Justice for Jews from Arab Lands : AZ IMC

Appearing in Geneva before the United Nations Human Rights Council on March 18, 2008, will be Regina Bublil Waldman, a Jewish refugee who fled Libya in 1967, in fear of her life.
Celebrating her heritage, Mrs. Waldman will be testifying wearing her grandmother' s Libyan wedding dress. At the same time, she will be "mourning" the loss of her heritage, as in 1948, there were 36,000 Jews living in Libya. Today, there are none left.
Mrs. Waldman will share traumatic and painful experiences from her native country:

-She was 6 years old when her madrassah teacher asked: "If you have 10 Jews, and you kill five of them, how many Jews do you have left to kill?
-She will testify, how, as a teenager, during the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab world, her Libyan neighbors took to the streets shouting, "Edbah el Yehud!" (Slaughter the Jews!).

Mrs. Bublil Waldman will be representing Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), which seeks rights and redress for Jews displaced from Arab countries.
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Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) is a coalition of 77 Jewish communal organizations operating under the auspices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Sephardi Federation in partnership with the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League, Bnai Brith International, the Jewish Public Council for Public Affairs and the World Sephardic Congress.

Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC)
15 West 16th Street - 6th Fl. - New York, NY 10011 - USA
Phone: 917-606-8262 Fax: 212-294-8348 info(at)justiceforj ews.com

And we will all just forget how it was Zionists who were terrorising the Jews out of "Arab" lands.

The next biggest chunk included those Jews in "Arab" lands who were Zionists and left to join the European crusaders in their murderous theft of Palestinian lands.

And after all that, very few Jews were left in those "Arab" lands to be kicked out.

But nothing that happened or didn't happen hundreds or thousands of miles away from Palestine is going to denigrate the Palestinian's basic human right NOT to be destroyed by Zionist invadors. That includes "Arab" lands as well as European lands.

American Jews were kept out of the country club's golf course. So American Zionists think/feel they have a birthright of murderous theft of Palestinian lands.

Jews that had lived in North Africa and the Middle East were ethnically cleansed by the various Moslem governments in agreeemnt with each other. These governments then nationalized the property and holdings of these Jews . The land confiscated represented an area five times the size of the state of Israel. Their descedants are over 50% of Israel's population.

Today, Congress moved one step closer to recognizing the 'forgotten refugees.'

In a unanimous bi-partisan decision, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved H.Res 185, a Resolution recognizing the plight and flight of over 850,000 from Arab countries. The Resolution now moves to the full House of Representatives for a vote.

The Resolution was introduced in the House by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) along with Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY) and Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ).

"Today, the House Foreign Affairs Committee recognized the suffering and terrible injustices visited upon Jewish refugees in the Middle East,” said Congressman Nadler. “It is simply not right to recognize the rights of Palestinian refugees without recognizing the rights of Jewish refugees, who, in fact, outnumbered their Palestinian counterparts. By any definition, these displaced Jews are refugees, and we should recognize them as such."

Rep. Ros-Lehtinen stated "It is imperative that we recognize the history and plight of history's forgotten refugees, along with the circumstances surrounding their departure. Failure to do so only serves to perpetuate their suffering."

Jews and Jewish communities have existed in the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region for many centuries. Their lives changed in the 20th century, as witnessed by a consistent, wide-spread pattern of persecution and the mass violations of the human rights of Jewish minorities in Arab countries. Upon the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, the status of Jews in Arab countries worsened dramatically as Jews were either uprooted from their countries of longtime residence or became subjugated, political hostages of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The result - from over 850,000 Jews resident in North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf region at the turn of the century, it is estimated that less than 5,000 Jews remain to-day in Arab countries.

Stanley Urman, Executive Director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) said the issue was first brought to the attention of Congress by JJAC and B'nai Brith International over three years ago. Since then, support has grown for this first formal recognition, by the U.S. House of Representative, of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

"This truth must be told - that Jews are an indigenous people of the region, having lived for 2,600 years in North Africa, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf" said Urman. "These Jews became victims of the Arab world's struggle against the state of Israel. This Congressional Resolution is necessary because any denial of rights to Jewish refugees from Arab countries will prejudice authentic negotiations between the parties and undermine the justice and legitimacy of any agreement."

The current Resolution urges the President to ensure that when the issue of Middle East refugees is discussed in international forums, any reference to Palestinian refugees be matched by a similarly explicit reference to Jewish and other refugee populations.

"The plight and injustices of Jewish, and other displaced, refugees in the greater Middle Eastern region must be recognized by the United Nations and dealt with in a fair and balanced manner," said Congressman Joseph Crowley. He added, "This recognition will fulfill a very necessary step in the effort to establish lasting peace and stability in a critically important and historic part of the world."

"This important resolution urges the international community to treat all refugees in the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf equally," said Congressman Ferguson. "All religions - including Judaism and Christianity - must be treated equally and fairly in any credible Middle East peace agreement."

Justice for Jews from Arab Countries is a coalition of 77 Jewish communities and organizations in 20 countries, operating under the auspices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Sephardi Federation, in partnership with the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, B'nai Brith International, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the World Sephardic Congress.

Congress sez so.

Good thing the authority of ALL US government doesn't extend past the US borders. Or someone might think that congress dictates means a damned thing.

And no, was not caught lying. Accused of lting, ALL THE TIME. Exposed as a liar, NEVER!

True- its a symbolic act, but its still an important gesture- its an acknowledgement of their existence and of their struggle

Jews expelled from Arab Lands had their businesses, home and land confiscated. The real estate confiscated from Jews was an area 5 times the size of the state of Israel!

THE JEWS OF IRAQ - TESTIMONY OF A FORMER ZIONIST

Article by Naeim Giladi

I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called "cruel Zionism." I write about it because I was part of it.

(snip)

I was an Iraqi Jew in the Zionist underground.

(snip)

* * * * *

Continued at:

http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/jewsofiraq.htm

The real history of jews from Arab lands

YEMEN

he Jews of Yemen have various legends relating to their coming to that country, the most wide-spread of which states that they arrived there before the destruction of the First Temple (587 BCE). The first historical evidence of their existence in Yemen dates from the third century.
Jews had begun to leave Yemen in the 1880s, when some 2,500 had made their way to Jerusalem and Jaffa. But it was after World War I, when Yemen became independent, that anti-Jewish feeling in that country made emigration imperative. Anti-Semitic laws, which had lain dormant for years were revived (e.g. Jews were not permitted to walk on pavements – or to ride horses). In court, a Jew’s evidence was not accepted against that of a Moslem.

In 1922, the government of Yemen reintroduced an ancient Islamic law requiring that Jewish orphans under age 12 be forcibly converted to Islam. When a Jew decided to emigrate, he had to leave all his property. In spite of this, between 1923 and 1945 a total of 17,000 Yemenite Jews left and immigrated to Palestine.[1]

After the Second World War, thousands of more Yemenite Jews wanted to come to Palestine, but the British Mandate’s White Paper was still in force and those who left Yemen ended up in crowded slums in Aden, where serious riots broke out in 1947 after the United Nations decided on partition. Many Jews were killed, and the Jewish quarter was burned to the ground. It was not until September 1948 that the British authorities in Aden allowed the refugees to proceed to Israel.

In 1947, after the partition vote, Muslim rioters engaged in a bloody pogrom in Aden that killed 82 Jews and destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes. The Jewish community of Aden, numbering 8,000 in 1948, was forced to flee. By 1959 over 3,000 arrived in Israel. Many fled to the U.S.A. and England. Today there are no Jews left in Aden.

Around the time of Israel’s founding, Yemen’s Jewish community was economically paralysed, as most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed. This increasingly perilous situation led to the emigration of virtually the entire Yemenite Jewish community - almost 50,000 - between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation “Magic Carpet.” A smaller, continuous migration was allowed to continue into 1962, when a civil war put an abrupt halt to any further Jewish exodus.

It is another example of the displacement of an entire Jewish community from its ancient roots in the Arab countries. It is estimated, there are about 1,000 Jews in Yemen today. They are held as hostages, and are kept in dire conditions and not allowed to leave.

http://www.justiceforjews.com/yemen.html

IRAQ

History

Iraq is the modern designation fro the country carved out of ancient Babylonia, Assyria, and the southern part of Turkey after World War I.

It is also the place of the oldest Jewish Diaspora and the one with the longest continuous history, from 721 BCE to 1949 CE, a time span of 2,670 years.

By the 3rd century, Babylonia became the center of Jewish scholarship, as is attested to by the community’s most influential contribution to Jewish scholarship, the Babylonian Talmud. Jews had prospered in what was then Babylonia for 1200 years before the Muslim conquest in 634 AD. Under Muslim rule, the situation of the Jewish community fluctuated. Some Jews held high positions in government or prospered in commerce and trade. At the same time, Jews were subjected to special taxes, restrictions on their professional activity. Under British rule, which began in 1917, Jews fared well economically, but all of this progress ended when Iraq gained independence in 1932.

In June 1941, the Mufti-inspired, pro-Nazi coup of Rashid Ali sparked rioting and a pogrom in Baghdad. Armed Iraqi mobs murdered 180 Jews and wounded almost 1,000.

Additional outbreaks of anti-Jewish rioting occurred between 1946-1949. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime.

In 1950, Iraqi Jews were permitted to leave the country within a year provided they forfeited their citizenship. A year later, however, the property of Jews who emigrated was frozen and economic restrictions were placed on Jews who chose to remain in the country. From 1949 to 1951, 104,000 Jews were evacuated from Iraq in Operations Ezra and Nehemiah; another 20,000 were smuggled out through Iran. Thus a community that had reached a peak of some 150,000 in 1947 dwindled to a mere 6,000 after 1951.

In 1952, Iraq’s government barred Jews from emigrating. With the rise of competing Ba’ath factions in 1963, additional restrictions were placed on the remaining Iraqi Jews. The sale of property was forbidden and all Jews were forced to carry yellow identity cards. Persecutions continued, especially after the Six-Day War in 1967, when many of the remaining 3,000 Jews were arrested and dismissed from their jobs. Around that period, more repressive measures were imposed: Jewish property was expropriated; Jewish bank accounts were frozen; Jews were dismissed from public posts; businesses were shut; trading permits were cancelled; telephones were disconnected. Jews were placed under house arrest for long periods of time or restricted to the cities.

Persecution was at its worst at the end of 1968. Scores were jailed upon the discovery of an alleged local “spy ring” composed of Jewish businessmen. Fourteen men-eleven of them Jews-were sentenced to death in staged trials and, on January 27, 1969, were hanged in the public squares of Baghdad; others died of torture (Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, “Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf”, p. 34).

In response to international pressure, the Baghdad government quietly allowed most of the remaining Jews to emigrate in the early 1970’s, even while leaving other restrictions in force. In 1973, most of Iraq’s remaining Jews were too old to leave and they were pressured by the government to turn over title, without compensation, to more than $200 million worth of Jewish community property (New York Times, February 18, 1973).

Today, approximately 61 Jews are left in Baghdad. A once flourishing Jewish community in Iraq has thus been extinguished (Associated Press, March 28, 1998).

Discriminatory Decrees and Violations of Human Rights
(Intended merely as a sampling and not an exhaustive compilation)

The first piece of legislation enacted that violated the rights of Jews was the 1948 amendment 12 to the 1938 supplement 13 to the Penal Code of Baghdad. The Baghdad Penal Code set out the provision regarding communism, anarchy and immorality in section 89A(1). The section generally prohibits the publication of anything that incites the spread of hatred, abuse of the government or the integrity of the people. This amendment, enacted in 1948, added “Zionism” to communism, anarchism and immorality, the propagation of which constituted an offence punishable by seven years imprisonment and/or a fine.

In an article that appeared in the New York Times on May 16, 1948, it was reported that: “In Iraq no Jew is permitted to leave the country unless he deposits £5,000 ($20,000) with the Government to guarantee his return. No foreign Jew is allowed to enter Iraq even in transit.”

Law No. 1 of 1950, entitled “Supplement to Ordinance Cancelling Iraqi Nationality,” in fact deprived Jews of their Iraqi nationality. Section 1 stipulated that “the Council of Ministers may cancel the Iraqi nationality of the Iraqi Jew who willingly desires to leave Iraq...” (official Iraqi English translation).[1]

Law No. 5 of 1951 entitled “ A law for the Supervision and Administration of the Property of Jews who have Forfeited Iraqi Nationality” also deprived them of their property. Section 2(a) “freezes” Jewish property.[2]

There were a series of laws that subsequently expanded on the confiscation of assets and property of Jews who “forfeited Iraqi nationality”. These included Law No. 12 of 1951 16 and the attached Law No. 64 of 1967 (relating to ownership of shares in commercial companies) and Law No. 10 of 1968 (relating to banking restrictions).

http://www.justiceforjews.com/iraq.html

istory

Jews have lived in Egypt since Biblical times. Israelite tribes first moved to the Land of Goshen (the north-eastern edge of the Nile Delta) during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1375-1358 B.C).

Over the years, Jews have sought shelter and dwelled in Egypt. By 1897, there were more than 25,000 Jews in Egypt, concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria. In 1937, the population reached 63,500.

In the 1940’s, with the rise of Egyptian nationalism and the Zionist movement’s efforts to create a Jewish homeland in adjoining Israel, anti-Jewish activities began in earnest. In 1945, riots erupted – ten Jews were killed; 350 injured, and a synagogue, a Jewish hospital, and an old-age home were burned down. After the success of the Zionist movement in establishing the State of Israel, between June and November of 1948, violence and repressive measures by the Government and Egyptians began in earnest. Bombs were set off in the Jewish Quarter, killing more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200. Rioting over the next few months resulted in many more Jewish deaths. 2,000 Jews were arrested and many had their property confiscated.

In 1956, the Egyptian government used the Sinai Campaign as a pretext to order almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews to leave the country and confiscated their property. They were allowed to take only one suitcase and a small sum of cash, and forced to sign declarations “donating” their property to the Egyptian government. Approximately 1,000 more Jews were sent to prisons and detention camps. On November 23, 1956, a proclamation signed by the Minister of Religious Affairs, and read aloud in mosques throughout Egypt, declared that “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state,” and promised that they would be soon expelled (AP, November 26 and 29 1956; New York World Telegram).

By 1957, the Jewish population of Egypt had fallen to 15,000. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, there was a renewed wave of persecution, and the community dropped to 2,500. By the 1970s, after the remaining Jews were given permission to leave the country, the community dwindled to a few families.

Jewish rights were finally restored in 1979 after President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords with Israel. Only then was the community allowed to establish ties with Israel and with world Jewry. Nearly all the estimated 200 Jews left in Egypt are elderly and the once proud and flourishing Jewish community is on the verge of extinction.
Discriminatory Decrees and Violations of Human Rights
(Intended merely as a sampling and not an exhaustive compilation)

The first Nationality Code was promulgated by Egypt on May 26, 1926. Entitled to Egyptian nationality were only those who “belonged racially to the majority of the population of a country whose language is Arabic or whose religion is Islam.” [1] This provision served as the official pretext for expelling many Jews from Egypt.

On July 29, 1947, an amendment was introduced to the Egyptian Companies Law which made it mandatory for at least 75% of the administrative employees of a company to be Egyptian nationals and 90% of employees in general. This resulted in the dismissal and loss of livelihood for many Jews since only 15% of them had been granted Egyptian citizenship.[2]

A mass departure of Jews was sparked when Egypt passed an amendment in 1956 to the original Egyptian Nationality Law of 1926. Article 1 of the Law of November 22, 1956, stipulated that “Zionists” were barred from being Egyptian nationals.[3] Article 18 of the 1956 law asserted that “Egyptian nationality may be declared forfeited by order of the Ministry of Interior in the case of persons classified as Zionists.” Moreover, the term “Zionist” was never defined, leaving Egyptian authorities free to interpret as broadly as they pleased.

Provision both in the 1956 and 1958 laws permitted the government to take away citizenship of any Egyptian Jew absent from UAR territory for more than six consecutive months. That this provision is aimed exclusively at Jews is shown by the fact that the lists of denaturalized persons published time and again by the Official Journal contains Jewish names only, despite the fact that there were many non-Jewish Egyptians who stayed abroad for over six months.[4]

Economic Discrimination and Strangulation
(Intended as a sampling and not an exhaustive compilation)

Law No. 26 of 1952 obligated all corporations to employ certain prescribed percentages of “Egyptians.” A great number of Jewish salaried employees lost their jobs, and could not obtain similar ones, because they did not belong to the category of Jews with Egyptian nationality.

Between November 1-20 1956, official records reveal that by a series of sequestration orders issued under Military Proclamation No. 4, the property of many hundreds of Jews in Egypt was taken from their owners and turned over to Egyptian administrators.[5] Proclamation No. 4 was carried into effect almost exclusively against Jews; and though a number of Copts and Moslems were also interned, their assets were never sequestered.[6]

Of the published lists of 486 persons and firms whose properties were seized under Military Proclamation No. 4, at least 95 per cent of them are Jews. The names of persons and firms affected by this measure represented the bulk of the economic substance of Egyptian Jewry, the largest and most important enterprises and the main sustenance, through voluntary contributions, of Jewish religious, educational, social and welfare institutions in Egypt.[7]

In addition to the vast sequestration of property and other discriminatory treatment, Directive No. 189 issued under the authority of Military Proclamation No. 4, authorized the Director General of the Sequestering Agency to deduct from the assets belonging to interned persons, 10% of the value of the sequestered property, presumably to cover the costs of administration. Hence, without regard to the question of whether a property is legally sequestered, the Jews of Egypt were being taxed to pay for the machinery or improper sequestration and withholding.[8]

The Jews leaving Egypt were subjected to additional deprivations and inconveniences. A regulation was established which only authorized Jews leaving Egypt to take with them travellers checks or other international exchange documents up to a value of 100 pounds sterling per capita. The Bank of Egypt provided Jews leaving the country with instruments specifically drawn on Egyptian accounts in Britain and France, when Egyptian authorities knew well that those accounts were blocked in reciprocation for the Egyptian blocking of British and French assets in Egypt and were not freely negotiable abroad.[9]

1. Article 10(4) of the Code. See: Maurice de Wee, La Nationalite Egptienne, Commentairo de la loi du mai 1926, p. 35.

2. H.J. Cohen, “The Jews of the Middle East, 1860 – 1972.”

3. Law No. 391 of 1956, section 1(a). See Revue egyptienne de Droit International, Vol. 12 (1956), p. 80.

4. Confidential Memorandum provided to the UNHCR, Feb, 26, 1960.

5. Confidential Memorandum provided to the High Commissioner, Mr. Auguste Lindt, on Feb. 21, 1957

6. Confidential Memorandum provided to the UNHCR, Feb, 26, 1960.

7. Egyptian Official Gazette, No. 88, November 1, 1957.

8. Confidential Memorandum provided to the High Commissioner, Mr. Auguste Lindt, on Feb. 21, 1957.

9. Ibid.