Israel 44,
May 2, 2024,
Hi Everyone,
I just an evening shift with MDA and will do the same this evening. The shifts are always longer than 8 hours as I plan for 1 hour travel time to arrive a little early. We usually finish 1 hour late and the return traffic it takes 1 hour to get back to the hotel.
I often like to visit small museums in a city just as I like to go to small medical conferences. I find the smaller ones tend to be more personal and allow me to ask questions with ease. I decided to visit the Yemenite Museum in Natanaya, half an hour from Tel Aviv and on the route to my MDA station. I met the curator of the museum, Ester, a charming woman, my age, who is of Yemenite origin. She spent 1 hour with me explaining the Yemenite Jewish people and their culture. The Yemenite Jews left Israel, Judea, around the time of the destruction to the first temple and settled on the peninsula which is now called Yemen. They have a 2000 year old history in that place. They are part of the Mezrahi Jews as opposed to the Sephardic Jewish community. They developed a rich and very different culture.
The Yemenite Jews began to come to Mandate Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century. Due to the severe anti-semitism that developed in the Muslim/Arab countries beginning with the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948. They were forced to leave a place where they had lived peacefully for 2000 years. The world often talks about the 600,000 Palestinian refugees that left Israel in 1948. They forget about the 600,000-900,000 Jewish refugees that left Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, etc. etc.
The Palestinian refugees were often not absorbed into the Arab countries. Instead, they lived in ‘camps’ and accepted 2 billion dollars a year for support from UNRWA for 75 years. A Palestinian refugee was defined as anyone who lived in Mandate Palestine (British governed Palestine) for 2 years. This is the broadest definition of a refugee.
3 things happen to a refugee: 1 he/she dies, 2 he/she receives citizen ship in his/her new country, 3 he/she returns home. On the other hand the refugee status of a Palestinian is inherited from generation to generation no matter who the Palestinian marries. Hence we now have 6 million people claiming refugee status. In 20 years, there will be 12 million. This makes them the fastest growing refugee population in the world with their own private UN refugee organization, UNRWA. Hence the problem of today. UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas. There are 16,000 UNRWA workers on theUN payroll in Gaza and another 14,000 in other Middle East countries. How can I get that job? All other refugees in the world fall under the UNHCR. (The United Nations High Commission for Refugees) Wow. No Palestinian refugee had to move more than 50K. The Jewish refugees had to move 2000-5000K from their homes with no compensation. They were absorbed in the USA, Canada, France and Israel and given immediate citizenship.
Life was not easy for the Yemenites in 1948 in Israel. Israel had to absorb 600,000 refugees from Europe and the Arab countries in 1 year in the newly founded country. To make matters worse, Israel was attacked by its 5 neighbours in an independence war that lasted 2 years. Israel had accepted the partition by the UN. The Palestinians and the Arab countries did not accept the partition. Many new immigrants had to live in tents for years. Israel now has a varied population after 75 years of intermarriage with the Ashkenazie Jews from Eastern and Western Europe, the Sephardic Jews from North Africa and the Mezrahi Jews from the eastern part of the Middle East.
Love,
Brian
gobriantravel 