(TPS) A new report detailing the financial losses of Jewish refugees from Syria estimates that the community lost $10 billion, driven out of the country by state-sponsored discrimination and persecution.
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), based in the US, said the study is part of a broader initiative, with plans to release reports on lost Jewish property in ten other Arab countries plus Iran. JJAC said the collapse of the Syrian government prompted it to release its findings sooner.
Between 1948-1972, approximately 586,000 Jews from Arab countries were resettled in Israel, while 200,000 more moved to North America and Europe. The vast majority of Jewish refugees were destitute, their property confiscated by the Arab governments they left behind.
“The report is long overdue as the issue of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries could have helped challenge the delegitimization of Israel decades ago and debunk the myths of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and colonialism,” Lyn Julius told The Press Service of Israel. Julius is founder of Harif, a UK-based organization to raise awareness of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa and their heritage.
“However, the report is most welcome and its publication is timely in view of everything that is happening in Syria,” added Julius, whose work was cited in the JJAC report.
“The Jewish community in Syria was one of the smaller communities in the Middle East and North Africa, and it would perhaps have had a greater impact had the overall figure for Jewish losses in all Arab countries, including the larger communities like Morocco or Iraq, been quoted. The total figure could amount to hundreds of billions,” Julius told TPS-IL.
Jews lived in Syria for 2,500 years, with the primary communities being in Damascus and Aleppo. Syria’s Jews and Christians lived under dhimmi status — a designation Muslims historically gave to non-Muslims living under their jurisdiction. They had a lower legal status than Muslims and had to pay a special tax.
Nazi and Fascist influence in Syria grew in the 1930s, much of it incited by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al Husseini. In the years leading up to and during Israel’s founding, antisemitic riots intensified. In Aleppo in 1947, “At least 150 homes, 50 shops, all of the community’s 18 synagogues, 5 schools, its orphanage, and a youth club were damaged. Property damage was estimated at $2.5 million. Many people were reported killed, but no figures have ever been advanced. More than half of the city’s Jews fled across the borders into Turkey, Lebanon and British Mandatory Palestine.”
In 1949, following Israel’s War of Independence, Syria moved to confiscate Jewish property and freeze Jewish bank accounts on a wide scale, boycott Jewish businesses, and restrict jobs that Jews could hold.
“Today it is estimated that only 4 Jews remain in Syria,” the report said.
According to the report, “For over 75 years, the world has ignored the uprooting of Jews from the Arab totalitarian regimes, dictatorships and monarchies. Under Muslim rule, Jews were subjected to a wide-spread pattern of persecution. Official decrees enacted by Arab regimes denied human and civil rights to Jews and other minorities; expropriated their property; stripped them of their citizenship; and means of livelihood. Jews were often victims of murder; arbitrary arrest and detention; torture; and expulsions.”
It added, “From the 1,000,000 Jews in 1948 based in 10 Arab countries plus Iran, today, less than 1% remain. Most fled to Israel, the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people for thousands of years. The legitimate call to secure rights and redress for Jewish refugees from Arab countries is not to negate the suffering or the rights of Palestinian refugees. Their claims, however, do not supersede the fact that Palestinians were not the only Middle East refugees. For peace in the Middle East, truth and justice must prevail.”
Commenting on the data, Julius told TPS-IL, “There were more Jewish refugees than Palestinian, and the Jewish refugee issue is important to correct distortions in how Jews are viewed – Jews are an indigenous Middle Eastern people, in continuous residence in the Middle East and Land of Israel for millennia. There was an exchange of roughly equal numbers of Arab and Jewish refugees within the Middle East itself –around 650,000. Some 200,000 Jews fled to Europe, the Americas and Australia.”
“There was some kind of exchange between Israel and Arab countries in 1948 – the number of Jewish refugees that came to Israel was almost identical to the number of Palestinian refugees that spread to Arab countries” Julius said.
There are several reasons for this ignorance, she said.
One reason is that Israel viewed the influx of Jews as “Zionists returning to their ancestral homeland,” and did not want to drive a wedge between various ethnic groups. “This was a great success in terms of internal cohesion, but a disaster in terms of public diplomacy,” Julius explained.
Israel did not promote the rights of Jewish refugees as a policy until 2011, Julius told TPS-IL. As a result, the UN passed no resolutions concerning them, and the word “Jewish” was never applied whenever refugees were mentioned. But she stressed that another reason for the ignorance is that the world has a distorted view of Israel and Jewish people.
“The Jewish refugees deserve not only compensation, but recognition for the suffering and abuses they suffered,” said Julius.
