The Jewish refugee issue

In recent days I have been exposed, like many others, to a campaign of the Foreign Ministry and the National Security Council which is titled: “Restitution of property to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.”

The intention, according to the international campaign editors, is to compare in the eyes of the world public opinion the loss of the property of the Palestinian refugees with the loss of Jews who were forced to leave the Arab countries and came to Israel. To compare the damages and the costs.

After I read about the struggle for the “Jewish refugees from Arab countries” who live in Israel, it sounded a little weird. Therefore, I searched through the Internet for the meaning of the word “refugee.”

In the old days, I used to open the Even-Shoshan dictionary, nowadays it’s a bit simpler. You just Google it, and find what you looked for.

I searched in Wikipedia and checked in Babylon dictionary and found the same definition there and everywhere else. A refugee is a person who was forced to flee from his homeland. From his country and from his land. Those who were forcibly evicted from their land are refugees by definition as well. This is also the UN definition for a refugee.

I refreshed my memory, trying to figure out if people like former cabinet minister Moshe Shahal, MK and former Defense Minister Binyamin (Fuad) Ben-Eliezer, or even the family of my good friend Yossi Shem-Tov fled their homeland Iraq? Are these and many others were driven from their land and their country? Had they arrived to a strange country and had to live there?

Maybe it’s true for people who had to leave Syria, I thought to myself. Just two days ago I heard an interesting lecture by Jacqueline Assis-Turgeman, of how she and her family fled Aleppo (Halab) in the 1960s. Although they had to leave their property there, they never saw themselves as forced to leave their homeland. Quite the contrary, they were willing to leave everything to reach their homeland, the same way as the Jews from Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other countries.

I do not know a single Jew who lives in Israel and has not seen and does not see Israel as his true homeland. No one thought of himself as a refugee here. The immigration to Israel is the fulfillment of a dream of returning to the homeland, it is not a forced abandonment of the homeland.

Is there a reason to claim compensation for property that was forced to be left behind – maybe. Is it reasonable to perform an offset with the Palestinian demand for compensation – could be. I’m not sure they deserve compensation.

I think it is better to invest the energy and intellect in an attempt to achieve peace.

The institutions of the State of Israel that call the immigrants to Israel from the Arab countries refugees are badly wrong. This is the opposite of Zionism and it may also, inadvertently, to give reassurance to the foolish attitude of the extremists in the Arab world who argue that all immigrants should return to their home countries because Israel is not their country and their homeland.

My friends in the government offices, remember: Every Jew in the world has only one homeland – Israel. Since its establishment, there is not and will not be Jewish refugees in the world, only Jews who use their right to return to their homeland.

The writer served for many years as spokesman of the World Jewish Restitution Organization.