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Occupied Arab World

New waves of African and Russian Jews set to swamp Palestine

Crescent International

Any person - or for that matter, any group of people - anywhere in the world, who, being under pressure for whatever reason, declares himself or herself to be Jewish, and is accepted as such by the rabbinical authorities in Israel, acquires an automatic right to Israeli citizenship and can look forward to being settled in lands being ruthlessly confiscated from indigenous Palestinian owners. The new wave of Ethiopian Jews being airlifted to Israel; the thousands of Russian Jews still fleeing an upsurge in anti-Semitism; the Lemba tribe in Southern Africa set to qualify as Jewish; and the White Jews ‘fleeing crime’ in South Africa are all potential beneficiaries, being pressurised into leaving for Israel for political rather than religious reasons.

The Israeli Law of Return, the legislative bedrock of the Zionist occupation of Palestine, enshrines this bogus right. Yet ‘president’ Yassir Arafat and other Arab dictators, posing as saviours of Palestine, have never raised the issue, not even as a bargaining chip, during the long negotiations with Israeli governments that have led to several infamous sellouts, such as the Camp David Accords and the Oslo agreements. An obvious time for Arafat to demand the abrogation of this instrument of war, not law, was when Israel raised the issue of amending the Charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and prevailed.

The Arab despots’ diffidence may be due to a mistaken view that Israel, as a sovereign state, has the right to grant its citizenship to anyone it chooses. But the Law of Return is not a reasonable manifestation of sovereignty since it is used as an instrument of expansionism, as well as of terrorism, and the right of residence it confers is exercised on occupied lands and not within Israel’s internationally recognized (albeit unlawful) borders of 1949.

The Jewish immigrants who are now flooding in will be settled on territories captured in the 1967 war, especially in areas deemed vital for securing Jerusalem for Israel or ensuring the fragmentation of the ‘autonomous’ West Bank. This explains the continued confiscation of Palestinian land as well as the demolition of Palestinian homes and the adoption by Ehud Barak, the prime minister-elect, of the settlement policies Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly in and around Jerusalem.

The Ha’aretz, a Tel Aviv daily, reported on June 14 that Barak had promised Knesset members belonging to a nationalist religious party that he would carry on with the programme of Jewish settlements in and around Jerusalem. According to Ha’aretz, he vowed to allow the construction of Har Homa settlement in Jabal Abu-Ghunaim to continue unhindered. He also pledges to complete the project of enlarging the Ma’aleh Adumin settlement, which was begun by the previous government. The expansion of the existing settlements and the construction of new ones not yet announced are no doubt needed to accommodate the new immigrants from Africa and Russia.

The London-based weekly Jewish Chronicle (JC) reported on June 18 that the outgoing Israeli government had decided several days earlier to airlift 3,000 Quaran Jews who live in Gondar Province, northern Ethiopia, on the border with Sudan. It was agreed at an emergency meeting to bring them to Israel as a matter of urgency because of the war in the region between Ethiopia and Eritrea, JC said.

According to JC, the Quarans are ‘the Jews that Israel forgot’ during the mass-airlifts of ‘Operation Solomon’ and ‘Operation Moses’ in the 1980s and early 1990s. By shear coincidence, of course, Ja’far Numairi, who had as Sudanese president authorized the airlift of the Falasha Jews through Sudan (Operation Moses), returned from exile to Khartoum mere days before Netanyahu’s decision to move the Quaran Jews to Israel.

But even more bizarre is the decision of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies to meet the leaders of the Lemba tribe to examine their claims that they are Jewish. According to the Jewish Chronicle, ‘genetic tests in the US, revealing that Lemba males carry a DNA sequence distinctive to Cohanim, have sparked further investigations into the tribe’s origins’. The president of the Lemba Cultural Association, Matshaya Mathiva, says that the Jewish origins of his tribe and the practice of Jewish customs have been passed down orally over generations. He represents 50,000 Lemba in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Mozambique. The issue will be determined by the Chief Rabbis of Israel.

In the meantime, while South African Jews and Russian Jews are emigrating to Israel in large numbers, many Jews, who previously voted for the nationalist party, are claiming that they are being discriminated against now that the ANC happens to be in office. Some Jewish students claim that the affirmative-action programme in favour of non-white children is directed against the Jews. This is strange because the only people to have profited from affirmative action throughout history are Jews - not only in Israel but in many lands.

Dina Saffer, chair of the South African Union of Jewish Students, says that the policy ‘is viewed as discrimination’. “Students talk about ‘when’ they are leaving South Africa, not ‘if’.”

But South African Jews are not the only ones leaving in droves. Russian Jews, who started leaving some time ago, are still flocking to Israel. Nearly 800 left for there in the first quarter of this year alone. Many voted against Netanyahu in the last election, because he did nothing for them once they had arrived after encouraging them to leave their homes.

However, the worst shock is reserved for Oriental and African Jews, who are treated worse than second-class citizens in Israel, which is dominated by the Ashkenazi Jews. Lemba and Quaran Jews beware! And think before leaving for Israel.

Muslimedia: July 1-15, 1999


Article from

Crescent International Vol. 28, No. 9

Rabi' al-Awwal 17, 14201999-07-01


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