The expulsion of over 850,000 Jews from Arab countries must be acknowledged and redressed for a just regional peace process to be initiated, according to a report compiled by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC).
The report, entitled “Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress,” purports that the existence of Jewish and Palestinian refugees is at the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its resolution. Until now, the human rights violations against Jews in Arab lands and their “forced expulsion” from these countries beginning in the 1940s have been overlooked in Middle East discourse and U.N. resolutions, according to the report.
JJAC, a U.S.-based consortium of academics and legal experts, announced their findings at a press conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
Irwin Cotler, JJAC’s honorary chair, professor of Law at Montreal’s McGill University, and Canadian Member of Parliament, characterized the dismissal of the “state-sanctioned patterns of repression” and exile of Jews from Arab countries as an “Alice in Wonderland human rights charade.”
He blamed the U.N. for creating a “distorted narrative” of the Middle East, which excludes Jewish refugees from Arab countries. If the U.N. intends to participate legitimately in Middle East peace negotiations, Cotler added, they must speak about both groups of refugees and acknowledge their “assault on truth and memory.”
He said that the report is about “the pursuit of truth and the duty of remembrance,” not about monetary restitution. However, the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) estimates communal and private losses at $100 billion.
The JJAC report outlines the violence and legal alienation of Jews, coinciding with a rise in Arab pan-nationalism and Zionism. While approximately 726,000 Palestinians were displaced in the first Arab-Israeli war and 325,000 more fled territories conquered in 1967, 97% of Jews have left Arab lands since 1948.
Because Zionism was considered a crime in six out of the ten Arab countries, Jews were treated as “foreign enemy nationals instead of the citizens that they were,” according to Stanley Urman, JJAC’s director. Similarly, the terms Jew and Zionist were used interchangeably in Arab law.
In Iraq, where Jews lived since the 6th century BCE, a 1941 “pogrom” claimed the lives of 180 Jews and injured 1,000 more. In 1969, after most of the community had been evacuated to Israel, eleven Iraqi Jews were convicted of treason in a “staged trial” and hanged publicly in Baghdad.
In Syria, Jews were dismissed from government posts and were denied freedom of movement in 1948. The following year, Jews’ bank accounts were frozen and their possessions expropriated, according to the report.
Less than 8,000 Jews live in Arab countries today.
Cotler said that the report highlights the rights of Jewish refugees, without negating the restitution of Palestinian refugees. He added that Arabs and Jews were the “joint victims” of a “double aggression,” the attack against Jews within the nascent Jewish state and violence against Jews in Arab countries. If Arab leaders had accepted the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947, Cotler continued, there would be no refugees.
Shlomo Hillel, a former speaker in the Knesset and member of JJAC’s legal advisory committee, also said that the Arab leadership is responsible for both groups of refugees. He explained that they sacrificed Palestinian self-determination and allowed thousands of Palestinians to remain in refugee camps to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.
Linda Menuhin of Iraq and Shimon Taragoni of Libya gave personal accounts of their plights. While Cotler insisted that the JJAC report should not be compared with the Holocaust, Menuhin and Taragoni’s presentations were emotional and the audience sat in reverential silence, usually reserved for Holocaust testimonials.
Menuhin recounted how her father was taken away for interrogation in the late 1960s, never to return. Along with other family members, she was then smuggled to Israel via Iran. Menuhin said that many Iraqi Jews hope to uncover the destinies of their relatives now that Saddam Hussein’s insular regime has been toppled.
“I hear they [the Palestinians] want to return here,” said Taragoni, who fled Libya for Tunis after witnessing the public “slaughter” of Jews in his native country. “I am the refugee. I am the injured one. I am the sacrifice,” he said, nodding his head in disbelief.
Likewise, Cotler said that the willingness of refugees to come forward is closely linked to the timing of the report’s release. “Behind every statistic, we are talking about human beings,” he said.
JJAC representatives will present the report to select Israeli politicians and President Moshe Katsav, as well as to officials at the White House and the British and Canadian parliaments in coming days.