Another year over for Point of No Return

Another year over, another birthday for Point of No Return.

It's been four years since this blog was set up (with the help of Joseph Alexander Norland) and the number of hits at the moment of writing stands at 206, 474 - as many in the last year as in the previous three years put together.

A drop in the blogocean, to be sure, but the issue of the forgotten Jews from Arab and Muslim lands attracts ever-growing interest. The global credit crunch has, sadly, taken its toll on funding for the campaign for recognition by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries. On the other hand, the issue has acquired a higher profile than ever in Israel and in February this year, the prestige Herzliya conference devoted 90 minutes to a discussion on Jewish refugees. An organisation of Iraqi Jews in Israel was emboldened to put forward a compensation claim for $100 billion.

Books and memoirs seem to be pouring forth from the pen of ex-residents of Arab and Muslim countries or their descendants : Memories of Eden, The Man the White Sharkskin Suit, My Father's Paradise - to name but three. But as the existence of Jews in Arab and Muslim lands becomes better known, so the danger increases that their narrative is rewritten and mythologised as a glorious pre-Zionist tale of Arab-Jewish coexistence, their suffering glossed over or their resettlement difficulties in the Jewish state magnified in order to 'bash' Israel.

It is not enough to raise the profile of Jewish refugees. We must be vigilant and strive to correct distortions wherever we come across them.