Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 17, 2005

EU investigates itself, finds itself innocent

This is so stupid it borders on self-parody. The EU "investigates" whether the PA used EU funds for terror, and finds it cannot determine that the PA did anything wrong - because the PA has no records!

Hmmm..The PA got billions of dollars and has nothing to show for it. But where could all of this money gone?

And is there the slightest chance that this distinguished EU commission decided to look at the question from the other side - where did the terror groups get their money from? Is there the possibility that they ignored the records that Israel had of Arafat transferring funds directly to terrorists? Any chance they even referred to the smoking gun documents surrounding the Karine-A?

Nah...that would be a little too inconvenient.

The European Union's anti-fraud office said Thursday that it has found no conclusive evidence that EU aid to the Palestinian Authority was diverted to fund terror groups or anti-Israel propaganda.

The independent European Anti-Fraud Office, known as OLAF, said its investigators found that it was necessary to continue to include financial safeguards in aid packages to the Palestinians.

The probe was opened in February 2003 following charges from European Parliament members that EU aid from 2000 to 2002 had been wasted or diverted to support anti-Israel propaganda or terrorism.

'The investigation has found no conclusive evidence of support of armed attacks or unlawful activities financed by the European Commission's contributions,' OLAF said in a statement.
'However, the possibility of misuse of the Palestinian Authority's budget and other resources, cannot be excluded, due to the fact that the internal and external audit capacity in the Palestinian Authority is still underdeveloped,' it added."

It sounds like the esteemed committee couldn't find a single French franc in the hands of an Al Aqsa terrorist that had the inscription: "This money is meant for a hospital in Ramallah."

Canadian anti-Semitism soars

As goes Europe....

According to an annual report released by B'nai Brith Canada's League for Human Rights on Tuesday, anti-Semitism in Canada is at its worst point in more than two decades. A total of 857 incidents were reported in 2004, nearly 47 percent more than the previous year, according to the report. It also said that the number of incidents had increased more than three-fold since 2000.

Dimant believes the real number of anti-Semitic incidents could be even 10 times higher, saying that the vast majority go unreported. While most of the incidents in 2004 were "merely" cases of harassment, the report noted that the greatest increases were registered in vandalism and violent attacks.

Synagogues were targeted 74% more often than in 2003. Cemetery desecrations increased more than 300%. As in Western Europe, Canada has seen a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic attacks carried out by Arab immigrants.

"Kill the Jews" graffiti scrawled in a university library in Hamilton is but one example of anti-Semitic incidents that are multiplying on campuses across Canada. Jewish students were now very afraid, Dimant said, because the "atmosphere has been poisoned."

What's worse, he added, is that university authorities refused to admit they have a problem. "Some have told us, 'You have to expect a little bit of anti-Semitism,'" Dimant said. "But why? Why do we have to tolerate any anti-Semitism?"

Syrians secretly sending Palestinians to Lebanon

Here's a thought experiment: Whose side are the newly-lauded "democratic" Palestinians on in the Syria/Lebanon issue?

Do we even have to ask?

Damascus has been secretly dispatching dozens of Palestinian youths to Lebanon during the past two weeks, alongside the apparent withdrawal of Syrian forces from the country, Farid N. Ghadry, president of the Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based opposition party, said this week.

“The youths underwent training by Syrian security services, designed to incite and disrupt Lebanese opposition,” he said.

“Our sources in Syria revealed that two weeks ago some 70-80 Palestinian youngsters aged 18-20 left the Neirab refugee camp, the largest refugee camp in Syria, on their way to Lebanon. “

Ghadry said the youngsters were taken to a training camp and told their Palestinian brothers in Lebanon were about to be massacred and needed their help. He added he expects hundreds of additional Palestinians to be dispatched to Lebanon after undergoing Syrian training.

Barbara Lerner - Collapsing Temples (NRO)

It is being referenced in many other places but it is a very good article and well worth reading.

Here's a part:

Here, first, is the way Palestinian Arabs have manifested their alleged embrace of peace and democracy in the months since Mahmoud Abbas replaced Yasser Arafat. Abbas was elected last January 9 with 62 percent of the vote, but, as Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki clearly shows, this was not a vote against terror: Two thirds of Palestinians still see terror as an effective weapon, and they give all credit for Israel's decision to withdraw from Gaza to the terrorists.

Hamas, the largest of the many Palestinian terrorist groups, boycotted the election, claiming it was based on the "illegal" Oslo "peace," but they did field candidates in the municipal election for control of Gaza on January 27, winning 77 out of the 118 seats — a victory margin of 67 percent. This huge Palestinian terror majority makes no secret of the fact that they intend to drive Jews out of Israel and Americans out of the Middle East. They are closely allied with all the other terrorist groups in the region, and with all the terror-sponsoring states. During both Iraq wars, they marched in support of Saddam Hussein; today, they march for Syria, and for Hezbollah, along with allied Palestinian terror groups like Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the terror wing of Abbas's own party, Fatah.

On March 11, there was a big pro-Syrian demonstration in Gaza. Thousands of armed, masked Palestinians waved Palestinian flags tied to Syrian and Lebanese ones. They burned American and Israeli flags, along with effigies of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon, with the caption "You have no place here." As usual, they all screamed "Death to America" and "Itbah al Yahud" ("Kill the Jews"), as well as "Yes, yes," to Syria and Hezbollah.

Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, the man our press keeps assuring us is "a moderate," has made no move to disarm these men or the hundreds of thousands of others like them who form a majority of all Palestinians in the West Bank as well as Gaza. Instead, he proposes to integrate gunmen who are not already members of the Palestinian security forces into their ranks, arming and training them with huge new infusions of American and European cash.

Last week, Abbas sent a different message to the beleaguered minority of Palestinians who actually do want peace — those who try to thwart planned terrorist attacks by reporting them to Israeli authorities. Fifty-one Palestinians are currently under Palestinian death sentences, more than half of them for "collaborating" with Israel, but executions have been suspended since August 2002. On March 3, Abbas lifted the ban, ordering the execution of 15 of them this month.

This "progress" is more than enough to satisfy our road-map partners, but it is nowhere near enough to satisfy Palestinian gunmen. When Abbas tried to hold a meeting in Gaza last week, Islamic Jihad gunmen broke it up by surrounding the meeting hall and firing a hail of bullets into it. That sent Abbas and his cronies scurrying back to Ramallah in the West Bank. There, on March 10, Palestinian gunmen from Abbas's own party — Fatah — followed suit: They broke up the meeting he tried to hold there, too, firing their guns and smashing windows and chairs. And of course, Kassam rocket attacks on Israeli civilians in Gaza continue: There were two more last week, along with an automatic weapons attack in Hebron, wounding two Israelis, plus the bombing of a beachfront nightclub in Tel Aviv on February 25 that killed five and wounded 50. But for the vigilance of Israeli counterterrorism forces, there would have been many more.

Yesterday (3/15), leaders from more than 40 nations gathered in Jerusalem to dedicate a new, expanded Yad Vashem Holocaust museum.

Yet at the very time that this monument to Nazi evil was inaugurated, the American cable network C-SPAN planned to give a notorious Holocaust denier a broad audience to promote his ideology that the murder of six million Jews never occurred. This, in the name of 'journalistic balance'. Here's what happened:

Deborah Lipstadt, Holocaust scholar at Emory University (pictured), will deliver a talk at Harvard University this evening (3/16), promoting her new book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving. C-SPAN wished to broadcast Lipstadt's talk on the network's BookTV program, but informed Lipstadt that a recent speech of Irving's (recorded by C-SPAN) would need to be broadcast as well. C-SPAN producers explained their reasoning to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen:

'We want to balance [Lipstadt's lecture] by covering him [Irving],' said Amy Roach, a producer for C-SPAN's Book TV. Her boss, Connie Doebele, put it another way. 'You know how important fairness and balance is at C-SPAN... We work very, very hard at this. We ask ourselves, 'Is there an opposing view of this?'

C-SPAN, that is, sought out an 'opposing view' to Lipstadt's confirmation of the Nazi Holocaust. Lipstadt refused to be cast side-by-side with Irving, on the grounds that Holocaust denial does not merit public debate. Cohen asks the appropriate question: 'For a book on the evils of slavery, would C-SPAN counter with someone who thinks it was a benign institution?'

In personal correspondence with HonestReporting, Lipstadt explained:

I would have been delighted to appear on C-SPAN's BookTV. It is an important venue and is watched by a book-reading audience. However, there was no way I was going to be forced into debating a man who is the equivalent of a flat-earther. I spent six years in court fighting this man. We defeated him completely. That C-SPAN should now give him an opportunity to resurrect arguments which the court found completely false is appalling.

Appalling ― six million times over.

HarperCollins, the publisher of Lipstadt's book, has supported Lipstadt's decision not to appear on C-SPAN, despite the fact that this loss of publicity means a loss of book sales.

HonestReporting encourages subscribers to write to C-SPAN, questioning its policy that grants equal air time to mendacious and immoral claims.

Comments to C-SPAN: booktv@c-span.org

Creating a supportive social environment for terrorists has been a critical factor in the Palestinian Authority’s successful promotion of suicide terrorism. To this end, PA policy has been to honor terrorists as Shahids (Martyrs for Allah), and to teach Palestinian mothers to celebrate when their children die as terrorist Shahids. Categorizing these dead terrorists as Shahids grants them the highest honor a Muslim can achieve, and is therefore cause for a mother to celebrate, according to this PA teaching.

This pressure on Palestinian mothers to celebrate their dead sons as Shahids continues under the regime of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and even increased this past week with repeated PA TV promotion connected to International Woman’s Day.

Preaching before an audience that included Abbas, Sheikh Yusuf Juma’ Salamah said in Friday’s sermon on PA TV that the ideal Palestinian woman is like Al Khansah, the heroine of Islamic tradition who celebrated her four sons’ death in battle by thanking God for the honor. Salamah, the PA Minister of Waqf, quoted Al Khansah: “Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths.” [PA TV, March 11, 2005]

It’s important to note that this was the first Friday sermon broadcast since the PA announced last week that it would control and vet all Friday sermons delivered in West Bank and Gaza strip mosques. This portrayal of the ideal Palestinian woman as one who willingly sacrifices her sons as Shahids, therefore, continues to represent official PA ideology – especially since this sermon was delivered in the presence of Abbas.

Two days later, PA TV broadcast a theatrical skit that included veneration of the same Al Khansah. A father taught his son her declaration: “Praise Allah, who granted me honor with their deaths.” [PA TV, March 13, 2005]

Both the sermon and the play portray Al Khansah’s celebration of the deaths of her four sons as superior to the way she mourned the deaths of her two brothers, who died before she adopted Islam.

During an interview with four university students for International Women’s Day last week, PA TV broadcast a telephone call from the Dean of Media at Al-Aqsa University. He expressed admiration for the “unique Palestinian woman ... she is the one who shouts for joy on the day of the Shahid.” [PA TV, March 10, 2005]

Promoting the Al Khansah ideal for Palestinians is a very powerful message for Muslims. Al Khansah was a poet in the early Islamic period. Before she converted to Islam, her brothers died, and she grieved. However, Islamic historian Ibn Athir writes that after she converted to Islam, she delivered a fiery speech encouraging her four sons to march into battle for Allah. When all four were killed, the poem she wrote was one of joy, rejoicing that Allah had honored her with the deaths of her sons.

Al Khansah is considered the archetypal mother of Shahids, a woman glorified by Palestinians for encouraging her sons to kill and die for Allah, and rejoicing when they achieved their Shahada deaths.

From a very young age, Palestinian girls are taught to adopt Al Khansah as a role model with her message of celebrating death in combat – which in contemporary Palestinian society includes death while committing acts of suicide terror. A music video for children, broadcast hundreds of times over three years on PA TV, included the farewell letter of a child Shahid, including the words: “Mother don’t cry for me, be joyous over my blood.”

In addition, the Palestinian Authority has named at least five girls schools “the Al Khansah School for Girls,” in Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Han Yunis and Rafah. [Al Hayat Al Jadida, Jan. 9, 2005]

Morality, Zionism and "illegal" outposts (Haaretz)

Hat tip to Israpundit.

By Nadav Shragai

"Unauthorized settlement outposts" have existed here for many years, ever since Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel resumed in the early 20th century.
"A small Jewish settlement among large Arab villages to the east, north and south," wrote Moshe Smilansky about the first settlement, Petah Tikva, in its early years. "Its houses are in one place, in Yehud. Its fields are elsewhere, and Arab fields are in between, and the ownership of the land is complicated."

Morally, there is no difference between the settlement of parts of the Land of Israel inhabited by Arabs in the early 20th century and settlements and outposts in parts of the Land of Israel inhabited by Arabs in the early 21st century. Either both are moral, or both are immoral. The real debate over the Model 2005 outposts is also unrelated to law and order. It is taking place between those who think there is nothing more moral, and those who think there is nothing more immoral.

Both settlement movements were the product of normative political Zionism. Settlements in the Negev and the Galilee were political, just as settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are political. And who knows this better than Ariel Sharon, who, before his opinions changed, urged his colleagues to "seize the hilltops"?

Carmiel and the hilltop communities in the north were established to Judaize the Galilee. Ariel and the outposts were established to Judaize the northern West Bank. Both were established as part of the great battle over the Land of Israel. The outposts were meant to fill in the empty spaces between established settlements, to prevent the Arabs from seizing control of them. Some of the lands on which the outposts were built were purchased, as in Migron and Givat Assaf. Once upon a time, this was called redeeming the land. Today, with the confusion characteristic of the spirit of the times, this is called "seizure."

It turns out that the World Zionist Organization's settlement division, a government agency, took its organizational and ideological affiliation with the WZO too seriously. Ron Shechner, the defense minister's advisor on settlements - an honest man, the salt of the earth, who was criticized in the Sasson report - also played a role. The ministers and the prime minister knew; some encouraged the process. The prime minister himself gave a detailed explanation of how to turn a barren outpost into a settlement. And he asked Einat Ehrlich of the outpost of Amona: "Why aren't you people building?"

That is how Israel was built. Even some of the "major settlement blocs" that Sharon (still?) wants to keep began their lives as unauthorized outposts. Even Ma'aleh Adumim, a large city, the largest settlement in the territories, began as an outpost with temporary housing. It is all a matter of definition - and who is doing the defining. If the outposts are neighborhoods of existing settlements, as they have been over the last 12 years, they are legal. But if they are "new settlements," which are not "adjacent," as determined by Sasson, they are "illegal."

The Sasson report is political and problematic, not only because it ignores Sharon and the rest of the political echelon, which approved and gave orders and knew, and not only because it ignores the legal system's responsibility for what happened, but also because it was born of a discriminatory approach.

Less well-publicized investigatory committees have in the past investigated illegal building in East Jerusalem and Israel's Arab sector. Their conclusions were unequivocal. When Haim Ramon served as minister for Jerusalem affairs under Ehud Barak, he informed the Knesset that more than 20,000 buildings had been built without a permit in East Jerusalem. Documents were seized at Orient House a few years ago that proved that this construction was not merely a response to the population's distress; it was also a political move. But nobody proposed destroying these buildings. On the contrary: Israel under Barak and Shimon Peres and Ramon negotiated with the Palestinian Authority over their retroactive legalization.

Nor did anyone suggest indicting successive mayors of Jerusalem or interior ministers for having deliberately turned a blind eye to this construction, sometimes for political reasons. There is also widespread illegal building in the Arab and Bedouin areas of Israel. The state accepts this, because reality - which includes the battle over this disputed land - is stronger.

The story of the outposts, just like the story of the construction in East Jerusalem, is a story about seeking to alter the status quo. But the outposts are an action of the old Zionist variety, which is now gradually being made illegal - first by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, then by Talia Sasson, and the High Court of Justice will doubtless follow in their footsteps.

In essence, the state is currently redefining Zionism as a movement that retreats under pressure, terrorism and threats, as a movement that gives up its dreams. The naive residents of the outposts are out of step. Nevertheless, they understand quite well what many others, perhaps even in the erring and confused Likud Party, will understand later: Gush Katif, the northern West Bank and the outposts are only the beginning. Sharon and his advisor Dov Weisglass - who, together with their new partners, Yossi Beilin and the Arab parties, are tearing the land and the nation apart - are already planning to uproot tens of thousands of additional Jews from the West Bank. And in secret, they are even talking about Jerusalem.

Another good-will gesture gone bad

But we thought that the Palestinians would be so thankful to Israel for freeing prisoners!

A Palestinian resident of Kalkilya, Naim Hable, who was freed in the release of 500 Palestinian security prisoners on February 21, was caught along with two others with 102 M-16 assault rifle bullets, a knife and stolen property at a checkpoint outside Kalkilya on Monday.

Abbas planning to release another murderer

More evidence that wearing a suit does not make you a partner for peace.

A Palestinian militant accused of ordering the killing of an Israeli minister will be freed from jail in Jericho when Israel pulls back from the city this week, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday.

But Israel said it had not agreed with the Palestinians that Ahmed Saadat or any of the other three it accuses in the 2001 assassination could be released after the redeployment around the West Bank city set for Wednesday.

Abbas told Reuters by telephone that Saadat and Fuad al-Shobaki, an aide to the late Yasser Arafat accused of arms smuggling, would be released after Israeli troops left.

'Saadat and Shobaki will be released from prison in Jericho when Jericho is handed over to the Palestinians,' Abbas said.

'The two men were placed by Israel on the wanted list and the agreement we have with Israel is that once it leaves our cities, the fugitives will have immunity. Therefore, they will be freed, and the Israelis are aware of this.'

But Israel's Defense Ministry said Israel and the Palestinians agreed at a meeting on Monday where they discussed the pullback from Jericho 'that the murderers of (Tourism Minister) Rehavam Zeevi will remain in prison.'

Report: PA will call off "collaborator" executions

There has been some muted criticism of these executions, I'm glad to see that they may have had an effect.

Knesset Member Michael Eitan (Likud) said this evening that sources in the Palestinian Authority (PA) have informed him that the PA will cancel the scheduled executions of 15 Arabs charged with helping Israel prevent terror or track down terrorists.

A complaint to police charging incitement recently was filed following a Moslem cleric's religious ruling that anyone who helps Israel to prevent terror attacks must be killed. Human rights and left-wing organizations recently have declared their opposition to the death sentences.

For what has been described as 'the first time in living memory,' a Jewish house of worship in Switzerland has been set afire. Less than a kilometer away, a Jewish-owned shop was also set alight.

Both attacks, which local police said were connected, occurred last night in the southern Swiss city of Lugano. Elio Bollag, the president of Lugano's Jewish community, described the incidents as 'anti-Semitic.' No one was hurt in either attack, but the synagogue's library was almost totally destroyed in the firebombing.

It was reported in the name of Jewish leaders in Switzerland that this was the first time in living memory that a Swiss synagogue has been attacked in this manner.
Previous anti-Semitic vandalism has included only graffiti daubed on walls.

Lugano apparently has a strong Arab population. The Neue Zurcher Zeitung reported just yesterday that tourism officials in the city have published a brochure in Arabic omitting references to aspects of European life that could offend Muslims. A comparison of the Italian, French or German versions of the Lugano tourist board's brochure with the Arabic-language text reveals that in the latter, pictures of churches are missing. In addition, references to the local variety of pork-based salami have been replaced with cheeses from the Italian-speaking region.

In June 2001, Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum, 71, of Bnei Brak was murdered in Zurich. The murderer, who rendered 11 children orphans, was never caught.

Switzerland's Jewish population has remained steady at approximately 20,000 for several decades.

Hat tip to Jewlicious.

Hezbollah has a history of killing Americans.

We are now approaching the 20th anniversaries of the murders of Robert Dean Stethem and William Buckley. The CIA station chief in Beirut, Buckley was beheaded by the Hezbollah on June 3, 1985. Stethem, a Navy diver, was murdered by Hezbollah the same month aboard hijacked TWA Flight 847. An eyewitness described Stethem's killing:

"They singled him out because he was American and a soldier. . . . They dragged him out of his seat, tied his hands and then beat him up. . . . They kicked him in the face and knee caps and kept kicking him until they had broken all his ribs. Then they tried to knock him out with the butt of a pistol--they kept hitting him over the head but he was very strong and they couldn't knock him out. . . . Later they dragged him away and I believe shot him."

So this is hezb Allah, the Party of God, the spear of Iranian influence in the Levant and chief local enforcer of Syria's occupation of Lebanon. Last week, it organized a counter-demonstration in Beirut on Syria's behalf, following weeks of anti-Syrian protests that had led to the resignation of puppet Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami. Now Mr. Karami has been renamed to his post by puppet Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a move the Lebanese opposition wasted no time in denouncing. The dividing line in Lebanon, separating a pro-independence coalition of Druze, Christians and Sunnis from the pro-Syrian Shiite Hezbollah, has now become clear.

As have the stakes. The size of Tuesday's rally has been exaggerated: Our Lebanese sources tell us there were around 350,000 protestors, not 500,000 as commonly cited, and that many of them were bused in direct from Damascus. Also notable was that while the demonstrators waved Lebanese flags, they mounted Syrian President Bashar Assad's portrait. But all this only underscores how much rides on the question of Lebanon's independence--and how far Syria, Hezbollah and Iran may go to preserve the status quo.

For Syria the stakes are economic and political. An estimated one million Syrian guest workers reside in Lebanon and remit their wages to relatives back home, and Syrian officials have plundered much of the international aid Lebanon received over the past decade. The Bekaa Valley also serves as a lucrative transit point for narcotics and other contraband. Without Lebanon, Syria's economy might collapse.

So, too, might the Assad dynasty: Bashar's grip on power is far less sure than his father's, and the loss of prestige that a withdrawal from Lebanon would entail might well be politically fatal to him and the minority Allawite clique through which he rules.

For Iran the stakes are strategic. Its elite Revolutionary Guards operate terrorist training camps in the Bekaa. Iran has also placed upward of 10,000 missiles in Lebanon, including the medium-range Fajr-5 rocket, bringing half of Israel within their reach. It thus maintains the option of igniting a new Mideast war at any moment, as well as a hedge against the possibility of a pre-emptive Israeli strike on its nuclear installations. Yet if Syria withdraws, no pro-independence Lebanese government will indulge Iran's military presence. The Lebanese have had enough of allowing their territory to serve, Belgium-like, as the battleground of choice for foreign powers.

For Hezbollah, the stakes are greater still. During the years when Israel maintained a security zone in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah could present himself as a patriot fighting occupation. But Israel removed its forces from Lebanon in 2000, and now Nasrallah's support for Syrian occupation exposes a different set of motives: not patriotic, but Jihadist. And the last thing the Jihadists want is for Lebanon to again become a flourishing, pluralist, cosmopolitan Arab state.

Syria's withdrawal would likely precipitate a Lebanese decision to enforce U.N. Resolution 520, which requires the Lebanese Army to patrol its border with Israel, a function now performed by Hezbollah. At length, it could lead to the disbanding of Hezbollah as an independent militia, though its terrorist wings would likely continue to operate.

How does the Bush Administration manage the crisis? There are reports that it is considering a softer line toward Hezbollah in the hopes of encouraging its acquiescence to a Syrian withdrawal. But we are confident President Bush would not lightly betray the memory of Stethem, Buckley or the hundreds of other Americans killed by Hezbollah over the years.

The latest news is that the young Assad promised U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen on Saturday that Syria will withdraw completely. This is promising. But given the stakes all around, skepticism is in order and world pressure will have to continue. The help of the French here has been welcome, due in part to Jacques Chirac's personal ties to the murdered Lebanese patriot Rafik Hariri. However, France still declines to call Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

The Cedar Revolution began as an outburst of rage against Hariri's killers. It has been sustained by what former U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross calls "the absence of fear"--the belief that the Syrian government will not do in Beirut's Martyrs' Square what the Chinese did in Beijing's Tiananmen. A joint Franco-American declaration that a crackdown in Lebanon would have serious consequences for Damascus would help give all Lebanese patriots the courage to move forward.

Rainbow over Har Homa

Rainbow over Har Homa
Hat tip to Callie

The forgotten Middle East refugees

I'm mildly surprised that this was published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

by Semha Alwaya

In discussions about refugees in the Middle East, a major piece of the narrative is routinely omitted, and my life is part of the tapestry of what's missing. I am a Jew, and I, too, am a refugee. Some of my childhood was spent in a refugee camp in Israel (yes, Israel). And I am far from being alone.

This experience is shared by hundreds of thousands of other indigenous Jewish Middle Easterners who share a similar background to my own. However, unlike the Palestinian Arabs, our narrative is largely ignored by the world because our story -- that of some 900,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries dispossessed by Arab governments -- is an inconvenience for those who seek to blame Israel for all the problems in the Middle East.

Our lives in the Israel of the 1950s were difficult. We had no money, no property; there were food shortages, few employment prospects. Israel was a new and poor country with very limited resources. It absorbed not only hundreds of thousands of us, but also an equal number of survivors of Hitler's genocide. We lived in dusty tents in "transit camps," their official name because these were to be temporary, not permanent.

Housing was eventually built for us, we became Israeli citizens, and we ceased being refugees. The refugee camps in Israel that I knew as a child were phased out, and no trace of them remains. Israel did this without receiving a single cent from the international community, relying instead on the resourcefulness of its citizens and donations from Diaspora Jewish communities. Today, many of Israel's top leaders are from families that were forced to flee Arab countries, and we make up more than half of Israel's Jewish population.

I was born in Baghdad, and like most other Iraqis, my mother tongue is Arabic. My family's cuisine, our mannerisms, our outlook, are all strongly influenced by our synthesized Judeo-Arabic culture.

There once was a vibrant presence of nearly 1 million Jews residing in 10 Arab countries. Our Middle Eastern Jewish culture existed long before the Arab world dominated and rewrote the history of the Middle East. Today, however, fewer than 12,000 Jews remain in these lands -- almost none in Iraq.

What happened to us, the indigenous Jews of the Arab world? Why were 150, 000 Iraqi Jews -- my family included -- forced out of Iraq? Why were an additional 800,000 Jews from nine other Arab countries also compelled to leave after 1948?

When the world of the 1930s and '40s was divided between the democratic Allies and the Fascist Axis, Arab nationalists in Iraq and Palestine chose to form an alliance with Nazi Germany. The father of Palestinian nationalism and the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, began his close collaboration with Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.

The British put out an arrest warrant for the pro-Nazi Palestinian leader, but he escaped when war broke out in Europe in the spring of 1939. Later that year, he arrived in Baghdad and linked up with pro-Nazi Iraqi nationalist Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. In 1941 al-Husseini and al-Gaylani engineered a pro- German coup against the pro-British Iraqi government, which brought a reign of terror to Iraq's Jews. This culminated in what we remember as the Farhud, an Arabic word akin to "pogrom."

In a two-day period Arab mobs went on a rampage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, murdering, raping and pillaging these cities' Jewish communities. Nearly 200 Jews were killed, more than 2,000 injured; some 900 Jewish homes were destroyed and looted, as were hundreds of Jewish-owned shops. My father was a survivor of the carnage. He hid in a hole dug in the ground to save his life. He saw Iraqi soldiers pull small children away from their parents and rip the arms off young girls to steal their bracelets. He saw pregnant women being raped and their stomachs cut open.

Britain eventually regained control, but al-Husseini and other Palestinian nationalists had already fled to Berlin where they became honored guests of the Nazi state. Hitler told a grateful al-Husseini that "Germany's only remaining objective in the [Middle East] would be limited to the annihilation of the Jews living under British protection in Arab lands."

Later, in a speech over Radio Berlin's Arabic Service, al-Husseini voiced support for the Nazis' "Final Solution" and became the first Arab leader to call openly for the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands -- some eight years before there was a single Palestinian refugee.

Even though Hitler lost the war, al-Husseini's call was heeded. In 1948, Iraq rounded up and imprisoned hundreds of Jews. Others were removed from their jobs in the civil service, business licenses of Jews were revoked, and quotas were placed on Jewish high school and college students. Later, discriminatory restrictions were imposed on Jewish travel abroad and the buying or selling of property. Thus, even if Jews wanted to escape Iraq, they could not do so legally, and they could not liquidate their assets.

In 1950, the Iraqi parliament passed a law called Ordinance for the Cancellation of Iraqi Nationality for Jews, Law No. 1 that stripped Iraqi Jews of their citizenship. In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed another law, confiscating all Jewish property. Within a year, most of Iraq's ancient Jewish population, my family included, fled to Israel.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, Jews faced similar circumstances. In Libya in 1945, nearly 100 Jews were massacred. In 1948, the Jewish communities of Aden and Algeria were rocked by a series of attacks that left hundreds dead and many more injured. Discriminatory laws against Jews were passed in other Arab countries. Within a decade, the exodus of Jews from Arab countries was almost complete, with most going to Israel.

All of this was conducted under the guise of law by Arab governments. This forced Jews to flee lands where we had lived for thousands of years before the Arab-Islamic conquests.

Since 1949, the United Nations has passed more than 100 resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Yet, for Jewish refugees from Arab countries not a single U.N. resolution has been introduced recognizing our mistreatment or calling for justice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees forced out of our homes. This imbalance of the world's concern is itself an injustice.

Arab governments instituted policies that led to nearly 900,000 Middle Eastern Jews becoming stateless refugees. Those same governments forced about 750,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants to remain in impoverished refugee camps, refusing them citizenship and denying them hope.

Peace between Israel and the Arab world requires a solution that recognizes that there were two refugee populations. Acknowledging and redressing the legitimate rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries will promote the cause of justice, peace and a true reconciliation.

Semha Alwaya is an attorney in the Bay Area and a founding member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (www.jimena-justice.org).