Congress to Hold Hearing on Middle East Refugees - Jewish ones....!

The truth comes out, eventually.

The Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) is scheduled to hold a first-of-its-kind hearing next week on on Jewish Refugees from the Arab States, the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were ethnically cleansed from their homes by various Arab countries as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The July 19 hearing in Washington, D.C., under the heading "Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation," is to be hosted by the CHRC in conjunction with B'nai Brith International and Justice for Jews from Arab Countries. It will be the first time that the US Congress will hear testimony on this subject.

There's a practical point to the July 19 congressional hearings - to provide US congressmen with preliminary information ahead of voting on House Resolution 185 and Senate Resolution 85. According to the proposed legislation, the US president would be obligated to instruct all official representatives of the United States that "explicit reference to Palestinian refugees be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees, as a matter of law and equity."

Just for the record, there were two refugee populations as a result of the Arabs' attempt to annihilate Israel between 1948 and 1968.

The UN estimates that 726,000 Arab refugees left what is now Israel during that period. UNRWA, the UN agency created solely to provide aid for the Arab refugees of the Arab Israeli conflict admits that these numbers are questionable, since the previous British census only showed an Arab population of 450,000 and over 100,000 Arabs stayed in Israel and became Israeli citizens.

While many of these Arabs were driven out by the necessities of the genocidal war launched against Israel by 7 separate Arab nations, many alsoleft voluntarily, as they were instructed to do by Arab radio and politicians. And some simply left to get out of a war zone, figuring that the Jews would be murdered soon and they would simply reclaim their property. That's why so many of them carried those famous house keys with hem.

Over 850,000 Jews were forcibly driven out of the Arab countries they lived in. Unlike the Arabs, few of them had any choice in the matter.The above chart shows a few numbers...

While both the Jewish and Arab exiles were both determined by international law to be bona fide refugees, only the Arabs received help from the UN. As a matter of fact, the `Palestinian' refugees have received more aid per capita than Europenas did from the Marshall Plan after WWII.

Israel resettled it's refugees at its own expense, a crushing burden foroa brand new country still in a state of war with its hostile neighbors. Many Israelis from that era recall the tent cities the refugees were housed in until housing could be built for them.

The CHRC hearing will also include a screening of `The Forgotten Refugees', produced by the David Project. The film is a documentary about the forced exodus of almost one million Jews from Arab countries.


Those hearings will be chaired by Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs....and a Holocaust survivor.