Israel embraced Jewish refugees

May 18, 2008

The column "The other side of Israel's birth" (Commentary, May 14) by Alice Rothchild describes the tragic fate of the 700,000 Arabs displaced from their homes in Israel in its War of Independence in 1948, even though many of them left voluntarily at the urging of the invading Arab armies who expected to be victorious.

But it made no mention of the really forgotten refugees from that conflict, the 900,000 Jews who were forcibly ejected from their ancestral homes in the Arab countries with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

Most resettled in Israel, then a newly created and impoverished country that found the resources to take in these refugees and find them homes and jobs as it granted them full citizenship.

It's too bad the same thing cannot be said about the treatment of the Arab refugees by the various Arab nations, some of which are flush with oil revenues.These refugees have been denied citizenship by any Arab country and forced to live in squalid refugee camps so that they can serve as an obstacle to the peace process and be used as a tool of anti-Israel propaganda and as a breeding ground for terrorists.

Jack Kinstlinger

Baltimore

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Israel embraced Jewish refugees

Related topic galleries: Religious Conflicts, Refugee, Civil Unrest

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