Jews from Arab countries: the forgotten refugees
A UN conference addresses the status of Jews from Arab states who were expelled from their homeland after the creation of the state of Israel.
The second annual gathering of Jewish refugees from Arab countries was held on Thursday, Nov. 21, in a conference room at UN headquarters in New York. The event was organized by the Israeli delegation to the UN, headed by Ambassador Ron Prosor, the World Jewish Congress and the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC). The organization was established in 1975 in Paris by former Knesset member and minister Mordechai Ben-Porat and the late millionaire Leon Taman, who served as chairman of the Sephardi Federation of UK and was one of the leaders of Arab Jewry.
The mission of WOJAC was, and is, to “raise world consciousness to the story of some one million Jews from Arab and Muslim states, who were forced to flee persecution, imprisonment and pogroms.” The organization, with its slogan “The Forgotten Million,” seeks to obtain recognition of the existence of Jewish refugees from Arab countries and compensation for the property they left behind.
For all UN member states the combination of the words “Israel” and “refugees” is likely to immediately conjure up the issue of Palestinian refugees, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But this time they were invited to hear a different tune.
Tal Dror, a member of the Israeli delegation to the UN, told Al-Monitor that last year, when organizers were putting together the first conference, headed by then-Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, representatives of the Arab states were vehemently opposed. They tried to find sections of the protocol which could be used to thwart it, but failed. This time, to everyone’s surprise, along with some 30 ambassadors and diplomats who attended the event, two representatives from the Egyptian delegation to the UN were also present. The organizers and Israeli representatives to the UN should have been pleased, because the issues raised at the event were meant especially for them.
