As the Arab nations continue busying themselves to portray Israel as an evil nation, one that violates international law and commits war crimes, one that has ousted so-called Arab refugees from their homes and now demanding a right of return for their heirs, Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev offers a response, a response to the PA and to Goldstone.
Ze’ev is going on the offensive, questioning the rights of the heirs of the many Jews ousted or compelled to flee Arab lands.
Ze’ev speaks of “historical justice” surrounding his bill, which will permit the families of Jewish refugees to demand compensation. The bill was passed into law in a 34-1 vote, with Ze’ev stating finally, those immigrants who arrived in Eretz Yisrael since the founding of the state in 1948 can now seek payment for their loss.
He sees the law as something much bigger however, since ultimately, if the Jews begin filing claims, it will lead to a realization that what occurred was a “population exchange”, Arabs leaving Israel and Jews leaving Arab countries, setting the stage of neutralizing Arab right-of-return claims in a final status agreement with Israel.
Needless to say the Arab MKs in Knesset are less than pleased, including MK Talab al-Sana, who blames the Zionist movement. He explained that the Jews were persecuted by both the Germans and Spain, and the Second Beis HaMikdash was destroyed by the Romans, the ancestors of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, who embraced Israel and was warmly received in Knesset during his recent visit.
He insists the law is nothing more than an effort to create a “fictitious Jewish refugee problem” to counteract the legitimate Arab refugee issue. He concluded by expressing his support for the right-of-return for both Arabs and Jews to their countries of origin.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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7 Responses
Why don’t people every do any research? Why do people act so ignorant? All the Arab countries have offered return of Jews to their lands – the Moroccan king and his advisor, Mr. Azulay; Muammar Qadaffi, the government of Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria (to visiting Syrian Jews from Flatbush). Same thing in Lebanon and Yemen.
DO RESEARCH!
Few if any Jews want to return to the Arab countries. The idea is as absurd as the suggestion in 1948 that Holocaust refugees be resettled in Germany and Poland. Perhaps after a generation or two of peace but not before (based on the experience of Germany).
There is a real issue of property claims. The various alien property custodians in the Arab countries have title to large amounts of Jewish property (as does the Israeli alien property custodian have title to abandoned Arab property), and Israel should be asserting Jewish claims.
Part of the reason Israel hasn’t asserted Arab claims is that it would disrupt Israeli society if a significant number of Sefardim received
windfalls (particularly, the way such things work in peace treaties, Israeli would end up having to pay the Israeli Sefardi claims, and the Arab countries would pay the Palestinian claims).
1,
what about iran, which isn’t an arab country at all, but did have a sizable population of jews who fled persecution and lost their lands..
and although this is only created to make a point, valid as it may be, we should try to pressure france to give back all of the property taken from jews during and after both world wars.
I agree with GoodYiddel.
Also, this article misses one of the Arabs’ strongest and most fervent points: sovereignty. Only a few hundred years ago (prior to the British Mandate, the Suez Canal and European Spheres of Influence, and notwithstanding Hashem’s grant of Eretz Yisrael as an eternal gift to the Jewish people), the Arab world perceived itself as having sovereignty over a contiguous land mass from Morocco to Afghanistan. The pattern of post-Shoar European colonialist powers has been to return land to the people that they took it from. (In fact, there are very few European colonies left.) But Israel is different: Ottoman Palestine, after being colonized as the British Mandate, was “returned” to Israel, which is a non-Arab (and non-Jewish) state.
Since 1919, non-Jewish states (i.e. the British Mandate and the State of Israel) have deprived Arabs of their perceived sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael. In practical terms, this has led to:
(1) influxes of Jews from Chutz L’Aaretz in greater numbers than the Ottomans were willing to tolerate;
(2) the prospect of a Jewish homeland (as prophesied by Balfour, a non-Palestinian), which enhanced Jewish motives for land ownership in Eretz Yisrael (because of the notion that Jewish-occupied land would become a State of Israel), thus causing skyrocketing real value of land in Palestine. As such, Jewish inter-war purchases of Palestinian land were, according to most secular legal systems, reversible as unconscionable. (I.e. if I purchased Manhattan from some Indian for $5 and some old clothes, I wouldn’t feel as if I had bought anything.) Even if not unconscionable, many Palestinians who were not parties to such transactions have been deprived of secondary property rights (e.g. prescriptive easements, pastoral rights, easements by necessity, riparian water rights and rights of way) and quasi-property rights (e.g. squatting rights and sharecropping) over such land; and
(3) Conquests in the West Bank (conveniently reassigned biblical toponyms to suit the State of Israel’s politico-military motives).
Yiddishkeit teaches us, in general, that the ends do not justify the means. In post-Ottoman times, there has never been a chiyuv to abuse Palestinians, or to watch idly and even benefit from the deprivation of the quasi-sovereignty that Palestinian Arabs held over Palestine prior to the British Mandate. Even if our record title over Eretz Yisrael is ancient, eternal and granted by Hashem, the fact that a minority of Mizrachim were chased or abused does not somehow credit Western Ashkenazim (or non-abused Mizrachim, for that matter) with the right to abuse, or benefit from the abuse of, Palestinians. Palestinians, who were a time-honored majority in pre-Mandate Palestine, based their existence on a time-honored perception of ownership, and it is a BIG chillul Hashem and simply bad middos to benefit from improper deprivations of Palestinian quasi-sovereignty and quasi-property rights.
Rarely Commenting in comment #4;
The Jews (Ashkenazim or others) never chased away or persecuted the Arabs.
And the Arabs ancestors moved in on land stolen from the Jews.
Both goodyiddel and Rarely Commenting just spewed their progandist lies that they are very capable of doing after getting their law degrees from the finest of Ivy League law schools here in the U.S. so they are able to hide their true intentions towards my fellow Jews. Could you two gentlemen do all of us Jews a favor? Could you two decide to go as Shahids on Shahada to Allah and take the entire legal department of the Council of American Islamic Relations with you? Shukran! Assalam!
I would like to wish all of my fellow Jewish bloggers here at Yeshiva World a very Freilichen Purim. May all of us Jews merit to see the downfall of our enemies such as goodyiddel and Rarely Commenting and the rest of their ilk very soon so that we may be able to serve Hashem in safety. Amen!
# Bubby
“Could you two decide to go as Shahids on Shahada to Allah and take the entire legal department of the Council of American Islamic Relations with you?”
You really should be banned from the site for spewing such hatred towards fellow Jews.
And you really need help.