[Jerusalem Post] Daniel Dagan - A few years ago, when I covered a visit to Cairo by former German president Johannes Rau, I stood in the reception line to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at his Cairo palace. After a routine handshake and a word of greeting in Arabic, I took him by surprise with the comment that I used to play on the property as a child. He didn't believe me, so I showed him my birth certificate - in Arabic: "Born at 1 Ibrahim Street, Heliopolis, Cairo." The headquarters of his regime used to be called the Heliopolis Palace Hotel and was considered the most beautiful residence in Africa. When I was a child living in the neighborhood, I played there often, as the manager was a friend of our family. To Rau standing next to him, Mubarak said: "Thank you for bringing an Egyptian brother with you." When Mubarak and other Arab and Muslim leaders address the problem of refugees forced to leave their homes as a consequence of the Arab-Israeli conflict, they fail to mention the one million Jews who fled Arab countries and sought a new home in Israel. Israel has been portrayed as a project of Western immigrants who seized a foreign country in the Orient. Yet I am an Israeli, I come from the Orient, and they never mention me. Considering the plight of nearly half the Jewish population in Israel who are refugees from Arab or Muslim countries and their descendants is an indispensable part of any debate on promoting accommodation between Muslims and Jews or Arabs and Israelis. The writer is the Berlin correspondent of the Israel Broadcasting Authority.
2009-06-05 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive