LFI vice-chair Dame Louise Ellman MP has spoken about the forgotten plight of the Jewish refugees from the Middle East and north Africa, in a Parliamentary debate.
In a debate in Westminster Hall, Dame Louise Ellman highlighted the tragic plight of the 850,000 Jews displaced from the Middle East in the last seventy years.
“It is a sad reflection on the history of the region that there are now virtually no Jews in the middle east outside of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state,” she stated, emphasising the way that before 1947, cities such as Aleppo, Syria and Baghdad, Iraq had been “renowned hubs of Jewish life.”
Following the UN vote in favour of the creation of a Jewish State, and Israel’s subsequent declaration of independence, institutional persecution forced hundreds of thousands of Jews to flee their homes, destroying communities that had existing in the region for millennia.
One such ancient community was that of Egyptian Jewry and Dame Louise highlighted the way that the 90,000 strong community, faced ”persecution and expulsion” In the 1940s and 50s, with the thousands who fled including Dame Margaret Hodge MP and her family.
Dame Louise stressed the importance of recognising these injustices and correcting their absence in the debates about the refugees associated with Israel’s creation.
Concluding on a hopeful tone, Dame Louise Ellman stated that “I hope that a peaceful solution to current conflicts in the region will once again welcome Jewish people right across the region, to the place of their origins.”
