Spain expecting up to 200,000 Sephardic Jews to apply for repatriation

The Spanish government expects up to 200,000 Sephardic Jews to apply for citizenship, following a repatriation bill passed last week, according to a Jewish community leader who works with the government and is tasked with helping approve applications. The bill entitles descendants of Jews who were forced to leave centuries ago to apply for citizenship. The ruling goes into effect October 1 and lasts three years.

The bill, approved June 11, was in the works for three years. “It amends an important mistake or injustice that was made 500 years ago,” says Isaac Querub, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, an official government partner that represents the Spanish Jewry. “All the political forces, all the political parties...have been voting in favor of this bill or abstained.... There is consensus of this issue.”

Querub says he anticipates people to apply from Turkey, France, Israel and countries in Latin America. Spain now joins Germany and Portugal in allowing the descendants of Jews who were driven out to return and repatriate. Israel also offers citizenship under a “law of return” for people with Jewish ancestry.

A royal decree passed in 1492 forced Jews living in Spain to convert to Christianity or leave the country, under threat of death. Muslims faced the same ultimatum, though the new bill applies only to Jews, a decision that some people have criticized. The decree continued the policies of the Spanish Inquisition, which began around 1478 with the intention of making Spain an entirely Catholic country. The Spanish government officially rescinded the decree in 1968.

http://www.newsweek.com/spain-expects-200000-jews-apply-citizenship-343586

Absolutely wonderful news, and fantastic Spain has done this. Of course they should have the 'right of return'. So should all people who have been expelled from their lands.

risingsun wrote:Absolutely wonderful news, and fantastic Spain has done this.  Of course they should have the 'right of return'.   So should all people who have been expelled from their lands.  

Does that include East Prussia being returned to Germany and 12 million Germans given the right of return?
How about 800,000 Jews displaced from Muslim nations Sassy?
How about the Jews displaced from Jerusalem by the Jordanians?
How about the Native American Indians in America?

and how far back in time are we going to keep pushing this "your ancestors did a bad thing" nonsense????

500 years for fks sake....

what about the saxons displaced by the normans
or the celts displaced by the romans.....

Of course Netanyahu will hate it, because he wants all Jew to go to Israel so he can expand it across all Palestine. Then of course, if they have the right to return, so should the Palestinians who were driven out and still have the legal documents showing they own the land.

darknessss wrote:and how far back in time are we going to keep pushing this "your ancestors did a bad thing" nonsense????

500 years for fks sake....

what about the saxons displaced by the normans
or the celts displaced by the romans.....

Exactly, demographics change and have changed throughout history. Fine the Spanish want to look good to the world to make amends for past mistakes, but how many will really return here?

Absurd. If someone knows exactly where their ancestors were 500 years ago, they have too much time on their hands.

Well, if it is absurd to give them a right of return to Spain after their expulsion 500 years ago, why is it not absurd that they have the right of return to Israel, where most have no ancestoral heritage and where the people that have an ancestral heritage and proof of it, are denied the right of return? The two views are complete opposites.

Belatucadros wrote:

darknessss wrote:and how far back in time are we going to keep pushing this "your ancestors did a bad thing" nonsense????

500 years for fks sake....

what about the saxons displaced by the normans
or the celts displaced by the romans.....

Exactly, demographics change and have changed throughout history. Fine the Spanish want to look good to the world to make amends for past mistakes, but how many will really return here?

So I presume you do not support the right of return that Netanyahu says all Jews, wherever their ancestors come from, have to 'return' to Israel? You can't have it both ways. There is either a 'right of return' or there isn't. In the case of those who have been given the right to return to Spain, they will have to prove that their ancestors came from there. Netanyahu has said every Jew in the world has the 'right of return' to Israel, even if they have no links to it at all. So chose a side, right of return or no right of return.

risingsun wrote:Well, if it is absurd to give them a right of return to Spain after their expulsion 500 years ago, why is it not absurd that they have the right of return to Israel, where most have no ancestoral heritage and where the people that have an ancestral heritage and proof of it, are denied the right of return?   The two views are complete opposites.

Because its disgusting the Arab nations are not housing these refugees. In many cases 60 years are they fled and were displaced a war started by the Arabs. In other words the Arab nations are del,iberately keeping them in limbo to continue a conflict with Israel. All the 800,000 Jews evicted have been found hones around the world, so have the 12 million Germans displaced after WW2.
It is just a publicity stunt by Spain to make past amends

risingsun wrote:Well, if it is absurd to give them a right of return to Spain after their expulsion 500 years ago, why is it not absurd that they have the right of return to Israel, where most have no ancestoral heritage and where the people that have an ancestral heritage and proof of it, are denied the right of return?   The two views are complete opposites.

No idea. I think the whole thing is absurd.

Can't anyone from the EU go and live in Spain anyway? Can anyone go and live in Israel?

risingsun wrote:

Belatucadros wrote:

Exactly, demographics change and have changed throughout history. Fine the Spanish want to look good to the world to make amends for past mistakes, but how many will really return here?

So I presume you do not support the right of return that Netanyahu says all Jews, wherever their ancestors come from, have to 'return' to Israel?   You can't have it both ways.   There is either a 'right of return' or there isn't.  In the case of those who have been given the right to return to Spain, they will have to prove that their ancestors came from there.  Netanyahu has said every Jew in the world has the 'right of return' to Israel, even if they have no links to it at all.  So chose a side, right of return or no right of return.

You are right I do not support this Zionist view all Jews have a right or return to Israel unless they are facing persecution in other lands.

Well, now you have a problem, because that is what Israel is based on.

And the Palestinians were expelled by the Nakba, long before any war.

risingsun wrote:Well, now you have a problem, because that is what Israel is based on.

I do not have any problem because that is not how Israel is based on, they originally bought land legally from the Ottoman rulers or regional rulers who own land there. So in other words you are trying to argue the Israeli Jews have no right to be there due to some descendants buying up land nearly 200 years ago as well as Jews living there for centuries longer.
That again is abusrd and proves you dont believe they have a right to exist there.
Why not stop there Sassy as many Poles have no right to land they now live in as it was once German, the same with Ukranians.
Its an absurd argument.

Belatucadros wrote:

risingsun wrote:Well, now you have a problem, because that is what Israel is based on.

I do not have any problem because that is not how Israel is based on, they originally bought land legally from the Ottoman rulers or regional rulers who own land there. So in other words you are trying to argue the Israeli Jews have no right to be there due to some descendants buying up land nearly 200 years ago as well as Jews living there for centuries longer.
That again is abusrd and proves you dont believe they have a right to exist there.
Why not stop there Sassy as many Poles have no right to land they now live in as it was once German, the same with Ukranians.
Its an absurd argument.

You don't half talk some rubbish.  The only land they have a right to is the land given to them in 1947 as Israel, and to get they forcibly displaced people who owned the land, who want a right of return to live there with them as equal citizens.  Since then they have stolen huge amounts of land, which is not recognised under international law, and live and build there illegally, throwing off the people who have legal docuements to say they own it and flattening their homes.  Netanyahu has given all Jews world wide the right of return so that they have people to build more illegal settlements and take over more land.  That is what modern day Israel is based on.  They do not have the people to build and live in illegal settlements unless all Jews have the right of return.  They brought in thousands of Russian and European Jews to up their numbers so that they could build the illegal settlements they have now.  Without the right of return, Israel will not be able to fulfill Netanyahu's vision.

Good grief, I didn't believe there was anyone who was that bloody ignorant.



The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs’ inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today.

The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true, as the documentary evidence in this booklet will show. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).

The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists’ intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years)

In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn’t matter. The Arabs’ opposition to Zionism wasn’t based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.

One further point: being Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930’s and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation.

But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic “land without people for a people without land” was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the problem, as we shall see.



http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html

I recommend you read the rest of it as you have fallen for Zionist propaganda wholesale, you must eat it for breakfast.

risingsun wrote:Good grief, I didn't believe there was anyone who was that bloody ignorant.  



The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs’ inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today.

The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true, as the documentary evidence in this booklet will show. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).

The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists’ intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years)

In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist world view that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn’t matter. The Arabs’ opposition to Zionism wasn’t based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.

One further point: being Jewish ourselves, the position we present here is critical of Zionism but is in no way anti-Semitic. We do not believe that the Jews acted worse than any other group might have acted in their situation. The Zionists (who were a distinct minority of the Jewish people until after WWII) had an understandable desire to establish a place where Jews could be masters of their own fate, given the bleak history of Jewish oppression. Especially as the danger to European Jewry crystalized in the late 1930’s and after, the actions of the Zionists were propelled by real desperation.

But so were the actions of the Arabs. The mythic “land without people for a people without land” was already home to 700,000 Palestinians in 1919. This is the root of the problem, as we shall see.



http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html

I recommend you read the rest of it as you have fallen for Zionist propaganda wholesale, you must eat it for breakfast.

Yes Good grief learn some real history:


Some Myths Surrounding the “Palestinians”
All the myths surrounding the Arab “Palestinians” are based on the same premises: 1) the “Palestinian people” have had an identity with the land; 2) that identity has been present for “thousands of years”; 3) the alien Jews “returned after 2000 years” in 1948 to “displace” the “Palestinian Arabs” in the “new” Jewish state; 4) the Arabs were there first—it was Arab land; 5) the Jews “stole” the Arabs’ land; 6) the Jewish terrorists forced the peaceable Arabs to flee from “Palestine”; 7) Palestine is Israel, and Israel constitutes all of Palestine—“In 1948 Palestine became Israel”; only Jews immigrated into “Palestine,” while Arabs were natives there for millennia; 9) there are no places for the “homeless” Palestinian “refugees” to go; 10) the Jews were living in equality and tranquility with the “Palestinian Arabs” before Israel became a state, just as Jews had lived traditionally in peace and harmony throughout the benevolent Arab world; 11) the Arab “Palestinians,” like other Arabs, have “nothing against Jews—only Zionists.”
Contrary to those Arab propaganda claims, 1) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Arabs or Arabic-speaking migrants were wandering in search of subsistence all over the Middle East. The land of “Palestine” proper had been laid waste, causing peasants to flee. 2) Jews and “Zionism” never left the Holy Land, even after the Roman conquest in A.D. 70. 3) The traditional land of “Palestine” included areas both east and west of the Jordan River. 4) The Arabic-speaking “masses” in “Palestine”—what few there were—thought of themselves as “Ottomans or Turks,” as Southern Syrians or as “Arab people”—but never as “Palestinians,” even after effendis and the Mufti tried to incite “nationalism,” and even after T. E. Lawrence had made herculean attempts to inject the Arabic-speaking residents of “Palestine” with nationalism. 5) Imbued with religious prejudice, the Muslims of Palestine erupted into anti-Jewish violence often, and at the call of the Muslim leaders, long before Israel. 6) Those anti-Jewish, apolitical acts were later, by the British, ascribed to “Nationalism.” 7) The bulk of all “Arab” peasantry in the area—East-Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, and others—were rendered “landless” by feudal-like societal structures, natural disasters, extortionate taxation, and corrupt loan sharks. Yet the Jews were cynically charged with creating “landless” Arabs in “Palestine.” The British gave state domain lands, allocated for the “Jewish National Home,” to those “landless” Arabs who claimed they were being “displaced by Jews” in Western Palestine. All the land outside the limited Jewish-settled area of Western Palestine was treated as “Arab” land: more than eighty percent—including even part of Western Palestine—was diverted to the Arabs. 9) The overwhelming bulk of Palestine called “Eastern Palestine,” or “Transjordan,” became the Arab independent state within Palestine, despite the fact that all “Palestine” had been designated as a “Jewish National Home.” 10) The “homelands” to which Arab refugees moved in 1948 included lands that many Arab refugees had only recently left in order to gain the economic advantages of the small Jewish region within Palestine. Those “homelands” where many Arab refugees of 1948 originated included the greater part of “Palestine”—Jordan today—to which the Jews claimed historic rights: “Jordan” was no less a “Palestinian state” than was the Jewish-settled fraction named “Israel.” 11) Those who deprived the Arab “refugees” of homes among families and within their own Arab nation are the Arab-Muslim leaders. 12) The Arab “refugees-emigres,” who by tradition had been migrating into the Jewish-settled areas, were accepted as citizens of Palestine-cum-Jordan, because Jordanians acknowledge that their country is “Palestinian soil.” 13) All other adjacent Arab states refused to grant the dignity of citizenship to those whom they called their Arab brothers. The migrants had left their nearby Arab homelands to share the new prosperity in the Jewish-settled area of Western Palestine, that fraction of the original Jewish homeland retained by the Jews.
As we have seen, it is only in the Jewish-settled area of Western Palestine that the population distribution is relevant. The charge that “Arab Palestinians were excluded from their homeland” has been levied against the Jewish people, based upon the false assumption that Jews were allowed to settle, unrestricted, throughout their “Jewish National Home” of “Palestine,” and thus that Israel was equivalent to all of “Palestine.” Since the land of Israel—mainly the Jewish-inhabited land in 1948—accounted for less than a fourth of the land originally designated “Palestine,” and if the rest of “Palestine” is inhabited by Jordanian/Palestinians in an Arab state carved out of the Palestinian “Jewish National Home”—where Jews are forbidden by law from settling—how, then, can Arabs be said to have been “excluded” from a “Palestinian homeland?”
The situation-changing effect of a detailed analysis of the composition and distribution of the population of Western Palestine, and of the nature of immigration and in-migration into that area, is of immense significance; yet these data have heretofore been almost entirely ignored. There was neither map nor measure readily available even to identify accurately the population or territory actually involved in the Jewish-settled areas that constituted the land where ninety-eight percent of all Jews in “Palestine” would live until after 1948—a fraction of Western Palestine. There has been no relevant recognition of the British land restrictions against Jews, which limited Jewish settlement to only a portion of Western Palestine.
The land in the “Jewish National Home” was treated largely as “Arab Land.” The Jews’ immigration was brutally restricted, while “illegal” Arab immigration was freely permitted—that was in fact the British “system” of immigration. To appease Arab “discontent,” the British violated the international League of Nations Mandate, by “facilitating” Arab settlement onto Jewish-settled land, and by treating the Jews only “on sufferance” in their “Jewish National Home.” No real measure of Arab in-migrants and immigrants was ever taken, because the prevalent erroneous assumption was and still is that those Arab migrants had “always been there.” The omission of such information facilitated the myth of today.

BTW, you forgot the link

risingsun wrote:

BTW, you forgot the link

Joan Peters - From Time Immemorial
http://www.mefacts.com/cached.asp?x_id=11591

So please spare me what you know on history Sassy, only Quill, Eilzel and Irn are on a par in Historical knowledge

Never mind, it's a cached version of http://www.markehrlich.com/authors/JPfti18Xsomemyths.html. which no longer exists.

Its From Time Immemorial:

From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a controversial[1] 1984 book by Joan Peters about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.

According to the book a large fraction of the Arabs of Palestine were not descendants of natives of Palestine at the time of the formation of Israel in 1948, but had arrived in waves of immigration starting in the 19th century and continuing through the period of the British Mandate. At the same time a much larger number of Jews, according to the author, to the Arabs fleeing Palestine, were driven out of the Arab countries and became refugees in Israel. Peters contends that what is referred to the 1948 Palestinian exodus is actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

When the book was published, it was acclaimed by mainstream critics, including Robert St. John. A short time later, the book's central claims were attacked by Norman Finkelstein. Other critics, including Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Yehoshua Porath, followed Finkelstein's criticism and called the book "ludicrous", "worthless" and a "forgery". Some historians rejected the central thesis. Other historians, such as Barbara W. Tuchman and Daniel Pipes, accepted the book's central thesis and claimed that weaknesses in the book do not undermine that thesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Time_Immemorial

Oh dear.

Oh dear, that is just criticism.
At least mine was from a historian sassy instead of Jews for justice.
What you need to do is prove your point right which is shody history.
She makes very good claims in mine.

Theodore H. White called Peters' work a "superlative book" that traces Middle East history with "unmatched skill."

Saul Bellow's endorsement on the cover of the book stated:

"Every political issue claiming the attention of a world public has its 'experts" - news managers, anchor men, ax grinders, and anglers. The great merit of this book is to demonstrate that, on the Palestinian issue, these experts speak from utter ignorance. Millions of people the world over, smothered by false history and propaganda, will be grateful for this clear account of the origins of the Palestinians. From Time Immemorial does not grudge these unhappy people their rights. It does, however, dissolve the claims made by nationalist agitators and correct the false history by which these unfortunate Arabs are imposed upon and exploited."
The book was also praised by Arthur J. Goldberg and Martin Peretz who said: "If (the book is) read, it will change the mind of our generation.”[5][6] Peretz suggested that there was not a single factual error in the book.[7] Walter Reich wrote on the book "fresh and powerful ... an original analysis as well as a synoptic view of a little-known but important human story".

Jehuda Reinharz described the book as "valuable synthesis" and "new analysis" that "convincingly demonstrates that many of those who today call themselves Palestinian refugees are former immigrants or children of such immigrants". Ronald Sanders wrote that Peters' demographics "could change the entire Arab-Jewish polemic over Palestine". Sidney Zion wrote that Peters' book was "the intellectual equivalent of the Six-Day War". Timothy Foote acclaimed that the book is "part historic primer, part polemic, part revelation, and a remarkable document in itself". Lucy Dawidowicz wrote that Peters "brought into the light the historical truth about the Mideast". Barbara Probst Solomon called the book "brilliant, provocative and enlightened". Elie Wiesel described the "insight and analysis" of the book. Similar views were expressed by, Paul Cowan and others.[7]

Some reviewers, while describing the book in favourable terms, did point to certain deficiencies in Peters' scholarship. Martin Kramer in The New Leader (May 1984) wrote that the book raises overdue questions about the demographic history of Palestine in a way that cannot be ignored, but also referred to "serious weaknesses" in the book, and Peters' "rummaging through archives and far more balanced historical studies than her own for whatever evidence she can find to back up her thesis". He goes on to say that "It is specially unfortunate because on the central point of her book, the demographic argument, Peters is probably right."[8] Daniel Pipes in Commentary (July 1984) initially stated that Peters' "historical detective work has produced startling results, which should materially influence the future course of the debate about the Palestinian problem." He did, however, caution readers that "the author is not a historian or someone practiced in writing on politics, and she tends to let her passions carry her away. As a result, the book suffers from chaotic presentation and an excess of partisanship".[9] He later modified his views in a letter to the New York Times, after several academic reviews had shown the technical deficiencies of her book, he argued that Peter's central thesis, of large-scale Arab immigration into Palestine, had still not been refuted, though:

Estimating Real Numbers
The derivation of Palestine migration estimates in this section is based on an uncomplicated imputation theory. Migration becomes a residual claimant for numbers not explained by a population-estimating model based on known initial population stocks and known sets of birth and death rates for that population. In this way, expected population stocks can be derived for any set of subsequent years.

The value of the model depends, of course, on the reliability of the estimates given for initial population stocks and for the rates associated with natural increase. Therein lies the problem with estimating Arab immigration into Palestine. The model itself may be simple and applicable, but its usefulness—as with all estimating models—is contingent upon the quality of the data inputs. That quality in the case of Palestinian migration is compromised by the explicit neglect of illegal entrants. If illegal migrants and subsequently illegal residents escaped the census taker, how could the census account for them? It couldn't and didn't.

It is not surprising then that the British census data produce an Arab Palestinian population growth for 1922-31 that turns out to be generated by natural increase and legal migrations alone. Applying a 2.5 per annum growth rate[30] to a population stock of 589,177 for 1922 generates a 1931 population estimate of 735,799 or 97.6 percent of the 753,822 recorded in the 1931 census. Does the imputation model then "prove" that illegal immigration into Palestine was inconsequential during 1922-31? Not at all. A footnote accompanying the census's population time series acknowledges the presence in Palestine of illegal Arab immigration. But because it could not be recorded, no estimate of its numbers was included in the census count.[31] Ignoring illegal migrants does not mean they don't exist.

Setting illegal immigration into Palestine aside, the imputation model does generate substantial migrations of Arab Palestinians within Palestine itself and confirms what many demographers, historians, government administrators, and economists have alluded to: the migration of Arab Palestinians from villages, towns, and cities of low economic opportunity to villages, towns, and cities of higher economic opportunity.

Which towns, villages, and cities offered the higher economic opportunity? Analyzing the 1922 and 1931 demographic data by sub-district and separating those sub-districts of Palestine that eventually became 1948 Israel—that is, sub-districts that had relatively large Jewish populations (with accompanying Jewish capital and modern technology)—from those that were not designated as part of 1948 Israel, identified not only the direction of Arab Palestinian migration within Palestine but its magnitude as well.[32]

The Arab Palestinian populations within those sub-districts that eventually became Israel increased from 321,866 in 1922 to 463,288 in 1931 or by 141,422. Applying the 2.5 per annum natural rate of population growth to the 1922 Arab Palestinian population generates an expected population size for 1931 of 398,498 or 64,790 less than the actual population recorded in the British census. By imputation, this unaccounted population increase must have been either illegal immigration not accounted for in the British census and/or registered Arab Palestinians moving from outside the Jewish-identified sub-districts to those sub-districts so identified. This 1922-31 Arab migration into the Jewish sub-districts represented 11.8 percent of the total 1931 Arab population residing in those sub-districts and as much as 36.8 percent of its 1922-31 growth.

That over 10 percent of the 1931 Arab Palestinian population in those sub-districts that eventually became Israel had immigrated to those sub-districts within the 1922-31 years is a datum of considerable significance. It is consistent with the fragmentary evidence of illegal migration to and within Palestine; it supports the idea of linkage between economic disparities and migratory impulses—a linkage universally accepted; it undercuts the thesis of "spatial stickiness" attributed by some scholars to the Arab Palestinian population of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and it provides strong circumstantial evidence that the illegal Arab immigration into Palestine, like that within Palestine, was of consequence as well.




Denying the Evidence
As compelling as the arguments and evidence supporting consequential illegal immigration may be to some scholars, they are clearly unconvincing to others. The single most cited contemporary publication on Palestinian demography is Justin McCarthy's 1990 The Population of Palestine. Of McCarthy's 43 pages of descriptive analysis—supplemented by 188 pages of demographic tables copied directly from Ottoman, European, and Jewish source materials—slightly more than one and a half pages are devoted to Arab immigration into and within Palestine during the Ottoman period, and a similar one and a half pages are devoted to Arab immigration during the succeeding mandate period.[33] According to McCarthy, these few pages offer enough critical analysis to close the lid on the "infamous" immigration thesis.

Consider first McCarthy's analysis of Arab immigration during the Ottoman period. That he finds no illegal immigration of consequence is not surprising because McCarthy uses official Ottoman registration lists that, by the nature of its classifications, take no account of the unreported, illegal immigration. That is to say, if you look in a haystack for a needle that wasn't put there, the probability is high you won't find it. It is strange that that idea had not occurred to McCarthy. Choosing to focus on the official registration lists allows him to write:

From the analysis of rates of increase of the Muslim population of the three Palestinian sanjaks [Ottoman sub-provinces], one can say with certainty that Muslim immigration after 1870 was small.[34]

Reflecting elsewhere on the possibility that the immigration may have occurred over an extended period of time, McCarthy writes: "To postulate such an immigration … stretches the limits of credulity."[35]

McCarthy's treatment of the linkage between economic disparities and migration impulses appears to be even more disingenuous. He writes: "The question of the relative economic development of Palestine in Ottoman times is not a matter to be discussed here."[36] Nor is it considered anywhere else in his book. That is to say, McCarthy does not contest the linkage so much as ignore its relevance to the Palestinian situation.[37]

His dismissal of Arab immigration into Palestine during the mandate period is based on a set of assumptions concerning illegal immigration that is both restrictive and unsubstantiated. He contends that even if the illegal immigrants were unreported on entry, their deaths in Palestine would have been registered. So too, he argues, would their children born in Palestine. Deriving estimates based on such registrations, he arrives at this conclusion: immigration was minimal.[38] But he provides no evidence to show that these supposed registrations of births and deaths were actually made. Had McCarthy considered the fact that detection of illegal immigration during the mandate period resulted in imprisonment and deportation and that immigrants, aware of this, may have avoided any formal registration of deaths and births, he would have had to revise his assessment of illegal immigration.

Perhaps the more serious charge against McCarthy's analysis of Arab immigration is his use of Roberto Bachi's estimates. McCarthy's numbers are based, in part, on Bachi's reporting of 900 illegal Arab immigrants per year over the period 1931-45.[39] But McCarthy misrepresents what Bachi's estimate is meant to show. Bachi is careful to identify his 900-per-year illegal Arab immigration estimate as only those discovered by the mandatory authorities. Illegal Arab immigration that went undetected and unreported is not included. He writes:

A detailed analysis presented in Appendix 6.5B on the basis of the registration of part of the illegal migratory traffic, discovered by the Palestine police, shows that legal movements (as reflected in Tables 9.4-9.7) constituted only a small fraction of total Muslim immigration.[40]

To emphasize this point, Bachi writes: "It is hardly credible that illegal movements which were actually discovered included all the illegal entrances which actually occurred, or even the majority of them."[41] As a result, Bachi can only conclude that "in the present state of knowledge, we have been unable to even guess the size of total immigration."[42]

Such a cautionary comment finds no place in McCarthy's analysis or conclusions. Using Bachi's estimates inappropriately, deriving estimates based solely on registration lists, and ignoring completely the linkages between regional economic disparities and migratory impulses, McCarthy confidently concludes,

the vast majority of the Palestinians resident in 1947 were the sons and daughters who were living in Palestine before modern Jewish immigration began. There is no reason to believe that they were not the sons and daughters of Arabs who had been in Palestine for many centuries.[43]

Every Reason to Believe
Therein lies the ideological warfare concerning claims to territorial inheritance and national sovereignty. Contrary to McCarthy's findings or wishes, there is every reason to believe that consequential immigration of Arabs into and within Palestine occurred during the Ottoman and British mandatory periods. Among the most compelling arguments in support of such immigration is the universally acknowledged and practiced linkage between regional economic disparities and migratory impulses.

The precise magnitude of Arab immigration into and within Palestine is, as Bachi noted, unknown. Lack of completeness in Ottoman registration lists and British Mandatory censuses, and the immeasurable illegal, unreported, and undetected immigration during both periods make any estimate a bold venture into creative analysis. In most cases, those venturing into the realm of Palestinian demography—or other demographic analyses based on very crude data—acknowledge its limitations and the tentativeness of the conclusions that may be drawn.

Fred M. Gottheil is a professor in the department of economics, University of Illinois.

http://www.meforum.org/522/the-smoking-gun-arab-immigration-into-palestine