By Robert F. Graboyes
Friday, December 01, 2023
Here they come again
Sages of social media and swarms in the streets tell us,
“It’s time to move those Jews again.” “From the river to the sea,” they
inform us, “Palestine will be free.” Free of Jews, that is. Or, some Germans
once put it, “Judenrein.”
Following Hamas’s livestreamed orgy of murder, torture,
rape, beheading, kidnapping, and necrophilia, and before Israel had reacted in
any way, celebrants took to Western streets and campuses to condemn Israel, not
Hamas, and to chant their ambiguous little rhyme, which has three plausible
interpretations: (1) extermination, (2) coexistence in a binational state, and
(3) expulsion and exile. Hamas has always made crystal-clear that their
ambition is option (1)—the murder of every Jew on earth. Rep. Rashida Tlaib
chose option (2), saying the phrase “is an aspirational call for freedom, human
rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate;” but she
proffered that definition while dodging censure and repeatedly spreading
Hamas’s murderous lie that Israel had killed 500 by bombing a hospital.
So, let’s explore interpretation (3)—expulsion and
exile. We’ll examine a whole array of questions: How long have Jew-Movers
been forcibly relocating Jews? How did European and Arab governments force Jews
to move to what is now Israel? What would happen if Israel’s Jews suddenly left
Israel en masse? Where do Jew-Movers insist they go?
Arab Governments Move Their Jews to Israel
Contrary to the common belief of people with PhD’s,
journalism degrees, and/or TikTok accounts, most Israeli Jews didn’t come from
post-Holocaust Europe; rather, they were forced to go to Israel as refugees
from a collective temper tantrum by Arab and other Muslim governments. Beginning
in the 1940s, most were stripped of their homes and other wealth and sent
packing. They and their ancestors had never lived anywhere but the Middle East
since Biblical times. Consider Iraq:
In 586 B.C.E, the Babylonians demolished the Kingdom of
Israel and moved its Jewish population to modern-day Iraq. The Jewish
community’s fortunes there ebbed and flowed for 2,500 years. Oppression rose
under the Mongols and medieval caliphates, but things improved when the Ottoman
Turks welcomed Jews with open arms into their empire. As the Ottoman Empire
grew decrepit, some of its Jews faced persecution. For example, the Sassoons,
once prominent in government and business, fled from Baghdad to Mumbai, India
in the early 19th century and then onward to other parts of the British Empire.
In 1941, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, after fleeing the
British in Palestine, helped mastermind a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq, followed by
the “Farhud”—a Hamas-like slaughter of Baghdad’s Jews. (A BBC report recounted
a mob triumphantly carrying the severed breast of a freshly tortured and
slaughtered Jewish woman.)
After Israel’s establishment in 1948, the Iraqi
government began brutal persecution of the country’s Jews, who were fired from
government jobs and also arrested, tried in kangaroo courts, fined, imprisoned,
and even executed. Those in outlying communities were herded into Baghdad,
where they lived in squalor. Like most Arab countries at the time, Iraq forbade
Jews from emigrating, making the country, to coin a phrase, an “open-air
prison.” In 1950, Iraq switched gears and encouraged Jews to renounce their Iraqi
citizenship and move to Israel. Roughly 75% (120,000-130,000) were rescued by
Israel’s Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Many, stripped of worldly possessions,
spent years in tents before successfully rebuilding their lives, aided
(unevenly at times) by Jews already living in Israel.
Similar stories played out across the Arab World
(Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, etc.) and in
non-Arab Muslim countries like Iran and Afghanistan. These Jews are the
“colonizers” who are commanded to move out of Israel by finger-wagging PhDs,
journalists, and TikToker-ers.
European Governments Move Their Jews to Israel
For centuries, Europeans treated Jews as movable pawns
and, at times, as property. Here are a few of the countless stories in
this saga.
In 1066, William the Conqueror invited Jews to settle in
England. In 1290, King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, exiling the
Jewish community created over two centuries earlier by
great-great-great-great-grandpa William’s invitation. Jews were invited back
into England 366 years later by Oliver Cromwell (who moved the Irish around
against their will).
In the early 20th century, persecution of
Jews ran rampant across Europe during and after the Dreyfus Affair. Russia
was already a hellscape of pogroms, including the 1903 Hamas-like
massacre of Jews in Kishinev, Bessarabia—a province of the Russian Empire.
In 1928, Stalin decreed that Russia’s Jews should move to Birobidzhan—a swampy,
malarial chunk of land on the Siberian/Manchurian border—bitterly cold in
winter and hot, humid, and buggy in summer. Perhaps 40,000 Jews relocated
there, but almost all later left. Despite the near-total absence of Jews, the
district today retains the name “Jewish Autonomous Oblast.”
In 1492, Spain had a large, ancient, influential Jewish
population, but that year, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella decided to expel
all Jews via the Alhambra Decree. The Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II promptly
invited them to move to his empire and sent his navy to pick them up, famously
saying:
“You venture to call Ferdinand a
wise ruler … he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!”
24 years later, the Ottomans conquered Greater Syria,
which included modern-day Israel and Palestine. Jews migrated throughout
the empire that had welcomed them in, which expanded their communities in
Turkey, Arabia, North Africa, the Balkans, Iraq, and present-day Israel and
Palestine.
After conquering vast territories from Lithuania, Poland,
and other countries, Russia established the Pale of Settlement—yet another
open-air prison. Previously flourishing Jewish communities were relegated
to the impoverished village existence we associate today with Sholem Aleichem’s
Tevye stories (source of Fiddler on the Roof). Russian Jews faced
continuous oppression until emigration was permitted in the 1980s, with most
migrants heading to the two nations that would admit large numbers—the U.S. and
Israel.
As the 20th century began, with
oppression of Jews spreading from Dreyfus Affair and Russian pogroms, Theodor
Herzl hosted the First Zionist Congress, which formalized the notion of a
Jewish homeland (not necessarily an independent nation) in the Turkish satrapies
(provinces) of Greater Syria. After all, Jews were indigenous to that
region, their communities had existed there without interruption since Biblical
times, and the Ottomans had welcomed them in for almost 500 years. During WWI,
Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, calling for “national home for the
Jewish people” in Palestine. In 1922, the League of Nations handed control of
Palestine (modern-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan) to Great Britain, which
wavered back and forth until WWII between allowing and disallowing Jewish
immigrants.
When Hitler rose to power, eradicating all Europeans Jews
became the Nazi Government’s central mission. Until 1940, Germany planned
to force them into exile—in Palestine, a “reservation” in Poland, or
Madagascar. Eventually, the Nazis shifted their plans from exile to
extermination.
After the Holocaust, the remnant hovered in refugee camps
until making their way to the United States, Israel, or whatever other
countries would take them in. Again, these are the “colonizers” and
“oppressors” one hears about.
In 1947, the United Nations voted to divide Palestine
west of the Jordan into two nations. The Jewish state would be a thin
sliver of land that Jews had bought, not taken, over many years. The rest would
be an Arab state. The Jews said yes, and the Arabs said no, ultimately
launching a failed attempt to wipe out Israel in its infancy.
Of Poets and Pessimists
Expulsion-and-exile advocates seem to have two vaguely
formed ideas as to where the 7 million Israeli Jews should go: “back where you
came from” or “the United States.” Blogger James Lileks recently
highlighted one such Illuminata (“Poet” by her own description) who offered the
following advice in a series of tweets:
·
“Israel + US should start making plans for safe
Israeli relocation.”
·
“Jewish people should be safe as a global
diaspora.”
·
“Jews co-existed peacefully in the region before
Israel.”
As suggested above and in a recent Bastiat’s
Window essay (“Jews,
Massacres, and U.S. Presidents”), the historical record indicates clearly
that Jews have never been “safe as a global diaspora;” nor was it ever true
that they “co-existed peacefully in the [Mideast] before Israel.” The
murder, torture, rape, beheading, and kidnapping of October 7 had countless
precedents over the centuries in both Europe and the Muslim World. (Hamas’s
novel contributions are limited to livestreaming and, perhaps, necrophilia.)
The Poet is a self-described “Jewish queer
anti-zionist”—a much-sought-after demographic for the rooftops of Gaza. She
also says she is a former Fulbright Scholar, chief of staff at a “diversity,
equity, inclusion, and consulting firm focused on film/TV culture,” and
purveyor of “psychedelic sessions for a more just, equitable & sustainable
world” in Amsterdam. (I’ll aver that by her own logic, as a Jew in Amsterdam,
she is a colonialist usurper who stole an apartment from some oppressed
indigenous Netherlander.) Nonentity that she is, as of November 25, 2023, her
three tweets had garnered, respectively, 2.9 million, 379,000, and 1.6 million
views—and she is only one of a great horde of online Jew-Movers. This helps
explain why a recent Harvard
CAPS/Harris poll shows 48% of 18-to-24-year-olds in America supporting
Hamas (Hamas specifically, not Palestinians in
general) against Israel.
The Condition of Would-be Exiles
Before examining the implications of “back where you came
from” and “to the United States,” let’s take a look at the condition in which
the Israeli refugees would arrive in their new countries.
Since 1948, Israelis have gone from very poor to among
the world’s wealthiest people via hard work and creativity, but expulsion and
exile would likely render the vast majority of them penniless overnight. By
my back-of-the-envelope calculation, the average Israeli household (Jewish and
Arab) has income of around $164,000 per year and wealth of around $455,000.
Departing en masse, they would almost certainly walk away uncompensated from
their homes, offices, businesses, farms, careers, personal possessions, and
income-generating networks—as always happens with refugees. Israelis have bank
accounts and securities, but the moment an outward exodus began, Israeli banks,
bonds, and stocks would quickly fail. In many cases, rebuilding that wealth and
restarting those incomes would be impossible.
Financial collapse wouldn’t be limited to Israeli
Jews. 2 million Arabs live in Israel, and their finances would implode as
the economy around them vanished. The same is true of Arabs in the Palestinian
territories, as their economy is tightly integrated with the Israeli economy.
Israelis’ current wealth is worth approximately $1.3
trillion, and the sudden collapse of that much wealth would likely set off a
disastrous chain reaction throughout world financial markets. After all,
much smaller bank failures can send world markets reeling.
Another domino effect worth pondering is that Israeli
technology is strategically central to Western military defense systems. Despite
the country’s small size, it is estimated that 10% of the world’s military
exports come from Israel. An exodus would disrupt our defense markets at the
very moment that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea pose deadly threats to
the West.
Israel is also a world powerhouse in medicine and
information technology. How much of these industries could be relocated or
replicated outside of Israel, and what lines of research would vanish? Good
question.
Back Where You Came From
Pressed on the broader implications of her tweets, the
Poet also agreed that non-Indigenous Americans are colonialist usurpers and
hinted that they, too, should be sent back to where they belong. (Personally,
I will be able to choose from among Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, Czechia, and
Moldova—and maybe Turkey.) As Lileks wrote:
“So the Jews should be moved to the
United States, but don't unpack, because we're moving everyone in United States
out of United States. The good news is it will be okay to be a colonizer for a
week or two until we sort out the paperwork and figure where you're going. …
It's not just the wisdom of these bright lights that inspires, it's the way
it's matched with such can-do practicality.”
Lileks noted that, continuing with her logic:
“everyone with European ancestry
has to leave Central and South America, and pile back into Spain and Portugal.”
I’ll add that the estimated 16 million descendants of
Genghis Khan—who are now genetically identifiable—will have to “go back where
they belong” and live among the current 3.3 million residents of
Mongolia. Carried to its logical conclusion, the Poet’s relocation diktats
will result in an extraordinarily crowded Olduvai Gorge.
If Israel’s Jews were hurled “back where they came from,”
nearly half would be deposited in their ancestral homelands in Europe—where 6
million of their kin were slaughtered within living memory, and where few of
their coreligionists still remain. So, smallish numbers, for example,
would be deposited, in places like Belarus, Poland, Bosnia, Estonia. They would
lack financial resources, job prospects, knowledge of the local languages, or
sizable Jewish communities to assist them. They would instantly become highly
resented burdens on the nations where they were dropped.
For slightly over half of Jewish Israelis, “back where
they came from” would mean Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia,
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and other realms of the Muslim world, where their
ancient communities were plundered, ravaged, and driven into exile in the
decades after Europe’s killing fields fell silent.
Both in Europe and in the Muslim World, Jews would be
parachuted alone, impoverished, and helpless into places where mobs today fill
the streets to celebrate all the murder, torture, rape, beheading, kidnapping,
and necrophilia delivered upon the exiles’ families and friends. It should
also be noted that none of these countries has offered to take in large numbers
of such Jewish refugees, and it’s unlikely that many (or any) would.
Of course, some Israeli families have resided
continuously in that land since Biblical times, so sending them “back where
they came from” poses a conundrum. (Ur, perhaps?)
From the River to D.C.
Then there’s the other big idea—that America’s political
leadership should just gather in Washington, D.C. and issue an invitation to
all the newly homeless, newly impoverished Jews to come to America. After
all, from the 17th century till today, 3.5 million Jews did
immigrate to America and fared quite well here. So why not just triple that
figure by bringing an additional 7 million or so overnight?
Indeed, the Jews of Europe were incredibly lucky that the
United States was such a welcoming place in the 18th, 19th,
and early 20th centuries. During that period, three
factors made this possible: (1) America’s economy had a unique capacity to
absorb huge waves of immigration and to offer remunerative work to unskilled
workers; (2) Americans had a remarkably welcoming attitude toward immigrants,
including Jews; and (3) A tightly knit, well-organized Jewish community had
ample resources and community spirit to get the newcomers through the early
years and start them on the way up. None of these things is true in 2023.
America is in no position to absorb a sudden wave of
7,000,000 impoverished immigrants. The country is already experiencing an
immigration crisis. Since Joe Biden became president, an estimated 6,000,000
undocumented immigrants have entered the country, and governors and mayors are
screaming to the heavens about the costs. 100,000 have ended up in New York
City, and Mayor Eric Adams says this the cost of caring for them and the social
turmoil they cause constitutes a crisis that “will destroy New York City.”
Politically, it is unimaginable that 7,000,000 Jews would be admitted to the
country while federal authorities are closing the doors on immigrants of other
nationalities. If it costs, say, $40,000 per year to provide an immigrant with
minimal basic food, clothing, housing, education, and healthcare, 7,000,000 new
immigrants would require nearly $300 billion per year—equivalent to 40% of the
annual U.S. defense budget.
Add to this the fact that you would be bringing millions
of newly impoverished, culturally isolated Jews into a country that is arguably
currently experiencing the most dangerous wave of antisemitism in the country’s
history. Jews are receiving death threats on campuses and in American
cities across the country. Mass marches were in the streets of America
celebrating Hamas’s bestial attack within hours of the news breaking; these
same mobs were condemning Israel before Israel had taken any retaliatory steps
at all. The Dean of the Law School at the University of California—Berkeley
said, “never in my life have I seen or felt the antisemitism of the last few
weeks.” News accounts have shown threats and assaults against Jews across
America. University professors celebrate the slaughter of October 7. In Los
Angeles, a professor allegedly killed a 69-year-old Jewish man for the offense
of carrying an Israeli flag. Some American Jews are arming themselves and
checking their passports. It’s not clear that America today Di Goldeneh
Medinah (The Golden Land) to which Jews arrived a century ago.
But, of course, this whole issue is moot, as no one has
invited 7,000,000 Jews to come en masse to the U.S., and no
one will.
Afterword
One can have a thoughtful debate over the history,
ethics, and impacts of the Balfour Declaration, the severing of present-day
Jordan from the rest of Britain’s Palestine Mandate, the relocation of
displaced European Jews to British Palestine, the U.N. Partition Plan of 1947,
the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, and Israel’s relationship with
the West Bank and Gaza since Arab nations failed attacks on Israel in 1967 and
1973. On the other hand, seeking to reverse those events, 80 to 100 years
later, is a barbarous notion.
The 20th century was a time of great and
terrible migrations, and those forced to move and those who lived where the
migrants came did, indeed, experience hardships. But for some strange
reason, Israel is unique in experiencing demands that they reverse the mostly
involuntary migrations that they underwent 50, 75, 100, 150 years ago. No one
today argues that the world should undo the 1947 partition of India (10-20 million
displaced and up to 2 million killed). Or the expulsion of 340,000 Volga
Germans who had lived for centuries in Ukraine and thereabouts. The expulsion
of 3 million Sudeten Germans from then-Czechoslovakia. The repeated relocations
of Poles and Germans and Ukrainians as Poland blinked in and out of existence
and as its borders moved repeatedly. The various population separations during
and following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Forced relocations of Greeks,
Turks, and Cypriots. Of Kurds by Iran and Iraq. Of various Syrian ethnicities
by the Assad regime. The mass deportations of Yemenites by Saudi Arabia.
Chinese in Tibet. Only Jews need to move again.
Decades ago, a wise friend, after hearing that Jews
should leave Palestine, told me his reaction is, “Will someone please tell me
in which year was everyone in the world where they’re supposed to be?
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