Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Canadian MP raises Jewish refugee issue

Winnipeg MP Anita Neville

Kudos to Canadian MP Anita Neville for raising the issue of Jewish refugees in Parliament - a response to the disproportionate attention given to Palestinian refugees, especially on university campuses during Israel Apartheid Week. She only discovered the issue of Jewish refugees two years ago, she tells Canadian Jewish News. Dare other parliamentarians follow suit?

Neville, who is running for re-election in Winnipeg South Centre, told The CJN this is “an issue that has not been discussed much in this House or by the current government.” She only learned of it two years ago. However, Canada could play a role in furthering awareness of the plight of Jewish refugees, either through discussions in committee or by calling on the government to raise it in forums in which the issue of Palestinian refugees comes up.

“This is a story that must be acknowledged and must be repeated,” she said.

Stanley Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, said U.S. Congress passed a resolution during the Bush administration calling on the executive to raise the issue in international diplomatic forums whenever Palestinian refugees are discussed. “To what extent the Americans are now pushing this issue, I’m not really aware of,” he said.

“But, Israel is making it part of their platform,” he continued. “We haven’t seen any recent Israeli government adopt this negotiation stance the way this government has.”

A little more than a year ago, Israel’s Knesset passed a bill aimed at securing compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran. The bill instructs the government to include the compensation issue in future peace negotiations.

“For the first time, there is seriousness among Israeli officials” about the issue. “The foreign ministry sent memos to ambassadors to make sure the issue is raised in any bilateral discussions,” Urman stated.

Neville said the timing of her statement “related to what is going on on university campuses.” (It came shortly after the conclusion of Israeli Apartheid Week.)

“No one is asking ‘what about Jewish refugees,’” she said. “No one is asking ‘what about the one-sided approach of the United Nations’.

“There’s a lot of attention on Palestinian refugees and no acknowledgement there was a significant number of Jewish refugees who were displaced. There were no reparations for these people,” she said.

“I think there has to be greater awareness of the issue, greater dialogue about it at universities, greater dialogue about it internationally, when there’s disproportionate talk about Palestinian refugees.”

Read article in full

Rare mention of refugees at Westminster

4 comments:

  1. I just love the last paragraph of this Canadian envoy!
    suzy vidal

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  2. With politicians like her, Canada might just get out of the Muslim-leaning, politically-correct and liberal quagmire she allowed herself to sink into.

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  3. Wow! This is closing the circle. I don't know if she is aware of it but there was a small "Canadian connection" in the rescue of Jews from North Africa in particular in the fifties and sixties. It was HIAS Canada (anyone remembers?) that's the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of Canada that handled the logistics for travel, destination, etc. There is a very large community in Canada that HIAS has helped settle there.
    How could we ever repay those magnificent people ....

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  4. I do not know the name of any of them,(the Hias people) but i want to thank them over and over. They did a marvellous job. In Egypt we called them "l'agence juive" and yes we owe them a lot. When we Jews from Egypt were kicked out, they were the ones to help. For instance I accopanied my handicapped grandmother to Greece, Athens, and they helped us go on to Israel. I have never known the name of anyone in particular but they were our safety belt. I take this opportunity to thank them .
    Suzy Vidal
    a Jewish refugee from Egypt.

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