Two apologies that would really help in the Israel/Palestine dispute

12 posts / 0 new

Tue, 2009-02-17 03:29

Ken Burch

This thread is inspired by something I read in Karl Sabbagh's book about Palestine(in which he looks at the history of the Palestinian people through the story of his own family).

In the last chapter, Sabbagh says that one of the things that would do the most to help end the conflict(aside from the obvious stuff like ending the Occupation, compensating the victims and at least symbolic Right of Return)would be for the Israelis to apologize to the Palestinians for, well, pretty much the whole thing, and to admit that the Palestinians do have a right to stay in the lands where they've lived and that their history there is valid.

This is a great idea, and there's no good reason for any Israeli of anyone who sees her or himself as "Pro-Israeli" to object to this. Like everyone else, Israelis now know that basically everything in the "national myth" of the country's founding was a lie(it wasn't ever "a land without a people", Jews and Arabs were NOT ancient enemies, and the Palestinian resistance to Zionism was never based on the European crime of antisemitism). They should just cop to this.

At the same time, another apology is needed, an apology to the OTHER innocent victims of 1948:

The Mizrahi.

For no good reason whatsoever, hatred against the Mizrahi(who WEREN'T Zionists, and who bore no responsibility for the crimes of Zionism) was whipped up in the Arab world, and all Arab countries deported the Mizrahim as a group, confiscating there homes and belongings and barring their return, leaving those people no alternative but to move to Israel and embrace the Zionist cause they'd previously never supported simply to survive, and to be treated as second-class citizens by Israel's Ashkenazim political and economic elite.

The Palestinians bear no responsibility for the suffering of the Mizrahi.

The Israeli political leadership, who provoked the Mizrahi expulsion and then crapped on the Mizrahim when they ended up in Israel, and the Arab governments who stupidly took the bait and expelled the Mizrahim, both owe those people apologies and compensation. Furthermore, the Arab countries that drove out the innocent Mizarhim should apologize for this completely unjustified act, should grant the Mizrahim the Right of Return and should launch a major campaign to eradicate prejudice against the Mizrahim.

If the Palestinians didn't deserve expulsion, neither did the Mizrahim, and both groups deserve remedy for their suffering. Collective punishment is collective punishment and was equally wrong in both cases.

Tue, 2009-02-17 18:00

Ken Burch

This isn't an anti-Palestinian proposal. I'm not arguing that the treatment of the Mizrahim justified the treatment of the Palestinians. It's about getting the Arab countries AND the Israeli government to remove a major obstacle to resolving this conflict and to address an injustice to another group of innocent victims. So please trust my intentions here, ok?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

Tue, 2009-02-17 18:14

al-Qa'bong

Have you been receiving nasty PMs or something?

I know that one of the major points that bother Palestinians, and which contributes to their feelings of humiliation regarding the Nakba is that Israelis refuse to acknowledge what they've done to Palestinians. Any indication of contrition would be appreciated, although I'm not sure if the Eternal Victims will ever be able to see past their own sense of injury.

Tue, 2009-02-17 18:19

Ken Burch

No nasty pm's, just a complete lack of any response. I was taking that to mean that people thought I was engaging in some sort of bullshit strategy in also calling for an Arab apology to the Mizrahim.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

Tue, 2009-02-17 18:46

Unionist

Ken, do you know of any relatively impartial accounts of the exodus of the Mizrahi Jews? That's an episode that I'm really ignorant about. In [Jewish parochial] school, we were just left with the impression that Jews joyously marched off to the newly-created Promised Land - not much about the pressures they faced. Of course, there was never much explanation as to why North American and European Jewry didn't follow suit...

Tue, 2009-02-17 22:11

al-Qa'bong

Cueball has posted information about how Zionists encouraged (pressured, sometimes even threatened) Jews to emigrate from other Arab countries to Palestine after the Nakba. I've seen other accounts of this from non-Cueball sources as well.

Tue, 2009-02-17 22:41

Ken Burch

My understanding is that the Mizrahim were expelled from their countries of origin, in a heavy-handed and misdirected act of retaliation for what was done to the Palestinians, and that the expulsion of Palestinians was at least partially intended to provoke a retaliatory expulsion of Mizrahim.

Provoking such an expulsion was in the national interest of the Zionist project, as it allowed the Israelis to invent the "we have to be bastards to the Palestinians because those Arab countries are bastards to the Jews" myth. Never mind that the Palestinians had no control whatsoever over what the rest of the Arab countries were getting up to.

To the best of my knowledge, prior to 1948, there was basically no such thing as a Mizrahi Zionist. The "joyfully marching off" thing was probably another of the now almost-totally discredited "myths of '48". The result was the same as if a giant Israeli press gang had fanned out all over North Africa and shanghaied every single Mizrahi into "the cause". And, of course, into the IDF. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

Tue, 2009-02-17 22:49

Unionist

I should say that I never heard the term "Mizrahi" when I was young - we called them Sephardim, ranging from Morocco to Yemen. I wonder who invented "Mizrahi".

As for Zionism, it was a clear minority trend in Europe as well, but I can well believe that it was even rarer among Sephardim, given that modern Zionism emanated from Europe.

Wed, 2009-02-18 00:26

Ken Burch

That's a complicated question. Most of those you heard being called "Sephardim" are actually Mizrahim. The Mizrahim are the Jews from North African and other Arab countries. The Sephardim, originally, were the descendants of those Jewish communities that were expelled from Portugal and Spain(Sepharad) at the time of the Inquisition. The two groups had some intermingling(a lot of Sephardim ended up in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt)but speak different languages(The Sephardim mainly speak Ladino, a variant of Portuguese and Spanish)whereas the Mizrahi basically speak Arabic and Magrebi.

Within Israel, the Sephardim and Mizrahim are generally(but not exclusively)in a lower social and economic class than the Ashenazim).

They have generally been seen as being to the right of the Ashenazim on the "peace process", yet have also generally been able to establish closer individual relations with Arab Muslims and Arab Christians.

here's a short essay on the Mizrahim I just found that sheds some light on the Mizrahim and Israeli history and politics:

http://www.monitor.upeace.org/printer.cfm?id_article=296

here is a general overview on the Mizrahim from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizrahi_Jews

(And yes, it turns out that Isaac Mizrahi, the fashion designer, actually IS a Mizrahi. Who'd a thunk it? Sasha Baron Cohen is as well.)

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

Wed, 2009-02-18 11:28

#10

St. Paul's Prog...

It is good to see a discussion emerging on the expulsion of Mizrahi Jews, a subject to often ignored by advocates of "right of return" for Palestinians.

Wed, 2009-02-18 11:44

#11

St. Paul's Prog...

Here is a New York Times article about a group called Justice for Jews from Arab Countries.

Quote:
With assertions of the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land in Israel expected to arise at an planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a Jewish advocacy group has scheduled a meeting in New York on Monday to call attention to people it terms “forgotten refugees.”

The organizing group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, says it is referring to the more than 850,000 Jews who left their homes in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948.

“This did not occur by happenstance, as is sometimes said,” said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of the group, a five-year-old New-York-based organization. “In fact, we have found evidence that there was collusion among the Arab nations to persecute and exploit their Jewish populations.”

To back the claim, the group has reproduced copies of a draft law composed by the Arab League in 1947 that called for measures to be taken against Jews living in Arab countries. The proposals range from imprisonment, confiscation of assets and forced induction into Arab armies to beatings, officially incited acts of violence and pogroms.

Subsequent legislation and discriminatory decrees enacted by Arab governments against Jews were “strikingly similar” to the actions laid out in the draft law, Mr. Urman said.

In January 1948, the World Jewish Congress submitted a memo with the text of the draft to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. It accompanied the submission with a warning that “all Jews residing in the Near and Middle East face extreme and imminent danger.”

Quote:

With the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the status of Jews in Arab countries changed dramatically, because most of those countries either declared war on Israel or supported the war to destroy the new state.

The group cites United Nations figures showing that 856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries in 1948.

“This was not just a forced exodus, it was a forgotten exodus,” said Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian minister of justice who is scheduled to be the main speaker at Monday’s program to open the campaign on behalf of the Jewish refugees.

For that reason, he said, the main goal of the campaign was to raise public awareness rather than to seek compensation. “It’s not about the money, it’s about the other components of redress, recognition, remembrance and acknowledgment of the wrongs committed,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/world/middleeast/05nations.html

Wed, 2009-02-18 14:39

#12

Ken Burch

Well, the two groups were both groups of innocent people who were expelled from their ancient homelands for no good reason. Neither expulsion justified the other. And what I hope to achieve in this is to address the injustice done to both.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly