The Other Middle East Refugees

Throughout the world there is much sympathy lavished on the between 500,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs who left Israel in 1948 despite the fact that their current status as refugees is deliberate. However, there are very few tears being shed over the much less known ordeal of the more than 850,000 Jews forced to flee Arab countries between 1948 and 1970.

The story of one of these persecuted people, Linda Abu-Aziz Menuhin, has now been told in the pages of The Jerusalem Post by Lela Gilbert. After the Six Day War Menuhin wrote a letter to her aunt in America describing the shocking conditions Jews were enduring including the banning of Jewish institutions, people disappearing, and the horrific execution of nine innocents in front of a large joyous cheering crowd. The letter under the title, Anne Frank from Baghdad, was published in Israel.

In the piece Gilbert points out that, “these forgotten refugees were members of ancient Jewish communities that predated Christianity. More than a few were wealthy, powerful and successful. Nearly all of them left their homes with little more than the shirts on their backs, leaving behind houses, bank accounts, investments, personal treasures and their means of livelihood. They resettled, mostly in Israel. From then until now, they have received no reparations, no inventory of their lost possessions and virtually no consideration in negotiations for Middle East peace.”

Cross posted on The Trebach Report