Saudi Columnist Hussein Shobokshi's piece in Asharq alawsat, picked up by Point of no Return (and now reproduced by MEMRI), lamented the exodus of first the Jews and now the Christians from the Middle East.
He writes:
"The Arab East was [once] a paragon of peaceful coexistence between different religious groups. Abundant evidence of this model arrangement could be found in school classrooms, trading companies, and cultural projects. [This situation existed] until the Jews were expelled from the Arab countries for the first time, which took place in the wake of the declaration of the Zionist state. The response [to this declaration] by the security apparatuses of several Arab governments was inane, in that they came to regard the Jewish communities with suspicion, skepticism, and apprehension, and tormented them in order to force them to emigrate [from Arab countries]."
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries points out with some satisfaction that within the last three years, references to Jewish refugees displaced from Arab countries have appeared in the following Arab media:
Al Arabia (Bahrain) Al-Ayat
Al-Haram (Egypt) Al-Jazeera (Kuwait) Atlasvista Maroc (Morocco) Dar Al Hayat (Lebanon) IDC Mideast News (United Arab Emirates) Islam Online Jordan Times (Jordan) Radio Free Iraq (Iraq)
Articles such as Shobokshi's betray a growing awareness of the catastrophic cost of the Jewish exodus. This has left a gaping void at the heart of the Arab world from which it has not yet recovered . As Shubakshi puts it:
"[Jewish emigration from Arab countries] had a significant negative impact on the material wellbeing of society, and on economic diversity, in the Arab world. It helped invalidate the claim that religious moderation, coexistence, and 'acceptance of the other' [prevailed in Arab countries].
Let's hope this self-critical trend continues.
on this same subject, Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Justice minister, was on Israeli TV tonight [Ro'im `Olam with Ya`aqov Ahime'ir]. He pointed out that before the UN General Assembly partition recommendation [11-29-1947] the Arab League had already called on member states to take measures against their own Jewish populations. I can add that speeches containing veiled threats against these Jews were made in speeches by Arab delegates to the UN. An article on the subject of how Arab states and the Arab League treated the issue of Jews in Arabs states even before 11-29-1947 is by Yaakov Meroz and found in Malka Hillel's Forgotten Millions [1999].
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