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The Jewish Nakba: Expulsions, Massacres and Forced Conversions

[Ma'ariv-Hebrew, 16May09-Tom Gross Media] Ben-Dror Yemini - In the 1940s, population exchanges and deportations for the purpose of creating national states were the accepted norm. Tens of millions of people experienced it, but only the Palestinians have been inflating the myth of the Nakba. However, there is another Nakba: the Jewish Nakba. During those same years, there was a long line of slaughters, pogroms, property confiscation and deportations - against Jews in Islamic countries. The Jewish Nakba was worse than the Palestinian Nakba. The number of Jews murdered was greater, their dispossession was greater, and their suffering greater. The only difference is that the Jews did not turn that Nakba into their founding ethos. To the contrary. Like tens of millions of other refugees around the world, they preferred to heal the wound. A stunning testimonial from those years actually comes from the Arab side. In 1936, Alawite notables sent a letter to the French Foreign Minister which said: "The Jews brought civilization and peace to the Arab Muslims, and they dispersed gold and prosperity over Palestine without damage to anyone or taking anything by force. Despite this, the Muslims declared holy war against them and didn't hesitate to massacre their children and women." One of the letter's signers was the great grandfather of Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria. Nakba Day is the date of the declaration of Israel's independence, May 15. A few hours after that declaration, the Secretary of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzamaha, announced a declaration of war against Israel: "This war will be a war of annihilation and the story of the slaughter will be told like the campaigns of the Mongols and the Crusaders." The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini, who was close to Hitler during the Second World War, added: "I am declaring a holy war. My brother Muslims! Slaughter the Jews! Kill them all!" There were periods in which Jews enjoyed relative peace under Muslim rule, but those periods were the exception. History records a long series of massacres in Muslim countries long before the Zionist endeavor. Tens of thousands were murdered simply because they were Jewish. The fairytale of coexistence and blaming Zionism for undermining that coexistence is yet another completely baseless myth. [Many countries where tens of thousands of Jews lived are now totally "Judenrein." Apart from Morocco and Tunisia, where about 4,000 Jews remain, no Arab state now has more than 100 Jews. In just a few years, Jewish communities stretching back up to 3,000 years, well before the birth of Islam, have been "ethnically cleansed" from Arab countries. This contrasts sharply with Israel where the Arab population continues to increase greatly and is now much larger than it was in the British Mandate period. - Tom Gross]
2009-05-27 06:00:00
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