"Cotler charged that the United Nations bears 'express responsibility for the distorted narrative.'" Yes.
"Cotler urges recognition of Jewish refugees," by Steven Edwards for the CanWest News Service:
NEW YORK -- Former justice minister Irwin Cotler and other Canadian scholars presented the U.S. Congress on Thursday with its first testimony on Jews driven from Arab lands following Israel's creation in 1948."The time has come to rectify this historical injustice," Cotler told members of the congressional human rights caucus in Washington in a written statement.
The witnesses were among experts helping U.S. lawmakers decide on a pair of bills that would oblige the Bush administration to actively oppose the Arab-led practice in Middle East peace efforts to speak only of Palestinian refugees.
While key Arab voices continue to push for a "right of return" for descendants of some 600,000 Palestinians whose pre-1948 homes are now inside Israel, the general discourse for decades has all but ignored the tens of thousands of Jews, Christians and other minorities who were similarly turned into refugees.
Cotler charged that the United Nations bears "express responsibility for the distorted narrative." Arab countries have mustered majority backing from Muslim and developing states to pass 101 UN resolutions that refer only to Palestinian refugees.
Jews in Arab lands totalled almost 900,000 in 1948, but there are fewer than 8,000 in 10 Arab countries today, Cotler said. Arab countries counter that 3.7 million Palestinians remain in refugee camps in the region, whereas Jewish refugees moved on to new lives in Israel and elsewhere.
Arab countries counter that 3.7 million Palestinians remain in refugee camps in the region..
So. Why don't these religion of peace and love countries take in the palestinians? They are their brothers - right?
Could it be the arabs are the ones who have forced the palestinians into the camps?
Nah - can't be. the evil Jews are the problem.
This might be a little off topic, but I really need to know something that I can't seem to find out; namely, "HOW MANY MUSLIM IMMAGRENTS COME TO THE USA EVERY YEAR, AND HOW DOES THIS NUMBER COMPAIR WITH IMMAGRENTS FROM OTHER GROUPS?? I would really appreciate an answer, and if I get one I shall publish it far and wide - answer from Spencir or Hugh or anybody -- much thanks, Tom
One word: Overdue!
Long overdue.
But the totally despicable, corrupt parasites in the UN will ignore it.
tom
Greetings:
You may want to try the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) website.
http://www.cis.org/index.cgi
Arab countries counter that 3.7 million Palestinians remain in refugee camps in the region, whereas Jewish refugees moved on to new lives in Israel and elsewhere.
Whose fault is that?
Arab countries counter that 3.7 million Palestinians remain in refugee camps in the region, whereas Jewish refugees moved on to new lives in Israel and elsewhere.
Isnt that rich? now they seek to blame Israel for bringing the jews displaced by muslim countries into Israel, for their own, very calculated, act of NOT allowing muslim displaced persons to "move on to new lives" in neighboring muslim nations.
Arafat long ago admitted that the "palestinian refugee" issue was purposly created and maintained for past 50 plus years as a "cause celebre" and to generate sympathy for the "poor muslim palestinians".
The REAL crime of the palestinian muslim situation is the refusal of any muslim state to allow the integration of those muslim who chose not to remain in Israel, or who were forced out of their homes by the attacking muslim armies in 48, 64, etc.
CBP
...the will of the masses is divided by far-reaching distortions and the mass mind is corrupted by a knowledge worse than ignorance because it is false.
Ely Culbertson
The western world has been infiltrated by an insidious ignorance of the real history of the world.
We, of the "bizzaro" world have little recourse to counterattack such suppositions. We scream and wail to no avail. They just laugh at us and call us haters and racists.
Impotence will breed rage. Rage will bring violent reaction. Violent reaction will breed the unspeakable.
The government understands this. They know what anger underlies the masses. They will counterattack and it will not be pretty.
Vote your heart, not your party line.
As if that will be of comfort.
This article is a lying and cheating connivance by the enemies of the Jews - nothing more and nothing less. It repeats the old, old lie that there were only around 900,000 Jews in the Arab occupied lands (the Muslim occupied lands) when in reality there were over seven million.
Ex-Government Minister Irwin Cotler is deeply prejudiced against Jews without even realising it. He was the first Canadian Government Minister to visit the Middle East – he promoted a so called common justice agenda in the region – and secured agreement among the Justice Ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority to participate in the first ever joint Justice Forum - which went absolutely nowhere because of Cotler's complete inability to understand the Muslim mind and because he asked repeatedly and often for more and more Israeli concessions until even the dhimmi Israeli Government simply stopped co-operating with him and his wild-eyed demands.
His record while serving as one of the Counsels to the Deschênes Commission of Inquiry in the matter of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice is by no means unblemished - this is a man who said that he could '...understand what it was about the Jews that drove the Nazi mind'. Well, bugger that. I can't and I doubt that any decent person could, either.
Irwin Cotler, so open, so apparently liberal, is in reality nothing more than a covert anti-semite in the usual way. It is long since past time that the Canadian people rejected him - but they won't for they can't, caught up as they are in the stupid disease of our 21st. Century political correctness.
But let's return to the number who wear the Judenhut, or used to, in Arab occupied lands - 900,000, what rubbish; more like seven and a half million: most of whom lie dead under the sands, killed by Muslims in retaliation, as they see it, for the Palestinian Arab Dead in 1948. Great, isn't it. The Palestinian Arabs lost a maximum of 20,000 people between 1946 and 1950: in return they killed over six defenceless million Jews - men women and children. Now that's what I call proportionate, don't you? They killed as many Jews as Hitler and his cronies did.
Think about that, please. They killed as many Jews as Hitler did. But do the Western press ever tell you that. Of course they don't. Does Irwin Cotler want you to remember that? Of course he doesn't. Cotler is after only one thing - Cotler's future reputation so that he can take on more and more lucrative posts. Don't be fooled by this man. He's not one of us - he's an apologist idiot and a willing swallower of Muslim defenses as well as being so politically correct that all I want to do is throw up whenever I think of him. Do I hate him and all he stands for? Yes! Does he make me sick? Yes! Is he a two-faced little git with no conscience? Yes! Would he sell the Jews, and his own grandmother, down the river to advance his own career? Yes!
I refuse to mince words here, Cotler is a willing dupe of Islamic Arab supremacists - a willing dupe. Doubt me? Google him! He's so wishy-washy liberal you could take a decent and refreshing shower under the fallout from his reputation alone! 'Wet' barely sums up the man!
I'm sorry. I'm just so flaming angry that lying toerags like Cotler get taken seriously, get quoted here at JW/DW, get presented by the media as if they were reasonable people that I just want to go on some sort of rampage. I just want to break crockery and yell obscenities in Main Street.
He is everything any reaonable person ought to detest. For him 'everything is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds'. For him it seems reasonable to say that we should forget the past and move on but how can one neglect the millions upon millions of slaughterd Jews, and others - Christians, Bahais, Buddhists, Hindus, Animists (to mention just a few) - who have been murdered by Islamic Arab Supremacists. And how, above all how else, can we forgive the professional apologist that is Irwin Cotler today. I can't and I hope that you can't.
Remeber, this man objected strongly to Israel rescuing the Ethiope Jews and argued against the return of the Yemeni Jews, told Israel that it would suffer if it let in the Jews who wished to return from the Baltic States and warned against Israel supporting the few remaining Ukrainian Jews. No doubt he had his reasons but could they ever have been sufficient. Damn it no and never. We all know what he is - the pity is, he himself doesn't know what he is. What arrogance. What hubris. What crass and overweening stupidity. Worse, what cupidity disguised as caring.
Angry. You bet I am.
If only we had access to Irwin Cotler's bank records!
BTW, a really intersting article is at
http://jewishrenaissance.org.uk/taniya.pdf
Recommend.
Jonathan Ralbrooke
just a question about sources.
I've only ever encountered the '900 000' guesstimate, for number of Jews within the Arab/Muslim world, ca. 1930s-1940s-1950. (Where does that number first come from? Anybody know?).
So - what are the sources for the much higher figure that you believe to have been the case? Were the various Jewish communities (e.g. in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Egypt or Algeria) keeping track of their own numbers? Does Bat Ye'or, who was raised in Egypt, say anything about this?
I'm not being contentious, nor necessarily disputing what you say. It's just that I'm a scholar - married to a statistician! - and I like to know exactly where things like population figures are coming from and how 'rubbery' they're likely to be.
If the '900 000' figure can be clearly demonstrated, from contemporary documents and witnesses, to be too low, then that is important. But we need to know what the documents are, and where they are, and who the witnesses are/ were.
The 900,000 figure comes from an estimate for the year 1951AD from the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It has never been revised. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office - one of the most notoriously anti-semitic government departments in the world - has consistently used that figure as a benchmark for the total number of Jewish refugees from the Arab occupied lands. The figure, however, only refers to the year 1951AD and was never meant to be the sum of all Jewish persecution in the Arab occupied lands.
The Israeli Government reckons that only some 6.5% of all Jews resident in the Arab/Muslim occupied lands made it to Israel between the years 1948AD and 2003AD and that some 8,000 to 12,000 Jews remain behind enemy lines. Work out the figures for yourself but I think that that means that around seven million Jews vanished in the sands. Not pretty, eh?
Of course, the Iranians claim that they have a thriving jewish community of 23,000 in their country but who on earth believes that when they also claim to have executed over 16,000 Zionist 'spies'. Many other Arab occupied countries claim similar ridiculous figures - see their government websites - that are wholly unsubstantiated by evidence on the ground gathered by diplomats and others.
Morocco, today, claims that it has over 200,000 Jews living under 'The Covenant of Omar' - dhimmi status to you and me - and Algeria still claims that it has over 80,000 Jewish citizens despite surveys indicating that there are fewer than 1,100 still currently stranded there with a mere 9,200 Jews allowed to emigrate to Israel since 1948.
The figures, quite simply and no matter how you look at them, don't add up. Someone is lying and I'll bet me bottom dollar that it ain't Israel or the Jews!
There were not 7,000,000 Jews living within the "dar al islam" in 1948. The stats, per country, are roughly as follows:
Morocco: 300,000
Algeria: 130,00
Tunisia: 108,000
Libya: 38,000
Egypt: 70,000
Sudan: 400
Syria: 39,000
Lebanon: 20,000
Turkey: 180,000
Iraq: 140,000
Yemen: 70,000
Aden: c. 4000
Iran: 130,000
Afghanistan: 10,000
Today:
Morocco: 4,000
Algeria: extinct
Tunisia: 1,000
Libya: extinct
Egypt: 100
Syria: 200
Lebanon: 20
Yemen: 500
Iraq: 30
Iran: 15,000
Turkey: 15,000
Afghanistan: 2
Sudan: extinct
Jonathan, your "information" is pure DIS-information and poppycocky mimbo-jibjab. The Jews of Morocco number 4,000 and they do not live under dhimmi status. There were never 7,000,000 Jews living in Arab countries. Go read a book and shut the hell up.
Jonathan, the American Jewish Committee has published for many years the American Jewish Yearbook. This publication surveyed the Jewish communities in the Middle East and North Africa and elsewhere [such as Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, etc] before WW2. Articles for each country [maybe sometimes treating adjacent countries together] gave population estimates or official population numbers for the Jews in each country as of that year [of the Yearbook's publicationl], plus the notable events in and affecting the community for that year.
You could start going over the population numbers for the North African and Middle Eastern communities starting with the Yearbooks published in the 1930s. Note that the Yearbooks published contemporary statistics. They were not looking back 60 years or more. The Yearbooks published during WW2 also noted the pogroms mentioned in Andrew Bostom's article linked to above.
Estimating the numbers of Jews inhabiting Muslim lands in the last 500 years is going to be a pretty tricky proposotion. Who knows how many were compelled to convert or die, as the historic records of those countries are far less easily accessed than those of Europe.
The House document would ensure that any peace agreement addresses the rights of all refugees, "including Jews, Christians, and other populations displaced from countries in the region."
And what form would "addressing [their] rights" take? Granting them a right of return to the Moslem countries they or their ancestors left, similar to the right of return being sought for Palestinians? And if the Moslem countries agreed to those terms, would we regard that as a good outcome?
Sometimes I have to wonder whether the people making these proposals have really thought them through, or whether they aren't just taking rhetorical postures rather than making serious proposals for negotiation.
There was a fascinating book written recently about the Holocaust and the role of Arab states in helping (or, in vast majority of cases, not helping) save Jews in Arab states from the Holocaust. Does anyone know the title and/or author?
here are two online sources -
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/
Begins with flash presentation at
And the other is the Jewish Virtual Library - book available online or to purchase:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/mythsorder6.html
MYTHS and FACTS, A Guide to the Arab=Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard
The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Connection-Islamic-Terrorism-al-Husseini/dp/0595289444/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/002-8985183-0751258
The book title requested in one of the above comments might be -
Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, by Robert Satloff.
The book relates stories of both heroic and shameful actions taken during that time concerning Jews and Arabs, and the author is respected by many for his resarch into this subject.
Sorry folks, I stick by my assertion - some seven million Jews previously resident in Arab/Muslim lands have simply been written out of history since 1948. Basically, go speak to the survivors who made it to Israel - I have, and what they say ain't pretty.
Just remember this, we counted only Sephardim: Mizrahim were, and always have been, excluded from the official figures such as the American Jewish Yearbook - a well-intentioned publication famed for its inaccuracies.
The figure of 900,000 is the number of Jews who successfully made it to Israel between 1945 and 1952. Quite simply, it is criminally insane to confuse this figure with the total number of Jews who were resident in Arab/Muslim lands pre-1945. It is also criminal, as desertdawg29palms does, to accept figures given in 1951 by Muslim governments who had already slaughtered the vast bulk of their Jewish populations and confiscated their wealth and properties. This type of disinformation we can do without, desertdawg29palms, as we can do without your spurious quotes from the deeply untrustworthy, at least on this subject, Wikipedia. Nice try, desertdawg29palms, but no cigar.
By the way, in Morrocco, the mellahim were known, in 1945, the post-war French government and British forces figures, to number in excess of 800,000 despite a huge number of (forced?) conversions to Islam. Your figure of 300,000 is, quite frankly, anti-Semitic nonsense unsubstantiated by any fact gathering process whatsoever whereas my figure is widely accepted in Europe because it is supported by the British Ministry of War and the Quai d'Orsay.
Jonathan Ralbrooke, my one, only, and final question for you is: From which state institution have you escaped, and shouldn't you be seeking medical attention?
Neat one, desertdawg29palms. Never address the issue, just slander the messenger.
Don't know who taught you in your logic class but I guess he/she must be really proud of the result.
Well, my dear little anti-Semitic, Wikipedia expert, the figures are always open to question and no amount of slander on your part is going to change that. Go to Israel and talk to the people who fled from the Muslim lands. You won't like what you hear but at least you might listen to them when, obviously, you ain't going to listen to me!
Slander is spoken, while that which is written is referred to is called "libel." Someone needs to invest in a legal dictionary.
Ya'allah k'var! Day im ha tipshiyut ve gam im kol ha nisyonot la'asot eze baleigan im uvdot he-avar batoldot am yisrael. That was Hebrew and should answer your remarks about my visiting Erets Israel.
I do not use Wikepedia. The statistics are from the Israei government's Misrad ha Klitah (absorption ministry), the Joint, and the American Jewish Committee and are found in Joan Peterson's "From Time Immemorial" among many other sources too numerous to cite here. So much for the accustation that I'm ignorant.
As for your accusation of "anti-semitism" (cough, cough) I am a lifelong Zionist.I am a convert to traditional Judaism and was a Zionist when I was a Christian (Unitarian counts as Christian, doesn't it?) I am married to an Israeli from the Iraqi community. I have also been to Israel many times and have been to the Iraqi and Temani batei keneset in Los Angeles, among others. None of the above are things done by anti-Semites. But while I will say that anti-Semitism has always been the socialism of fools, indiscriminate charges of anti-Semitism are the domain of moral bankrupts and blackmailers. So much for that.
Regarding your suggestion to speak to anshei plitei edot ha mizrakh kedey livchon et uvdot avaram bamdinot ha ha-arav ve-ha-islam...I have spent considerable time studying those communities' histories, traditions, etc. as well as speaking to the people themselves.
Since you appear to be playing some silly little game, I'll leave it at that and let this blog's readers come up with their own conclusions. You are just inventing "facts" and spinning.
Slander is spoken, while that which is written is referred to is called "libel." Someone needs to invest in a legal dictionary.
Ya'allah k'var! Day im ha tipshiyut ve gam im kol ha nisyonot la'asot eze baleigan im uvdot he-avar batoldot am yisrael. That was Hebrew and should answer your remarks about my visiting Erets Israel.
I do not use Wikepedia. The statistics are from the Israei government's Misrad ha Klitah (absorption ministry), the Joint, and the American Jewish Committee and are found in Joan Peterson's "From Time Immemorial" among many other sources too numerous to cite here. So much for the accustation that I'm ignorant.
As for your accusation of "anti-semitism" (cough, cough) I am a lifelong Zionist.I am a convert to traditional Judaism and was a Zionist when I was a Christian (Unitarian counts as Christian, doesn't it?) I am married to an Israeli from the Iraqi community. I have also been to Israel many times and have been to the Iraqi and Temani batei keneset in Los Angeles, among others. None of the above are things done by anti-Semites. But while I will say that anti-Semitism has always been the socialism of fools, indiscriminate charges of anti-Semitism are the domain of moral bankrupts and blackmailers. So much for that.
Regarding your suggestion to speak to anshei plitei edot ha mizrakh kedey livchon et uvdot avaram bamdinot ha ha-arav ve-ha-islam...I have spent considerable time studying those communities' histories, traditions, etc. as well as speaking to the people themselves.
Since you appear to be playing some silly little game, I'll leave it at that and let this blog's readers come up with their own conclusions. You are just inventing "facts" and spinning.
Never address the issue, just slander the messenger.
You mean the way you called ikonklast29palms "anti-Semitic" for having a different set of statistics than you did?
Well said, Seamus. Mea culpa.
But where did the 900,000 figure first come from and why is it so universally accepted when it is so obviously, despite ikonklast29palms vigorous assertions to the contrary, wrong and accepted as wrong by the survivors, even though he attempts to mislead us all by citing his comfortable middle-class Jewish experiences.
Israel today is not some sort of promised land and the survivors of the desert massacres are marginalised and poor and usually denied access to synagogues and denied a voice in public life by those just like ikonklast29palms who simply don't want to hear.
In Israel today people like him also marginalise the Ethiope Jews and returnees who have blacker skins than the norm. Racism is not just a product of the white western countries - it's everywhere.
And changing his moniker from desertdawg29palms to ikonklast29palms simply to insult someone (me) who disagrees with him is, quite simply, a childish and stupid distraction and designed more to indicate his unjustified and self-satisfied superiority than to engage in any real debate about how the figure of 900,000 came into being.
Basically, all he is saying is 'I'm right because I said it and because I said it then I can't be wrong'.
Arrogance of the first order!
Since I am a compassionate man (I learned this kindness from the Jews) I shall do you the favor of biting your line yet again and giving you the satisfaction of thinking whatever it is you'd love to continue thinking.
Rallbrooke, I and several others gave you the sources. The fact remains that you've NEVER given yours. You're very similar in that regard to the nazis who state the Shoah never happened; or to the islamo-fascists who talk about the "Jenin holocaust" and state this or that without a shred of proof. A Maoist "revolutionary" I met once in Seattle told me "Israel has massacred 14,000,000 Palestinians" and "The Deir Yassin massacre was the most brutal blood letting of the Twentieth Century." You could get together with ANY of the above-mentioned people and fit right in. I just don't care to waste much time speculating which one of those ideological labels describes you best.
Since I am married to a "dark-skinned" Israeli- Iraqi woman (with a degree in Near Eastern studies from an Israeli university) who has popped out several brown babies for me, and whose parents have a very, very vivid remembrance of the events and conditions leading to their departure from Iraq in 1950, I believe I am a little closer to the source of information than someone who lives online and is trying to impress everyone with huge words.
Nice try speaking about my alleged "comfortable middle class Jewish existence." Being an E-6 on the payscale doesn't exactly qualify me as "comfortably middle class" but we get by with G-d's help. And I am so sorry that the success of Mizrachim such as my wife and her family offends you and blows away your attempt to enforce false stereotypes; but she (and they) are just three of many among Mizrachim (and there are MANY) who have succeeded and thrived in the Jewish state or here in America, rising from disenfranchisement back to success within a generation thanks to the freedom these two societies offer. Thank you.
Accusing me of racism just adds another log to the proof pile that youre a raving lunatic. Who says I'm not black?
There simply were no "desert massacres" as you described, no more than there were "14,000,000 massacred Palestinians." Any Mizrachi or S'fardi would laugh in your face, as my Mizrachi wife did when I showed her your dis-informative nonsense.
"Denied access to synagogues"? (cough, cough). The people you are speaking so ignorantly about form the majority of observantly religious Jews in Israel. Through Shass and other religious parties the Eastern Jews have gained increasingly in influence. Not to mention the increasing power gained from more participation in secular organs.
Your obviousely paranoid fantasies to the contrary, my new moniker has nothing to do with you. I prefer this one.
Anyway. Like I said I'm a compassionate man; but
until you can prove your silly statements all I can do is laugh.
One more statistic: About 75% of marriages between Israel Jews involve partners from both Sfardi-Mizrachi background and Ashkenazim. So much for "endemic Israeli racism" between Jews. They are all ONE people.
Good grief, so now I'm a Nazi, or a Maoist revolutionary - or any other label you care to through at me. Well done. Throw enough mud and some is bound to stick, isn't it?
I think I'll just let your words speak for themselves and for you, but I do find it strange that no matter what I say you always have some personal life experience that contradicts me. Still, stranger things have happened, I suppose; but what are the odds that we two would engage in a conversation on a site like this and that you would always have had some life event that, according to you, proved me wrong! Unlikely, I think.
Your sources are weak and merely retail a deficient and unsubstantiated figure. My figure is equally unsubstantiated but born from my conversations with the survivors. Your assertions are futile and unprovably personal. Your argument, therefore, falls because you cannot prove it independently of your own life. Mine, however, can be proved by anyone who comes to Israel and talks to the people involved.
Come and talk to them, if you have the courage!
Existence proves you wrong. Common sense proves you wrong. The Israeli government proves you wrong. Every international Jewish agency proves you wrong. Every Mizrachi's life experiences proves you wrong.
I'm still awaiting your source for the "7,000,000 dead." It'll never be forthcoming will it?