The refugees nobody remembers
Posted by Richard on July 13, 2012
June 20 was World Refugee Day. Ron Prosor, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, pointed out that there was one group of refugees that never got the world’s sympathy or even attention (emphasis added):
At the end of World War II, 850,000 Jews lived in Arab countries. Just 8,500 remain today. Their departure was no accident. After Arab leaders failed to annihilate Israel militarily in 1948, they launched a war of terror, incitement, and expulsion to decimate their own ancient Jewish communities.
In Iraq Jewish businessman Shafiq Adas, then the country’s wealthiest citizen, was immediately arrested on trumped-up charges and publicly lynched. This was followed by bombings targeting Jewish institutions, arbitrary arrests of Jewish leaders, and massive government seizures of property. Within years virtually all of Iraq’s 2,500-year-old Jewish community had fled, emptying the country of many of its greatest artists, musicians, and businessmen.
Similar scenes played out across the region, from Egypt to Syria to Libya to Yemen. State-sanctioned pogroms descended on Jewish neighborhoods, killing innocents and destroying ancient synagogues and Jewish cemeteries. New, draconian laws prevented Jews from public worship, forced them to carry Jewish identity cards, and seized billions of dollars in their property and assets. The total area of land confiscated from Jews in Arab countries amounts to nearly 40,000 square miles — about five times the size of Israel’s entire land mass.
Jews once made up a third of the population of Baghdad. Now, only seven remain.
» Netanyahu’s excellent UN speech Combs Spouts Off said
[…] to live throughout the Middle East in large numbers (a third of the population of Baghdad) until they were driven out or murdered by the Arabs who embraced Islamofascism. Defying the laws of history, we did just that. We […]