Jews from Middle East Granted Refugee Status April 3, 2008
In what is being termed as a “dramatic shift” in US policy, Congress granted, for the first-time ever, refugee status for Jews from Muslim countries.
The bill (click here for the full text) was introduced by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Joseph Crowley (D-NY), and Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) and declares that it would be “inappropriate and unjust for the United States to recognize rights for Palestinian refugees without recognizing equal rights for former Jewish, Christian, and other refugees from Arab countries”. Some 900,000 Jews were displaced from Muslim countries, with 850,000 Jews being expelled from “10 Arab countries” following Israel’s creation in 1948.
One of the main proponents of the legislation, the organization Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), was quick to note that this is not about financial compensation or ulterior motive:
The organization’s executive director, Stanley Urman of West Orange, called the resolution “a historic milestone.”
“It may be the first fundamental change in U.S. Middle East policy,” said Urman in a separate interview with NJJN. “Previously virtually all U.S. focus on Middle Eastern refugees was exclusively on Palestinians. It may be the first fundamental change in U.S.-Middle East policy. This expresses the sense of Congress that Palestinians were not the only Middle East refugees.”
“This is not about compensation,” said Urman. Rather, the resolution will help ensure that “2,500 years of Jewish life in what is today the Arab world is not erased from history. The Jews are an indigenous people in the Middle East. In a peace process that seeks to resolve a half-century of conflict, these victims and their rights must also be resolved.”
Rep. Ros-Lehtinen told the Jewish Week that the legislation is “an attempt to redress a critical imbalance”:
“Discussions of Middle Eastern refugees inevitably focus exclusively…on the plight of those of Palestinian descent,” said Ros-Lehtinen. But Jewish refugees “lost their resources, their homes and their heritage sites, fleeing in the face of persecution, pogroms, revolutions and brutal dictatorships.”
(Ignoring Ms. Ros-Lehtinen’s omission of “Christian refugees”…) I applaud this legislation, and as Ehud Olmert has already said, this is US policy, not Israeli policy (unlike critics who imply that this is some flipside of the Palestinian claim to right of return). I hope that the US government stays true to its word and provides refuge and asylum for all victims of the wars in the Middle East.
And may there be an end to those wars, b’m'heira b’yameinu.
this would have been a really great step by Congress you know, 60 years ago.
Now the real question is whether other countries will pick up on this, and whether it will have any effect on the whole peace process.
When you consider just how many refugees there were at that time–(WWII, various other regional conflicts), the fact that the only ones still in refugee camps are the Palestinians is even more telling. These guys really have been turned into political tools….
Would this make it easier to obtain visas to the US for Jews already living in Muslim countries?
Also worth mentioning that when the Jews left the Arab lands in 1948, they left behind $300 billion worth of property, including private land totaling four times the size of Israel.