If you have ever read the excellent book, The War of Return by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz, you would understand that the Palestinian cause is all about ‘the right of return’ to Israel of Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants. Everything else - two-state solution or not - is a red herring.
As early as the 1970s, Arab leaders realised that they could not demand a ‘right of return’ for their Arab compatriots when they had driven out almost a million Jews. Hence, in 1975, the Arab League promoted an appeal for Mizrahi Jews—particularly those in Israel—to return to their countries of birth. Iraq and Morocco were among the most vocal. Arab states could then no longer be accused of denying a ‘right of return’ to their ex-Jewish citizens.
Thirty years earlier, the Jewish population of the Arab world had been decimated: Jews fled pogroms and state-sanctioned persecution and dispossession. It was, by any measure, an unprecedented, yet largely unrecognised, ‘ethnic cleansing’.
By 1975, only a handful of Jews still remained in Libya from a community of 38,000. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi invited Libyan Jews to “come home” in 2004, and a small Jewish delegation subsequently visited Libya. Yet this was not the first time the Libyan leader had asked the Jews to return to the land of their birth. When he made a similar offer in 1975 (‘Are you not Arabs like us, Arab Jews?’), Albert Memmi, the Tunisian-born French writer and intellectual, scoffed:
“Yes, indeed we were Arab Jews – in our habits, in our culture, our music, our menu. But must one remain an Arab Jew if, in return, one has to tremble for one’s life and the future of one’s children and always be denied a normal existence? We would have liked to be Arab Jews. If we abandoned the idea, it is because over the centuries the Muslim Arabs systematically prevented its realization by their contempt and cruelty.”
Who in their right minds would return to countries which remained as hostile to Jews as on the day they were forced out?
In 1975 Iraq’s Revolutionary Command Council issued a decree, confirmed by a US diplomatic report, permitting Iraqi Jews who had emigrated after 1948 to return to Baghdad and regain Iraqi citizenship rights.
One man who did respond was Mordechai Khabaza, an Iraqi Jew living in Israel.
As soon as Khabaza arrived from ‘the Zionist entity’, he immediately aroused the suspicions and anger of the few hundred Jews remaining in Iraq. They avoided contact with him, fearing that the authorities would accuse them of associating with a
Zionist. Zionism had been made a capital crime, and Jews were commonly
accused of fabricated spying charges.
According to one account, Khabaza encouraged Iraqi intelligence to seize all Torah scrolls from synagogues ‘except the handful needed for prayers.’ He helped the authorities amass a stash of Jewish documents, which, ironically, was later discovered by the Americans floating in the flooded basement of the secret police headquarters. It was shipped from Baghdad to Texas for restoration in 2003.
Nothing more was heard of Mordechai Khabaza. The community believed that Saddam had had him killed once he had outlived his usefulness.
Three members of the Nawi family also returned to Iraq from Israel. A husband and wife, active members of the Communist party in Petah Tikva, moved back to Baghdad with their son. Mrs. Nawi told reporters at Baghdad airport that now she had started breathing the Baghdad air, she felt she was back in. paradise. After a while, however, this family too disappeared without trace.
According to one story, the community received a coffin and instructions to
bury it in the Baghdad Jewish cemetery. Security agents accompanied the community to the cemetery, to ensure that the coffin was not opened. Some Jews immediately concluded that the coffin contained the bodies of the Nawi couple. Others believe that the coffin was that of Mordechai Khabaza.
A trickle of Jews returned to Morocco, but the Arab leaders’ call to Jews to exercise their ‘right of return’ has been a failure. The only way forward to peace and reconciliation is if they recognise that an exchange of refugees between Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian Arabs had taken place. The clock could not be turned back: neither group is destined to return.
But UNRWA, which maintains the Palestinian refugee problem in perpetuity, still gives Palestinians the vain hope that they are going back. While Jews have long ago ceased to be refugees, the dismantling of UNRWA, as Wilf and Schwartz claim, has got to be the only answer.
Jewish Refugees
Why any human being would return to a country where they were persecuted is ridiculous. Moreover, the Mizrahi Jews had already rebuilt their lives in Israel and elsewhere. Why would they voluntarily destroy everything they had worked so how to build for what and for whom? A few returned and to what avail. It is like the Jews who returned to their Polish towns after the Holocaust only to be slaughtered by the Poles who had stolen their property, homes and belongings.
The only interesting thing about the "right of return" is just how far would they say it goes back? Is this a new modern idea or is this something inherent in human history? If this is human history than the Jews who were expelled from Judea 2000 years ago, have the inherent right of return to the Land of Israel. I would also posit that since the land then was colonized by Muslim invaders (imperialists), the returning Jews have the right to tear down the mosques on the Temple Mount and rebuild the Holy Temple. Hmmmmm....
The same goes for all minorities expelled from countries from all countries throughout history. When do the Hindus get to return to Pakistan and take back what was stolen from them? How about the Armenians and Greeks who were expelled and slaughtered by the Turks.
Somehow, I don't think those espousing this "right of return" have thought this fully through.Except that is not the point of the "right of return" which in truth doesn't actually exist in international law. But then again as with all things in the modern world, this is a "Palestinian privilege" and part of Palestinianism. Seems they get to have special rights not allowed to other communities in history or throughout the world.
I always thought that the Mizrahi Jews were less conflicted than the Eastern Europeans Jews about their identity....Jews before the Muslim Arab conquest and Jews after. I didn't know my father 's parents so I have no idea how closely they identified with Russian culture.....there was no id as Ukrainian then. My understanding they had Genitle friends here, they'd known over there. My American father didn't send me to Russian culture school or celebrate Russian festivals and holidays. So I grew up Jewish. My friend from Alexandria.....kicked out as small child with his family in '56 ...French speaking family....never related to me as other than one Jew to another. Was perplexed that his Ashkenazi best friend had a Christmas tree. This has always interested me. How do Jews reconcile the cultures in which they were raised with the specificity of Jewish identity? A lot more I could write.