Ben White says that the 850,000 Jews who left Arab countries in the years after the Nakba were not refugees, by and large, i.e., they were not forced to leave, and that many left for messianic/Zionist reasons, and did so in a somewhat orderly manner. Equating this migration with the Nakba is Zionist propaganda, he says.
While there seems to me truth in each point White makes, I don’t go there. Do those on our side of this issue close off all sympathy to the Jewish/Zionist experience? I believe there was persecution of Arab Jews post the creation of Israel. Mark Cohen said so at JTS last year (and he might agree with some of White’s points). Diminishing human suffering isn’t my game. And the good place that Ali Abunimah is going with his latest piece, on the South Africa model, is some degree of empathy with the Israeli political understanding, knowing that wherever we’re going, we can’t go there without some/many Israelis and Jews.
