Middle East’s Jewish Refugees

As a boy growing up in Cairo, Joseph Abdel Wahed, an Egyptian Jew, would read graffiti in the streets that said, “The Jews are the dogs of the Arabs.” In high school, his best friend once said to him, “one day, all the Jews will have their necks cut.” Despite this anti-Semitism, he never imagined that his home would be anywhere but Egypt. Then, following Gamel Abdel Nasser’s rise to power, Wahed’s entire community was uprooted. A 1956 proclamation signed by the Egyptian Minister of Religious Affairs said, “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state,” and promised to expel them. Wahed had to leave his British school, the pyramids and the Nile that he loved, and Cairo, his native home. He and his family fled to Europe as stateless refugees, forced to begin life anew.

Wahed’s experience was nearly universal among Arab Jews. The rise of Arab nationalism in the mid-20th century was accompanied by virulent anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Many Arab leaders openly supported the genocide carried out by the Nazis. Hajj Amin al-Husayni, a Palestinian nationalist leader and the Mufti of Jerusalem, went to Berlin in 1941 and asked Hitler to “resolve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and the other Arab countries in the same way as the problem was resolved in the Axis Countries.” A few years later, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen drove out most of their Jewish citizens through official government edicts and waves of anti-Semitic attacks.

In Egypt, large numbers of Jewish businessmen were arrested on false charges. Wahed remembers how the government confiscated his family’s business and home. Malaka Bublil, another refugee and now an award winning human rights activist, recalls the expulsion of Libyan Jews, who were forced to leave with no more than $20 each. When she and her family fled on a bus to the airport, the driver tried to set it on fire. When 150,000 Jews were forced to leave Iraq, the Iraqi government seized their bank accounts, and allowed each of them to take only one suitcase. In 1948 there were 80,000 Jews in Egypt whereas today fewer than 50 remain. Altogether, 900,000 Jews were forced to flee their homes in the Arab world. Arab states destroyed ancient Jewish communities that had existed for 2,700 years and created a refugee population of almost one million people.

In addition to the Jewish refuges, Arab states created a second refugee population when they declared war on Israel in 1948. The 1947 U.N. partition plan called for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. Arab states refused the offer, declared war against Israel, and told Arabs in Palestine to leave their homes until Israel was destroyed. The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, proclaimed the war’s purpose clearly on May 15, 1948. He declared; “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” When the Arab League lost the war that they started against Israel, the Palestinians who had expected to leave their homes for a short time were left homeless. Palestinians and Arab Jews both became refugees as a direct result of Arab aggression toward Jews and toward Israel.

Both Jewish and Palestinian refugees found themselves in refugee camps but their fates soon diverged. Through a tremendous effort, the newborn state of Israel absorbed and integrated 600,000 of the 900,000 Jewish refugees, nearly doubling its population. In sharp contrast, many Palestinians are still living in refugee camps, even under the Palestinian Authority’s rule. Arab governments rarely extend citizenship or offer reparations to Palestinians, despite having urged them to leave their homes in 1948. While Jewish refugees have been given a second chance to lead free lives, the same cannot be said about Palestinians. Discussion of the Middle East conflict must begin with recognition of the origins of both refugee populations and a comparison of how each group has been treated.

Last month, Abdel Wahed came to Harvard and told his story. He spoke of being an individual who considered himself a proud member of the Arab world and an Egyptian citizen, until his government and society decided that his religion invalidated his centuries-old tie to Egypt. Abdel Wahed’s life is powerful proof of the destructiveness of hate, and the impact of his story lies in the 900,000 times it was repeated. There are nearly one million people whose histories parallel Wahed’s, who experienced the same fear for their lives, and who underwent the same uprooting from their countries. When we heard him speak, we heard more than just his voice—we heard the voice of the last generation of Arab Jews.

Cecile Zwiebach ’04 is a history and literature concentrator in the Adams House. She is a member of Harvard Students for Israel.