Israel/Palestine

King_David

(14,851 posts) Sun Feb 16, 2014, 12:38 AM Feb 2014

Don’t forget what we lost, too

Compensation for Jews pushed out of Arab lands may become yet another issue

MUCH as Palestinian refugees and their offspring remember the orange groves and cinemas they lost in Jaffa when Israel was born in 1948, Jews who once lived in Iraq recite the qasidas—lyrical Arabic poetry—and recall the time when most of Iraq’s banks and transport companies were run by Jews. “Iraq has gone downhill since they forced us out,” sighs a professor at a gathering of academics of Iraqi origin at Or Yehuda, a Tel Aviv suburb, slipping into Arabic. “Mubki, lamentable.”

American officials are unclear on the subject of whether they have formally raised the issue of Jews driven out of Arab lands as part of their proposed framework to establish an international fund to compensate Palestinians who fled the new state of Israel in 1948. But leaders of Israel’s Sephardic Jews (most of whom came from Arab lands) criticise their own negotiators for not raising the issue more forcefully.

“Why does Israel ask for compensation for Holocaust victims but not for the Jews from the Arab world?” asks Levana Zamir, leader of an association for Egyptian Jews in Israel. “Because our leaders are Ashkenazi [European Jews], and we are Mizrahim [Orientals],” she says. “We had another kind of Shoah [Holocaust]. A million Jews [from Arab lands] lost everything.”

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21596578-compensation-jews-pushed-out-arab-lands-may-become-yet-another-issue-dont

8 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Don’t forget what we lost, too (Original Post) King_David Feb 2014 OP

yes those poor folks still sitting in refugee camps worldwide a is true tragedy azurnoir Feb 2014 #1

+1 bravenak Feb 2014 #2

10 or 20 years back for all refugees? King_David Feb 2014 #3

Nope but are the Mizrahi refugees still actually refugees? azurnoir Feb 2014 #4

Same goes for Palestinians, King_David Feb 2014 #6

No not really azurnoir Feb 2014 #7

Well, good. compensation is deserved Scootaloo Feb 2014 #5

From the article. R. Daneel Olivaw Feb 2014 #8

azurnoir

(45,850 posts)

1. yes those poor folks still sitting in refugee camps worldwide a is true tragedy

Reply to King_David (Original post)

Sun Feb 16, 2014, 12:46 AM

Feb 2014

oh wait..... Israel had some recently vacated property didn't it, and gosh those spaces got filled pretty quickly

To call holding a Palestinian state hostage to what other countries did 70-50 years ago duplicitous is polite at best

bravenak

(34,648 posts)

2. +1

Reply to azurnoir (Reply #1)

Sun Feb 16, 2014, 12:47 AM

Feb 2014

It's pathetic.

King_David

(14,851 posts)

3. 10 or 20 years back for all refugees?

Reply to azurnoir (Reply #1)

Sun Feb 16, 2014, 12:51 AM

Feb 2014

or 5 to 10 ?

azurnoir

(45,850 posts)

4. Nope but are the Mizrahi refugees still actually refugees?

Reply to King_David (Reply #3)

Sun Feb 16, 2014, 12:59 AM

Feb 2014

or are ProIsrael pundits re-refugeeing them to score cheap political points

Calling Mizrahim "refugees," first of all, denies Mizrahim any opportunity to be Zionists in their own right. While it is true that European Zionist organizations only turned their attention to Arab Jewry—at the time, around eight percent of the world Jewish population—in the 1940s, organic Zionist organizations were active in Tunisia and Morocco in the early 20th century. In fact, Yemeni Jews had already begun immigration to mandate Palestine in the early 1900s. As it happens, the Yemeni Jewish immigrants were treated like Palestinian laborers: European Zionist settlers believed they could subsist on so-called "Arab wages," and denied them any position of political power after independence.

Calling Mizrahim refugees has also strangely been linked to the Palestinian right of return. In 1976, the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries was founded, in large part to claim that Oriental Jews were banished from Arab countries and ought to have compensation rights. WOJAC's goal in claiming compensation rights was not to get any monetary compensation from Iraq, Yemen, Morocco or Tunisia, but to set these debts off against the ones owed to the Palestinians.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/10/the-mizrahi-jewish-refugee-problem.html

also

http://972mag.com/spineless-bookkeeping-the-use-of-mizrahi-jews-as-pawns-against-palestinian-refugees/56472/

King_David

(14,851 posts)

6. Same goes for Palestinians,

Reply to azurnoir (Reply #4)

Sun Feb 16, 2014, 01:12 AM

Feb 2014

Most were born in other countries.

The real sin is the other countries do not allow them citizenship they deserve in the lands they were born.

azurnoir

(45,850 posts)

7. No not really

Reply to King_David (Reply #6)

Sun Feb 16, 2014, 01:20 AM

Feb 2014

but thanks your only proving the point made in the daily beast article

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)

5. Well, good. compensation is deserved

Reply to King_David (Original post)

Sun Feb 16, 2014, 01:01 AM

Feb 2014

As is repatriation on the off-chance that the refugees wish to return well, the ones who haven't annuled their refugee status by accepting citizenship in another nation, that is...

R. Daneel Olivaw

(12,606 posts)

8. From the article.

Reply to King_David (Original post)

Sun Feb 16, 2014, 01:21 AM

Feb 2014

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator, an Ashkenazi, fears that adding such topics could complicate to distraction efforts to resolve matters arising from Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after the six-day Arab-Israeli war of 1967. For some Israelis, that may be just the idea. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has repeatedly raised the issue, apparently to offset any claims for compensation from the Palestinians uprooted in 1948, 750,000 of whom fled abroad and 150,000 of whom were displaced within what became Israel. Mr Netanyahu’s ministry for senior citizens has opened a hotline for claimants to register lost property in the Arab and Muslim world (including Turkey and Iran), which, campaigners argue, will exceed the price-tag of between $20 billion and $100 billion which Israeli officials privately put on Palestinian claims.

I'm not so sure that you want to go down this path, King. Comparing what other countries in the region did to their Jewish populations vs the same thing that Israel did to the Palestinians (large scale expulsion) puts the latter in the same category as the former. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Wouldn't you agree?

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