'Draft law' points to conspiracy against the Jews in Arab countries, scholars say

http://www.canada.com/national.....4e202904de 

'Draft law' points to conspiracy against the Jews in Arab countries, scholars say 
Steven Edwards, CanWest News Service 
Published: Monday, November 05, 2007 

UNITED NATIONS - New research shows there was Arab inter-state "collusion" to persecute and terrorize Jews in Arab countries after Israel's creation, former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler and Jewish rights scholars will announce today in New York. 

While it is known that over a million Jewish families were terrorized and left Arab countries (while living there for close to 3,000 years) after the post-war division of the Palestine mandate, the group is holding a news conference to highlight a rediscovered Arab League "draft law" that suggests a pan-Arab conspiracy was at play. 

The new assessment comes just ahead of a major Israeli-Arab/Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis, Md., where the rights of millions of descendants of up to 600,000 Arab-Palestinian refugees of the Arab-Israeli conflict will be discussed -- but not the rights of the over a million Jewish families squeezed and expelled from Arab countries. 

Without the inter-Arab draft, the measures individual Arab states took against their Jewish citizens may not have been so widespread, the researchers will say. Only 8,000 Jews remain in 10 Arab countries today that once hosted over a million Jewish families and some going back 3,000 years, to the time of king Solomon. 

"We will show that the various state sanctions in Arab countries did not occur haphazardly, but were the result of an international collusion organized by the League of Arab States at the time to set in place a blueprint for the denationalization of their Jewish nationals, the sequestrations of their property and the declaration of Jews as enemies of the state," Mr. Cotler said. 

He said he and his research colleagues will also present evidence showing the United Nations intentionally failed to investigate the matter, in part because an Arab League representative ran the agenda at one of its key debating chambers. 

"It is now clear the United Nations has played a singular role in ignoring and intentionally expunging the whole question of Jewish refugees from Arab countries on the Middle East agenda for the last 60 years," Mr. Cotler said. 

Fellow Canadians David Matas, a Winnipeg refugee lawyer, and Stan Urman, executive director of New York-based Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, will join Mr. Cotler. They co-wrote a landmark 2003 study highlighting separate Arab government decrees that sanctioned repression and persecution of Jews to varying degrees, resulting in confiscation of more than $1-trillion in property belonging to those who left. 

"The existence of the Arab League draft law makes the story of what happened all the more heinous because it represented the acting out of a master plan," Mr. Matas said . 

"It enhances the case for redress, which should at least include recognition of the over a million Jewish refugees, given the peace process speaks of redress for the Arab-Palestinian refugees." 

The researchers hope their work will influence U.S. lawmakers currently considering two bills that call for the rights of all refugees -- Muslims, Jews, Christians and any others displaced in the region-- to be recognized in the peace talks. 

The bills are significant because the United States is a central broker of the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli peace process. 

The researchers will also call on the Canadian government -- as chair of the Refugee Working Group under a peace track launched in Madrid in 1991 -- to include displaced Jews as refugees. 

Today comprising 22 countries, the Arab League had seven members in 1947, the year documents say its political committee drafted a Text of Law concerning Jews. They were Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen. 

After the UN in violation of international laws and treaties and without authority, created Jewish and Arab areas in the Jewish Palestine mandate, laws reflecting what had appeared in the Arab League draft began to appear in Arab countries. 

The draft law calls for registering all Jewish citizens of Arab countries, and freezing their bank accounts to use the money to help fund "resistance to Zionist ambitions in Palestine aka The Land of Israel." This would happen even to those Jews prepared to join an Arab army. A Jew considered an "active Zionist" would be interned as a political prisoner. Such Jews would see their money confiscated. 

Brackets written into the draft law suggest it was intended as a template: "Beginning with (date), all Jewish citizens of (name of country) will be considered as members of the Jewish minority State of Palestine," it begins. 

The researchers located the document in UN and World Jewish Congress archives after spotting a May 16, 1948, New York Times reference to it. In the Times article, Congress officials cited the document as evidence Jews faced grave danger in Arab lands -- something the researchers say turned out to be prophetic.