Israel 1952
by David Szymin (David "Chim" Seymour), 1911-1956
[click on the photo to see it full size]
[click on the photo to see it full size]
Showing posts with label Jewish Refugees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jewish Refugees. Show all posts
Friday, February 12, 2010
Chalutz Wedding
From "Magnum Magnum", a collection of photographs from the famous photographic agency, first published in 2007 by Thames & Hudson:
Sunday, January 31, 2010
"We Don't Want to be Forgotten Anymore"
From Israel national News, 16/11/09, by Hillel Fendel:
Peace Talks Must Include Jewish Refugee Demands
Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries made Aliyah [immigration] to Israel in its early years, after being banished and forced to leave behind property and asset worth billions of dollars. A legislative proposal on the issue by Knesset Member Nissim Zev (Shas) ...stipulates that in any negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the rights of Arabs who left Israel in 1948, the government of Israel would be required to present its own demands for reparations for the Jews of Arab countries.
MK Zev says his proposal is anchored in both a United Nations resolution and the U.S. Congress. “The Jews from Arab countries are defined as refugees by the United Nations,” he emphasized. “It’s not something we made up, but rather a U.N. definition. In addition, the American Congress itself resolved, in 2008, that the rights of these Jewish refugees must be recognized in the course of the negotiations.”
The resolution, passed by the House of Representatives in April 2008, recognized Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were forced to flee their homes in the aftermath of the creation of the State of Israel. It requires U.S. officials involved in any Middle East peace negotiations that deal with the Arab refugees to "also include a similarly explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries."
More Jewish Refugees than Arabs
One Congressional co-sponsor said at the time that “it’s not just the Arabs and Palestinians in the Middle East, but also Jewish people who themselves were dispossessed of their possessions and their homes, and were victims of terrorist acts.” Another said there were more Jewish refugees than Palestinian refugees, and “their forced exile from Arab lands must not be omitted from public discussion on the peace process."
The American Sephardi Federation reports as follows:
“The expulsion and exodus of over 850,000 Jews from Arab countries is among the most significant yet little known injustices against humanity of the past century… Between the 1940s and 1980s, the Jews of Arab countries endured humiliation, discrimination, human rights abuses, organized persecution and expulsion by the governments of the countries of their origin. During this time, Jewish property was seized without compensation, Jewish quarters were sacked and looted, and cemeteries were desecrated. Synagogues, Jewish shops, schools and houses were ransacked, burned and destroyed, and hundreds of Jews were murdered in anti-Semitic riots and pogroms. Of the over 850,000 Jewish refugees who left Arab countries, approximately 600,000 sought refuge in the State of Israel and were resettled there at great expense. Arab states have refused to acknowledge these human rights violations and provide relief to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were forced to abandon their homes, businesses and possessions as they fled those countries.”
MK Zev said that his mother remembers that in 1941, “180 Jews were slaughtered in Baghdad, and the Jews, including my uncles and other relatives, left behind property worth millions. So it has just disappeared? In many countries, their citizenship was revoked, their bank accounts confiscated, and the money used to finance the war against Israel. Other laws stipulated that Zionism was a crime and the property of activist Zionists was confiscated.”...
Zionism's promise
From The Jerusalem Post, 29/01/2010, by CAROLINE GLICK:
..."Never again!”
So declared Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he spoke at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Wednesday, the 65th anniversary of its liberation.
Netanyahu used his speech at the notorious death camp to nudge what he referred to as “the enlightened nations of the world” to recognize that “murderous evil” has to be stopped as early as possible to prevent it from achieving its aims. Unfortunately, the events of the past week show clearly that evil is on the march, and “the enlightened nations of the world” are on a coffee break from enlightenment.
As Netanyahu addressed the world from the site of the most prolific genocide factory in human history, at the place where over a million Jews were gassed, starved, beaten, raped, frozen, shot and hanged and then burned in ovens, Iran’s leaders were declaring loudly that they intend to finish what the Nazis started. They will destroy the Jewish people.
Iran’s dictator supremo Ali Khamenei used a photo-op with Mauritania’s President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz – who cut his own country’s diplomatic ties with Israel last January – to renew his pledge to commit yet another Holocaust. As he put it, “Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime... When the destruction happens will depend on how the Islamic nations approach the issue.”
And as he spoke ...Germany’s Der Speigel reported that evidence gleaned from document intercepts and from the testimony of two senior Iranian defectors who were involved in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Iran’s nuclear program is not a peaceful one. The Iranians are designing and building nuclear warheads for their Shihab-3 ballistic missiles. According to a summary of the findings now circulating through the halls of power, Teheran will have the wherewithal to build nuclear warheads by 2012.
So the Der Spiegel report showed that Iran is developing the capacity to carry out a second Holocaust in under a hundred years. And yet, in the face of their sure knowledge that evil is on the march, as they did 70 years ago, the “enlightened nations” of Europe are siding with evil against its would-be victims.
On a popular level, as Sunday’s release of the Jewish Agency’s annual report on global anti-Semitism documented, there were more anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in 2009 than there had been in any single year since the Holocaust. The report stated that the attacks were carried out by Jew-haters on both the Left and the Right.
....Since the Holocaust, old-style right-wing anti-Semites in Europe have had a hard time getting political traction for their desire to see Jews suffer. But by conflating Jews with Israel, their colleagues on the Left have made sticking it to the Jews, our state and our supporters the easiest way to score political points. So it was that in her first speech as the EU’s new foreign policy chief, Britain’s Catherine Ashton went out of her way to condemn Israel for building in Jerusalem, closing its border with Hamas-controlled Gaza and defending itself from Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria.
....Against the backdrop of the persistence of right-wing Jew hatred, and the politically ascendant Red-Green alliance of anti-Semites, it makes sense that Europe will not raise a finger to prevent another Holocaust.
And so, not surprisingly, in the wake of the Der Spiegel report, the EU’s foreign ministers got together and decided not to support any new sanctions against Iran – unless they are passed by the UN Security Council. Since Europe’s foreign ministers all know full well the Security Council will not pass sanctions against Iran because China has announced that it will veto any sanctions against Iran, this week the EU’s foreign ministers got together and essentially said they’re okay with another Holocaust.
With Europe out, and with “enlightened” Asian, African and South American countries never really in the game, the only “enlightened” country that might be expected to stop murderous evil before it can carry out its aims is the United States. But unfortunately, like the Europeans, the Americans don’t feel like being responsible. President Barack Obama, his administration and many of his fellow Democrats would rather take on Israel.
This week 54 Democratic members of Congress wrote Obama a letter asking him to apply pressure on Israel to remove its restrictions on the import of goods – including dual use goods like construction materials – to Hamas-controlled Gaza. Never mind that under US law it is legally problematic to provide any aid, (including the $300 million Obama has pledged) to Gaza in light of the fact that it is controlled by a terrorist organization....
...This week [Obama’s Middle East envoy George] Mitchell asked Israel to stop all of its counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria, and allow Palestinian forces to operate not only in the Palestinian areas, but in predominantly Israeli areas as well. Specifically, Mitchell asked Israel to allow Palestinian forces to deploy in what the arguably defunct Oslo agreements refer to as Area C, where the Palestinian Authority has no security authority whatsoever.
When it comes to Iran ... in his State of the Union address on Wednesday, Obama himself made clear that the US will do nothing to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. As far as Obama is concerned, the nuclear arsenal in most urgent need of evisceration is the US’s nuclear arsenal.
ALL OF this just goes to show that at the end of the day, now when the chips are down, there is only one “enlightened” nation in the world that may actually do something to prevent the advance of murderous evil. And Israel unfortunately is of two minds on the issue.
On the one hand, we have Netanyahu, who is clearly focused on preventing another Holocaust of Jewry. But on the other hand, we have Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who on Tuesday claimed that the absence of peace with the Palestinians – not Iran – is the greatest threat that Israel faces today. As he put it, “The lack of defined boundaries within Israel, and not an Iranian bomb, is the greatest threat to our future.”
Barak’s outrageous pronouncement is a succinct encapsulation of the great aspiration of the Israeli Left. If he could only be right, then Israel would be able to singlehandedly solve all the problems of the region and be immediately adored by the likes of the EU and the Obama administration just by making itself smaller.
So with the scourge of moral and strategic blindness rampant not only in Europe and America, but within his own government, Netanyahu rapidly approaches his moment of truth ...he will have to decide whether Iran will become a nuclear power, or whether Israel, standing alone, will prevent it from becoming a nuclear power.
Was his declaration of “Never Again,” ...a solemn vow that Zionism’s promise will be kept?
..."Never again!”
So declared Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he spoke at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Wednesday, the 65th anniversary of its liberation.
Netanyahu used his speech at the notorious death camp to nudge what he referred to as “the enlightened nations of the world” to recognize that “murderous evil” has to be stopped as early as possible to prevent it from achieving its aims. Unfortunately, the events of the past week show clearly that evil is on the march, and “the enlightened nations of the world” are on a coffee break from enlightenment.
As Netanyahu addressed the world from the site of the most prolific genocide factory in human history, at the place where over a million Jews were gassed, starved, beaten, raped, frozen, shot and hanged and then burned in ovens, Iran’s leaders were declaring loudly that they intend to finish what the Nazis started. They will destroy the Jewish people.
Iran’s dictator supremo Ali Khamenei used a photo-op with Mauritania’s President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz – who cut his own country’s diplomatic ties with Israel last January – to renew his pledge to commit yet another Holocaust. As he put it, “Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime... When the destruction happens will depend on how the Islamic nations approach the issue.”
And as he spoke ...Germany’s Der Speigel reported that evidence gleaned from document intercepts and from the testimony of two senior Iranian defectors who were involved in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Iran’s nuclear program is not a peaceful one. The Iranians are designing and building nuclear warheads for their Shihab-3 ballistic missiles. According to a summary of the findings now circulating through the halls of power, Teheran will have the wherewithal to build nuclear warheads by 2012.
So the Der Spiegel report showed that Iran is developing the capacity to carry out a second Holocaust in under a hundred years. And yet, in the face of their sure knowledge that evil is on the march, as they did 70 years ago, the “enlightened nations” of Europe are siding with evil against its would-be victims.
On a popular level, as Sunday’s release of the Jewish Agency’s annual report on global anti-Semitism documented, there were more anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in 2009 than there had been in any single year since the Holocaust. The report stated that the attacks were carried out by Jew-haters on both the Left and the Right.
....Since the Holocaust, old-style right-wing anti-Semites in Europe have had a hard time getting political traction for their desire to see Jews suffer. But by conflating Jews with Israel, their colleagues on the Left have made sticking it to the Jews, our state and our supporters the easiest way to score political points. So it was that in her first speech as the EU’s new foreign policy chief, Britain’s Catherine Ashton went out of her way to condemn Israel for building in Jerusalem, closing its border with Hamas-controlled Gaza and defending itself from Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria.
....Against the backdrop of the persistence of right-wing Jew hatred, and the politically ascendant Red-Green alliance of anti-Semites, it makes sense that Europe will not raise a finger to prevent another Holocaust.
And so, not surprisingly, in the wake of the Der Spiegel report, the EU’s foreign ministers got together and decided not to support any new sanctions against Iran – unless they are passed by the UN Security Council. Since Europe’s foreign ministers all know full well the Security Council will not pass sanctions against Iran because China has announced that it will veto any sanctions against Iran, this week the EU’s foreign ministers got together and essentially said they’re okay with another Holocaust.
With Europe out, and with “enlightened” Asian, African and South American countries never really in the game, the only “enlightened” country that might be expected to stop murderous evil before it can carry out its aims is the United States. But unfortunately, like the Europeans, the Americans don’t feel like being responsible. President Barack Obama, his administration and many of his fellow Democrats would rather take on Israel.
This week 54 Democratic members of Congress wrote Obama a letter asking him to apply pressure on Israel to remove its restrictions on the import of goods – including dual use goods like construction materials – to Hamas-controlled Gaza. Never mind that under US law it is legally problematic to provide any aid, (including the $300 million Obama has pledged) to Gaza in light of the fact that it is controlled by a terrorist organization....
...This week [Obama’s Middle East envoy George] Mitchell asked Israel to stop all of its counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria, and allow Palestinian forces to operate not only in the Palestinian areas, but in predominantly Israeli areas as well. Specifically, Mitchell asked Israel to allow Palestinian forces to deploy in what the arguably defunct Oslo agreements refer to as Area C, where the Palestinian Authority has no security authority whatsoever.
When it comes to Iran ... in his State of the Union address on Wednesday, Obama himself made clear that the US will do nothing to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. As far as Obama is concerned, the nuclear arsenal in most urgent need of evisceration is the US’s nuclear arsenal.
ALL OF this just goes to show that at the end of the day, now when the chips are down, there is only one “enlightened” nation in the world that may actually do something to prevent the advance of murderous evil. And Israel unfortunately is of two minds on the issue.
On the one hand, we have Netanyahu, who is clearly focused on preventing another Holocaust of Jewry. But on the other hand, we have Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who on Tuesday claimed that the absence of peace with the Palestinians – not Iran – is the greatest threat that Israel faces today. As he put it, “The lack of defined boundaries within Israel, and not an Iranian bomb, is the greatest threat to our future.”
Barak’s outrageous pronouncement is a succinct encapsulation of the great aspiration of the Israeli Left. If he could only be right, then Israel would be able to singlehandedly solve all the problems of the region and be immediately adored by the likes of the EU and the Obama administration just by making itself smaller.
So with the scourge of moral and strategic blindness rampant not only in Europe and America, but within his own government, Netanyahu rapidly approaches his moment of truth ...he will have to decide whether Iran will become a nuclear power, or whether Israel, standing alone, will prevent it from becoming a nuclear power.
Was his declaration of “Never Again,” ...a solemn vow that Zionism’s promise will be kept?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
The return of the Hebrew to his land
A recent posting in the excellent Blog "Point of No Return" dedicated to the forgotten Jewish refugees of Arab lands and preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, has drawn my attention to a brilliant 1978 publication of four articles written in 1977 by Bat Ye'or*. A Jewish refugee from Egypt herself, she has been a prolific writer and has a beautiful florid style.
I'll post only a short excerpt here, but when you have some time, I commend you to the full 25-page publication.
I'll post only a short excerpt here, but when you have some time, I commend you to the full 25-page publication.
...the expression "dhimmi" designated the indigenous non-Arab and non-Muslim people - Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians (Persians) - whose territories came under Arab-Muslim domination. ...these peoples - in theory if not always in practice - were protected from pillage, slavery, exile and massacre by the specific conditions of an agreed ...Covenant of Umar...
A tax (the kharaj) was levied on lands left to the ...dhimmis...
Each male dhimmi ...had to pay a poll-tax (the gizya) ...
The dhimmis also paid double the taxes of Muslims. In addition ransoms (avanies) were frequently extorted ...
It was forbidden for the dhimmi on pain of death:
- to carry or posses weapons,
- to raise a hand against a Muslim, even against an aggressor...
- to ally himself with the enemies of the Arabs,
- to criticise Islam, the Prophet or Angles,
- to convert to any religion other than Islam...
- to be linked by marriage or concubinage to a Muslim woman,
- to hold a position of authority over a Muslim,
The dhimmis were obliged:
- to live seperated...
- to have lower houses...
- to practice their religion secretly ...
- to wear clothes distinguished ...by shape ...[and] specific colours for Jews, Christians and Samaritans...
...This brief summary provides only an outline ..In exchange for these obligations ...the dhimmis ...[were] tolerated... This tolerance was not final. It could be abrogated in two ways: ...exile ...[or] individual or collective reprisals [for infractions] ...ending in pillage or massacre.
...the world today is full of dhimmis: for the system which produces them ...is still at work. ...the victims of ...international terrorism - banishing by death whomsoever blasphemes against Arabism - are also dhimmis. Worse, there is even a dhimmi state: Israel, existing yet denied.
The system of values which produced the dhimmi today decrees that to harass, assassinate, or mutilate the Israeli population and its sympathisers ...is legal and commendable. ...Racialsim, imperialism, colonialism are the hateful cloth of contempt and derision thrown on the State of Israel in order to disarm and ostracise a country, whose population, largely comprised of dhimmi refugees from Arab lands ...struggles for survival.
...Bethar, where once stood the fortress of the courageous Bar Kochba, the last stronghold of ancient Hebrew resistance. The stones testify in silence, for the earth cannot lie ...as in an open book ...A square tower ...typical Hebrew architecture of the first Temple period ...Over there a wall and tower built by Herod...Here on the 9th of Ab in the year 135 the Hebrew resistance was annihilated by the Roman army.
...Michael Meshorer, chief curator of archeology at the Israel Museum...:
"...Between the years 70AD and the Arab invasion and occupation in 640, these hills were dotted with Hebrew towns and villages where an intense national, religious and cultural life prospered....
...The Arab occupation scarcely modified the Hebrew place names, and the Jewish inhabitants, now considered as dhimmis, remained on their land. It was only later ...colonisation gradually wiped out the indigenous population ...a progressive Arabisation of the soil."
...nowhere else is the tragedy of history so poignant as in Shomron-Sebastia in Samaria. Nowhere else is the devastation so sinister as in the ruins of this ancient capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel, founded about 880BC ...There are the fortifications and palaces of Omri, Ahab, Jezebel, the granaries of Jeroboam II (787-749). Herod built here an avenue bordered with columns. A theatre, a stadium, a city wall with gates and towers testify to the solid, elegant, Hebrew architecture of this period.
Today Shomron-Sebastia is nothing more than a miserable village where 1300 Arabs camp among the ruins. The church built by the Crusaders, in which lie the ancient tombs attributed to the Hebrew prophets Elisha and Obadiah, has become their mosque. ...Foreigners to this past, the present inhabitants ignore it and cover their misery in the ruins. These columns, these sculptured stones are merely used as material for repairing their poor hovels. Human distress and the cataclysms of history are brought together here to make of Shomron-Sebastia the symbol of the greatness and extermination of a people...
...This is the simple explanation of the historical anomaly of a Samaria without Samaritans and a Judaea without Jews...
...Up until 1948, Jewish inhabitants were massacred or expelled and the right to reside was prohibited them until 1967. The Arabisation of the region resulted in a judenrein Arab province...
...Yet since 1967, these peaceful villagers, with unperturbed consciences, who justified their Arab rights established by the martyrdom of the banished or annihilated native peoples, are now experiencing a nightmare. The Hebrew, exiled in the wake of successive waves of occupation and its sequels ...now returns ...no longer as a dhimmi ...but as a ...free man...
...Thus the Hebrew returns...with care he searches among the ruins and brings to light thousand-year-old documents bearing Hebrew inscriptions ...monuments and coins... The Hebrew ...reaches out to the soil which yields up its history...
The present Arab populations are faced with a choice: acceptance of peaceful coexistence and a relationship of equality...; or a continuance of the traditional Jihad in massacring, exiling or dominating the legitimate heir in a renewed effort of total Arabisation...
*"Bat Ye'or" (בת יאור, meaning "daughter of the Nile") is a pseudonym of Gisèle Littman, née Orebi, an Egyptian-born British scholar. She was born in Cairo, Egypt from a middle class Jewish family, but she and her parents were forced to leave Egypt in 1957 after the Suez War, arriving in London as stateless refugees. Beginning in 1958 she attended the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London and in 1959 became a British citizen by marriage. She moved to Switzerland in 1960 to continue her studies at the University of Geneva.
She described her experiences in the following manner:
"I had witnessed the destruction, in a few short years, of a vibrant Jewish community living in Egypt for over 2,600 years and which had existed from the time of Jeremiah the Prophet. I saw the disintegration and flight of families, dispossessed and humiliated, the destruction of their synagogues, the bombing of the Jewish quarters and the terrorizing of a peaceful population. I have personally experienced the hardships of exile, the misery of statelessness − and I wanted to get to the root cause of all this. I wanted to understand why the Jews from Arab countries, nearly a million, had shared my experience."
Monday, August 31, 2009
Arab Theft of Jewish-owned Land
From The Point of No Return (Blog)*, 22 July 2009:
The stench of hypocrisy is rising ....
...Jewish construction is seen as an obstacle to peace; burgeoning Arab construction in Jerusalem (much of it illegal) is not. You only have to read Justus Reid Weiner's research exposing the construction boom in thousands of Arab units in Jerusalem, much of it lavishly funded by Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and the Palestinian Authority, to understand that peace is not the issue. On the contrary, over the last several years, the Arabs have been engaged in a political and demographic race for control of Jerusalem.
To the US government and the European Union, everything is black-and-white: in their eyes west Jerusalem is 'Jewish', and east Jerusalem ...remains 'Arab'. In truth, this simplistic view ignores the fact that the eastern part of Jerusalem only became Jew-free when the thousands of Jewish inhabitants were 'ethnically cleansed' from the old city in 1948, scores of synagogues destroyed and cemeteries desecrated during 19 years of Jordanian occupation. The city was reunited when the eastern side of the city was recaptured and annexed in 1967 by Israel.
The issue of land ownership in Jerusalem is far more complex than the Obama administration and the EU would have us believe. Mount Scopus - the original site of the Hebrew university campus and the Hadassah hospital - remained a Jewish enclave in Jordanian-controlled territory.
It is also a little known fact that hundreds of thousands of Arab squatters in 'Arab east Jerusalem' live on land still owned by the Jewish National Fund. The JNF purchased hundreds of individual parcels of land in and around Jerusalem during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Some ended up under Jordanian control.
In 1948, on one of these parcels the UN built the Kalandia refugee camp, seizing the land without permission from the owners, the JNF. As Gil Zohar explained in his 2007 Jerusalem Post piece other parcels of land in 'Arab' east Jerusalem were cut off from their Iraqi and Iranian Jewish owners after they came under Jordanian rule. In total 145,976 dunams [almost 600,000 acres] of Jewish land is said to have come under Jordanian control. (Jewish property claims against Arab countries by Michael Fischbach, p 85).
Another 16,684.421 dunams of Jewish land in the rural West Bank - including the Gush Etzion settlements, land between Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm, and in Bethlehem and Hebron - were seized by the Jordanians after 1948.
The Golan Heights are almost universally considered 'Syrian' territory and yet the JNF lays claim to 73,974 dunams in southern Syria (op cit, p36)...
On the macro-level, it is estimated that Jews living in Arab countries owned some 100,000 sq km of deeded property, equivalent to four or five times the size of Israel.
Many cities in the 'Arab' Middle East and North Africa had large Jewish populations.
Baghdad was a quarter Jewish. When over 90 per cent of Iraq's Jews left for Israel in 1950 - 51, property seized by the Iraqi government included three hospitals, 19 Jewish schools, 31 synagogues and two cemeteries.
In Egypt mansions belonging to wealthy Jewish families became embassies, residences and public institutions. Jihan Sadat still lives in a mansion once owned by the Castro family, and president Mubarak reputedly has the use of a villa owned by the Smouha family.
The international community gets into a huff when Jerusalem property once owned by Arabs is legally bought by Jews. Across the Arab world, Jewish property has been abandoned, sequestered or sold well below market value as Jews left in haste or were driven out.
The West is sanctioning the principle that the Arab world must be Jew-free (Arab states have almost succeeded in this task, having banished 97 percent of their Jewish population) . The takeover of millions of dollars' worth of Jewish homes, shops, offices and communal property by Arabs has never been considered provocative or an 'obstacle to peace'...
*The Point of No Return is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what they once were. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. I've linked to that excellent Blog in our Blog Roll on the right-hand side of the page - SL.
The stench of hypocrisy is rising ....
...Jewish construction is seen as an obstacle to peace; burgeoning Arab construction in Jerusalem (much of it illegal) is not. You only have to read Justus Reid Weiner's research exposing the construction boom in thousands of Arab units in Jerusalem, much of it lavishly funded by Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and the Palestinian Authority, to understand that peace is not the issue. On the contrary, over the last several years, the Arabs have been engaged in a political and demographic race for control of Jerusalem.
To the US government and the European Union, everything is black-and-white: in their eyes west Jerusalem is 'Jewish', and east Jerusalem ...remains 'Arab'. In truth, this simplistic view ignores the fact that the eastern part of Jerusalem only became Jew-free when the thousands of Jewish inhabitants were 'ethnically cleansed' from the old city in 1948, scores of synagogues destroyed and cemeteries desecrated during 19 years of Jordanian occupation. The city was reunited when the eastern side of the city was recaptured and annexed in 1967 by Israel.
The issue of land ownership in Jerusalem is far more complex than the Obama administration and the EU would have us believe. Mount Scopus - the original site of the Hebrew university campus and the Hadassah hospital - remained a Jewish enclave in Jordanian-controlled territory.
It is also a little known fact that hundreds of thousands of Arab squatters in 'Arab east Jerusalem' live on land still owned by the Jewish National Fund. The JNF purchased hundreds of individual parcels of land in and around Jerusalem during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Some ended up under Jordanian control.
In 1948, on one of these parcels the UN built the Kalandia refugee camp, seizing the land without permission from the owners, the JNF. As Gil Zohar explained in his 2007 Jerusalem Post piece other parcels of land in 'Arab' east Jerusalem were cut off from their Iraqi and Iranian Jewish owners after they came under Jordanian rule. In total 145,976 dunams [almost 600,000 acres] of Jewish land is said to have come under Jordanian control. (Jewish property claims against Arab countries by Michael Fischbach, p 85).
Another 16,684.421 dunams of Jewish land in the rural West Bank - including the Gush Etzion settlements, land between Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarm, and in Bethlehem and Hebron - were seized by the Jordanians after 1948.
The Golan Heights are almost universally considered 'Syrian' territory and yet the JNF lays claim to 73,974 dunams in southern Syria (op cit, p36)...
On the macro-level, it is estimated that Jews living in Arab countries owned some 100,000 sq km of deeded property, equivalent to four or five times the size of Israel.
Many cities in the 'Arab' Middle East and North Africa had large Jewish populations.
Baghdad was a quarter Jewish. When over 90 per cent of Iraq's Jews left for Israel in 1950 - 51, property seized by the Iraqi government included three hospitals, 19 Jewish schools, 31 synagogues and two cemeteries.
In Egypt mansions belonging to wealthy Jewish families became embassies, residences and public institutions. Jihan Sadat still lives in a mansion once owned by the Castro family, and president Mubarak reputedly has the use of a villa owned by the Smouha family.
The international community gets into a huff when Jerusalem property once owned by Arabs is legally bought by Jews. Across the Arab world, Jewish property has been abandoned, sequestered or sold well below market value as Jews left in haste or were driven out.
The West is sanctioning the principle that the Arab world must be Jew-free (Arab states have almost succeeded in this task, having banished 97 percent of their Jewish population) . The takeover of millions of dollars' worth of Jewish homes, shops, offices and communal property by Arabs has never been considered provocative or an 'obstacle to peace'...
*The Point of No Return is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what they once were. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. I've linked to that excellent Blog in our Blog Roll on the right-hand side of the page - SL.
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