In the shadow of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s theatrics at the United Nations, armed with his cartoon Iranian bomb, Israeli officials launched a quieter, but equally combative, initiative to extinguish whatever hopes have survived of reviving the peace process.
For the first time in its history, Israel is seeking to equate millions of Palestinians in refugee camps across the Middle East with millions of Israeli citizens descended from Jews who, before Israel’s establishment in 1948, lived in Arab countries.
According to Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, whose parents were originally from Iraq and who has been leading the government campaign, nearly a million Jews fled countries such as Iraq, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen (“Israel demands compensation for Jews who fled Arab countries,” Globes, 23 September 2012).
That figure exceeds the generally accepted number of 750,000 Palestinian refugees, uprooted during the Nakba (catastrophe), the wave of ethnic cleansing that led to Israel’s foundation in 1948.
Transparent goal
Israel’s goal is transparent: it hopes the international community can be persuaded that the suffering of Palestinian refugees is effectively cancelled out by the experiences of “Jewish refugees.” If nothing can be done for Arab Jews all these years later, then Palestinians should expect no restitution either.
Over the past few weeks that has been the message implicit in a social media campaign called “I am a refugee,” which includes YouTube videos in which Jews tell of being terrorized while living in Arab states after 1948. Ayalon has even announced plans for a new day of national commemoration, Jewish Refugee Day. more
Comments
Post a Comment