The Volokh Conspiracy - The BBC's Take on Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries:

The BBC reports on a conference of Jewish organizations trying to call attention to the injustices perpetrated on Jews from Arab countries after the creation of Israel. [Note: My father-in-law, late mother-in-law, and their families fled Iraq with the clothes on their back and little else in 1950. My wife's great-grandfather was murdered by an Arab mob in Baghdad in the late 1930s.]

While the BBC does briefly summarize the focus of the conference, the report discusses in detail the views of only one individual. Not an organizer or attendee of the conference, not an expert (such as Bernard Lewis) on the history of Jews in Arab countries, but "the BBC's Arab affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi."

He states, among other things,

the subject is highly controversial as the numbers of Jews who left, and the conditions under which they left, are disputed. He says one undisputed fact is that Jews were part of Arab societies for centuries, where they were fully integrated in their societies, until Israel was established.

In fact, there is no controversy over the numbers. Moreover, not only is it not "undisputed" that Jews were "fully integrated" in Arab societies "for centuries," it's an absurd statement. At best, one can say that in the more cosmoplitan cities of the Arab world such as Baghdad and Cairo, Jews became increasingly integrated in Arab societies starting in the late 19th century, often under the protection of European colonial governments.

(As a sidenote, Jews settled in Iraq, Egypt, and other parts of the Arab world long before the Muslim conquest and before the inhabitants would have been considered "Arabs." A more accurate summary is that Jews lived in various countries in the Middle East for over 2,000 years, their status their had its ups and downs, including during Arab rule, but was never secure. Jews fled in the latter half of the twentieth century because a combination of anti-Israel sentiment, intolerant Arab nationalism, growing Islamism, and the use of anti-Semitism by governing elites to distract the masses from their incompetent, dictatorial rule, made Jewish life increasingly precarious, while the existence of Israel and liberal French immigration for its former colonies made building a life elsewhere possible.)

	[David Bernstein, June 23, 2008 at 5:44pm] Trackbacks The BBC's Take on Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The BBC reports on a conference of Jewish organizations trying to call attention to the injustices perpetrated on Jews from Arab countries after the creation of Israel. [Note: My father-in-law, late mother-in-law, and their families fled Iraq with the clothes on their back and little else in 1950. My wife's great-grandfather was murdered by an Arab mob in Baghdad in the late 1930s.] While the BBC does briefly summarize the focus of the conference, the report discusses in detail the views of only one individual. Not an organizer or attendee of the conference, not an expert (such as Bernard Lewis) on the history of Jews in Arab countries, but "the BBC's Arab affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi." He states, among other things, the subject is highly controversial as the numbers of Jews who left, and the conditions under which they left, are disputed. He says one undisputed fact is that Jews were part of Arab societies for centuries, where they were fully integrated in their societies, until Israel was established. In fact, there is no controversy over the numbers. Moreover, not only is it not "undisputed" that Jews were "fully integrated" in Arab societies "for centuries," it's an absurd statement. At best, one can say that in the more cosmoplitan cities of the Arab world such as Baghdad and Cairo, Jews became increasingly integrated in Arab societies starting in the late 19th century, often under the protection of European colonial governments. (As a sidenote, Jews settled in Iraq, Egypt, and other parts of the Arab world long before the Muslim conquest and before the inhabitants would have been considered "Arabs." A more accurate summary is that Jews lived in various countries in the Middle East for over 2,000 years, their status their had its ups and downs, including during Arab rule, but was never secure. Jews fled in the latter half of the twentieth century because a combination of anti-Israel sentiment, intolerant Arab nationalism, growing Islamism, and the use of anti-Semitism by governing elites to distract the masses from their incompetent, dictatorial rule, made Jewish life increasingly precarious, while the existence of Israel and liberal French immigration for its former colonies made building a life elsewhere possible.)