Figure 1.--The refugee issue is one of the most emotional issue within the overall Arab-Isreali conflict. Almost always this is thought to mean the Arab Palestinian refugees. Somehow the Jewish refugees such as the Jewish girl here are ignored in this discussion. This is in part because Israel moved to quickly and effectively assimilated Jewish refugees into Isrraeli society. And here we are talking about both Palistinian Jewish refugees and a torrent of Jewish refugees fleeing Arab states. This did not occur with the Palestinian Arab refugees. Arab policy was to not onlu not to creatre a Palistinian state, but to annexx Palistinian territory. Jordan took the West Bank and Jerusalem. Egypt took Gaza. In addition, the Arab states decided to maintain the Palestinians as refugees in camps. Arab states placed various barriers on employment and education. In fact there are still Palestinian refugee camps nearly seven decades after the conflict began. One has to ask why this is. It is not that the numbers of refugees were impossible to absorb. In fact the numbers were relatively small compared to the number of refugees in other conflicts, such as the Germans after World War II or the Indians and Pakistanis after the partition of India as just two examples. This was done as a matter of Arab policy. Here we are not sure who the refugee is, only that the photograph was taken at an immigration camp some where in Israel during 1948. Photograopher: Robert Capa.

The term refugeees when mentioned in reference to Isreael-Paestinian issue is normally used in reference to Palestinians Arabs. Large numbers of Paestinians did indeed flee from the areas where the Isrealis gained control. Historians believe that during the 1948 war that about 0.7 million Arabs fled or were expelled from the part of Palestine which became Israel. Less well known is that a similar number of Jews fled or were were expelled from Arab comtrolled areas of Paalestine or Muslim countries where their ancestors had lived for centuries, in most cases predating Islam amd the Arabs. Rather than being a one-sided refugee problem, there was in fact an exchange of population. The essential difference is that Israel proceeded to absorb and integrate the Jewish refugees, both the European refugeees abd the so called Oriental Jewish refugees from Arab countries. The Arab countries, however, did not absorb or integrate the Palestinian refugees. As a matter of policy, decades after the 1948 war, we are still talking about the Palestinian refugees, who are now mostly the children and grandchildren of the 1948 refugees. One reader writes, "If 1948 was an injustice, it was not unique. Almost every existing country was built on land seized from someone else at some point in the past. If we set out to reverse every such "injustice", the result would be a global bloodbath. All that happened in 1948 and 1967 was that the Muslim world was defeated in war and lost a small amount of territory. This has happened to many societies at various times. The only unique feature of the Palestine case is that the Muslim world would rather keep fighting -- perhaps to the point of triggering a nuclear holocaust -- rather than accept reality and move on."

Palestinian Arab Refugeees

The term refugeees when mentioned in reference to Isreael-Paestinian issue is normally used in reference to Palestinians Arabs. We have found some serious misunderstandings about the Paestinian refugee problem. There is no doubt Large numbers of Paestinians did indeed flee from the areas where the Isrealis gained control. And there is no doubt that it was a bitter experience and the individuals suffered terribly. Historians report that during the 1948 war, large numbers of Arabs fled or were expelled from the part of Palestine which became Israel. There is some disagreement, however, as to why they fleed and to what extent they were expelled. Often ignored by Arab accounts is that the invading Arabs countries incouraged Palestinian Arabs to flee from Isreli occupied areas. Another often ignored subjects is the difference in treatment of Arans in Idreali occupied areas and Hews in Arab occupied areas. Both sides recount horror stories thus this is a difficult assessment to make. A Palestinian source describes the Palestinian experience as the world's "oldest and largest refugee problem". Another Palestinian site describes the loss of "their property in one of the greatest acts of plunder in modern history". These and similar claims are simply not true. There were many refugee problems brfore and after and there have been quite a nunber of serious refugee crises of far greater magnitude. Even during the same period there were far larger refugee problems. The displace persons following World War II was far larger involving millions of refugees (1945). Just the German refugee problem after the War was larger (1945-46). As was the refugee problem following the partition of British India (1948). And there were actually more Jewish than Arab refugeees. Here we are not just talking about European Jewish refugeees, but Oriental Jewish refugees from Arab countries as well. There are many other refugee crisis we could list, many of which have been larger than the Paestinian refugee problem. It may well be, however, that the Palestinian refugee problem is the world's most enduring such problem. There are differences of opinion as to the numbers of Paestinians displaced from Israel. Perhaps the most commonly used figure is 0.7 million. We have, however, seen estimates ranging from about 0.4-0.8 million persons. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the Palestinian refugee problem to understand is why the Palestinians did not integrate into the Arab societies where they sought refuge. Many images highlighting the difficult living conditions Palestinans faced were taken in Gaza refugee camps. A myth about the Paestinian refugees, however, is that “Israel forced the Palestinian refugees to stay in primitive Gaza camps". The Arab refugees were left in camps and in some cases confined in those camps by the Arab Governments. The Palestinian ASrabs were never integrated, unlike the similar number of Jewish refugees from the Arab world, who were fully integrated into Israeli society.

European Jewish Refugees: The NAZI Holocaust

The NAZI Holocaust was a systematic state genocide to extinguish not just the Jewish religion, but to murder the entire Jewish people. The NAZIs suceeded in killing about half of the 12 million European Jews. Most of the Jews to fall into German hands were killed, including skilled workers that could have assisted in the German war effort. Some Jews were able to hide. A few countries (notably Bulgaria, Denmark, and Italy) protected their Jews to varying degrees. Other Jews survived in unoccupied areas, primarily the Soviet Union. More than half of the surviving Jews wwre in the unoccupied area of the Soviet Union. After the NAZI surrender (May 1945), surviving Jews in Western Europe could pick up their lives, with the exception of Germany. The survivors, however, found it difficult to return to the Soviet occupied areas of Eastern Europe. Some Jews trying to return to Polasnd and other countries were attacked. They were cared for in refugee camps while they tried to plan a future. Many wanted to go to the United States and Congress passed new laws to allow increased immigrantion. Others inspired by the Zionist dream wanted to go to Palestine, but the British who contrilled Palestine tried to prevent this because of Arab objections. The Hagenah organized efforts to bring Jews to Palestine in violation of British regulations. The Royal Navy brought Jews intercepted to internment camps on Cypres. The last British forces departed (May 1948). Only after the British withdraw from Palestine did unrestricted emigration become possible. The large Soviet Jewish popuilation was not allowed to participate in this migration until well after Isreal was established (1970s). About half of Israeli Jews are of European origins, but many came before World War II. The emigration set in motion by the NAZIs approximately doubled the Jewish population in Palestine, although we have noted varying numbers.

Oriental Jewish Refugees--Mizrahim

Less well known is that a similar number of Jews were expelled from Muslim countries where their ancestors had lived for centuries, in some cases predating Islam. Jewish commiunities were founded in Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, and India. This process began with the Babalonian Captivity (6th century BC), but most significantly with the Roman supression of the Jewish revolt (1st century AD). Thus Jewish communities in Arab countries were founded 400- 1,000 years before Islam. There were even Jewish communities in Saudia Arabia before Islam. (They are mentioned in the Koran.) These Jewish communities had various experiences after the Islamic conquests. Arabs contend that Jews and Arabs coexisted in harmony before Israel was established. It is true that during the Medieval er that Islam was more tolerant of Jews than Christians. It is also true that there were incidence of extreme intolerance in the Islamic world. And these incidents continued into the modern era. Arabs massacred Jews in Morocco (1912), Algeria (1933), Iraq (1941), and Libya (1945), all these incidents of course pre-dated the establishment of Israel. The Mizrahim, now integrated into Israel, never left the Middle East, can hardly be called Western interlopers. They are as much a part of the Middle East as the Arabs. The Oriental Jews or Mizrahim were expelled from Arab and other countries such as Iran. Jews were expelled by countries like Iraq, Egypt and Algeria. Other Arab countries (such as Morocco and Tunisia) did not formally expel Jews, but persued policies of marginalisation and intimidation. Historians report that there were about 870,000 Mizrahi refugees. The majority or about 600,000 sought refuge in Israel, where they now constiture about half of the Isreali Jewish population. The Oriental Jews are important to be recognized. One of the Arab charges against Israel is that the Jews are western colonial interlopers--essentially a colonial phenomenon. The Arabs complain that these Western Jews stole the land from the native Pestinian Arabs. They conveniently forget the Oriental Jews that form such a large part of the Isreali population.

Public Perceptions

The popular press has badly failed to inform the public of the refugee problem. If you reasonably informed individuals about the Isrerali-Palestinian conflict, most will be aware of Palestinian Arab refugees. Few will be aware of Jewish refugeeews others than those who came from Europe after World War II. Very few undersand that there were even more Jewish refugees from Arab countries than Palestinisan refugeees. There is an easy way of testing the huge attention given to the Palestinian refugee issue. Do an internet search for Palestinian refugees. I got nealy 1.1 million hits. (The numbers will vary depending on ypourr sesarch engine and when you do the search. Compare this to India partition refugees involving far greater numbers of people at the same time. There were only 0.3 million hits. A search for Arab Jewish refugees generate only 0.4 million hits. (For some reason Jewish Arab refugees generated only 0.2 million hits.) Even less well know is the different policies adopted by Isreael and the Aerab countries in assisting refugees. Israel pursued a policy of assimilation whle Arab countries to vary degrees discouraged assimilation. Many Palestinian refugees were forced to live in squalid camps not by Israel, but by Arab governments. The Arab refugees were supported by the United Nations and at first Israel. Arab countries varied in their treatment of Jews , but in several countries they were stripped of their property and expelled. We have presented some data on this, but readers might also be interested in these five YouTube clips. They vividly tell the story of the Ethnic Cleansing of nearly a million refugees in the Middle East because of racism--but most people will be surprised that they are Middle Eastern Jews and not Palestinian Arabs. The story is in five parts:

Justice for Middle East Refugees I

Justice for Middle East Refugees II

Justice for Middle East Refugees III

Justice for Middle East Refugees IV

Justice for Middle East Refugees V

Here is the Second part: Justice for Middle East Refugees II

Refugee Policy

The First Arab Israel War created huge numbers of regugees. This included not only Arabs and Jews in Palestine itself, but also Jews throughout the Middle East. News about the war inflamed the Arab public. The situation variesd somewhat from country to country. Jews were forced to flee Arab countries where they were attacked, arrested, beaten, and stripped of their policy. Many but not all sought refuge in Israel. Unlike other countries, Israel took in all Jews without question. There was thus a major refugee crisis on both sides. The arabs and Israel, however, had very different policies toward the refugees. The Arabs did not accept the United Nations partition or the establishment of a Palestianian state. Rather the invading armies (Egypt, Jordan, and Syria) annexed the area of Palestine that they seized. Not only did they not create a Plaestinian Arab state, but they refused to integrate the Palestinians in their population. Arab sources report 0.8-1.0 Palestinian refugees. Manfate census data suggest that this is an inflated number, greater than the entire Palestinian Arab poplation. Some 0.2 million Arabs remained in Israel after the War. This means that the number of Palestinian refugees was anout 0.6-0.7 million. These unfortunate people were confined to fetid camps, not by the Israelies, but their fellow Arabs. Arab governments did not allow them to move into the counry proper or seek jobs. Here policies varied from country to country. The Arab countries saw the Palestinin refugees as a disruptive influence and thus wanted them confined to camps. In addition they wanted to keep the distruction of Israel a major issue and the dispair of the Palestinian Arabs in these camps was a useful propganda tool. The number of Jews fleeing Arab countries for Israel in the years following Israel's independence was roughly equal to the number of Arabs that left Israeli occupied areas of Palestine. These Jews were forced to leave with little more than the shirts on their backs. Unlike the Arab refugees, they had had no desire to be repatriated. Little is now heard of them because Israeli policy was radically different than Arab policy. Israeli policy was to get the refugees out of the camps as soon as possible and assimilate them into Israeli society no mather where they came from. As a result, most Jewish refugees spent very little time in refugee camps. There were some 0.8 million Jewish refugees, some 0.6 million were quickly resettled in Israel at considerable expense. There was no offer of compensation from the Arab governments who appropriated their property and possessions. Nor was there any thought of using the funds generated to aid or compensate the refugees.

Ethiopian Jews

Another group of Jewsish refugeees are the Ethiopian Jews. The culture of either Ethiopian Jews or Ethiopia is not well known in the West. Generally less is known about them than other Jewish refugee groups. Part of the difficulty here is linguistic. Few Americans speak either Amharic or Ge'ez Amharic is the language of Ethiopia. Ge'ez is the language of Ethiopian Jewish (and Christian) scriptures. There have in recent years been some imfotmative scholarly work on Ethiopian Jews. Some of the leading scholars are Steven Kaplan of the Hebrew University, Kay Kaufman Shelemay of Harvard, and James Quirin of Fisk University. The most readable work for the layman is probably Shelemay's fascinting account of her academic fieldwork in Ethiopia, A Song of Longing (University of Illinois Press, 1994). These and other scholars have given us an account of Ethiopian Jews that places them and their origins with backgrpind on the on the overal aweep of Ethiopian history and culture. The Judaism that emerges is one that has substantial differences with the primarily European origins of most modern Jews. In the same context, Ethiopian Christianity differs from the essentially European Christianity of most modern Christians. A Jewish observer comcludes, howeverm that, "This Ethiopian understanding of Ethiopian Jews shows our Ethiopian brethren to be in no way less Jewish than we are, despite the radical differences in origins." Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) were at first an object of intra-Jewish dispute. This has gradually changed and Isrealis now generally support their aliyah to and absorption into Israel. There are now about 100,000 Jews of Ethiopian origin in Israel. There are about 50,000 Jews remaining in Ethiopia. Some believe that about 20,000 of the remaining Ethjiopian Jews would like to make aliyah. Many of the remaining Jews appear to be Falash Mura--people who had at one time been converts to Christianity but have since returned to the practice of Judaism. The absorption of the Ethiopian Jews in Israel was frought with cultural, political, and financial problems. Given the impediments, the absorption of the Ethiopian Jews has been more successful than night have been expected.

Soviet Jews: Cold War Issue

The Pogroms launched by Tsar Alexander III made drove many Jews from Poland abd other areas of the Pale where Jews were allowed to live in Tsarist Russia (1880s). It made the Tsar and the Tsarist regime a subject of fear and hated. Jewish raducals turned to revolutionary politics. These were ethnic Jews often without any religious afiliation with the Jewish community. Many Jew put there faith in socialism and were active in the Russian Revolution. The most famous was Trotsky, but there were many other prominant Jews. The same was true in the socialist movements in other European countries as well. After Stalin seized control of the Soviet Union, supression of all religious groups became more intense, but gradually unwritten restrictions on Jews developed. Historiand generally believe that the Dictor's Plot was the beginning of a major anti-Semetic campaign Stalin was planning at the time of his death (1953). This was never launched, but Soviet Jews were desciminated against and decined basic religious and cultural rights. And they like other Soviet citizens with rare exceptions were not allowed to emigrate. The issue of Jewish immigration first received international attention durung the Nixon Administration. Two Jews who had been denied exit visas began plotting to hijack a plane. They were arrested, tried and sentenced to death (December 1970). The press picked up on this and it caused an international outcry. The Soviets backed down and decided not to execute the two men. This brought the issue of Jewish emigration tothe internstional spot light. It was a difficult issue for them, because if Jews were allowed to emigrate it would make it difficult to deny similar rights to other Soviet citizens and to explain why people whould want to leave the 'workers' paradise. The Nixon Administration was primarily interested in bilateral relations with the Soviets and pursued detente. Senator Henry Jackson made human rights an element in that relationship. The passage of the Jackson-Vanik Act (1974) forced both the Soviets and American administrations to address the civil rights issue as part of the bilateral relationship. Authors disagree as to the importance of Jewish emigration. Secretary of State Henry Kissenger seems to have seen it as more of an irritant in United States-Soviet relations. Another author writes, "It armed Soviet citizens with the greatest weapon against their closed society: the opportunity to vote with their feet and leave."

Exchange of Populations

Rather than being a one-sided refugee problem, there was in fact an exchange of population. Many readers will be surprised to know that there were more Jewish refugees from Arab countries than there were Arab refugess from Israel.

Basic Difference

The essential difference is that Israel absorbed and integrated the Jewish refugees, both the European refugeees abd the so called Oriental Jewish refugees from Arab countries. The Arab countries, however, did not absorb or integrate the Palestinian refugees. As a result, decades fter the 1948 war, we are still talking about the Palestinian refugrees, who are now mostly the children and grandchildren of the 1948 refugees.

Tolerance

Modern Israel has more than one million Arab citizens. They have full voting rights and representatives in the Kniset. In fact, Palestinians in Israel are among the few Arabs that are able to participate in democratic elections. There are only about 5,000 Jews who now live in the Arab world. When Aran spokesmen charge that the Isrealis are guilty of ethnic cleansing, this basic fact needs to be considerd.

Importance

The refugee issue is of course important because it is the major stumbling block to any peace settlement. Territorial issues are difficult, but solveable. In the last seeious round of negotiations that President Clinton attempted to broker in 2000, the territorial differences between the two sides were relatively minor. Much more difficult is the "right of return" issue. By this is meant the right of return of Paestinian refugees to Israel. Rarely mentioned is the right of return or compensation for the Oriental Jrewish refugees to Arab countries or compebnsation for the losses incurred.

Right of Return

The right of return is one of the most difficult issues in the Isreali-Palestinian conflict. One of the principle reasons that Arafat decided not to sign the Camp David accord was that it rfused to permit the right of retrurn of Palestinians refugees (now mostly the descendents of refugeees) to Israel. Here a lot of misleading retoric is often used. Palestinian spokesmen speaking in English often say they accept a two state sollution and recognize Israel's right to exist. One especially effectiive Palestinian spokesperson is Dr. Hanan Ashrawi. Like many Palestinian spokespersons she criticses the 2000 Camp David accord. One of her principle objections is the failure to accomodate the right of return. Of course as a Palestinian spokespersons she has every right to advance the interests of her people. And her position accurately reflects the sentiment among most Palestinians. What is not legitimate, however, is to claim to recognize Israel's right to exist and then insist on the right of return. The two are mutually inconsistent. The position makes for effective propaganda. It dies not, however, offer any hope of resolving the conflict. It also leads one to seriously question if Palestinian leaders have any interest in a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Another issue concerning the right of return is that the discussion usually focuses only on Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees arre also ignored as if they did not exist.

Assessment

One reader writes, "If 1948 was an injustice, it was not unique. Almost every existing country was built on land seized from someone else at some point in the past. If we set out to reverse every such 'injustice', the result would be a global bloodbath. All that happened in 1948 and 1967 was that the Muslim world was defeated in war and lost a small amount of territory. This has happened to many societies at various times. The only unique feature of the Palestine case is that the Muslim world would rather keep fighting -- perhaps to the point of triggering a nuclear holocaust -- rather than accept reality and move on."

Created: 6:39 PM 11/21/2006
Last updated: 6:53 AM 12/10/2016