Migration

The Mezze plate, if unknown to readers is a mix of different appetizers of various Middle Eastern foods, often combined together in a mix of powerful flavours and textures. Food in the region is often like its people, a combination of tastes that while creating a wonderful mix of culture and language also can create indigestion in some cases. The following is a mix of issues that have charged the region and its people abroad in the last week, often celebrating victory in conflict and enraging further problems.

-Israel at 60: Last week was the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence as a sovereign nation. At the same time, for many Palestinians it was the remembrance of the Naquba, or ”Catastrophe” of the migration of many from their original homes and towns upon the creation of the new state of Israel. Festivities took place in Israel and among Israelis and Jewish communities all around the world. In 1948, the State of Israel was created as a home for the Jewish people after the mass genocide of the European Jewish community and pogroms of Eastern Jews bringing many into the newly formed nation. While 1.5 million Israeli-Arabs live inside Israel and are a part of Israel society with full legal rights, legal challenges for increased rights for Israel’s Arab minority, Palestinians and even some Jewish people with Eastern roots push the system to promote a better equality among the multicultural Jewish State. Separate from the systemic stresses faced in the Israeli context, the West Bank and Gaza Strip are embroiled in a Hot Peace between Fatah and Hamas who periodically debate and often fight for power and control of a future state of Palestine. While some movements for peace between Israel and Fatah in the West Bank have started to produce results, rocket attacks coming in from Gaza leaves little chance for change despite the best and very last minute efforts of Carter or Bush. Unknown to most outside Israel, the conflict in 2006 did not produce the release of Gilad Shalit who was kidnapped by Hamas at the time. The continued attacks and retaliations, blockades, increased poverty and the maintained hostage taking of Shalit will not help produce any peace in Israel anytime soon and will give more support for creating more walls between the various people in the region.

-Muslim Immigrants to Europe: In a Foreign Policy Association Religion and Politics blog post by one of our charming and intelligent bloggers, Karin Esposito, the integration of Muslims into European society is discussed on her posting: Integrating Immigrant Communities. Karin points out in refer to author Olivier Roy, that after 9/11, the French immigrant riots and the killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh there is a feeling that assimilation and multiculturalism was a failure in the European context. In reference to a HRW report in Immigration in the Netherlands, she points out that tests sent to the home countries of many immigrants may act as indirect discrimination, targeting specific immigrant groups even before they come into the country as detailed in the report. The challenge is far from being resolved, as a new way to view integration will likely have to be created to promote any dialogue between communities, preferably without the use of Cartoons.

-Beirut the next Baghdad?: In a May 18th New York Times article and among media worldwide, the issue of sectarian violence taking charge over the fragile democracy that exists in Lebanon is becoming a great concern to the region. After Hizbollah attacks against Sunni citizens, media and political parties put the Lebanese government and the often targeted and assassinated Hariri family into the spotlight again, Lebanon may be approaching a large conflict between its Shi’a and Sunni communities. Like in Iraq, indiscriminant violence by one community over the other has lead to the declaration of blood feuds among Lebanon’s communities. In the Middle East the extremity of violence often intentionally created humiliation and dishonour to many proud groups and cultures which can only be met by delicate diplomacy or outright revenge and conflict. While the international community often focused its attention on the Israel-Lebanon conflict in 2006, attention and understanding of the divisions now taking place needs to have the attention it deserves to avoid an all out civil war in Lebanon.

Since the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of refugees in countries throughout the Middle East left or were forced to leave without a Pound or a Franc from lands where they had lived in since biblical times. What is often not addressed in English language media or worldwide as a whole, is that many of these people were Jewish communities which were slowly destroyed for political, cultural and religious reasons in the 20th century. Many of these communities eventually inherited the fate of the Jewish Community in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, leaving towns and villages where their cultures and communities thrived for generations for new destinations abroad, slowly losing their heritage and homes to satisfy the desires of the political majority. While not all countries in the Middle East treated their Jewish communities with severe contempt and some communities were given some equality in their respective societies, the majority of Jewish people who had lived for thousands of years in the Middle East were forced to leave for Europe, the Americas the new state of Israel and even Asia.

Many Jewish people from Arab lands settled in France where Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan Jews could speak French and integrate into society. Jewish people from Iraq and other former British colonies settled in London and the United States, even making it as far as China and Singapore. Many settled in Latin America as well, with Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi Jews creating communities in Brazil and Argentina and many Turkish and Syrian Jews settling in Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and even Cuba. In one community in Havana alone, an entire village with all their religious texts and chattels from their original town in Turkey were transplanted into Cuba in the early 1900s. They moved to live in the US Protectorate at the time of Cuba, which spoke Spanish, similar to the dialect of Ladino they inherited from their ancestors who escaped from Spain to live in Turkey, Italy, France and Greece. In 1948, half of Israel’s population alone was made of Jewish people who came from Arab, Persian, Central Asian and Turkish lands. These refugees were often forced to leave their birthplace and all their funds and land built up upon generations in order to arrive poor and homeless in Israel and abroad. While these people often had a difficult time in their birth countries and in Israel upon arrival, their situation has only been given some slight attention in the last 10 years. Almost none of their original communities exist today; making Jewish culture from Arab lands some of the oldest decimated cultures to have been lost to the world in the last 100 years.

Some slight progress has been made in addressing the issue of Jews from Arab and other Middle Eastern lands. On April 1st 2008, the U.S. Congress passed House Resolution 185, which grants first-time-ever recognition to Jewish refugees from Arab countries. For the first time those hundreds of thousands of refugees and emigrants who lost their homes and were turned into poverty were recognised 60 years later as being not simply a forgotten people. US Rep. Ros-Lehtinen made a statement saying:

“Far fewer people are aware of the injustice faced by Jewish refugees from Arab lands and Iran. Many Jews saw their communities, which had existed vibrantly for centuries systematically dismantled. They lost their resources, their homes, and their heritage sites, fleeing in the face of persecution, pogroms, revolutions and brutal dictatorships.”

With many smaller cultures in the Middle East facing persecution in the last 50 to 100 years, the first steps to addressing refugees beyond those well known refugee groups are beginning to take place. Beyond those Jews from Arab lands, other groups such as Zoroastrians, Armenians, Kurdish, Bah’ai, Assyrians, Christians, recent Iraqis and various other oppressed groups and political refugees need to be acknowledged. After 60 years of unknown suffering, this small group of people are finally able to reconcile their history and future as a recognized people and culture in the world community.