Today, "
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries" is
announcing new evidence that Arab nations colluded to persecute the Jews in their countries before 1948:
To back the claim, the group has reproduced copies of a draft law composed by the Arab League in 1947 that called for measures to be taken against Jews living in Arab countries. The proposals range from imprisonment, confiscation of assets and forced induction into Arab armies to beatings, officially incited acts of violence and pogroms.
Subsequent legislation and discriminatory decrees enacted by Arab governments against Jews were “strikingly similar” to the actions laid out in the draft law, Mr. Urman said.
In January 1948, the World Jewish Congress submitted a memo with the text of the draft to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. It accompanied the submission with a warning that “all Jews residing in the Near and Middle East face extreme and imminent danger.”
At a meeting two months later, however, Charles Malik, the Lebanese ambassador and president of the council, succeeded in a parliamentary maneuver that ended consideration of the memo. Though the event drew news coverage at the time, it has apparently gone unnoticed since.
The Arab League draft law had been drawn up in response to the Nov. 29, 1947, vote in the General Assembly to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.
With the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the status of Jews in Arab countries changed dramatically, because most of those countries either declared war on Israel or supported the war to destroy the new state.
The group cites United Nations figures showing that 856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries in 1948.
“This was not just a forced exodus, it was a forgotten exodus,” said Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian minister of justice who is scheduled to be the main speaker at Monday’s program to open the campaign on behalf of the Jewish refugees.
Ami Isserloff's wonderful resource site, zionism-israel.com,
reproduces parts of this draft law created by the Arab League in 1947:
• “All Jewish citizens…will be considered as members of the Jewish minority of the State of Palestine and will have to register [“within 7 days”] with the authorities of the region wherein they reside, giving their names, the exact number of members in their families, their addresses, the names of their banks and the amounts of their deposits in these banks…”
• “Bank accounts of Jews will be frozen. These funds will be utilized in part or in full to finance the movement of resistance to Zionist ambitions in Palestine.”
• “Only Jews who are subjects of foreign countries will be considered ‘neutrals.’ These will be compelled either to return to their countries, with a minimum of delay, or be considered Arabs and obliged to accept active service in the Arab army.”
• “Every Jew whose activities reveal that he is an active Zionist will be considered as a political prisoner and will be interned in places specifically designated for that purpose by police authorities or by the Government. His financial resources, instead of being frozen, will be confiscated.”
• “Any Jew who will be able to prove that his activities are anti-Zionist will be free to act as he likes, provided that he declares his readiness to join the Arab armies.”
• “The foregoing…does not mean that those Jews will not be submitted to paragraphs 1 and 2 of this law.”
That same website
reproduces a New York Times article from 1948 that described the World Jewish Congress' petition to the UN based on this draft memo:
JEWS IN GRAVE DANGER IN ALL MOSLEM LANDS
By MALLORY BROWNE
New York Times, May 16 1948, page E4
LAKE SUCCESS, N. Y., May 15 -- For nearly four months, the United Nations has had before it an appeal for "immediate and urgent" consideration of the case of the Jewish populations in Arab and Muslim countries stretching front Morocco to India.
Even four months ago, it was the Zionist view that Jews residing in the Near and Middle East were in extreme and imminent danger. Now that the end of the ,mandate has precipitated civil war or even worse developments in Palestine, it is feared that the repercussions of this in Moslem countries will put the Jewish populations in many of these states in mortal peril.
...Already in some Moslem states such as Syria and Lebanon there is a tendency to regard all Jews as Zionist agents and "fifth columnists." There have been violent incidents with feeling running high. There are indications that the stage is being set for a tragedy of incalculable proportions.
Nearly 900,000 Jews live in these Moslem and Arab countries stretching from the Atlantic along the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Zionist leaders today are convinced that their position is perilous in the extreme.
When the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations meets in Geneva next July, this matter will come before it.
On Jan. 19. 1948, the World Jewish Congress submitted a memorandum on the whole problem to the Economic and Social Council, asking for urgent action during the spring session of the Council.
This plea arose to some extent from statements, made by Arab spokesmen during the General Assembly session last autumn, to the effect that if the partition resolution was put into, effect, they would not be able to guarantee the safety of the Jews in any_ Arab land.
The memorandum of the World Jewish Congress went into considerable detail on this danger. It cited the text of a law .drafted by the Political Committee of the Arab League which was intended, to govern the legal status of Jewish residents in all Arab League countries.
It provides that beginning on an, unspecified date all Jews except citizens of non-Arab states, would be considered "members of the Jewish minority state of Pales-tine." Their bank accounts would he frozen and used to finance resistance to "Zionist ambitions in Palestine." Jews believed to be active Zionists would be interned and their assets confiscated.
Later information submitted to the Economic and Social Council was to the effect that:
In Syria a policy of economic discrimination is in effect against Jews. "Virtually all" Jewish civil servants in the employ of the Syrian Government have been discharged. Freedom of movement has been "practically abolished." Special frontier posts have been established to control movements of! Jews. .'
In Iraq no Jew is permitted to' leave the 'country unless he deposits f5,000 ($20,000) with the Government to guarantee his return. No foreign Jew is allowed to enter Iraq even in transit.
In Lebanon Jews have been forced to contribute financially to the fight against the United Nations partition resolution on Palestine. Acts of violence against Jews are openly admitted by the press, which accuses Jews of "poisoning wells," etc.
...Conditions vary in the Moslem countries. They are worst in Yemen and Afghanistan, whence many Jews have fled in terror to India. Conditions in most of the countries have deteriorated in recent months, this being particularly true of Lebanon, Iran and Egypt. In the countries farther west along the Mediterranean coast, conditions are not so bad. It is feared, however, that if a full-scale war breaks out, the repercussions will be grave for Jews all the way from Casablanca to Karachi.
The National Post (Canada) adds that
the UN was complicit in this affair as well, essentially ignoring months of entreaties by the WJC:
[Cotler] said he and his research colleagues will also present evidence showing the United Nations failed to investigate the matter, in part because an Arab League representative ran the agenda at one of its key debating chambers.
"It is now clear the United Nations has played a singular role in expunging the whole question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries on the Middle East agenda for the last 60 years," Mr. Cotler said.
The atrocities done by the Arabs against Jews in the wake of partition and Israeli independence are well documented - and the pages of the Palestine Post had many stories, big and small, contemporaneous with this persecution:
But this is the first time that proof has been offered that this persecution appears to have been pre-planned and coordinated.
