After the invading Arab League armies lost the war against Israel in 1948, every Arab country in the Middle East with a Jewish population expelled them en masse in retaliation. Jews who didn’t leave were killed. Between 1948 and the following years, 850,000 Jews were deported out of their home countries, usually with not much more than the clothes on their backs. These included Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Qatar, Algeria, and Ethiopia. As the wave of deportations began, Israel started a rescue mission for the exiled Jews, running free flights to and from the countries, saving the lives of those who would have had no other means of egress. Sixty percent of the Jews in Israel today descend from this rescued population of Arab Jews. While this doesn’t undermine Palestinian displacement, the international community’s blatant silence on this event often appears to come at the expense of understanding the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Behind every common anti-Israel fact are similar truths that show the conflict as it is: two peoples linked through time and land manipulated by the powers around them.
A reminder: Deligitimizing Jewish or Palestinian connections to the homeland is a bad look. Peace is the right look. Let’s focus on that.
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