jewish refugees

Yemenite Jews walking to a ‘reception camp’ near Aden, 1949. (Photo by Kluger Zoltan/Israel National Archive)

No more lip service: How to retrieve lost Jewish property in Arab countries

The property Jews abandoned across the Middle East has been long used by Israel as a bargaining chip, to offset similar Palestinian claims. If Mizrahi Israelis are serious about claiming it back, it can only be done by bringing the Palestinians on board. By Uri Zaki Israel’s powers that be have been surprisingly attuned recently…

By +972 Magazine August 11, 2016

African Asylum seekers march out of the Holot ‘open prison,’ where they were being held, and march along the highway from Beer Sheva in southern Israel on their way to Jerusalem, December 16, 2013. (Photo: Activestills.org)

The origins and politics of Israel’s refugee debate

An in-depth look at the historical and political developments that shaped Israel’s current African asylum-seeker crisis — and one way to resolve it that meets Israel’s own needs while doing right by those who most need its protection. African asylum seekers in Israel have brought their struggle into the limelight in recent weeks. Through acts…

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man January 28, 2014

African asylum seekers put into a bus in Israel, where authorities have not granted them refugee status in 2013, Jewish asylum seekers in the port of Havana where they were denied asylum in 1939. (Photos: Activestills, U.S. Government)

Turning Israel into a ‘state of all its infiltrators’

The past two Israeli governments successfully turned the issue of African asylum seekers into a threat posed by infiltrators, who were subsequently criminalized. A short examination of the country’s history with infiltrators, however, can give us some important insights. By Eitan Bronstein Aparicio Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who’s in favor of expelling refugees from Africa, devised…

By +972 Magazine December 20, 2013

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Spineless bookkeeping: The use of Mizrahi Jews as pawns against Palestinian refugees

Calls to define Jews from Arab countries as refugees were silenced in the past by Israeli governments. The change of policy has to do with the relatively new recognition that Israel will not be able to escape its responsibility for the Nakba. But leaders of the new campaign should first learn the history of their…

By Haokets September 25, 2012

‘I Am a Refugee’: Israel’s splashy new victimhood campaign

Message: The Palestinian refugees have nothing on the ‘Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries.’ As if Israel hasn’t been playing the victim long enough, as if it hasn’t exploited the Six Million to the absolute limit, now comes a new weapon: the “Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries.” This has long been an Israeli answer to the…

By Larry Derfner September 11, 2012