On 23 June 2014, the Israeli Knesset passed a law designating 30 November as an official date in the calendar to remember the uprooting of almost one million Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran in the last 60 years. Lyn Julius of Harif explains in the Huffington Post why it is important:
The date chosen was 30 November - to recall the day after the UN passed the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine. Violence, following bloodcurdling threats by Arab leaders, erupted against Jewish communities. The riots resulted in the mass exodus of Jews from the Arab world, the seizure of their property and assets and the destruction of their millennarian, pre-Islamic communities. In 1979, the Islamic revolution resulted in the exodus of four-fifths of the Iranian-Jewish community.
Refugees are much in the news these days. Until the mass population displacement caused by wars in Iraq and Syria, however, the world thought that 'Middle Eastern refugee' was synonymous with 'Palestinian refugee.' Yet there were more Jews displaced from Arab countries than Palestinians (850, 000, as against 711,000 according to UN figures.)
The majority of Jewish refugees found a haven in Israel. For peace, it is important that all bona fide refugees be treated equally, yet Jewish refugee rights have never adequately been addressed. The 30 November commemoration is first and foremost a call for truth and reconciliation.
The Jewish refugee issue is more than simply a question to be resolved at the negotiating table. It is a symptom of the Arab and Muslim world's deep psychosis - an inability to tolerate the non-Arab, non-Muslim Other.
Today, both Muslim sects and non-Muslim minorities are being persecuted in the Middle East, but people are apt to forget that the Jews were one of the first. As the saying goes, 'First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.' And it does not stop there. A state that devours its minorities ends up devouring itself.
This Arab/Muslim psychosis is the product of fundamentalist ideologies, many of them Nazi-inspired, which took root in the first half of 20th century. These ideological forces left a legacy of state-sanctioned bigotry and religiously-motivated terrorism. That legacy is with us today, in the atrocities in Paris, in Mali and in the stabbings on Israel's streets.
There are no Jewish refugees today - they have been successfully absorbed in Israel and the West. They have rebuilt their lives without fuss. They don't expect much in the way of compensation. But former refugees do demand their place in memory and history.
The Israeli government is telling the Jewish refugee story at the UN on 1 December. From Amsterdam to Sydney, Toronto to Geneva, Liverpool to New York, San Francisco to London, Jewish organisations worldwide - my own (Harif) included - are organising lectures, film screening and discussions.
Read article in full
Same article in The Algemeiner
It's time to remember the other refugees on 30 November (Jewish Weekly)
As a matter of fact, the UN General Assembly partition recommendation was passed on November 30, 1947, Middle East time. The vote took place in New York at approx. 5:30 pm EST [New York time] but in Israel the time was already 30 November 1947, 12:30 am. That is, in Israel the time of the vote was already on the early morning of 30 November, because of the 7-hour difference in between the time zones.
ReplyDeleteMurderous attacks on Jews began in Israel within a few hours of the UN GA vote, which had ended at approx. 12:35 am. For instance, a car traveling to the Hadassah Hospital on Mt Scopus past the Jewish neighborhood of Shim`on haTsadiq was shot at during that early morning.
My family were among the one million refugees from Arab lands. Fortunately, we were also British by birth and by descent, so were deemed to be returning nationals to Britain.
ReplyDeleteWe were however totally destitute as Egypt had robbed us of everything we owned.
Once in Britain, we felt free. We could say the word Israel out aloud, without worrying about bein flung in an an Egyptian prison.
We could sing the hatikvah out aloud and not be scared that the Egyotian secret police would make us disappear.
There is no price for freedom.
Material belongings, money,....nothing is worth it if you live in a country that deprives you of freedom.