Yes. Nearly 50 percent of Israel’s Jewish population today has their roots in Arab countries, while the Arabs who left Israel constitute less than 2 percent of the total Arab population in Arab states. Even so, the Jewish refugees were – in spite of tremendous difficulties, especially in the early years of Israel’s independence – economically and socially absorbed and given a secure haven in the State of Israel, whereas the Palestinian Arab refugees were deliberately herded into refugee camps by their host Arab states, devoid of the minimal conditions for decent life, so that they might become a political and propaganda tool in the hands of the Arab governments in their relentless fight against the State of Israel.
Furthermore, Jewish refugees from Arab states received no financial support whatsoever from the international community: their absorption was financed, to the last cent, by the Israeli government and by their Jewish brethren in Israel and abroad. Jewish refugees from Arab states have not been granted any international political recognition of their plight. There are no UN resolutions calling for this population to receive just compensation and restitution.
Palestinian Arab refugees, on the other hand, have received massive political and material support from the United Nations, whose agencies – primarily the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – have spent billions of dollars, from May 1950 to date, on their maintenance.
Despite propaganda in many Arab countries, which has succeeded in establishing the concept of “the legitimate rights of the Palestinians” and their “right of return” in the organs of world public opinion, the world community is only now beginning to recognize the fact that the Jewish refugees from Arab countries have no less legitimate rights, and that these rights should be fully acknowledged and restored.
