LANDMARK HEARING FOR JEWISH REFUGEES FROM ARAB COUNTRIES: Here is the summary of the article by Andrew Bostom that appears on American Thinker:

Recognition for the Silent Jewish Refugees
By Andrew G. Bostom
Summary

The bicameral Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) will hold a landmark hearing on Thursday July 19th regarding the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to flee their communities in the Arab Muslim nations as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Oriental Jews suffered profound violations of their basic human rights under the Islamic regimes throughout North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf Region.

This persecution -- including pogroms and expropriations -- caused their subsequent flight despite longtime residences in these countries. The two decades following World War II witnessed a rapid dissolution of the major Jewish communities in the Arab Muslim world (and beyond, including Afghanistan, as well as the significant attrition of the Jewish population in Turkey). Even the first decade after World War II saw a reduction by half in the overall Jewish population of the Arab countries.

The July 19, 2007 congressional hearing on Jewish refugees has an immediate, practical goal of providing US legislators with preliminary information before voting on House Resolution 185 and Senate Resolution 85. Under the proposed legislation, the US president would be required to instruct all official representatives of the United States that "explicit reference to Palestinian refugees be matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees, as a matter of law and equity." The historical legacy of this mass Jewish exodus elucidates the bare minimum equity provided in these resolutions. This Thursday's CHRC hearings provide a unique window on the legacy of dhimmitude and Islamic antisemitism which caused the tragic exodus of some 900,000 Jews from the Arab (and non-Arab Muslim) nations, liquidating most of these ancient communities.

But the occasion of these hearings should also serve as a clarion reminder that this is a living legacy for those vestigial remnant Jewish populations still living within the Arab Muslim world, as well as the larger populations of Jews in both non-Arab Iran (in particular), and even Turkey. Finally, it must be acknowledged that this same animus-born of general anti-dhimmi attitudes and specific Islamic antisemitism-has reached genocidal proportions when directed at the Jews of Israel, nearly half of whom are Oriental Jewish refugees and their descendants.

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