UN event spotlights history of Jewish refugees from Middle Eastern countries

As the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session opens today, B’nai B’rith International and Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) are hosting an event to raise awareness of the plight of former Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries.

“Over the course of mere decades in the 20th century, most Middle Eastern lands were collectively emptied of some 99% of their Jewish population, pushed out by expulsion and persecution in one of modern history’s most dramatic but little-recognized mass displacements,” the organizations say in a statement.

The event at the Palais des Nations, the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva, will show that the number of displaced Jews in the Middle East exceeded that of the Palestinian Arab refugees, they add.