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March 15, 2002
The overlooked refugees
Jews in Arab states faced suspicion due to 1948 war.
PAT JOHNSON REPORTER
David Asmoucha was 14 years old when he fled Baghdad with his aunt.
His parents stayed behind for a year winding up their affairs and
packing their belongings before joining young David in the new state
of Israel. The family was permitted to take only the barest of personal
necessities and an additional 10 dinars worth of valuables –
about $15.
“There wasn’t much they took with them,” he said
of his family’s departure.
The Asmouchas had been part of Baghdad’s vibrant Jewish community
of about 130,000 people. By that time, Jews had been in Iraq for
centuries.
“We really can’t trace it,” said Asmoucha, who now
lives in Vancouver, “But I would assume [Jews were in Iraq]
from the time of the destruction of the Temple.”
Life changed for Iraqi Jews – as it did for Jews in all primarily
Arab countries – after the state of Israel was founded in 1948.
The ensuing war between Israel and her Arab neighbors cemented the
distrust of leaders of the Arab world toward the Jews who lived
among them.
Young David was one of the first Jews who would leave Iraq in the
years immediately following 1948, and it was repeated by hundred
of thousands of others all over the Arab world.
For Asmoucha and his family, the birth of the Jewish state in 1948
turned authorities in Iraq against local Jews, but conversely held
no initial refuge. That was because the Iraqi government didn’t
allow Jews to leave. The untenable status of Jews in Arab states
was a result of the fact that they were suspect in their home countries
but were forbidden from leaving due to the assumption that they
would go directly to Israel and add strength to the emerging Jewish
state.
“There was very bad treatment,” Asmoucha said of the years
after 1948. “The situation wasn’t really secure. You didn’t
know what was happening.”
It took clandestine lobbying and baksheesh – bribery –
for Israeli officials to convince the Iraqis to allow Jews to leave
that country. It was 1950 before Jews were legally permitted to
leave the country and about a year later before Asmoucha was spirited
away by his aunt. The Iraqis may have had other intentions, too.
The Jews had contributed much to Iraqi society despite their relatively
small numbers. A mass exodus would have had negative economic consequences,
though the Iraqis didn’t seem to foresee such a possibility.
When the law was enacted, authorities assumed a few thousand Jews
might take the opportunity it presented. In his definitive monograph
Israel: A History, Sir Martin Gilbert noted that 3,400 Jews
applied to leave Iraq on the first day they were legally able to
apply. The next day, 5,700 applied. After three months, 90,000 of
the 130,000 Jews had declared their intention to leave. Though Iraq
certainly knew where the emigrants were headed, they were, nonetheless,
forbidden from travelling there directly. Instead, the Jews travelled
east to Iran where they were permitted to board planes to Israel.
Similar situations occurred all over the Arab world. By 1951, almost
the entire Jewish populations of Iraq and Yemen had been airlifted
to Israel.
Howard M. Sachar, in his book A History of Zionism: From the
Rise of Zionism to Our Time, states that Jewish life, which
had found a relatively comfortable accommodation in most Arab states
over centuries of coexistence, became utterly unacceptable.
“Between 1948 and 1957, as a consequence of government pressure,
economic strangulation and physical pogroms, some 467,000 Jews would
be compelled to flee their ancestral homes in Muslim lands,”
Sachar wrote. “The largest number of them would find asylum
in Israel.”
According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, more than 684,000
immigrants came to Israel in its first three years, doubling the
new country’s population. An enormous project creating housing
and assimilating newcomers from 70 different countries was undertaken.
Though Israel has its social disparities between Ashkenazim and
Sephardim – as well as other cleavages – the intentions
of Israel has been to incorporate the varieties of immigrants it
has attracted, not to amass them in a separate holding facility.
These refugees have been essentially forgotten to history, in the
sense that they and their descendants have become integrated members
of Israeli society. Though Sephardic Jews are beginning to flex
their muscles in politics, it has little to do with their original
status as refugees. The idea that they might receive some form of
compensation from Arab states for their lost property of a half-century
ago is so unlikely that it has not even been seriously proposed
in political negotiations.
It has been raised, however, as a counterpoint to another contentious
aspect of political negotiation. The idea that Palestinian Arabs
should be granted a right to return to their places of origin that
are now within the borders of the state of Israel – or that
they receive some compensation instead – has reminded observers
that there is a Jewish parallel to the case of displaced Palestinian
Arabs. The historical issue is clouded by everyday reality. Because
Jews forced from Arab lands were integrated into Israel, they have
essentially ceased to exist as an identifiable group.
On the other hand, several generations of Palestinians have now
known no home other than the enforced confines of Arab-controlled
camps. At the end of hostilities in 1948, the United Nations estimated
that about 720,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced. These people
have been described by one commentator as a running sore of history
– their hapless presence in unsatisfactory accommodations impossible
to ignore and their desire to return to their place of origin understandable.
But their presence is also a monument to the Arab nations’
willingness to sacrifice three generations of Palestinian Arabs
in order to feed anti-Israel sentiment.
The problem, as constructed by the Arab side, is that these people
were forced out of what is now Israel, either by force or by common
sense as fighting swirled around them. (Another argument holds that
the Arabs were advised by their allied armies to leave temporarily
with the assurance that they would return triumphant after the Jewish
state was eradicated from the map.) The solution, constructed by
the same side, is that these people should be returned to the home
from whence they came, even if they are within Israel.
The response from Zionists is that war makes refugees. Israel mobilized
everything the young state had to welcome the refugees forced from
Arab countries. The Arab countries penned Arab refugees in apparently
permanent camps, enforcing their status as stateless outsiders.
Arabs say Israel should take them back. Israel says Arab states
should have welcomed the refugees 54 years ago the way Israel welcomed
the Jewish refugees of Arab states.
As debate has raged, a fierce numbers game has been played.
When subsequent generations are included in the calculation, the
Council for Palestinian Restitution and Repatriation claims a total
of 4,942,121 Palestinian refugees.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA)
cites the statistic from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which calculates 3,521,130,
though CAMERA contends that these figures were based on information
supplied voluntarily in order to access services provided by the
UN.
The numbers may be debatable but the situation remains. If Israel
is responsible for the fate of refugees of the 1948 war (and, as
some Arabs add, refugees of 1967 as well), then the issue of Jewish
refugees from Arab lands will almost certainly be revived, though
the propaganda value of Jewish refugees is limited. The optics are
not as stark. While Palestinians live in crowded, poverty-challenged
camps run by Arab governments, Jewish refugees from Iraq, Yemen,
Egypt and elsewhere are often successful, fully integrated members
of Israeli society. While the refugees in Arab camps long for the
day they can return to the homes they left behind, David Asmoucha
and his family have moved on. After growing up in Israel, the young
man went to work as a sailor, eventually meeting his wife and moving
to Canada in 1963. Almost all of his family remains in Israel and,
despite everything they left behind five decades ago, Asmoucha doubts
that his family will ever see any compensation.
“It would be nice if they will, but I don’t have hope
about that,” he said. “Maybe one day.”
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