Tiqva was forced out of her native Iraq, but stories like hers are glaringly absent from what is taught in western schools and universities about the Israel-Arab conflict. The Jewish refugees will continue to be written out of the teaching of the Middle East's history as long as it remains a vehicle for Palestinian propaganda, argues Daniel Ledeen in Herald Jewish-Voice. (With thanks Allan and Rachel L)
On March 16, Owls for Israel had the good fortune to learn about a subject long gone from the curriculum in most American universities today - Jewish refugees. Asked to speak to a group of students during lunch, Hebrew Professor Baron Tiqva described what it was like to be forced out of her home in Basra, Iraq, in 1948. Tiqva told the story of her family and how they suffered under Nuremberg-style Iraqi laws forbidding Jews to hold bank accounts, serve in government, walk on the sidewalk, attend public schools or own land. In one of the most striking moments of the story, Tiqva described her childhood memory of the day her family finally was forced out of Iraq.
Allowed only one suitcase, young Tiqva wore layers upon layers of clothing as her family set out for the airplane destined to Cyprus. Once they arrived at the gate, however, police forced Tiqva and her entire family, including her grandmother, to strip down naked. Looking for the last remnants of wealth in the form of gold or jewels, the Iraqi Police stole even the wedding bands from Tiqva's mother, father and grandmother. There they were, a once prominent family with wealth stretching throughout the most fertile regions of the biblical lands - now naked with nothing but each other.
Tiqva's family, like many of the nearly one million Jews who were robbed, abused and kicked out of Arab lands in 1948, traveled to the newly created State of Israel, where they would begin anew the long arduous task of building out of nothing. It was brutal work and Tiqva described to us the squalor of living conditions, the lack of clean water and the immense poverty that was characteristic of the early camps for immigrants within Israel. Refugees from Europe and refugees from the Middle East - people with nothing in common except for the shared joys and, unfortunately, the shared pains that came along with being Jewish - set out to create a nation that would guarantee their protection.
Tiqva's story is heart wrenching and inspiring but, most of all, it is glaringly absent from history books, lectures and academia. The Israel of today bears little resemblance to the barren and harsh land that Tiqva saw when her family first arrived. Within a generation, the country established itself as a leader on the world stage in everything from medicine to technology. Perhaps the story of the refugees has been lost within the skyscrapers and stock exchanges of Tel Aviv, and yet, the success Israel enjoys today is only because of the backbreaking work of those earliest immigrants - a kind of work too many today would be unable to recognize.
While the story of Jewish refugees has fallen between the cracks, Palestinian refugee issues continue to dominate discussions. Sixty years later, the Palestinians enjoy the patronage of a separate refugee organization within the United Nations (UNRWA). While every single other refugee from Darfur to China is served by the UN's High Commission for Human Rights, the Palestinians have enjoyed the utmost attention along with an unimaginable amount of funding and education. Tiqva made the case that all of the wealth confiscated from Jews in the Arab Lands could have provided an ample start for Palestinians - a start that Jewish refugees should have had when they came to Israel.
So, why is it that we don't hear about Jewish refugees? Why is it that a separate UN organization exists entirely for the Palestinians? Perhaps the answers can be found in looking at the recent actions from the so-called UN Human Rights Committee. Run by a group of the world's worst human rights violators - countries such as Iran, Libya, Cuba, Egypt and Angola - the committee has turned into a UN-sanctioned anti-Semitic bully-pulpit. Not surprisingly, in the first conference held in 2001, a draft declaration was written that called Jewish self-determination racist, Israel an apartheid state and went on to question the existence of the Holocaust. Israel remains the victim of numerous resolutions of condemnation, and it remains the only country to be specifically condemned.
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Israeli authorities never called refugees by that name - they were all "olim hadashim" - new immigrants ("old immigrants" are called Israelis). The reason for this was ideological - the dominant line of thinking was that anyone who came to Israel did so out of a Zionist commitment, rather than because they had nowhere else to go.
ReplyDeleteThis was good for integration into society and restoration of the refugees' lives, but turned out badly in the political sphere. The narrative of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries is still not part of the mainstream Arab-Israeli debate.
No doubt there were several reasons for Israel officially avoiding raising the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands or how Jews had traditionally been treated in those countries. I think one reason was a kind of "leftist" political correctness even many years ago on the part of top politicians [Labor Party representatives up to 1977]. Another reason may have been the belief --mistaken I believe-- that time would bring the Arab states to make peace with Israel and that meanwhile, it would not be wise to antagonize them by shaming them on this issue. Even personalities like Ambassador Eliyahu Sasson --one of Israel's top diplomats and himself from Aleppo, a Halabi-- may have shared this view. Sasson, by the way, was part of an Arab nationalist organization at an early stage of his career while still in Syria. If this was Sasson's view, it would have fit in with how I perceive the Labor Party's outlook in the early days of the state.
ReplyDeleteThe LP [first called Mapai] also had a general strategy of being overly conciliatory to other forces and powers, not only to Arabs.
Further, since the US and Britain were quite openly pro-Arab in the early period of the state, the LP might have wanted to placate them too by not directly confronting the issue.
Lastly, some might have argued in those days that any attack or negative portrayal of the internal workings of Arab societies, and how they treated dhimmis and Jews in particular, might have threatened the remaining Jews in various Arab lands, who might have suffered violence as a result or been forbidden to leave.
I do not claim that I have any definitive answer. As to why there is no peace as yet, I think that outside powers also bear much of the blame. For many years, outside powers have encouraged, one way or another, the Arabs NOT to come to terms with Israel. I think that today the EU plays that role.
Eliyahu
ReplyDeleteYou are right that there were several reasons. What you say about the 'politically-correct'Labour Party is interesting.
My view is that the refugee question was a final status issue and Israel never got that far in any peace talks.
Israel never made political capital out of the Jewish refugees so as not to drive a wedge between different ethnic groups. (As anon says, this was good for Israeli society but lousy for hasbara.)
Another very big factor, as you say, Eliyahu, was that Israel did not want to jeopardise the rescue operations going on in various Arab countries from the 1970s to 90s by making the refugee issue 'political'.
Bataween