About 850,000 Jews fled Arab countries after Israel's founding in 1948, leaving behind assets valued today at more than $300 billion, said Heskel M. Haddad.
He added that the New York-based organization has decades-old property deeds of Jews from Arab countries on a total area of 100,000 sq.km. - which is five times the size of the State of Israel.
Most of the properties are located in Iraq, Egypt and Morocco, Haddad said.
The Baghdad-born Haddad fled Iraq in 1951, and, after a brief stop in Israel, made his way to the United States where he went on to become a prominent New York optometrist.
In an interview, he said that it was imperative for Israel to bring up the issue of the Jews who fled Arab countries at any future peace talks - including those scheduled to take place in Annapolis in the coming weeks - since no Palestinian leader would sign a peace treaty without resolving the issue of Palestinian refugees.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians - with estimates ranging from 400,000 to 750,000 - left Israeli-controlled territory in 1948 and 1949, and they, along with their millions of descendants, make up one of the prickliest issues to be dealt with by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators as part of any resolution to the conflict.
Haddad said that the key to resolving the issue rested with the Arab League, which in the 1950s passed a resolution stating that no Arab government would grant citizenship to Palestinian refugees, keeping them in limbo for over half a century.
At the same time, the Arab League urged Arab governments to facilitate the exit of Jews from Arab countries, a resolution which was carried out with a series of punitive measures and discriminatory decrees making it untenable for the Jews to stay in the countries.
"No Jews from Arab countries would give up their property and home and come to Israel out of Zionism," Haddad said.
He said that the Israeli government was "myopic" not to utilize this little-known information, which he said should be part of a package financial solution to solving the issue of Palestinian refugees.
An Israeli ministerial committee on claims for Jewish property in Arab countries, which is currently headed by the Pensioners Minister Rafi Eitan, has been virtually dormant since it was established four years ago.
I challenge these Jews to WANT to claim back their land in Arab countries and leave the state of Israel! The fact that it was the jewish underground who planted many bombs in many synagogues in Arab countries in order to speed up mass immigration to Palestine does not register on the Zionist myth radar. The fact tha Jews have lived in Arab countries for thousands of years until the Zionist enterprise infected the Middle East does not register. And the fact that without mass immigration and majority rule in Palestine the Zionist enterprise would have failed also fails to register! The Zionist attempt to claim to be a victim while murdering Arabs every single day is beyond comprhension. The fact that Palestinian Arab have for over 60 years lived under a brutal and oppressive Jewish occupation is enough to render these Zionist myths and fabrications sickening to the human soul and spirit. The fact that Jews continue until today to live in Muslim lands and their synagogues still stand is testament to the actual facts! The fact that over 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed by Jewish nazis in 1948 enraging the Muslim and Arab world to the reality of Zionism is the reason why some Jews were persecuted in some Arab countries! However as the Drayton affair shows us it was the Zionist leaders who waged war against their fellow Jew in order to force their exodus from Arab lands! Planting bombs in synagogues as the Jewish underground did in 1950 in Iraq shows us the lengths the Zionists would go in order to steal another peoples land! AND LET US NOT FORGET THAT THE PALESTINIANS ARE NO THE LIBYANS THEY ARE NOT THE IRAQIS THEY ARE THE PALESTINIANS AND THEIR CRIME WAS TO EXIST AND LIVE IN A LAND WHICH THE ZIONISTS WANTED TO CONQUER BY USE OF TERROR LIES AND HISTORICAL MYTHOLOGY!
ReplyDeleteAdabat forgot to take his psych meds.
ReplyDelete13 reasons why the Palestinians don't deserve a state:
ReplyDelete1. There was never an independent Arab state called Palestine. At best, Palestine was a backwoods Turkish province. Hence, there were no pilgrimages to the "holy" Al Aqsa mosque. Jerusalem is not the third holiest site of Islam. Mecca and Medina are holy, Jerusalem was never mentioned in the same breath until the liberation of the Temple Mount by the Israelis in 1967.
2. The Palestinians and their political leadership bring war and instability to wherever theyreside, be it Jordan, Lebanon or in the very territories Israel recently handed over to them. No one wants them as neighbors because they are too egotistical, hotheaded, selfish and immature to qualify as a responsible nation.
3. No one will sign a meaningful agreement with any Palestinian leader because agreements are always broken. Israel learned the hard way, that the PLO's diplomats have no ethics and lie with impunity.
4. There is no hope of the Palestinians ever honestly electing their leaders. At best, this ragtag collection of Middle Eastern peoples will accept whatever tyrant proves the most inscrutable and leads their tribe after Arafat.
5. The Palestinians send their children to their deaths to make media propaganda points. Real nations care about their young. The PLO and its allied Islamic organizations practise child sacrifice under the guise of martyrdom.
6. The PLO has no morals, national or otherwise. Their sole motivation is to instill hate from one generation to the next. The PLO has brought nothing but misery to its followers.
7. The Palestinian leaders and their factotums are totally corrupt, stealing every penny of public money they can lay their hands on. No one seriously accepts that financial aid will actually reach the people. And no one will make a business investment in the Palestinians because of the payoffs and bribes involved in setting up shop. The PLO's strongarm tactics have brought in just enough protection money to buy arms and pay the militias, but not enough honest funds to initiate a prosperous nation.
8. The PLO and its police torture people they don't like. They execute people without due process of law. Whatever Palestinian courts do exist, none do so to protect the rights of the accused. The PLO will not tolerate free expression and arrest and torture journalists who criticize the regime. The PLO offer no rights to women.
9. There is no Palestinian language. There is no Palestinian religion. Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran. Mohammed never claimed he was in Jerusalem. The Al Aqsa Mosque and Shrine Of Omar are built atop the ancient Jewish temples.
10. The Jews held sovereignty over Jerusalem for 1300 years; the Arabs, a mere fraction of the time. There was never an Arab Palestinian nationalist movement until 1964. The majority of "Palestinians" according to British demographic surveys, arrived in Israel after 1917, seeking economic opportunities.
11. No one is offering to compensate the 800,000 Sephardic Jews whose assets were stolen when they were forced out of Arab countries in the 40s and 50s. Israel took in their refugees, the Arabs kept their 500,000 in camps.
12. The Palestinians already have a nation, Jordan. There, the indigenous majority is ruled by Bedouin royalty from Mecca. The Jordanians had control of the West Bank from 1948 to 1967 and never once offered it as a Palestinian state. Why not? The Egyptians held the Gaza Strip for much longer. Why didn't theycreate a Palestinian state if there were Palestinian people living there?
13. There is no ancient Palestinian history. There are no world renowned Palestinian artists, scientists, not one Palestinian literary masterpiece, no recognizable culture, no inventions... nothing that distinguishes Palestinians as a people. They are neither a unique people, nor a separate people with their own history. The Palestinians do not deserve a nation because they are not a nation.
Period.