No, not the Nazis—nor am I referring to the IDF. The world’s most successful ethnic cleanser in history is… the Arab League!

While a number of posters here have no hesitation in branding Israel as “genocidal”, “Nazi-like” and “ethnic cleanser of the worst order”, none of them see fit to even mention that if any group of nations deserves the title of “ethnic cleansers”, it’s the Arab League states.

As early as 1940, Arab states began passing anti-Jewish laws that far outstripped the Nazi “Nuremberg Laws” they were originally based on.

These laws included divestment of property, disenfranchisement, “administrative arrests” and expulsion. See the table below for a comparison between the 1948 Jewish population of Arab states and their Jewish population estimates for 2008.

Country
Aden 8,000(1948) 0(2008)
Algeria 140,000(1948) 0(2008)
Bahrain 600(1948) ~30(2008)
Egypt 75,000-80,000(1948) <100(2008)
Iraq 135,000-140,000(1948) <100 (2008)
Lebanon 5,000(1948) ~40(2008)
Libya 35,000-38,000(1948) 0(2008)
Morocco 250,000-265,000(1948) <7,000(2008)
Qatar No data
Syria 15,000-30,000(1948) <30(2008)
Tunisia 50,000-105,000(1948) ~1,500(2008)
Yemen 45,000-55,000(1948) ~300-400(2008)
Total 758,000-881,000(1948) Less than 9,000(2008)

(Courtesy of Wikipedia, “The Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands”)
Note: this table shows ONLY Arab states. Additional Jewish populations were expelled from Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.

Where did these Jews from Arab lands go when they were expelled from the countries their families had lived in for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years- often with a single suitcase and no more than the equivalent of $50? About 650,000 went to Israel, with the remainder going to Europe, the Americas and Australia.

Fully 68% of the Jewish population of Israel has one or both parents indigenous to the Middle East (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics).

For a fact, the Arab countries are 99% “Jew-free”, an ethnic cleansing that Nazi Germany would have been proud to achieve in Europe. Granted, the Arab countries didn’t try to murder all of them… (at least, not all at once) they “just” stole all the personal and collective assets of their Jewish populations and expelled them, expecting the sudden burden of penniless refugees to overload the fragile economy of Israel at the time.

It was not an easy time for anyone, but Israel did something for the Jewish refugees that all 21 of the Arab states together were not willing to even try to accomplish: by 1964, there were no refugee camps in Israel, and all of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands were integral members of Israeli society. In contrast, Palestinian Arabs are the outcasts of the Arab world, welcome nowhere.

Here are just two of the assets stolen: Property: approximately 100,000 square kilometers (almost 5 times the size of Israel); Estimates of cash, land improvements (buildings, infrastructure, etc.) are estimated at approximately $10 billion in Iraq alone (in 2008 dollars). As opposed to that, Palestinian claims, not counting “lost income” from the lands since 1948 come to $4 billion, (I’ve excluded the lost income claim for the sake of simplicity, since there’s no equivalent claim on the Jewish properties in Arab lands) while the actual area of land claimed has to be less than one-fifth of the Jewish claims for the simple reason that the entirety of Israel is only about one-fifth that size: 20,770 sq. km.[The Times Atlas of the World]).

Why these facts remain largely unknown and certainly ignored by Palestinians and their supporters is no mystery—it would de-legitimize all their arguments for a “right of return” and a right of compensation- until the Jewish refugees from Arab lands are granted the same.