Post by the Scribe on Dec 3, 2021 8:43:20 GMT
Yom HaGirush—The Inside Story
blogs.timesofisrael.com/yom-hagirush-the-inside-story/
NOV 28, 2021, 6:49 PM
Today, we speak of a largely forgotten ethnic cleansing largely unparalleled in the history of humanitarian abuses. Recall the coordinated international expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, where they had lived peaceably for as long as 27 centuries. As some know, in 2014, the Israeli government set aside November 30 as a commemoration of this mass atrocity. It has had no real identity or name like “Kristallnacht.” But today, from this day forward, the day will be known as Yom HaGirush: “Expulsion Day.”
It has been a years-long road to identify and solidify this identity. It began the moment Hitler came to power in 1933. The international Pan-Arab community, coordinated out of Palestine and spanning four continents, formed a vibrant political and later military alliance with the Nazis. This partnership functioned in the rarefied corridors of governments, the riot-torn streets of many cities on all sides of the oceans, and eventually the gun-powdered trenches and frontlines of war-strangled Europe. The overseer of this alliance was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, but he led an eager coalition of Arab leaders organized into the Arab Higher Committee, along with popular supporters from the Arab Street. They had fused with Nazi ideology and goals, which included the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of British influence.
After the Mufti fled criminal prosecution in Jewish Palestine in October 1937, he relocated to Baghdad. Iraq became the new center of gravity for the Arab-Nazi collaboration. By the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Iraqi Arabs under the guidance of the Mufti had imported all sorts of Nazi ideology and confederation into Iraq. On June 1–2, 1941, as Germany was poised to attack Russia and needed Arab oil, Nazi Arabs in Iraq launched a bloody two-day pogrom against its Jewish community which had dwelled there for 2,700 years—a thousand years before Muhammad. The hyphenation Arab-Nazi applies, not merely because these Arabs were fascist in mind and deed, but because they actually identified with Germany’s Nazi Party. Some rioters wore swastikas; many had actually marched in the Nuremberg torchlight parades. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party adopted a flag that spun off from Nazi Germany’s.
In that nightmare June 1–2 riot, Jews were hunted in the streets. When found, Jewish girls were raped in front of the parents, fathers were beheaded in front of their children, mothers were brutalized in public, babies were sliced in half and thrown into the Tigris River. The Baghdad mobs burned dozens of Jewish shops, invaded Jewish homes and looted them.
We will never know how many hundreds were murdered or mutilated because in the investigation that followed, many were afraid to come forward. But that bloody event became known as the Farhud, meaning violent dispossession. The Farhud spelled the beginning of the end of Iraqi Jewry—more than 140,000 souls.
Just before the State of Israel declared its independence in 1948, the Arab League promised the world it would execute a mass expulsion of all of it Jews. The Arab League actually coordinated forms and procedures among more than a dozen countries. For example, in Iraq, Law 51 on criminality was modified to include “Zionist”—which could be defined as any Jew found with a Hebrew marking even from a prayer book. Law 1 on denaturalization was modified to deprive Jews of their long-held citizenship, and then Law 5 permitted confiscation of Jewish assets.
Similar disenfranchisements were repeated across the Arab and Muslim world. Guiding and assisting in these processes were some 2,000 Nazis—ex-concentration camp guards, Gestapo, SS officers and Wehrmacht commanders who has escaped Nuremberg trials to continue Hitler’s war against the Jews—but now in the Middle East.
At the same time, the Arab League promised to invade the new state of Israel. “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres,” promised Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the Arab League.
For four months, the World Jewish Congress pleaded with the United Nations, then convening in Lake Success, New York to stop the ethnic cleansing. Was this a secret? Hardly. The New York Times was then the newspaper of record in the United States. Its bold-type headline alarum declared “Jews in Grave Danger in All Moslem Lands.” The article prominently listed the expelling countries and how many thousands of Jews would be ethnically cleansed. French Morocco: 190,000; Iraq: 130,000; Algeria: 120,000; and on, until the total touched the dark edge of 900,000.
more blogs.timesofisrael.com/yom-hagirush-the-inside-story/
blogs.timesofisrael.com/yom-hagirush-the-inside-story/
NOV 28, 2021, 6:49 PM
Today, we speak of a largely forgotten ethnic cleansing largely unparalleled in the history of humanitarian abuses. Recall the coordinated international expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, where they had lived peaceably for as long as 27 centuries. As some know, in 2014, the Israeli government set aside November 30 as a commemoration of this mass atrocity. It has had no real identity or name like “Kristallnacht.” But today, from this day forward, the day will be known as Yom HaGirush: “Expulsion Day.”
It has been a years-long road to identify and solidify this identity. It began the moment Hitler came to power in 1933. The international Pan-Arab community, coordinated out of Palestine and spanning four continents, formed a vibrant political and later military alliance with the Nazis. This partnership functioned in the rarefied corridors of governments, the riot-torn streets of many cities on all sides of the oceans, and eventually the gun-powdered trenches and frontlines of war-strangled Europe. The overseer of this alliance was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, but he led an eager coalition of Arab leaders organized into the Arab Higher Committee, along with popular supporters from the Arab Street. They had fused with Nazi ideology and goals, which included the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of British influence.
After the Mufti fled criminal prosecution in Jewish Palestine in October 1937, he relocated to Baghdad. Iraq became the new center of gravity for the Arab-Nazi collaboration. By the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Iraqi Arabs under the guidance of the Mufti had imported all sorts of Nazi ideology and confederation into Iraq. On June 1–2, 1941, as Germany was poised to attack Russia and needed Arab oil, Nazi Arabs in Iraq launched a bloody two-day pogrom against its Jewish community which had dwelled there for 2,700 years—a thousand years before Muhammad. The hyphenation Arab-Nazi applies, not merely because these Arabs were fascist in mind and deed, but because they actually identified with Germany’s Nazi Party. Some rioters wore swastikas; many had actually marched in the Nuremberg torchlight parades. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party adopted a flag that spun off from Nazi Germany’s.
In that nightmare June 1–2 riot, Jews were hunted in the streets. When found, Jewish girls were raped in front of the parents, fathers were beheaded in front of their children, mothers were brutalized in public, babies were sliced in half and thrown into the Tigris River. The Baghdad mobs burned dozens of Jewish shops, invaded Jewish homes and looted them.
We will never know how many hundreds were murdered or mutilated because in the investigation that followed, many were afraid to come forward. But that bloody event became known as the Farhud, meaning violent dispossession. The Farhud spelled the beginning of the end of Iraqi Jewry—more than 140,000 souls.
Just before the State of Israel declared its independence in 1948, the Arab League promised the world it would execute a mass expulsion of all of it Jews. The Arab League actually coordinated forms and procedures among more than a dozen countries. For example, in Iraq, Law 51 on criminality was modified to include “Zionist”—which could be defined as any Jew found with a Hebrew marking even from a prayer book. Law 1 on denaturalization was modified to deprive Jews of their long-held citizenship, and then Law 5 permitted confiscation of Jewish assets.
Similar disenfranchisements were repeated across the Arab and Muslim world. Guiding and assisting in these processes were some 2,000 Nazis—ex-concentration camp guards, Gestapo, SS officers and Wehrmacht commanders who has escaped Nuremberg trials to continue Hitler’s war against the Jews—but now in the Middle East.
At the same time, the Arab League promised to invade the new state of Israel. “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres,” promised Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the Arab League.
For four months, the World Jewish Congress pleaded with the United Nations, then convening in Lake Success, New York to stop the ethnic cleansing. Was this a secret? Hardly. The New York Times was then the newspaper of record in the United States. Its bold-type headline alarum declared “Jews in Grave Danger in All Moslem Lands.” The article prominently listed the expelling countries and how many thousands of Jews would be ethnically cleansed. French Morocco: 190,000; Iraq: 130,000; Algeria: 120,000; and on, until the total touched the dark edge of 900,000.
more blogs.timesofisrael.com/yom-hagirush-the-inside-story/