Campaign for refugees

PAUL LUNGEN CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS

Canadian Jews are joining an international effort to highlight the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. As part of a campaign that will kick off in March and involve as many as 14 international Jewish communities, Canadian Jewish Congress will reconstitute its moribund Jews from Arab Lands committee and will make the pursuit of justice for North African and Middle Eastern Jews a key element for the current administration.

CEO Bernie Farber said Congress will undertake an education program that will target parliamentarians and inform the wider public about a mostly unknown international human rights issue. Congress will also push for a government statement in the House of Commons on Jewish refugees, and it is considering holding a conference in Ottawa to keep the issue alive.

"We want this on the radar screen," he said.

Farber said Congress will follow up on recent comments made by Paul Martin, in which the prime minister acknowledged that as many as 850,000 Jews fled Arab or Muslim countries and that Jewish refugees claims should be taken into consideration.

"A refugee is a refugee," Martin said. "I think we've got to be prepared [to take Jewish claims] into consideration."

Martin's comments created a buzz at the tail end of a conference in Paris that saw representatives from nine international Jewish communities discuss the advocacy campaign for the rights of Jews from Arab lands.

"[Martin] is probably the first western leader to acknowledge the fate of Jewish refugees," Farber said. "He understands the need to find a resolution for this."

Farber was the lone Canadian representative at the meeting convened by the World Association of Jews from Arab Countries in association with Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC).

JJAC executive director Stanley Urman said the proposed international advocacy campaign contains two elements: "highlighting the mass violation of human rights versus Jews and their flight as refugees, and cataloguing individual and communal losses."

"We found in some of our research a pattern of orchestrated repression that was mirrored in 10 Arab countries. There were murders, arbitrary detentions and expulsions in all countries," Urman said.

Data provided by JJAC indicate that the Jewish population in 10 Arab countries (Iran is not included) in 1948 totalled 856,000. By 2001, the Jewish population in all 10 countries totalled 7,800, of whom 7,200 lived in Morocco and Tunisia. Algeria's numbers went from 148,000 to zero. Other countries to report having no Jews at all were Aden and Libya. Egypt's ancient community of 75,000 dropped to 100, Iraq's went from 135,000 to 100 and Morocco's 265,000 fell to 5,700.

Two-thirds of today's world Sephardi population resides in Israel, Urman said, and the country's Ministry of Justice has created a database to collect testimony of refugees and document the assets they were forced to leave behind. So far, Israeli officials have collected the case histories of some 3,000 families.

Sasson Mayer, a retired businessman originally from Baghdad, said he has already filed a claim on behalf of himself and his family with an organization in Jerusalem that represents Iraqi Jews. His family lost their interests in a weaving looms factory and two houses, and they were forced to abandon about 1,000 dinars in a bank account. Mayer is not confident anything will come of his efforts. Instead, he believes, the claims of Iraqi Jews will be used to balance those of Palestinian refugees, netting them very little.

Farber, however, believes the claims of Jewish refugees should not be linked in that way to Palestinian claims.

"Sephardi Jews want their narrative recognized," he said. Arab countries must "recognize the fact these are legitimate Jewish refugees forced to leave their homes and they are due compensation."

In addition, Arab governments should recognize the injustice they perpetrated against their Jewish citizens, many of whom had lived in these countries for thousands of years, he said.

Human rights activist Gina Waldman, the founder of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA), noted that "over the years it has been difficult to raise the profile of Sephardi Jews throughout the world. This is about telling the stories that have never been told. It is not about money. And some of the stories are very sad."

Waldman recalled fleeing with her family from Tripoli in 1967 as a mob was setting fire to her apartment building.

"A Muslim neighbor saved us," she said. "He convinced the mob to leave. He saved our lives."

She and six family members managed to get to Italy, where they lived in one room.

Her father had founded a land development company in Tripoli, which employed more than 300 people when the family fled in 1967.

"He never got over the loss," she said.

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