Canadian MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler proposed a motion in the
Canadian Parliament on Thursday for formal government recognition of 850,000
Jews “forcibly displaced and exiled from Arab countries since the declaration of
the State of Israel in 1948.”
Cotler has played a prominent part in a
campaign being led by Israel’s Foreign Ministry aimed at bringing international
recognition to the plight of hundreds of thousands of
Jews who fled the Arab
states due to state-sponsored persecution after the establishment of the Jewish
state.
“The Arab countries rejected the United Nations Partition
Resolution of 1947-1948, and launched their double aggression of a war against
the nascent Jewish state and assaults on their own Jewish nationals, resulting
in two refugee populations, Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees from Arab
countries,” Cotler said.
“The time has come to restore the pain and
plight of Jewish refugees from Arab countries to the international peace and
justice narrative from which it has been eclipsed these past 60
years.”
The former justice minister’s motion also maintains that a Middle
East peace agreement should resolve all issues relating to the “legitimate
rights of all refugees, including Jews, Christians and other populations,
displaced from countries in the Middle East,” and should support remedies for
victim refugee groups.