Spinning Refugees

Remember how Zionist propagandists used to flog the lie that the Palestinians of 1948 simply melted away at the behest of Arab leaders, leaving an astonished Jewish community scratching their scones in wonderment? This whopper was, of course, always a diversion, designed to shift the spotlight from Zionist ethnic cleansing onto alleged Arab military orders. However, it was really too absurd an explanation for the 'exodus' of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians, around 85% of the indigenous population of the areas overrun by Zionist forces at the time, and fell victim to the labours of historians, Western, Israeli and Arab. Although still occasionally trotted out by the lower echelons of the Israeli propaganda machine, no reputable historian, Israeli or otherwise, will have a bar of it. The more streetwise among the legions of Zionist pen pushers are now, it seems, prepared to admit (60 years on!), albeit grudgingly and contemptuously, that, 'Yes, OK, the bloody Palestinians were dispossessed, but so what: "I would like to remind Randa Abdel-Fattah (October 4) that the Palestinians do not have a monopoly on dispossession."* (From a letter in Good Weekend by Lorin Blumenthal, Bondi Beach, 25/10/08)

[Imagine the howls of outrage at 'I would like to remind Elie Wiesel that European Jewry does not have a monopoly on genocide'.]

In an effort to wriggle out of responsibility for such a crime, however, a new lie was required: "Dare I mention the thousands of Jews forced to leave their homes in other Arab nations, where they had lived for centuries, due to violence and persecution?" (ibid)

If you think about this, and Blumenthal's hope is that you, the reader, won't, she is asking you to swallow the morally indefensible notion that, all things being equal (& I'll get to that later), while Zionist forces may have ethnically cleansed Palestine in 1948, the Arabs are guilty of ethnically cleansing Jews from Arab countries. Where this argument falls flat, of course, is in its assumption that, because the ethnically cleansed Palestinians are Arabs, and Arabs (other Arabs, that is) ethnically cleansed Jews from their lands, this somehow absolves Jews (other, European Jews, that is) from responsibility for Palestinian dispossession.

Let us, for the sake of argument, take seriously Blumenthal's allegation that Jews were dispossessed by Arabs. If we were in a position to ask her when exactly this alleged dispossession took place, she'd say 'in the fifties'. But notice she doesn't supply this information. And there's a reason for that: if the reader were told that the dispossession of the Palestinians came first - in 1948 - he or she might legitimately conclude that the so-called dispossession of Jews from Arab countries was undertaken in revenge for the earlier dispossession of the Palestinians, and that Israel, therefore, bears primary responsibility for perpetrating such a crime. Propagandists like Blumenthal therefore tend to avoid any reference to timing and prefer to leave the reader labouring under the mistaken notion that both dispossessions - the real and the alleged - took place simultaneously.

I now come to the allegation itself - that Arab Jews were dispossessed by Arabs. It is, of course, false, as I have shown in earlier posts (see Greg Sheridan: Charmed by Israel's 'Most Dangerous Politician' 21/12/07 & Hue & Cry on the Letters Page 5/1/08). The Israeli daily Haaretz, however, recently (15/8/08) carried a pertinent article by Yehuda Shenhav, professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University, titled Hitching a ride on the magic carpet. Some excerpts:-

"An intensive campaign to secure official political and legal recognition of Jews from Arab lands as refugees has been going on for the past 3 years. This campaign has tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews, whose origins are in Middle Eastern countries - depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of Independence. The campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a 'right of return' on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of 'lost' assets. The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice. "

Shenhav went on to tell the story of the rise and fall of the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC), an earlier manifestation of this spin: "The WOJAC figure who came up with the idea of 'Jewish refugees' was Yaakov Meron, head of the Justice Ministry's Arab legal affairs department. Meron propounded the most radical thesis ever devised concerning the history of Jews in Arab lands. He claimed Jews were expelled from Arab countries under policies enacted in concert with Palestinian leaders - and he termed these policies 'ethnic cleansing'. Vehemently opposing the dramatic Zionist narrative, Meron claimed that Zionism had relied on romantic, borrowed phrases ('Magic Carpet', 'Operation Ezra & Nehemiah') in the description of Mizrahi immigration waves to conceal the 'fact' that Jewish migration was the result of 'Arab expulsion policy'. In a bid to complete the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews, WOJAC publicists claimed that the Mizrahi immigrants lived in refugee camps in Israel during the 1950s (ie ma'abarot or transit camps), just like the Palestinian refugees. The organization's claims infuriated many Mizrahi Israelis who defined themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, at the time of WOJAC's formation, Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: 'We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations'. Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: 'I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists'. In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically: 'I have this to say: I am not a refugee'. He added: 'I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee'." Shenhav described how WOJAC's funding was eventually cut off and Meron fired from the Arab legal affairs department: "Today," he asserted, "no serious researcher in Israel or overseas embraces WOJAC's extreme claim."

After pointing out that the current crop of campaigners around this 'issue' have "learned nothing from [WOJAC's] woeful legacy," Shenhav concluded: "Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition. In contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came of their own free will; others arrived against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered from fear and oppression."

The fact that Blumenthal's Zionist folderol (and that of others like her) continue to dominate the letters pages of the corporate press is a sad indictment of the ignorance and/or partisanship of its editors.