Arab 'collusion' against Jews; 'Draft law' points to conspiracy, scholars say

By Steven Edwards 

UNITED NATIONS - New research shows there was Arab inter-state "collusion" to persecute Jews in Arab countries after Israel's creation, former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler and Jewish rights scholars will announce today in New York.

While it is known up to 850,000 Jews left Arab countries after the post-war division of the Palestine mandate, the group is holding a news conference to highlight a rediscovered Arab League "draft law" that suggests a pan-Arab conspiracy was at play.

The new assessment comes just ahead of a major Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis, Md., where the rights of millions of descendants of up to 600,000 Palestinian refugees of the Arab-Israeli conflict will be discussed -- but not the rights of Jews squeezed from Arab countries.

Without the inter-Arab draft, the measures individual Arab states took against their Jewish citizens may not have been so widespread, the researchers will say. Only 8,000 Jews remain in 10 Arab countries today that once hosted many more.

"We will show that the various state sanctions in Arab countries did not occur haphazardly, but were the result of an international collusion organized by the League of Arab States at the time to set in place a blueprint for the denationalization of their Jewish nationals, the sequestrations of their property and the declaration of Jews as enemies of the state," Mr. Cotler said.

He said he and his research colleagues will also present evidence showing the United Nations failed to investigate the matter, in part because an Arab League representative ran the agenda at one of its key debating chambers.

"It is now clear the United Nations has played a singular role in expunging the whole question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries on the Middle East agenda for the last 60 years," Mr. Cotler said.

Fellow Canadians David Matas, a Winnipeg refugee lawyer, and Stan Urman, executive director of New York-based Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, will join Mr. Cotler. They co-wrote a landmark 2003 study highlighting separate Arab government decrees that sanctioned repression of Jews to varying degrees, resulting in confiscation of more than $1-billion in property belonging to those who left.

"The existence of the Arab League draft law makes the story of what happened all the more heinous because it represented the acting out of a master plan," Mr. Matas said.

"It enhances the case for redress, which should at least include recognition of the Jewish refugees, given the peace process speaks of redress for the Palestinian refugees."

The researchers hope their work will influence U.S. lawmakers currently considering two bills that call for the rights of all refugees -- Muslims, Jews, Christians and any others displaced in the region-- to be recognized in the peace talks.

The bills are significant because the United States is a central broker of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

The researchers will also call on the Canadian government -- as chair of the Refugee Working Group under a peace track launched in Madrid in 1991 -- to include displaced Jews as refugees.

Today comprising 22 countries, the Arab League had seven members in 1947, the year documents say its political committee drafted a Text of Law concerning Jews. They were Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.

After the UN created Jewish and Arab areas in the Palestine mandate, laws reflecting what had appeared in the Arab League draft began to appear in Arab countries.

The draft law calls for registering all Jewish citizens of Arab countries, and freezing their bank accounts to use the money to help fund "resistance to Zionist ambitions in Palestine." This would happen even to those Jews prepared to join an Arab army. A Jew considered an "active Zionist" would be interned as a political prisoner. Such Jews would see their money confiscated.

Brackets written into the draft law suggest it was intended as a template: "Beginning with (date), all Jewish citizens of (name of country) will be considered as members of the Jewish minority State of Palestine," it begins.

The researchers located the document in UN and World Jewish Congress archives after spotting a May 16, 1948, New York Times reference to it. In the Times article, Congress officials cited the document as evidence Jews faced grave danger in Arab lands – something the researchers say turned out to be prophetic.

© 2007 Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved.

Mon Nov 5 2007
Page: A13
Section: World 

Source: CanWest News Service

Canadians behind bill to help Jews; U.S. draft legislation to advance cause of refugees mirrors earlier research

By Steven Edwards 

Research by former justice minister Irwin Cotler and other Canadians is at the centre of a U.S. bill telling the American president to advance the cause of hundreds of thousands of Jews who were driven from Arab and Muslim lands after Israel's creation.

The bipartisan draft legislation in the House of Representatives says the plight of Palestinian refugees has received "considerable attention" worldwide, and so it would be "inappropriate and unjust" if the United States didn't also recognize equal rights for the Jewish refugees. The bill also recognizes that Christians and other minorities were displaced from North African, Middle Eastern and Persian Gulf countries, as well.

"It's an important step for-ward; it is a very good bill," Cotler told the Citizen. "It sets forth what the U.S. should be doing in bilateral negotiations, multilateral negotiations, various initiatives in the peace process and the justice agenda."

Arab leaders have long demanded a "right of return" for descendants of 600,000 Palestinians whose homes were situated in what became Israel. But the bill says some 850,000 Jews living throughout the Arab world and Iran were similarly turned into refugees following the 1948 emergence of the Jewish state.

The bill's findings mirror those of the report "Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: the Case for Rights and Redress" by Cotler, currently Liberal critic for justice and human rights, David Matas, a Winnipeg-based refugee lawyer, and Stan Urman, Canadian executive director of New York-based Justice for Jews from Arab Countries.

The 2007 report came in the same year Cotler, Urman and Canadian academic Henry Green presented the congressional human rights caucus with its first testimony on the Jewish refugee matter.

The House, in turn, reflected the testimony in a 2008 resolution, while the new bill builds on that measure.

"This initiative is to the credit of the congressional leaders them-selves," Cotler said. "They them-selves really took the ball and ran with it."

Among three Democrats sponsoring the bill, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York said it was "simply wrong to recognize the rights of Palestinian refugees without recognizing the rights of nearly one million Jewish refugees."

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, one of the three Republican sponsors, noted the plight of refugees from Arab lands had largely "been ignored by the United Nations, other international bodies, and many responsible nations."

A United Nations agency with 30,000 staff members exists separately from the world body's global refugee agency to help care for the five million Palestinians who trace their lineage to the initial displaced population.

But while the Jewish refugees moved on to new lives in Israel and elsewhere, they were never compensated for an estimated $1 billion in property the governments of their former homelands confiscated.

Cotler said the campaign hopes to have multiple countries legislatively recognize the Jewish and other minority refugee rights.

He has testified before British and Italian parliamentary bodies on the issue, and has tabled a motion seeking Canadian parliamentary support.

Leading voices in the campaign will join Cotler on the margins of the UN in September to make an additional statement as the world body launches its new session.

The bill says the U.S. president must periodically tell Congress how the U.S. government is raising the profile of the Jewish refugee issue, and come up with ideas for addressing not only their interests, but the interests of "Christians and other groups" displaced from Arab and Muslim countries, as well.

It says the government must make sure Jewish refugee issues are mentioned alongside Palestinian ones by the Middle East Quartet, a peace-process partnership comprising the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Finally, the bill says the government must help Israel advance its bid to have Jewish refugee interests addressed in any comprehensive peace plan that addresses the Palestinian refugee question.

U.S. bills become law after both the House and Senate approve a joint measure, which in turn must receive presidential assent.

Fri Aug 3 2012
Page: A1 / Front
Section: News
Source: Ottawa Citizen

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