(Huffington Post) Ron Prosor - At the end of World War II, 850,000 Jews lived in Arab countries. Just 8,500 remain today. After Arab leaders failed to annihilate Israel militarily in 1948, they launched a war of terror, incitement, and expulsion to decimate their own ancient Jewish communities. In Iraq, Jewish businessman Shafiq Adas, then the country's wealthiest citizen, was immediately arrested on trumped-up charges and publicly lynched. This was followed by bombings targeting Jewish institutions, arbitrary arrests of Jewish leaders, and massive government seizures of property. Similar scenes played out from Egypt to Syria to Libya to Yemen. State-sanctioned pogroms descended on Jewish neighborhoods, killing innocents. The total area of land confiscated from Jews in Arab countries amounts to nearly 40,000 square miles - about five times Israel's entire land mass. Year after year Palestinian refugees attract attention and resources at the UN, yet not a single syllable about the Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries can be found in any of the 1,088 UN resolutions on the Middle East or the 172 UN resolutions dedicated to Palestinian refugees. The historic Jewish presence in the Arab World must be recognized. The grave injustices inflicted upon them must be acknowledged. The crimes committed against them must be rectified. The writer is Israel's ambassador to the UN.
2012-07-20 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive