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Some years ago, a daughter of the wealthy Jewish Castro family from Egypt heard Anwar Sadat’s widow Jehan deliver a talk in New York. Congratulating her afterwards, the Egyptian Jewess exchanged pleasantries with Mrs. Sadat. “But you must come back to visit [Egypt] and to show it to your children,” Mrs. Sadat said, adding the traditional Egyptian courtesy, beti betak – “my house is your house.”
Little did she appreciate the irony, but Jehan Sadat’s presidential villa had literally belonged to the Castro family, which was expelled by Nasser in 1956. Observers of the Middle East conflict frequently talk of trampled Palestinian rights, but suffer from a blind spot when it comes to the mass dispossession of a greater number of Jews across 10 Arab countries.
Now is the time to fight for Jewish refugees
Article Source: JPost.com
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Few Jews lived as opulently as the Castros, but all over the Middle East and North Africa, Jewish homes, shops and businesses were seized or sold for well under market value as fearful Jews fled or were forced out. Communities predating the Islamic conquest by 1,000 years have been driven to extinction.
Economist Sidney Zabludoff estimates that there were 50 percent more Jewish refugees than Palestinian Arab refugees, and that they almost certainly lost 50% more in assets and property. While the world is fixated by Israeli building in a (Jewish-owned) Jerusalem suburb, nobody reproaches Arab states for seizing Jewish land and property in Baghdad, Cairo, Tripoli and Damascus, estimated by the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries at five times the size of Israel itself.
- 5 votes
#1 - Thu Feb 9, 2012 9:15 PM ESTAll too often, the issue is met with disbelief or denial. If it is acknowledged, wild counterclaims for compensation are made. Arabs blame the exodus on the Zionists, or rationalize it as a justifiable backlash to the creation of Israel. The myths are peddled that Jews and Muslims lived together harmoniously before Zionism, or that Jews were better treated in the Muslim world than in the Christian.
As the plight of Copts and Assyrians shows, the native Jews would have been victimized even if Israel had not existed. They were the first to suffer ethnic cleansing, but they will not be the last.
- 5 votes
#2 - Thu Feb 9, 2012 9:18 PM ESTThe total focus on blaming the "Zionist regime" for the world's ills, while ignoring or at the best tolerating the sins of the Arabs perpetrated on Jews is nothing more than blatant anti-Semitism.
- 5 votes
#3 - Fri Feb 10, 2012 10:43 AM ESTIs it just the Jews or is it Islam.
What comes to mind is the plight of the Coptics in Egypt - they are scared and have no place to go - there is no Israel for them.
And, of course, the Mandeans in Iraq, a peaceful group if there was ever was one. Only to have their Churches burnt to the ground, women raped and men killed for no other reason then not being Muslims. Yet they as a group that predates Islam. The irony of all of this is that minorities were protected (to some degree) by Saddam and most of the Mandeans have fled to Iran for safety.
- 5 votes
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