By Andrew G. Bostom, The American Thinker
Summary
The bicameral Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) will hold a landmark hearing on Thursday July 19th regarding the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to flee their communities in the Arab Muslim nations as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Oriental Jews suffered profound violations of their basic human rights under the Islamic regimes throughout North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf Region.
This persecution — including pogroms and expropriations — caused their subsequent flight despite longtime residences in these countries. The two decades following World War II witnessed a rapid dissolution of the major Jewish communities in the Arab Muslim world (and beyond, including Afghanistan, as well as the significant attrition of the Jewish population in Turkey). Even the first decade after World War II saw a reduction by half in the overall Jewish population of the Arab countries.
The July 19, 2007 congressional hearing on Jewish refugees has an immediate, practical goal of providing US legislators with preliminary information before voting on House Resolution 185 and Senate Resolution 85. Under the proposed legislation, the US president would be required to instruct all official representatives of the United States that “explicit reference to Palestinian refugees be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees, as a matter of law and equity.” The historical legacy of this mass Jewish exodus elucidates the bare minimum equity provided in these resolutions. This Thursday’s CHRC hearings provide a unique window on the legacy of dhimmitude and Islamic antisemitism which caused the tragic exodus of some 900,000 Jews from the Arab (and non-Arab Muslim) nations, liquidating most of these ancient communities.
But the occasion of these hearings should also serve as a clarion reminder that this is a living legacy for those vestigial remnant Jewish populations still living within the Arab Muslim world, as well as the larger populations of Jews in both non-Arab Iran (in particular), and even Turkey. Finally, it must be acknowledged that this same animus-born of general anti-dhimmi attitudes and specific Islamic antisemitism-has reached genocidal proportions when directed at the Jews of Israel, nearly half of whom are Oriental Jewish refugees and their descendants. Continue
On reflection one statement in my foregoing post may be miscontrued. I therefore wish to clear that up, not because of any sense of political correctness, but my wish to be accurate and more precise in the meaning I am trying to convey.
I stated:
I do not mean by that one, especially a Westerner such as I, steeped in Western values should not feel compassion for the plight of a great many Palestinians who have been forced to live in conditions of abject poverty and deprivation of many of the basic amenities of life we in the West take for granted.
Feeling compassion however does not give rise to responsibility or an obligation to ameliorate the plight of the Palestinians.
The West however taken that responsibility on their own shoulders for a number of reasons, having little if anything to do with compassion and a lot to do with the Arab oil power and securing their own interests.
In furtherance of assuming that obligation, the West has thrown annual fortunes of money at the Palestinians to aid them in building a stable society that can provide Palestinians with a much better standard of living and as well prepare Palestinians to take on the mantle of statehood.
In so doing, the West has failed in three respects:
1. They have exercised the responsibility they took on for the Palestinians irresponsibly by failing to ensure the aid given the Palestinians would be used for the purposes intended, which it consistently has not. That Western irresponsibility continues for in opening the floodgates of welfare support to the Palestinians, again there are no enforceable conditions including strict accountability placed on the Palestinians for use of that aid;
2. The West has especially failed morally in that they have consistently imposed a responsibility, backed up by various political and economic pressures on Israel, the victim of the genocidal efforts of the Jew hating Arab world that has created the Palestinian humanitarian crisis and which has ensured its perpetuation to pay for the realization of Palestinian/Arab dreams of an independent Palestinian state by giving Palestinians pieces of Israel and in so doing compromising Israel’s security in the region, which a great many have convincingly argued borders on if it does not amount to Israel committing suicide in order for Palestinians to realize their dreams.
3. The West has failed completely to put both the blame for the Palestinian crisis and the onus to aid the Palestinians solely, completely and squarely on the Middle Eastern Muslim world which has far more land then is needed to absorb all the Palestinians as citizens and which has far more money and resources at their disposal then will be needed to do that without causing themselves any economic hardship and that is even without one dime’s worth of financial help from the West.
The West’s humoring and agreeing with the Middle Eastern Muslim nations refusing to accept any blame for the Palestinian crisis and any responsibility to fix it and instead blaming Israel and demanding that Israel pay for their failed Jew hating evil efforts to eradicate Israel is egregiously wrong, unjust, immoral and the values that the West otherwise cherish and believe in.
If the testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus conveys the history of Jewish refugees from Arab lands as Andrew Bostom’s excellent article does, it will be undeniable that the history of the Israel-Palestinian conflict must be hereafter viewed in the broader context of the Arab world’s ongoing genocidal war against all Jews fueled by their virulent anti-Semitism.
How dare President Bush or any American speak of Palestinian refugees in the same breath as Jewish refugees?
For that matter, how dare President Bush or any American speak any longer of Palestinian refugees as if they, by comparison to the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, deserve an ounce of compassion?
The plight of most so called Palestinian refugees is the result of their own Arab brethren’s intractable Jew hatred that kept the Arab nations, defeated in one genocidal war after another against the Jews of Israel, from aiding their own Arab brethren made victims of their own failed genocidal wars against Israel and instead they continued to use those victims of their own failures by ensuring they remained victims so the Arab nations could blame Israel for their plight.
Furthermore, back in 1948 a very great many, if not the vast majority of Arab refugees from that failed Arab genocidal war against Israel were no less consumed by the same Jew hatred as their Arab brethren and that Jew hatred poisons most of their minds to this day.
Evidence of the Palestinian opinion polls conducted over the last few years has consistently revealed that the large majority, being up to 80% of the Palestinians support Hamas, Hamas’ goals for the destruction of Israel and the methods Hamas employs to achieve those goals which as we have seen, is to use terrorist attacks against non-combattant Israeli citizens to strike fear in the hearts of Israelis.
This Israel-Palestinian conflict is not at all about Arabs fighting Israel to ensure they can equitably share the biblical lands of the region with the Jews.
This Israel-Palestinian conflict is just a continuation of the earlier history about Muslim Middle Eastern anti-Semitism deriving from their Islamic culture and beliefs to force Jews to live in dhimmitude with little more rights then the right to live. Even that right was not assured as it was taken from many Jews time and again both before and since Israel became a state when Islamic anti-Semitism burned more fiercely in the hearts and minds of the Muslim Middle East.
With the coming into being of the state of Israel the ongoing war between Israel and the Arab nations, which since about the mid 1960’s have the newly named Arabs as Palestinians on the front line, is still all part of the Islamic culture and beliefs in the region that call for Islam to be dominant, for the land of Israel to be taken from the Jews and restored to Islamic authority and dominion and for those Jews not murdered and forced to leave the region, to once again live in dhimmitude under the harsh rule of Islam.
The Israel Palestine conflict is just part of the war made against the Jews by those within the Muslim world who are to this day no less consumed by their Jew hatred then they have historically been.
These Congressional Human Rights hearings will hopefully open American eyes and the Bush administration’s eyes to this reality.
If that happens, America will hereafter place the blame for the plight of Palestinian refugees squarely and completely where it belongs, which is on the Middle Eastern Muslim world. In recognizing that reality, it follows that America must also squarely and completely place the onus of dealing with and eliminating the plight of Palestinian refugees on those Arab nations that caused and for their own selfish Jew hating motives, perpetuated the plight of those so called refugees.
If such does occur, that would allow Jews and Israel to stand together and refuse, with the support of America, any further calls by the Muslim Middle East to pay the price for ending the plight of the so called Palestinian refugees by Israel giving away pieces of herself.