http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=329736
Hitching
a ride on the magic carpet 
By Yehouda Shenhav
Any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is folly in historical and political terms
An intensive campaign to secure official
political and legal recognition of Jews from Arab lands as refugees has been
going on for the past three years. This campaign has tried to create an analogy
between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews, whose origins are in Middle
Eastern countries - depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of
Independence. The campaign's proponents hope their efforts will prevent
conferral of what is called a "right of return" on Palestinians, and
reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in
exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of
"lost" assets.
The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of
history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice.
Bill Clinton launched the campaign in July 2000 in an
interview with Israel's Channel One, in which he disclosed that an agreement to
recognize Jews from Arab lands as refugees materialized at the Camp David
summit. Ehud Barak then stepped up and enthusiastically expounded on his
"achievement" in an interview with Dan Margalit.
Past Israeli governments had refrained from issuing declarations of
this sort. First, there has been concern that any such proclamation will
underscore what Israel has tried to repress and forget: the Palestinians'
demand for return. Second, there has been anxiety that such a declaration would
encourage property claims submitted by Jews against Arab states and, in
response, Palestinian counter-claims to lost property. Third, such declarations
would require Israel to update its schoolbooks and history, and devise a new
narrative by which the Mizrahi Jews journeyed to the country under duress,
without being fueled by Zionist aspirations. That would be a post-Zionist
narrative.
At Camp David, Ehud Barak decided that the right of return issue was
not really on the agenda, so he thought he had the liberty to indulge the
Mizrahi analogy rhetorically. Characteristically, rather than really dealing
with issues as a leader, in a fashion that might lead to mutual reconciliation,
Barak acted like a shopkeeper.
This
hot potato was cooked up for Barak and Clinton by Bobby Brown, prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's adviser for Diaspora affairs, and his colleagues, along
with delegates from organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
WOJAC fails
A few months ago Dr. Avi Becker, secretary-general of the World
Jewish Congress, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the
Conference of Presidents, persuaded Prof. Irwin Cotler, a member of Canada's
parliament and an expert on international law, to join their campaign. An
article by Becker published a few weeks ago in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz
(July 20), entitled "Respect for Jews from Arab lands," constituted
one step in this public campaign. The article said little about respect for
Mizrahi Jews. On the contrary - it trampled their dignity.
The campaign's results thus far are meager. Its umbrella
organization, Justice for Jews From Arab Countries, has not inspired much
enthusiasm in Israel, or among Jews overseas. It has yet to extract a single
noteworthy declaration from any major Israeli politician. This comes as no
surprise: The campaign has a forlorn history whose details are worth
revisiting. Sometimes recounting history has a very practical effect.
The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) was
founded in the 1970s. Yigal Allon, then foreign minister, worried that WOJAC
would become a hotbed of what he called "ethnic mobilization." But
WOJAC was not formed to assist Mizrahi Jews; it was invented as a deterrent to
block claims harbored by the Palestinian national movement, particularly claims
related to compensation and the right of return.
At first glance, the use of the term "refugees" for Mizrahi
Jews was not unreasonable. After all, the word had occupied a central place in
historical and international legal discourses after World War II. United
Nations Security Council Resolution 242 from 1967 referred to a just solution
to "the problem of refugees in the Middle East." In the 1970s, Arab
countries tried to fine-tune the resolution's language so that it would refer
to "Arab refugees in the Middle East," but the U.S. government, under
the direction of ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg, opposed this revision. A
working paper prepared in 1977 by Cyrus Vance, then U.S. secretary of state,
ahead of scheduled international meetings in Geneva, alluded to the search for
a solution to the "problem of refugees," without specifying the
identities of those refugees. Israel lobbied for this formulation. WOJAC, which
tried to introduce use of the concept "Jewish refugees," failed.
The Arabs were not the only ones to object to the phrase. Many Zionist
Jews from around the world opposed WOJAC's initiative. Organizers of the
current campaign would be wise to study the history of WOJAC, an organization
which transmogrified over its years of activity from a Zionist to a
post-Zionist entity. It is a tale of unexpected results arising from political
activity.
`We are not refugees'
The WOJAC figure who came up with the idea of
"Jewish refugees" was Yaakov Meron, head of the Justice Ministry's
Arab legal affairs department. Meron propounded the most radical thesis ever
devised concerning the history of Jews in Arab lands. He claimed Jews were
expelled from Arab countries under policies enacted in concert with Palestinian
leaders - and he termed these policies "ethnic cleansing." Vehemently
opposing the dramatic Zionist narrative, Meron claimed that Zionism had relied
on romantic, borrowed phrases ("Magic Carpet," "Operation Ezra
and Nehemiah") in the description of Mizrahi immigration waves to conceal
the "fact" that Jewish migration was the result of "Arab
expulsion policy." In a bid to complete the analogy drawn between
Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews, WOJAC publicists claimed that the Mizrahi
immigrants lived in refugee camps in Israel during the 1950s (i.e., ma'abarot
or transit camps), just like the Palestinian refugees.
The organization's claims infuriated many Mizrahi Israelis who
defined themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, at the time of WOJAC's
formation, Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: "We are not
refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had
messianic aspirations."
Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq,
adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from
Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as
Zionists."
In a Knesset hearing, Ran Cohen stated emphatically: "I have
this to say: I am not a refugee." He added: "I came at the behest of
Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of
redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee."
The opposition was so vociferous that Ora Schweitzer, chair of
WOJAC's political department, asked the organization's secretariat to end its
campaign. She reported that members of Strasburg's Jewish community were so
offended that they threatened to boycott organization meetings should the topic
of "Sephardi Jews as refugees" ever come up again. Such remonstration
precisely predicted the failure of the current organization, Justice for Jews
from Arab Countries to inspire enthusiasm for its efforts.
Also alarmed by WOJAC's stridency, the Foreign Ministry proposed that
the organization bring its campaign to a halt on the grounds that the
description of Mizrahi Jews as refugees was a double-edged sword. Israel,
ministry officials pointed out, had always adopted a stance of ambiguity on the
complex issue raised by WOJAC. In 1949, Israel even rejected a British-Iraqi
proposal for population exchange - Iraqi Jews for Palestinian refugees - due to
concerns that it would subsequently be asked to settle "surplus
refugees" within its own borders.
The foreign minister deemed WOJAC a Phalangist, zealous group, and
asked that it cease operating as a "state within a state." In the
end, the ministry closed the tap on the modest flow of funds it had transferred
to WOJAC. Then justice minister Yossi Beilin fired Yaakov Meron from the Arab
legal affairs department. Today, no serious researcher in Israel or overseas
embraces WOJAC's extreme claims.
Moreover, WOJAC, which intended to promote Zionist claims and assist
Israel in its conflict with Palestinian nationalism, accomplished the opposite:
It presented a confused Zionist position regarding the dispute with the
Palestinians, and infuriated many Mizrahi Jews around the world by casting them
as victims bereft of positive motivation to immigrate to Israel. WOJAC
subordinated the interests of Mizrahi Jews (particularly with regard to Jewish
property in Arab lands) to what it erroneously defined as Israeli national
interests. The organization failed to grasp that defining Mizrahi Jews as
refugees opens a Pandora's box and ultimately harms all parties to the dispute,
Jews and Arabs alike.
Lessons not learned
The World Jewish Congress and other Jewish rganizations learned
nothing from this woeful legacy. Hungry for a magic solution to the refugee
question, they have adopted
the refugee analogy and are lobbying for it all over the world.
It would be interesting to hear the education minister's reaction to the
historical narrative presented nowadays by these Jewish organizations. Should
Limor Livnat establish a committee of ministry experts to revise school
textbooks in accordance with this new post-Zionist genre?
Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must
acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is
unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many
Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians
were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left
did not do so of their own volition.
In contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country
under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came
of their own free will; others arrived against their will.
Some lived
comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered from fear and
oppression.
The history of the "Mizrahi aliyah"
(immigration to Israel) is complex, and cannot be subsumed within a facile
explanation. Many of the newcomers lost considerable property, and there can be
no question that they should be allowed to submit individual property claims
against Arab states (up to the present day, the State of Israel and WOJAC have
blocked the submission of claims on this basis).
The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and
Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a
dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for
genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation.
Jewish anxieties about discussing the question of 1948
are understandable. But this question will be addressed in the future, and it
is clear that any peace agreement will
have to contain a solution to the refugee problem. It's
reasonable to assume that as final status agreements between Israelis and
Palestinians are reached, an international fund will be formed with the aim of
compensating Palestinian refugees for the hardships
caused them by the establishment of the State of Israel. Israel
will surely be asked to contribute generously to such a fund.
In this connection, the idea of reducing compensation obligations by
designating Mizrahi immigrants as refugees might become very tempting. But it
is wrong to use scarecrows to chase away politically and morally valid claims
advanced by Palestinians. The "creative accounting" manipulation
concocted by the refugee analogy only adds insult to injury, and widens the
psychological gap between Jews and Palestinians. Palestinians might abandon
hopes of redeeming a right of return (as, for example, Palestinian pollster Dr.
Khalil Shikai claims); but this is not a result to be adduced via creative
accounting.
Any peace agreement must be validated by Israeli
recognition of past wrongs and suffering, and the forging of a just solution.
The creative accounts proposed by the refugee analogy turns Israel into a
morally and politically spineless bookkeeper.
Yehouda Shenhav is a professor at Tel Aviv University
and the editor of Theory Criticism, an Israeli journal in the area of critical theory
and cultural studies.
Iraqi Jews arrive in Israel, 1949:"We are not refugees." (Courtesy of the Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center)
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