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| UN Special Committee for Palestine meeting, 1947 |
A threat that Jews living in Arab countries will be massacred should the U.N. General Assembly decide to adopt the partition plan for Palestine was made today at the Ad Hoc Committee by Egyptian delegate Heykal Pasha. He warned the Committee, which concluded its debate tonight, that it was “playing with the lives of 1,000,000 Jews who are now living peacefully in Arab countries.”The Egyptian delegate warned that the General Assembly’s decision is fraught with the possibility of widespread bloodshed. “We now regard the 1,000,000 Jews in the Moslem countries as brothers, but your decision may make some of our citizens regard them as enemies,” he declared, adding that the Arab governments would do all they could to protect the Jews within their borders, but “mob violence is often hard to control.”Heykal Pasha appealed to the United States to reconsider its support of partition and to refrain from advocating “a dangerous adventure which might imperil the peace of the world.” He said that “no force on earth could prevent blood from flowing in Palestine if the United Nations decides to amputate a part of Palestine in order to establish a Jewish state.” All the peoples of the Orient, he asserted, would come to the aid of the Palestine Arabs in a “race war.”“Would the members of the United Nations be acting in a humanitarian fashion in placing in certain and serious danger a million Jews simply in order to save a hundred thousand in Europe or to satisfy Zionist dreams?” Heykal Pasha asked. He said that his statement should be considered a “fair warning to the world” by the government of Egypt.
This thinly veiled threat was splashed on the front pages of Egyptian newspapers, causing much fear from Jewish residents:
The warning that Jews in the Arab countries face massacre if partition is approved by the United Nations, which was voiced yesterday at Lake Success by Egyptian spokesman Dr. Mohammed Heykal Pasha, has caused consternation among the 50,000 Jews in this country.The statement, which was splashed on the front pages of the local Arabic press is the first official threat to the Middle East Jews and is taken to indicate that the government will adopt at least a passive attitude if anti-Jewish violence occurs here as a result of the Palestine issue.
It was not the first time that Arabs threatened mass murder by telling the West that their own people are violent and uncontrollable .
Of course, attacks on Jews in Arab countries that followed the partition vote were tacitly encouraged by the Arab leaders with lurid and inciting headlines in the state-controlled media.
