In May 2013, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign
Affairs and International Development (“the Committee”) studied the historical
experience of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.
[1] As part of its study, the Committee received testimony from representatives of
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs,
Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, and a past president of
the Communauté sépharade unifiée du Québec. The Committee also heard from two
individuals who recounted their personal experiences of life in Iraq.
In the course of its hearings, the Committee learned of the
discrimination and hardship faced by Jewish people living in the Middle East
and North Africa in the twentieth century. Much of this discrimination, which
was practiced by governments in the region against their Jewish populations,
surged over the years in tandem with the crisis moments of the Arab-Israeli
conflict, in particular the 1948–49 and 1967 wars. As a result, almost all of
the Jews in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and
Yemen eventually left their homes and communities, which had existed in the
Middle East and North Africa for centuries.
The Committee was told of the need for the experiences of these
Jewish refugees to be recognized; their narrative has to date been largely
missing from international discussions of what took place in the Middle East
following the end of the British Mandate of Palestine. The Committee was also told
that without such recognition, the history of the region will be incomplete.
Many of the witnesses who appeared argued that this issue is not only of
historical importance; it should be addressed as part of contemporary efforts
to achieve lasting reconciliation in the Middle East. As this report will show,
the Committee agrees with these views.
The Committee would also underline its belief that recognition of
the experiences of Jewish refugees does not diminish or compete with the
situation of Palestinian refugees.
The sections that follow summarize the Committee’s study of these
issues.
The report concludes with recommendations to the Government of Canada.
In the twentieth century, armed conflicts produced a significant
number of refugees in the Middle East, both directly and indirectly. The most
important events in this regard were two major regional wars. The first
Arab-Israeli war occurred in 1948–49, following the collapse of the United
Nations plan for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into a
Jewish state and an Arab state. In response to the declaration of the
establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948, armies from Egypt, Iraq,
Lebanon, Syria and the Transjordan attacked the new state. The conflict ended
with the conclusion of armistice agreements that delineated the 1949 “Green
Line”. The second major event was the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, Jordan
and Syria, which saw a swift and decisive Israeli victory. From that conflict,
Israel assumed control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territory that had
previously been administered by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, and which was
home to a significant number of Palestinians.
As of 1 January 2013, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) reported that there are some 4.9
million registered Palestinian refugees. Around one-third live in camps in
Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to the
operational definition used by the UNRWA, “Palestine refugees are people whose
normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who
lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948
Arab-Israeli conflict. UNRWA’s services are available to all those living in
its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the
Agency and who need assistance. The descendants of the original Palestine
refugees are also eligible for registration.”
[2]
One of the main messages to emerge from the Committee’s hearings is
that two refugee populations were created by the Arab-Israeli conflict: one
Palestinian and one Jewish. The Committee was told of the rich Jewish heritage in the Middle
East and North Africa, which had existed for approximately 2,500 years. However,
those communities have for the most part been displaced since 1948. As Sylvain
Abitbol, Co-President of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, told the Committee, “even
in Morocco, despite its tolerant attitude, only 3,000 Jews remain there today
out of a population of approximately 265,000 in 1948.”
[3] Dr. Stanley Urman,
Executive Vice-President of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, provided the Committee
with statistics depicting the displacement of Jewish populations from countries
in the Middle East and North Africa since 1948. These statistics are shown in
Table 1 below.
Table 1: Jewish Population in the Middle East and North Africa, 1948–2012
| |
1948
|
1958
|
1968
|
1976
|
2012 (est.)
|
Aden
|
8,000
|
800
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
Algeria
|
140,000
|
130,000
|
1,500
|
1,000
|
0
|
Egypt
|
75,000
|
40,000
|
2,500
|
400
|
75
|
Iraq
|
135,000
|
6,000
|
2,500
|
350
|
50
|
Lebanon
|
5,000
|
6,000
|
3,000
|
400
|
40
|
Libya
|
38,000
|
3,750
|
500
|
40
|
0
|
Morocco
|
265,000
|
200,000
|
50,000
|
18,000
|
3,000
|
Syria
|
30,000
|
5,000
|
4,000
|
4,500
|
~50
|
Tunisia
|
105,000
|
80,000
|
10,000
|
7,000
|
1,000
|
Yemen
|
55,000
|
3,500
|
500
|
500
|
100
|
Total
|
856,000
|
475,050
|
76,000
|
32,190
|
4,315
|
Source of statistics: Stanley A. Urman, “Displacement
of Jews from Arab Countries 1948-2012,” in Middle East Refugees: the
Differing Treatment of Palestinians and Jews, presented to the Standing
Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, House of Commons, 2 May 2013, p. 3.
Jewish people living in these nations left as a result of
discrimination, intimidation and fear. Dr. Urman told the Committee that in the
region, Jews and Christians had historically been considered “‘dhimmi’,
a privileged minority but still second-class citizens” under Islamic rules.
However:
The status of Jews worsened dramatically in 1948,
as virtually all Arab countries declared war, or backed the war against Israel.
Jews were either uprooted from their countries of residence or became
subjugated, political hostages in the Arab Israeli conflict.
In virtually all cases, as Jews were forced to
flee, individual and communal properties were seized and/or confiscated without
any compensation provided by the Arab governments involved.[4]
In his written submission to the Committee,
Dr. Urman included an estimated value of the lost assets of individual Jewish
refugees — six billion dollars.
[5]
Mr. Abitbol explained that the displacement described above and the
measures that precipitated it “did not take place spontaneously nor in a
vacuum.” He told the Committee,
On February 17, 1948, the Arab League's Political
Committee, which included Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan and
Yemen, adopted a seven-point bill dealing with the treatment of Jews in Arab
countries.
The bill included seven
provisions including the following: that Jews must register as members of the
state of the Jewish minority of Palestine, meaning that Jews became citizens of
an enemy country, that is to say Israel; that Jews' bank accounts would be
frozen; that these frozen funds would be used to fund the war waged by Arab
countries against Israel; that Jews were to be imprisoned for Zionist
activities. Jews had to prove that their activities were anti-Zionist and had
to declare their willingness to join Arab armies at war with Israel […]
These measures and others made the lives of Jews
in Arab countries quite simply unbearable…[6]
Dr. Urman provided the Committee with several specific cases of
these discriminatory practices, which in some instances were justified by
discriminatory legislation. For example, the Nationality Code that was enacted
in Egypt in May 1926:
…established that a person born in Egypt was
entitled to Egyptian nationality only if their father belonged racially to the
majority of the population of a country whose language is Arabic or whose
religion is Islam. This provision later served, in the mid-1950s, as the
official pretext for expelling many Jews from Egypt.[7]
Dr. David Bensoussan, past
president of the Communauté sépharade unifiée du Québec, told the Committee of
other “anti-Jewish measures,” including “the withdrawal of the right to vote
for Jews in Libya in 1951.” Among many other incidents, he also noted “the
pogroms in Djerada, in Morocco in 1948, in Damascus and Aleppo in 1948, in
Benghazi and Tripoli in 1948, in Bahrein in 1949, in Egypt in 1952, and in
Libya and Tunisia in 1967.”
[8]
Shimon Fogel, Chief Executive Officer of the
Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, referred to communications
between
Canadian diplomats abroad and the Canadian government in these years
for
further substantiation. He noted, for example, that “By March 1952,
the Government of Canada received reports that Israel had
absorbed over 300,000 Jews from Arab countries, including 120,000
from Iraq and
another
50,000 from Yemen.”
[9] Mr. Fogel also noted a cable that was sent to the Department of
External Affairs in 1956 regarding the situation facing the Jewish population
in Egypt.
It reported that those individuals who had lost their Egyptian citizenship as a
result of the 1926 nationality code, and who did not have other citizenship,
“were given a choice between leaving Egypt or being sent to a concentration
camp.”
[10]
The Committee received personal testimonials of
the suffering experienced by individuals, families and communities in this
period. Regina Bublil Waldman, President of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East
and North Africa, described her family’s experience
in Libya. Growing up in the 1950s in that country, Ms. Waldman recalled: “Our
Jewish community was forbidden to…leave the country. We were denied
citizenship. We were denied passports. We were denied the right to travel, yet
we had to live in this very
anti-Jewish environment.”
[11] Then, in the period following the 1967 war, in an atmosphere that
had seen rioting and intimidation against the local Jewish population, Jews
were expelled from Libya under the order of the government and their property
was confiscated. In Ms. Waldman’s words: “We were being expelled from the
country we had lived in for over 2,000 years.” Her family was forced to leave
with almost nothing — “one suitcase per person and the equivalent of $25 per
person” — eventually ending up in Italy. She later arrived in the United States
as a refugee. Ms. Waldman noted that at the time of her birth in 1948, “the
Jewish community of Tripoli constituted almost 30% of the total population of
the city.” Today, her “whole community is extinct.”
[12]
The Committee also learned of the experiences of
Gladys Daoud and
Lisette Shashoua, both of whom are originally from Iraq and are now Canadians.
Ms. Daoud was a teenager in Baghdad when the 1967 Six Day War broke out. In its
wake, she recalled that the Iraqi “government proceeded with a plan of total
isolation and economic strangulation” against the Jewish population. As a
student, Ms. Daoud, who had been admitted to universities in Baghdad and the
United States, had her acceptance to Baghdad University “retracted” while she
was also “refused a passport to study abroad.” The bank accounts of her family
“were frozen” and their property “confiscated.” At the same time, they “were
forbidden to leave Baghdad.” The situation became “so desperate” that Ms.
Daoud’s family was forced to escape the country, eventually doing so in 1971.
Ms. Shashoua similarly noted the retaliatory
measures that were instituted against Jewish businesses and business people,
employees and students by the Iraqi government following the 1967 war, and the
loss of personal property, including that of her family.
She told the Committee that “In 1968 the random arrests intensified. Men were
now tortured and forced to say they were spies.” In a notable and troubling
incident in
January 1969, following “mock” trials, 14 men were hanged publicly, 10 of whom
were Jewish and accused of being Israeli spies. Ms. Shashoua said, “You can
just imagine the sheer terror that dominated our daily existence after that horrid
day.”
[13] Ms. Daoud noted: “they were hanged in the public square and the
population was given the day off and invited to gather and dance in celebration
underneath the dangling corpses. I still have nightmares about being back in
Baghdad and reliving the anguish of those days.”
[14]
Ms. Shashoua told the Committee that she too was forced to escape from Iraq.
After many years, she was finally reunited with her parents in Canada.
The overall result of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and the
discrimination and intimidation practiced against Jews in various countries in
the region was summarized by Dr. Bensoussan in his testimony: “…Jews who had
been present in Arab Muslim countries for a thousand years were squeezed out in
the span of one generation, and they had
to choose exile to other countries.”
[15] Dr. Urman informed the Committee that “Some
two-thirds, or nearly 650,000 Jews, immigrated to Israel, while roughly
one-third, or over 200,000 Jews, found a safe haven in countries other than
Israel, including Canada.”
[16]
The Committee was told repeatedly that it is important for there to
be recognition of the experiences of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and
North Africa.
Witnesses argued that, to date, most historical accounts of the period have
ignored
this narrative. Dr. Urman also told the Committee more specifically that
there has been a lack of recognition of Jewish refugees at the United Nations.
He said:
…with respect to UN resolutions from 1949 to 2009,
there has been a total of
1,088 resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly on every
conceivable Middle East issue. One hundred and seventy-two resolutions have
dealt specifically with Palestinian refugees.
There
has never been any Security Council resolution, any General Assembly
resolution, that specifically addresses the issue of Jewish refugees, or any
resolutions on other topics that even mention Jewish refugees from Arab
countries…[17]
The World Jewish Congress wrote to the Committee that “this
incomplete version of history will not bring justice or closure to any of the
victims of this painful conflict.”
[18] In his testimony, Dr. Urman noted that “this is not fundamentally an issue
about money; this is fundamentally an issue about recognizing the historic injustice
to one population
of refugees.”
[19] Mr. Fogel stated that “The inclusion of the issue of Jewish refugees is meant
to complete, not revise, the historical record.”
[20] Recognition is
also important because of what history can presage for events in current times.
As Ms. Daoud told
the Committee:
I hear every day that the Christians who are now a
minority in all of the Arab countries are in the same desperate situation that
we were in. In fact, they always said that after Saturday comes Sunday.
…
So history is repeating itself and now the
international community has to do something. We see it happening.[21]
A complete and accurate historical record
is therefore an essential component of public education and understanding of
unfolding international events.
A number of witnesses made recommendations regarding how this
recognition should be taken into account as part of Canadian policy, including
with respect to Canada’s stance towards the Middle East peace process.
Mr. Fogel argued that there needs to be “a formal recognition of
Jewish refugees in Canada’s foreign policy.”
[22] Mr. Abitbol recommended that “during all Canadian debates on the Middle East,
any explicit reference to the required resolution of the Palestinian refugee
problem be accompanied by an explicit reference to the rights of Jewish
refugees from Arab countries.”
[23] Mr. Fogel said that Canada must “enshrine in our official policy that a refugee
is a refugee, regardless of ethnic or religious background.” He noted that, as
the gavel holder of the multilateral Refugee Working Group, which was
established out of the 1991 Middle East Peace Process in Madrid, “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 among all parties engaged in
the pursuit of a durable peace.”
[24]
Some witnesses indicated that raising this profile is not intended
to undermine the rights and claims of Palestinian refugees. Mr. Fogel told the
Committee that when Canada assumed the gavel of the Refugee Working Group, the
parties involved decided to focus their “efforts on providing material help to
Palestinian refugees so that they too could benefit from the peace dividends
going forward…”
[25] For various reasons, at the time of the Madrid conference in 1991, large
numbers of Palestinian refugees were living in camps, a situation that, as
noted previously, continues today. In the case of Jewish refugees post-1948,
they were eventually resettled in Israel or found new homes in countries such
as Canada. However, Mr. Fogel explained why these ultimately divergent outcomes
do not alter the need to address — as part of any final peace settlement — the
fact that two refugee populations were created over the years by the
Arab-Israeli conflict. He argued:
…I think we would all agree there are acute
problems confronting Palestinian refugees, who require attention today to
materially enhance the quality of their lives.
It is only when we get to a point where we’re
actually starting to focus on what a comprehensive resolution looks like that
we do an inventory of all of those outstanding issues that require some
attention. From our perspective, attention to the Jewish refugee claims from
Arab countries starts, and may end, with formal recognition…[26]
David Matas, Legal Counsel of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries,
told the Committee that bilateral agreements between Israel and Egypt in 1978
and 1979 and Jordan in 1994, as well as between Israel and the Palestine
Liberation Organization in 1993 and 1995 (as part of the Oslo Accords), did use
“generic” language in reference
to refugees.
[27] Perhaps most importantly from a multilateral perspective, United Nations
Security Council Resolution 242, which was adopted after the 1967 war and is
typically considered as the basic framework for any settlement to the Middle
East conflict, affirmed the necessity of “achieving a just settlement of the
refugee problem.”
[28] Witnesses argued that the resolution did not, therefore, distinguish between
refugee groups.
Mr. Matas told the Committee that Jewish refugees are “entitled to
redress” for violations of their rights. He further argued that “Canada should
support the principle that in Middle East peace negotiations, all refugees
should be treated with equity and justice.”
[29] As he indicated
in his written brief to the Committee, however, “one has to distinguish
recognition of a right and its violation on the one hand, and awarding redress
on the other.” He explained that, “when it comes to redress, there is a wide
array of possibilities.”
These can include, for example, truth and reconciliation commissions, the
establishment of “Chairs at prominent universities to promote and preserve the
rich Sephardic heritage and legacy,” the “establishment of Foundations to
protect and preserve holy sites in Arab countries,” and compensation. Mr. Matas
noted that “Redress, ultimately, will be decided by the parties directly
involved in the negotiations.”
[30] For his part, Mr. Fogel also argued against a prescriptive approach to
determining redress. He said: “I would be really hesitant about our presuming
to shape or to define how we get satisfactory redress.
The contribution we can make is to bring closure to the conflict, to allow for
all of the stakeholders to feel that they’ve been noted, recognized, and
validated.”
[31]
Based on its consideration of the testimony and submissions it
received, the Committee puts forward the following recommendations to the
Government of Canada:
Recommendation 1
The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada
officially recognize the experience of Jewish refugees who were displaced from
states in the Middle East and North Africa after 1948.
Recommendation 2
The Committee recommends that the Government of
Canada encourage the direct negotiating parties to take into account all
refugee populations as part of any just and comprehensive resolution to the
Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts.
