[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 189 (Friday, November 30, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1588-E1589]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        REMEMBERING THE EXPELLED JEWS OF ARAB COUNTRIES AND IRAN

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                              HON. TED POE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, November 30, 2018

  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, today memorializes the more than 
850,000 Jews who were expelled from Arab countries and Iran. Jewish 
communities throughout the Middle East, which had thrived for 
millennia, have long been a persecuted minority. When the

[[Page E1589]]

State of Israel was founded, many Jews were victims of brutal violence 
by their Arab and Iranian neighbors and had to flee their homes. We 
mark this occasion to remember the horrific trauma those Jews 
experienced so that it is never repeated.
  Today, very few of the ancient Jewish communities that dotted the 
Middle East survive. For centuries they lived largely at peace with 
their Muslim and Christian neighbors. Baghdad, Iraq was once the home 
to one of the region's largest Jewish communities. When the British 
entered Baghdad during the First World War, a third of the city was 
Jewish. Today, there is supposedly only five Jewish individuals 
remaining. This is shameful.
  It is astonishing that in a region so rampant with anti-Semitism has 
so little interaction with the people they hate so much. Many Arabs and 
Iranians living today have never met a member of the Jewish community; 
therefore their hatred is based not on their own experiences, but what 
extremists and hatemongers have taught them. They forget that Jews were 
a vital part of their history, when Middle East was an incredibly 
diverse place. Today, it is a region of conflict and radicals, where 
historic Christian communities are also now endangered.
  The story of the expulsion of entire Jewish communities from Arab 
lands is an important part of modern history that tragically affected 
the Jewish nation as a whole as well as the demographic composition of 
the Middle East and North Africa. This is a story must be told.
  And that's just the way it is.

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