Helen Thomas’ comments that Jews in Israel should go back to Poland and Germany perpetuated the falsehood that Israel is a European implant, which fits nicely into the narrative of the Islamist-Leftist anti-Israel coalition.
In fact, as I documented before, there was an exchange of populations at the time of and after Israel’s independence, with roughly equal numbers of Jews fleeing Muslim lands to Israel as there were non-Jews fleeing what now is Israel and the West Bank.
In following up on Thomas’ comments, I came upon the story of the expulsion of Jews from Iraq, which started with the Farhoud (sometimes called “Krystallnacht in Baghdad”).
I never heard of the Farhud specifically, although I was aware at a more general level of the attacks on Jews in Muslim lands prior to and after the creation of the State of Israel. This post was illuminating:
Few people in Iraq know what happened in Baghdad exactly 69 years ago.
But on June 1-2, 1941, something previously unthinkable in the city occurred. Mobs attacked the capital’s prosperous and influential Jewish community, killing more than 100 people and looting homes.
By the time the orgy of murder and pillaging was done, the Jewish community was so shaken that it would never recover. Within 10 years, the vast majority would leave the country, leaving behind just the handful of people who tend the capital’s empty synagogue today.
The two days of terror are known in Iraq as the Farhud, the Arabic word for pillaging or looting an enemy. Yet most Iraqis know very little about the event because Iraq’s history books rarely speak of them. Those writers who do mention those days simply explain the violence as the result of the Iraqi Jewish community’s “Zionist activities,” ithout detailing more.
But people who survived the attacks and remember the events tell another story — like Layer Abudia, who now lives in Israel, who was a child at the time of the pogrom.
An interesting discussion of the forced expulsion of the Iraqi Jewish community, much of which ended up in Israel, is in this clip of Iraqi Author Dr. Rashid Al-Khayounfrom which appeared on Al-Arabiya TV (transcript here). A key player in the expulsion of the Jews of Iraq to British Palestine (and eventually Israel) was the Nazi-supporting Grand Mufti of Jerusalem:
Interviewer: But many of the Jews moved to Israel.
Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun: They were coerced to move.
Interviewer: Who forced them?
Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun: The wave of pan-Arab nationalism within Iraq.
Interviewer: So they thought that Israel would be better for them than Iraq?
Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun: They did not go [straight] to Israel. First, they went to European countries, to Iran… They tried to find an interim region from where they could later return to Iraq. You shouldn’t be surprised if I told you that the first to study [the possibility] of expelling the Jews from Iraq was the so-called Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin Al-Husseini.
Interviewer: What, Amin Al-Husseini banished the Jews of Iraq to Palestine?
Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun: Yes, Amin Al-Husseini played a significant role, along with German Nazism, in dragging the Jews out of Iraq.
The history of the Farhoud and the expulsion of the Iraqi Jewish community contradicts the picture often portrayed in Western media of Jews being an accepted minority in Arab states.
Are the Iraqi Jews and their descendants in Israel among the Jews who should go back to where they came from?
Somehow, I think Helen Thomas and her supporters would say “yes,” which tells you everything you need to know.
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Related Posts:
Helen Thomas’ Greatest Accomplishment
The War Against The Jews Is No “Mistake”
But Helen Thomas Was So Nice To Those Jewish Students
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Comments
Most of our history books, and those of Middle Eastern countries, are "cleansed" from true, tragic events like this. How many know that Spain expelled the Jews in 1492 when Isabel and Ferdinand united the country? Very few. The Muslims conquered most of Spain, and fined and punished the Jews, although allowing them to live. But Isabel was a staunch supporter of the Inquisition: all Jews' gold was confiscated, along with their property, and were told to leave or be executed. Most do not know this; it is "cleansed" by writers and editors.
The Jews fled to many places, including Europe and the Middle East, just as they did after Jerusalem and Judea were destroyed in 78 AD, driving masses of Jewish peoples to settle elsewhere – to survive and thrive. Fast forward to modern times. The hatred of Jews during WWII by Islamic leaders is completely "cleansed" from history books. Why?
Who writes the books? What does removing this information do – why is it not considered relevant by authors, or edited out? Yes, the Holocaust is taught, but is it perhaps used to compartmentalize anti-Semitism, to try to convey the message that it is dead, with Hitler and Nazism? Why is no parallel – or connection – to the hatred in Islam and the Middle East today against Jews drawn in history texts?
Always question the motives. Who writes, edits, approves these textbooks? (We know the media won't tell the truth – but teaching truth and facts……it's essential to preventing horrific genocide like the Holocaust.) We MUST teach facts and truth, insist upon it. We can't control what other countries teach, but our country, our schools……our children. Now. Before it's too late for us all.
Some excellent work can be found here:
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/
The murder of the Jews in Europe after World War II ended is also cleansed from history. Many Jews tried to return home after the war only to be murdered and chased out. Switzerland carefully hid safety deposit boxes and bank accounts from the heirs and the insurance companies refused to pay off on life insurance policies.
Wikipedia shows the following as an example
The exact number of Jewish victims is a subject of debate but the range is estimated as 1,000[1] to 2,000[2] Polish citizens of Jewish ethnicity — largely those returning to Poland after surviving the war on Soviet territory, but also those who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe,[3] — were murdered, constituting 2 to 3 percent of the total number of victims of postwar violence in the country.[2][4] The incidents ranged from individual attacks to pogroms. Partly as a result of this violence, about one half of the Jewish population (100,000–120,000 out of 180,000–240,000[5]) left Poland by 1948.
And disgustingly our State Departmetn has decided instead of giving Torahs taken from Iraq found in Saddam Hussein's mansion to Israel where the vast majority of Iraqi Jews found safe haven, they have decided to return these Jewish holy relics to Iraq, claiming it is Iraqi historic treasure. I suppose our State Department will next find some Nazis to return some German Jewish holy items too. The overwhelming Arabism of this adminisration and its lack fo respect for Jewish history has now reached a level beyond disgust, reminiscent of the State Deparment's admiration for Adolf Hitler prior to World War Two.
If anyone is interested in learning more about the Farhud (and the Palestinian and German connection to it), Magnes Press just published Al-Farhud: The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq" edited by Shmuel Moreh and Zvi Yehuda. Besides details on the anti-Jewish attacks, there's a fascinating article by Stefan Wild in it about the German project to translate Mein Kampf into Arabic.
Disclosure: I did the technical preparation of the book for publication.