Arab and Muslim world or were summarily expelled for being Jewish in
the 20th century.Andre Aciman's account, however, needs to be read in context, some of which is supplied by Rabbi Lerner's editor's note.
[ Editor's Note: The article below which appeared June 9, 2009, in the New York Times reminds us of another level of complexity in the Middle East--the flight of some and expuslion of others of the 800,000 Jews who had to leave Arab lands in the 20th century, often having their property confiscated, often fleeing with justified fear for their lives, most of whom found refuge in the newly created Zionist state of Israel.
The account given below by Andre Aciman has been challenged by some historians who point out that these Jews may have themselves been victims of Western colonialism. The colonial powers traditionally attempted to create or exacerbate exisitng ethnic divisions in each colonized country so that the colonized peoples would fight against each other, often using a domestic minority as one of their local surrogates.
In some Arab countries, France and England used the Jews in this role, and Jews willingly embraced the benefits of the privileges offered, in part because under Islamic rule they had usually been second class citizens without the same political rights as Muslims and with special tax burdens. In short, they faced in their daily life the kind of apartheid conditions that Palestinians in the West Bank face today. Few Arabs have ever acknowledged that these conditions helped create the context within which Jews would experience the discourse of "equal rights" from France and England as liberatory, and hence feel a stake in supporting the colonialist regimes that were being imposed on these Arab countries.
The anger that Jewish "collaboration" with the colonial powers generated among Muslims was exacerbated by Arab resentments about how Palestinians were being treated in the process of creating a Jewish state in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s. Though Jewish refugees to Israel were often treated in a discriminatory manner by the dominant European/Ashkenazi Jews who were the major pioneers of the new Zionist reality (which accounts for some of their subsequent identification with the anti-socialist, anti-Labor party Likud), it is also the case that the anger that these refugees felt at the way they had been treated by Arabs while they lived in Muslim lands contributed to their even-now-persisting tendency to support militarist political parties in Israel and to explain that support by reference to their own experience of discrimination in Arab lands.
This history, of course, is the subject of great contention, and Aciman fails to discuss its complexities, but his raising the issue as one that cannot be ignored is essentailly correct.
Unfortunately, this history has been misused by some neo-cons and rightwing Zionists to claim that Israel has no responsibility to Palestinian refugees because the Arab countries should have been as successful in integrating the Palestinians into Arab societies as Israel was in integrating Jewish refugees from Arab lands.
By trying to reduce the situation to a mere "population transfer," those right-wingers obscure the particular historical experience of Palestinians and their deep connection to the land of Palestine. Their discourse obscures the fact that it was not "Arabs" who failed to integrate the Palestinian refugees, but rather specific Arab leaders who were themselves deeply aligned with and supported by Western colonial and imperial powers. These Westerns supporters, whose foreign policies often refleced the needs of the multinational oil companies, had their own reasons to keep the Arab/Israeli tensions high, so they supported the Arab oligarchs in using Palestinians as a distraction for the Arab masses so that they would not concentrate on the role of those oligarchs in perpetuating poverty in oil-rich Arab lands.
That Obama did not challenge those oligarchs in any direct way, and that he did not do more to support those in Arab lands who continue to suffer from the oppression of governments like those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia which the U.S. supports is another story to be addressed separately, but cannot be forgotten when raising the issues of how to understand the situation of Palestinian refugees and why they cannot be morally equated to the situation of Jewish refugees from Arab lands (not least because Jews do not yearn to return to Arab countries to resume their lives there while Palestinians do wish to return to their lives in Palestine).
Yet Tikkun has always maintained that the plight of Jews who fled Arab lands is a legitimate issue to be raised in any final settlement of the larger Arab/Israeli conflict. We believe that compensation packages for those Jews from Arab lands who remain in conditions of poverty today in the State of Israel should be one of the elements of a comprehensive reparations agreement whose primary focus should be the compensation of Palestinian refugees and their families.--Rabbi Michael Lerner]
The New York Times PRESIDENT OBAMA’S speech to the Islamic world was a groundbreaking As important, Mr. Obama did not mince words. Never before has a And yet, for all the president’s talk of “a new beginning between the The president never said a word about me. Or, for that matter, about any Nor did he bother to mention that with this flight and expulsion, Jewish Mr. Obama had harsh things to say to the Arab world about its treatment In Alexandria, my birthplace and my home, all streets bearing Jewish When the last Jew dies, the temples and religious artifacts and books It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so André Aciman, a professor of comparative literature at the City
Op-Ed Contributor
The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention
By ANDRÉ ACIMAN
Published: June 8, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09aciman.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
event. Never before has a young, dynamic American president, beloved
both by his countrymen and the nations of the world, extended so timely
and eager a hand to a part of the globe that, recently, had seen fewer
and fewer reasons to trust us or to wish us well.
president gone over to the Arab world and broadcast its flaws so loudly
and clearly: extremism, nuclear weapons programs and a faltering record
in human rights, education and economic development — the Arab world
gets no passing grades in any of these domains. Mr. Obama even found a
moment to mention the plight of Egypt’s harassed Coptic community and to
criticize the new wave of Holocaust deniers. And to show he was not
playing favorites, he put the Israelis on notice: no more settlements in
the occupied territories. He spoke about the suffering of Palestinians.
This was no wilting olive branch.
United States and Muslims around the world” and shared “principles of
justice and progress,” neither he nor anyone around him, and certainly
no one in the audience, bothered to notice one small detail missing from
the speech: he forgot me.
of the other 800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the
Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in
the 20th century. With all his references to the history of Islam and to
its (questionable) “proud tradition of tolerance” of other faiths, Mr.
Obama never said anything about those Jews whose ancestors had been
living in Arab lands long before the advent of Islam but were its first
victims once rampant nationalism swept over the Arab world.
assets were — let’s call it by its proper name — looted. Mr. Obama never
mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never recover. My
mother’s house, my father’s factory, our life in Egypt, our friends, our
books, our cars, my bicycle. We are, each one of us, not just defined by
the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the
things we call our own. Take away our things and something in us dies.
Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He
didn’t die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off.
of women. And he said much about America’s debt to Islam. But he failed
to remind the Egyptians in his audience that until 50 years ago a strong
and vibrant Jewish community thrived in their midst. Or that many of
Egypt’s finest hospitals and other institutions were founded and
financed by Jews. It is a shame that he did not remind the Egyptians in
the audience of this, because, in most cases — and especially among
those younger than 50 — their memory banks have been conveniently
expunged of deadweight and guilt. They have no recollections of Jews.
names have been renamed. A few years ago, the Library of Alexandria put
on display an Arabic translation of “The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion,” perhaps the most anti-Semitic piece of prose ever written. Today,
for the record, there are perhaps four Jews left in Alexandria.
that were the property of what was once probably the wealthiest Jewish
community on the Mediterranean will go to the Egyptian government — not
to me, or to my children, or to any of the numberless descendants of
Egyptian Jews.
committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of
Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn’t know, or just thought it wasn’t
expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo
of a shared effort “to find common ground ... and to respect the dignity
of all human beings” without mentioning people in my position would be
like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany
and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II.
University of New York Graduate Center, is the author of the memoir “Out
of Egypt.”
