Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development that Canada should officially recognize the persecution and displacement of more than 850,000 Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. “Much of the Arab-Israeli peace process is about validation, of the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state and the recognition of the Palestinians as a people,” he said. “Redress for Jews displaced from Arab countries is another example of this, and needs to be included for true and lasting peace to be achieved.” Fogel noted: “Achieving peace in the Middle East is not a zero-sum game. The rights and claims of one group need not come at the expense of or displace those of the other. And thus, the purpose of incorporating the historic claims of Jewish refugees from Arab countries is not to diminish or compete with the claims of Palestinian refugees. The inclusion of the issue of Jewish refugees is meant to complete, not revise, the historical record.” As gavel-holder of the multilateral refugee working group (a moribund product of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference), Canada is uniquely placed to raise the profile of the Jewish refugee issue and to ensure that it is given the fair consideration it merits. The initiative in Canada needs to be repeated everywhere. In fact, there is a bill pending introduction in the US Congress which will require the State Department to report annually on what it has done to advance the Jewish refugee issue. Why is this issue so important? Because it establishes that Israel is not a “foreign implant” in the Middle East; that Israel is not a mere by-product of the Nazi Holocaust and of European war guilt. Rather, some 50 percent of the Jewish citizenry of today’s Israel descends from Jewish refugees from Arab countries, Jews who lived in Middle East communities that stretch back up to 3,000 years. As such, modern Israel is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed, indigenous, Middle Eastern people. Israel is the nation-state of Jews from Arab countries with a long history in the Middle East; of Middle East Jews who were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries in the 20th century, both prior to and mostly after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. This levels the playing field in international debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It makes it clear that Israel deserves and demands justice just as much as the Palestinians do, if not more so.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 13:33:26 +0000
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