Ignoring the Jewish “Nakba”
May 21, 2012 12:24 by GuestPostThis guest post was written exclusively for HonestReporting by Lyn Julius, the co-founder of Harif, a UK group representing Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.
This year, as every year, the international media noted Nakba Day, the day when Palestinians mark the anniversary of the ‘catastrophe’ of Israel’s independence and the flight of 700,000 Arab refugees from the newborn state of Israel. Noticeable by its absence was any mention of the contemporaneous Jewish ‘nakba’, the flight of around 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
Isabel Kershner of The New York Times is among the offenders. Leo Rennert wrote in American Thinker: “A fair reading of history demands that equal attention be paid to this Jewish “naqba.” But fairness is in short supply in The New York Times. There’s also no indication in Kershner’s piece about the different outcomes of these two “naqbas.”
Although the refugees were displaced in roughly similar numbers, the western press and media remain deaf, dumb and blind to the Jewish refugees. Do a search for “Palestinian refugees” on the influential BBC website and you get 1,197 results. Do a search for “Jewish refugees” and you get only 187 results.
Of these, the BBC contained only one story about Jews from Iraq and two references to Jewish refugees from Arab countries, neither of them emanating from BBC programs. With the exception of a 2011 radio program fronted by BBC2 controller Alan Yentob about Iraqi Jews, the only Jewish refugees discussed by the BBC website have been Holocaust survivors.
When the media does feature Sephardi or Mizrahi suffering in Arab lands, the implication is that Zionism caused their troubles. Before Israel, so the myth goes, ‘Jews and Arabs coexisted peacefully’ through the centuries.
According to David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, the western media are accomplices in a campaign to ‘deny or extinguish a Jewish presence deeper in the region’. A seasoned Middle Eastern affairs journalist had been surprised to discover that Harris’s wife had, as a Jew, been forcibly expelled from her native Libya. The journalist had no idea that Jews had ever lived in Libya nor that every trace of the millenarian Jewish presence had been obliterated almost overnight. So un-newsworthy was the story at the time, that The New York Times, Harris says, devoted exactly two tiny news briefs in 1967 to the end of the Libyan Jewish community.
The net effect of this bias by omission is that the average viewer, listener or reader has no clue that Jews lived in the Middle East and North Africa well before the Arabs, let alone were brutally ejected. He or she could be forgiven for thinking that Israel was established to atone for European sins, at Arab expense. But 50 percent of the Jewish population of Israel are there not because of the Nazis but because of the Arabs.
A jaw-dropping BBC reply to a complaint I made about the lack of coverage of Jewish refugees is that they simply aren’t enough of a stumbling block to peace:
Victor
4:56 pm
May 21, 2012
Google to Wikipedia: Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. Excellent work.
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Michal Ravdin
5:00 pm
May 21, 2012
It is long due to bring up this subject. It is also important to prepare list of properties that the Jews have left in the Arab countries, which will for sure sum up to much more than what the Arabs of 1948 have left here when running away.
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Equality? or Appeasement
10:36 am
May 27, 2012
I like the way you think Michal, but let’s take it a step further: Add up the value of all Jewish property seized, confiscated, or left behind when the Jews were “encouraged” (read: FORCED with the threat of life, limb and liberty) to leave their homes and possessions in their former (Arab) countries. Deduct the value of all property equivalently abandoned or otherwise given up by the Arabs who fled Israel (including the territories, as applicable). If the difference is in favour of the Arabs, compensate them. If it is in favour of the Jews (likely), the Arab countries would have to compensate Israel in the final status of any peace. They could do so by absorbing the “Palestinians” who wish to leave Israel & the disputed (not “occupied”) territories…, giving up land to Israel (if a bordering state), or by financial settlement. Then again, why not just take over Jordan? The political left falsely accuses Israel of apartheid? Look at Jordan: Minority rule, with limited rights and opportunity for the majority Palestinians! If this is NOT apartheid, then what the heck is?!?
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Florence Kaplan
5:07 pm
May 21, 2012
My family lost everything in Iraq after my grandfather was forced into the army and killed during the first world war….my grandmother took her two kid and walked to Basra to take a boat to India. The Arabs stole their home and their gold jewelry shop and she was forced to flee in 1918. The Arabs steal until now and want what is not theirs….
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Victor
5:26 pm
May 21, 2012
I am one of those Jews who lived in an Arab country, Egypt, where in 1965 they confiscated everything we owned including may father and mother’s personal wealth, homes, cars, bank accounts, everything, and they gave us 3 months to leave with nothing except 20 Egyptian pounds per family member (4). In the meantime and until we left, the daily harassment of my dad and mom was unrelenting. They drove us from Cairo to Alexandria whereupon they insured we board a ship (small one at that) and searched everything in our bags and body searched me, my mother, my father and my sister. Frankly speaking that was the best decision for us. They are horrible people, the way they treated us, like common criminal does not deserve forgiveness or forgetfulness. They can go to hell and I will not shed a tear over it or over their falsely claimed losses. And even if the losses claims are legitimate, they were the ones who initiated all the wars betting that they will throw the Jews into the sea. Well they lost the bet. Tough.
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Josephine Bacon
5:33 pm
May 21, 2012
I disagree that fewer Jews were displaced from the Arab world than Palestinians who fled. There were MORE Jews displaced from the Arab world, and even more again if you count the Iranian Jews who had to flee when the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power. Unlike the Palestinians, who grow exponentially, thanks to UNWRA which decreed in 1982 that their descendants were refugees forever (!) the Jews have settled wherever they went so are not even classed as refugees. Talk about a whitewash!
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r.eluchans
6:36 pm
May 21, 2012
The UK’s media (The Guardian, BBC, among others) are a shame to serious journalism .So its regulators like the Public Complain Commission (PPC). I don’t think there is any objective media anymore in UK. They are totally politicized and none of them is unbias in their reporting.
This is an important signal od a society in decadence.
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Spongwoggler
7:07 pm
May 21, 2012
You are right. There is no longer any objective media in the U.K. (Was there ever) The media is now taking its instructions from their capitol. Cairo.
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Joseph Wahed
8:02 pm
May 21, 2012
I was 12 years old living in Cairo when we heard the head of the Arab League, Azzam Pacha, say: “This will be a war of extermination that will be likened to the Mongolian massacre and Crusades”
The next day, 5 Arab armies attacked the new-born state of Israel. it turned into a humiliating defeat for the Arabs. After that, the ethnic cleansing nearly one million Jews (and 100,000 Iranian Jews) from the Middle East and North Africa. We were stripped of our belongings and kicked out of our own country. Meanwhile we continue to hear the whining and crying of the Palestinians who, like beggars complain that they are victims when all the time they were the aggressors. These people received over $50 billion from the U.N., the E.U. and the U.S.A. since 1950 and still complain about “poverty” The culture of Palestinians and other Arabs is one of violence and hatred.
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Equality? or Appeasement
10:42 am
May 27, 2012
One problem with your statement Joseph: Most of “these people” likely received very little or nothing at all! It all went to the corrupt officials and so-called leaders at the top to procure weapons to shoot at Jews and Israelis, bombs to blow up buses and cafés, and a few “teachers” to spread hate propaganda to impressionable little children! How much of it went to Yasser Arafat and his wife Suha personally? How about Abbas, the Hamass “leaders”… I could go on and on….
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Ed Margolis
8:05 pm
May 21, 2012
If ever there were a simple and well written explanation of the “Palestinian refugee problem,” this is it. What stands out here is the contrast between the compassionate way Jews have dealt with their displaced brethren as opposed to the cynical use of the suffering of the displaced Palestinians by the Arab countries as a political tool to further their National interests.
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Barry
8:18 pm
May 22, 2012
How right you are! What a great point. Few make mention of the fact that Jews have been cast out of their homes throughout all of Europe and the Middle East for how many centuries now? And when has anyone heard of a Jewish refugee camp (with the exception of the temporary DP camps post WW2 for 5 or 6 years when few countries would accept them).
The people that are now referred to as “Palestinian refugees”, the few true refugees as well as (unbelievably) their decedents, have been made so not due to persecution set upon them, but rather due to the failed result of their own resolve to push the Jews into the sea…in other words…due to their persecution of others.
These people are artificially kept from integrating into their host societies and kept in refugee camps that have existed for more than 60 years now. They are intentionally herded in these “refugee camps” in a cynical attempt to nurture hatred and to be used as political pawns. How very companionate of their own leaders!
To put it in perspective, Jews in the Middle East alone, have been ejected from the following countries they had called home: Aden, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine Mandate (Jordanian part), Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Yemen, totaling more than a million people.
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Carole Rubin
8:15 pm
May 21, 2012
My daughter, born in the USA, lives in Israel with her Yemenite husband. His parents were whisked out of Yemen on Operation Magic Carpet in 1949. They had their three day old son with them and thought that they were flying on birds….Wings of Eagles. Moshav Givat Yearim, outside of Jerusalem,became their home and the home of others who arrived in Israel from Yemen. They asked to be kept together in one area. I’m sure you’ve never seen this in the news…….
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alex parks
1:01 am
May 22, 2012
You would wait a long time in Australia to read in any newspaper that Jews were expelled from any Arab state .We are fed endless stories about the ‘bad treatment’ of Arabs by Israel ,also the constant use militant instead of terrorist .The local Moslem groups have an easy time of it due to a lazy press .
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Gary Katz
6:58 am
May 22, 2012
Let’s face it – the Arabs who left Israel in ’48 have gotten more attention and hand wringing than any other refugees ever. I wonder if 100 years from now, their descendants will still call themselves “refugees?” I guess that means I’m a refugee of the Bolshevik Revolution, because that’s when my grandparents fled Russia, and African-Americans who are descendants of slaves are refugees from their ancestors’ African countries.
On a different tack, I would actually like to read stories of the Arabs who left Israel in ’48, because I suspect most of them will not claim they were forced out by Jews. There must be accounts compiled somewhere. I bet such accounts are suppressed by the Arabs of today, because they contradict the narrative that the Jews drove out the local Muslims.
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Reuven Ofir
11:13 am
May 22, 2012
The tragedy is that Jews did not allow themselves to become victims and prostrate themselves whining on the world stage . Paestinian Arabs did just that resulting in the creating UNRWA the worlds lagest welfare agency! Middle Eastern Jews arrived penniless in Israel, lived in tents for several years and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps with whatever help the small beleaguered state could render. 60 years later there are no longer any Jewish refugess, there are only proud standing Israeli citizens, enjoying their freedoms.
The so called liberals are perpetuating the Arab Palestinian tragedy by their political, and economic support. Arab countries are perpetuating the Arab tragedy to this day by using them as pawns in their over arching ideology of world domination.
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Brent Pudsey
1:37 pm
May 22, 2012
Thanks Honest Reporting for addressing this issue. It is important to know that the Jews who fled to Israel were in need and being oppressed in the nations they fled from. It is not just the Palestinians who can be considered refugees.
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La Nakba ebraica ignorata « Bugie dalle gambe lunghe
7:14 pm
May 22, 2012
[...] ORIGINALE QUI Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:Mi piaceBe the first to like this [...]
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indignant
8:37 pm
May 22, 2012
Misery is misery, whether it befalls Jews or Arabs. To deny one or the other is pointless. What would be useful would be a press less biased, and people better informed. The Arab countries have kept the “refugees” in a state of squalor as a fifth column against Israel and also because they do NOT want them in their countries. The Jews took in the refugees of Arab countries because it was the DECENT thing to do. It did not always work beautifully, but their children were citizens and not refugees. The press forgot what came first, it was the egg, not the chicken.
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Ignoring the Jewish “Nakba” | The Conservative Papers
11:19 pm
May 22, 2012
[...] Continued on Page 2 VN:F [1.9.17_1161]calculating…Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)topsyWidgetPreload({ "url": "http%3A%2F%2Fconservativepapers.com%2Fnews%2F2012%2F05%2F22%2Fignoring-the-jewish-nakba%2F", "style": "big", "title": "Ignoring the Jewish “Nakba” #BBC #Freedom #HonestReporting #Islam #Israel #Jihad #Muslims #Palestinians #Terrorism" }); [...]
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Ray
5:03 pm
May 25, 2012
I am doing research (Personal) on Expelled Jews form Arabs lands since 1914 ..Would anyone like to give me some information
re: Jews around the Arab world being forced out of their homes and country.
I just need to get a fix in my mind when writing to the News Papers – I seem to get the facts missed placed and need clear information as too what has happened since 1914 – to date … The Wars – The pogroms – the persecution and expelling of Jewish peoples form Arab land etc.
If you are willing: Just some basics.
you do not need to give your name – However, if you do it helps when setting out the details ..Thanks
(1) Date you were expelled
(2) Name your Country
(3) Expelled by which Arab group .. tribe
(4) How many Jews were expelled to your knowledge from your country
(5) Was it a violent expulsion
(6) Were there Property, finance and goods taken
Any other salient facts to help keep things chronological ..
Please keep it short .. Basic facts will help
Thanks
Ray
fatso911@hotmail.com
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Samir S. Halabi
1:10 pm
Aug 01, 2012
I know that some of the Syrians that were responsible for the brutal murder of some members of my family in Aleppo, Syia of 1947 are still alive, I am still tracking them down, eventually I will know exactly who they are, therefore they can be assured of one thing, they won’t die a natural death.
what took place in that horrific pogrom of Aleppo in 1947 is still vivid in my memory although at the time I was a small child, but as I just stated my memory is long and my arms are even longer.
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ralph
1:50 pm
Jan 02, 2013
Not only the Palestinian Arabs and Arab countries refused the division of an already amputated
Palestine but the armies of several Arab countries attacked Israel since the first days of its
existence. The Palestinian Arabs were encouraged by Arab leaders to quit Palestine/Israel
with the promise they would very soon come back once the Jews would be thrown into the sea.
The Jews who lived in Arab countries never used violence against the Arab compatriots but
on the contrary were discriminated and victims of violence by the Arab Governants .
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