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Saturday, November 9, 2019

1948 Middle East's Muslim and Jew: Different Fates

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                       
By 1948, there were 75,000 Jews living in Egypt
                               150,000 Jews living in Iraq
                                 20,000 Jews living in Lebanon
                                 30,000 Jews living in Syria
                               265,000 Jews living in Morocco
                               140,000 Jews living in Algeria
                               100,000 Jews living in Iran
                                 38,000 Jews living in Libya
                               105,000 Jews living in Tunisia
                                 55,000 Jews living in Yemen
                                         0  Jews living in Saudi Arabia , were living in tribes, many forced to convert by 1948 or leave
                                                                                                                                       
Jordan is not included because at the time of Jews residing in Arab lands, Jordan was part of Palestine. 

And they were all being treated as Dhimmis, people of 2nd class.  The Christians were also
considered as Dhimmis in these Muslim countries, for they had all been conquered when Mohammad had died in 632 and his leadership set off to conquer the world and convert them to Islam.  As Dhimmis, they were not allowed the same freedoms that the Muslims enjoyed.  

It is noted that the Dhimmis status was far better than the treatment Jews received in Europe at the same period.  Alexander III of Russia died in 1894, see below:  He more than encouraged Jews to leave .  It was an order.  
                                                     
1918 Pogrom during Ukranian-Poland wartime, drunk Cossacks
then attacking Jews.  "A pogrom is a violent riot aimed at the massacre or persecution of an ethnic or religious group, particularly one aimed at Jews."
The latest pogrom-1941 in Europe-WWII

 Whereas pogroms became the norm in such places as Poland and Russia, such attacks were rare in the Middle East.  The time for Muslim extremism had not yet occurred.  In fact, some Muslim countries treated Jews much better than other Muslim countries.   The dichotomy of life was that Jews were not allowed to leave Germany yet were persecuted, rounded up  and horribly murdered by its government which had set out to slaughter all Jews on the planet.  

More than 850,000 Jews fled rising persecution or were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands after the War of Independence in 1948.  Between 1949 and 1954, Jews became  homeless though they had lived in these lands for over 2,000 years.  Between 1948 and 2000, the Jewish population dropped from about 900,000 to less than 50,000.  

Israel was created for just such a change in the climate of the world towards Jews  and took in about 600,000 Jews from Arab lands.  As a new state, created on May  14, 1948 with 650,000 Jews, recovering from the devastation of the 1948 war, worked hard to absorb the new homeless Jews from Arab lands and the 300,000  European Jews of World War II.  

Within 3 years Israel's original population of 650,000 more than doubled a it fulfilled the mission of being a refuge for persecuted Jews.  It was the largest influx of population movement witnessed in modern times.  The world community supported the rebirth of the Jewish State, but there was no international aid agency assisting in the resettlement of homeless Jews.  Israeli Jews did it all by themselves with the help of donations from the western Jewish communities.   Israel, of course, has an open door policy in taking all Jews, as it is the ONLY Jewish country in the world, whereas there are about 48 Muslim majority countries for their large population.  We only have about 6 million in Israel, about 6 million in the USA and about 2 million in other parts of the world, a total of about 14 million Jews in the world.  We are about 0.02% of the world population.  One must remember that we lost 6 million in the Holocaust, so we have just now recouped that lost number.  Today we see that 2/3s of the Middle Eastern Jewry chose to live in dangerous Israel and their descendants make up over half of Israel's Jewish population.  

As of 2010, there were only 200 Jews living in Egypt
                                         100 Jews living in Iraq
                                         100 Jews living in Lebanon
                                         200 Jews living in Syria-or less
                                      5,800 Jews living in Morocco
                                         100 Jews living in Algeria
                         12,000-40,000 Jews living in Iran though my cousin fled as a
teenager on a camel with others to escape-now a doctor in USA.  
                                             0 Jews living in Libya
                                      1,500 Jews living in Tunisia
                                         200 Jews living in Yemen
                                             0 Jews living in Saudi Arabia
                                                
Between 672,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.  Most fled to the Territories of Gaza and Judea-Samaria (modern term of West Bank) or wait in neighboring Arab countries in refugee camps.  These countries do not take them in as new citizens.  Jordan has done this after the Palestinians tried to take Jordan for their own in the fight called BLACK SEPTEMBER,  was a conflict fought in Jordan between the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF), under the leadership of King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, primarily between 16 and 27 September 1970, with certain actions continuing until 17 July 1971.  
   To nullify the problem, the king of Jordan married a Palestinian girl.                          
Married in 1993, Queen Rania and King Abdullah II of Jordan
Rania was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian family and came to Jordan looking for work.  Though making a beautiful couple, the king remains
quite contrary towards Israel, especially when it comes to the TEMPLE MOUNT.

What it all comes down to is that as many Jews lost their homes in 1948 as Arabs did.  There was an exchange in populations.  Jews were reunited with their ancient land and taken in warmly as welcome citizens while the Arabs were used as pawns in a chess game, kept as refugees and never taken in as citizens in most cases.  Today after 70 years they find themselves still living in refugee camps living off the dole of the UN.  Many have become living ammunition by their own people who will not make peace with Israel's existence.  
 
Resource: Alexander III of Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_III_of_Russia
Israel 101, produced by StandWithUs, 2010.

                              


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