Tag: Jewish refugees

Americans Last! Groups Revitalized by Biden Promises to Immediately Increase Refugee Admissions

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
HIAS CEO Hetfield (right) received Islamic Relief USA’s “Courage” award in 2017. https://www.hias.org/blog/hias-receives-courage-award-islamic-relief-usa-tireless-work-assisting-refugees

Last Friday “faith based” groups huddled (virtually) with demented Joe‘s proposed head of Homeland Security and declared themselves “refreshed” by promises from their dear leader.

According to Religion News Service, here are the attendees, in addition to Mark Hetfield of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), who are especially thrilled at the prospect of more impoverished Muslims and other third worlders expected to arrive in the US beginning in January:

(I have highlighted some of my personal favorites)

According to a Biden transition official, the meeting also included representatives from Catholic Charities USA, Emgage, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints[Mormons—ed], Code Legal Aid, Christian Churches Together, Jesuit Refugee Services USA, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Arab American Institute, Bridging Cultures Group, Esperanza, the Ismaili Council for the USA, the Secure Community Network, the Islamic Society of North America and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Those are ‘faith’ groups along with HIAS that DO NOT PUT AMERICANS FIRST. 

As I told Neil Munro at Breitbart (and I plan to post this comment every time I write about the America Lasters, fake humanitarians):

There’s no sense trying to argue with [progressives] except to turn it back and say; ‘What about our own poor people? Why aren’t they interested in taking care of our poor Americans? Our homeless? Why are refugees and immigrants somehow cooler and more desirable to take care of than our own poor people? Have we run out of poor Americans to take care of?’ No, clearly, we have not run out of poor Americans.

So here is what Religion News reported:

Biden DHS nominee has ‘refreshing’ meeting with faith groups about immigration, refugees

 

WASHINGTON (RNS) — President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security held a roundtable meeting with an array of faith groups on Friday (Dec. 18), a gathering participants described as “refreshing” and a shift away from the Trump administration’s combative relationship with religious organizations regarding immigration and refugee policy.

The long list of attendees huddled virtually with Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban American Sephardic Jew and former refugee Biden has tapped as his DHS nominee.

They are especially jazzed at Biden’s promise to open America’s gates to migrants from Muslim countries that hate us!

A Biden transition official noted there was significant energy at the meeting created by Biden’s promise to overturn President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which advocates characterize as a “Muslim ban.” They also discussed laws and regulations governing asylum claims.

Biden says he will one-up Obama!

Biden recently announced at a gathering of the Jesuit Refugee Service that he would raise the refugee ceiling to 125,000, above even the 110,000 cap former President Barack Obama set in his final year in office.

“The door just has not been open for discussion for the last four years for many of us in the human rights community,” Mark Hetfield of HIAS, formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, told Religion News Service after the meeting. “It was nice to actually have a meeting where you can discuss issues — that’s a 180 degree change from what we’ve been enduring for the last four years.”

HIAS has been the ringleader of the anti-Trump ‘faith’ groups since before the President was elected in 2016.  They sued the President over Trump’s attempt to give local governments a say in refugee placement.  HIAS, Church World Service, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service want to decide if your town will be a resettlement site.  They have been making those decisions for decades!

 

 

Last year, three faith-based groups, including HIAS, sued the Trump administration over an executive order granting state and local officials the authority to block refugee resettlement.

“I honestly feel there is no better person in the country to serve in this role than Alejandro,” Hetfield said of Mayorkas, who has served on HIAS’ board.

More here.

Speaking of the HIAS board….

You need to know a few other bits of information.

First, HIAS and the United Nations have formalized their relationship according to a press announcement from the UN yesterday. Supposedly it is the first ‘faith’ group to do so.

Zionists zing Hetfield!

Also, yesterday, a press release from the Zionist Organization of America trumpets that HIAS misleads its supporters and the public on several fronts:

ZOA Urges HIAS: Stop Misleading Statement That HIAS Is “Jewish Refugee Agency” and That “HIAS’ Board is 100% Jewish”

HIAS Falsely States Its Partner “Islamic Relief” Is “Apolitical Humanitarian Group” When IR Is On Israel’s and UAE’s Terrorist Lists

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) released the following statement:

The ZOA urges HIAS and HIAS’ President, CEO, and Board member Mark Joseph Hetfield to stop falsely stating that “HIAS’ Board is 100% Jewish”; to stop misleadingly implying that Hetfield is Jewish and speaks for Jews as a Jew; to stop misleadingly claiming that HIAS is a “Global Jewish Refugee Agency,” when in fact approximately 99% of HIAS’ refugee clients are non-Jews (largely Muslim); and to stop falsely stating that HIAS’ partner, “Islamic Relief,” is an “apolitical humanitarian group.”  In fact, Israel, the UAE, and others designate Islamic Relief as a terror organization.

Read it all.

As Americans continue to struggle due to the Chinese virus, I figured it is time to highlight once again the salaries of those who are doing well by doing good. 

Parents tell your children to grow up to be charity workers.

Here (below) is a screenshot of HIAS salaries from its most recent IRS Form 990(page 7).

Again, if HIAS was a legitimate private ‘charity’ it would be none of our business what they pay their employees. However, since they took in over $20 million in taxpayer dollars reported in this Form 990, nearly half of their income for the year, it is our business.

Of course these six digit salaries pale in comparison to those I reported recently at the IRC.  

Think about it!  Your tax dollars help pay the salaries of these political agitators who have worked tirelessly to defeat our President.

 

UNRWA: Maybe the worst organization in the world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In case you doubt that Israel is singled out by the United Nations, read this paragraph from Jordan Schachtel at American Thinker:

Since World War II, over 50 million people worldwide have been displaced as a result of armed conflict, yet the only group of refugees anointed by the United Nations for specific attention is the one composed of Palestinians.  On their behalf, the U.N. created an exclusive agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Most of the world believes the Palestinians are uniquely oppressed above all peoples.  In actual fact, it is their eternal refugee status and their own behavior that have doomed them to such sorry lives.  The article points out:

The Jewish population forced out of Arab countries was nearly double that of the number of Arabs who left after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War of Independence.

Most of these Jews went to Israel and were never classified as refugees by the UN.  They were simply absorbed into the population.  At the same time, Arab countries refused to take in the Palestinians who were called refugees.  They didn’t want them.  And strategic thinkers like the KGB realized that a continuing population of pathetic refugees would be a terrific weapon against Israel.  And they were right.

So the UN created UNRWA.  Here’s what Schachtel says about that:

UNRWA is currently the largest agency-subdivision of the United Nations, employing a staff of 30,000, most of whom are Palestinians.  From its creation in 1949 to the present day, the number of refugees recognized by the UNRWA has grown from roughly 750,000 to 5,000,000.

The agency now considers “refugees” to include not only the first generation of Palestinians who were displaced in the 1948 Israeli-Arab War, but also their progeny, the children and grandchildren of the initially displaced population.  Given the U.N.’s liberality in designating refugees, it would not defy expectations if the next generation of Palestinians were similarly designated as such, or even if the policy continued in perpetuity.

Despite its purported mission, UNRWA has drawn attention for its ties to radical Islam, rather than its humanitarian relief efforts.  Credible information has surfaced linking UNRWA-funded sites to keeping suspected terrorists on payroll and unreported surrendering of ambulances and supplies to Hamas.

In addition to the refugee agency, the UN has created a number of committees and other entities to promote the Palestinian cause.  And the flow of money to UNRWA has funded all kinds of things of no benefit to the Palestinians, like Yasser Arafat’ Swiss bank account and the terrorist group Hamas.  All of this effort has certainly borne fruit.  Israel is hated more than ever before and more people are openly admitting that it’s not just Israel, it’s “the Jews” that they would like to get rid of.

Do you remember the Jewish refugees of 1948?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Probably not because it is one of those inconvenient historical truths that is buried by the media and policy-makers in their six-decades-old lament about “Palestinian refugees.”

Jewish refugees cross the desert in Yemen. Photo: Courtesy Israeli National Photo Archive

There is a good summary at Frontpage magazine earlier this month (hat tip: Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum).  We have covered this subject in several previous posts which can be found in our Israel and refugees category, here.

June 20 was World Refugee Day, dedicated to nearly 60 million people worldwide who were forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution. One group of refugees rarely acknowledged is the Jews who were indigenous to Muslim lands but compelled to flee around the time that the State of Israel was established.

A Google search for “1948 refugees” produces about 6 million results. All but a few (at least through page six) are about the Palestinian Arab refugees, as if they were the only refugees of 1948. But it is estimated that from the beginning of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War through the early 1970s, up to 1,000,000 Jews fled or were expelled from their ancestral homes in Muslim countries. 260,000 of those refugees reached Israel between 1948 and 1951 and comprised 56% of all immigration to the fledgling state. By 1972, their numbers had reached 600,000.

In 1948, Middle East and North African countries had considerable Jewish populations: Morocco (250,000), Algeria (140,000), Iraq (140,000), Iran (120,000), Egypt (75,000), Tunisia (50,000), Yemen (50,000), Libya (35,000), and Syria (20,000). Today, the indigenous Jews of those countries are virtually extinct (although Morocco and Iran each still has under 10,000 Jews). In most cases, the Jewish population had lived there for millennia.

Read it all.

Photo is from this 2012 article at the Jerusalem Post.

Recognizing Jewish refugees from Arab countries

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As the United Nations continues to bemoan the fate of so-called “Palestinian refugees,” the history of Jewish refugees from the time before and shortly after the creation of the State of Israel has been long forgotten—until now.   Regular readers know this is a topic we’ve discussed on several occasions recently and previous posts can be found in our Israel and Refugees category.

Here is another good article on the issue and it’s worth repeating because any future discussion about the Palestinians and “peace” attempts will necessarily include consideration of fairness to former Jewish refugees.

Here is Michael Curtis writing at the Gatestone Institute (Hat tip:  Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum):

The status of those Jews as refugees has been found to be in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees. The UNHCR announced on two occasions, in February 1957 and in July 1967, that Jews who fled from Arab countries “may be considered prima facie within the mandate of this office,” thus regarding them, according to international law, as bona fide refugees.

The Palestinian narrative of victimhood, emphasizing the pitiful condition of Palestinian refugees, and portraying them as the world’s major refugee problem, has convinced many in the international community to accept this version of their unfortunate plight and the injustices done to them.

That narrative, however, essentially one of historical revisionism, denies the truth that the Jews who left, fled, or were expelled from Arab countries can really be regarded as refugees, as well.

The story of these Jewish refugees has been much less well known than that of the Palestinian refugees, about whose fate international resolutions have been passed, and on whose behalf thirteen UN agencies and organizations have provided aid. The issue of the legitimate rights of the Jewish refugees, and the individual and collective loss of their assets, have not yet been seriously addressed; nor have there been any real attempts in international forums at the restitution of their rights and assets.

The contrast is startling. Between 1949 and 2009 there were 163 resolutions passed in the UN General Assembly dealing with Palestinian refugees; there was not one on Jewish refugees. Similarly, since 1968, the UN Human Rights Council (formerly Commission) has adopted 132 resolutions dealing with the plight of the Palestinian refugees, but not one directed to the Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Other specialized agencies of the UN have been specifically established, or charged, to pay attention to the Palestinian refugees. These refugees have benefited from international financial assistance; the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), since 1950, has provided over $13 billion (in 2007 prices). Jewish refugees have received nothing from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the international organization dealing with refugees all over the world except Palestinians, who have the UNRWA solely devoted to them.

There is more, read it all here.

Forever a thorn in the side of Israel

It should be stunning to those who don’t know already—Palestinian “refugees” are the only people the UNHCR never tries to resettle in other countries.  Indeed they have their own UN agency—UNRWA—to which we in the US send billions of dollars to help maintain them as permanent refugees generation after generation (60 plus years!) while demanding their “right to return” to the land that is now Israel, whereupon Israel would promptly become a Muslim country.

Contrast that to how we quickly did the UN’s bidding and scooped up tens of thousands of Bhutanese/Nepali people expelled from Bhutan (as one reader said because Bhutan feared the ethnic Nepalis would end up out-populating them in their own country—sound familiar!).   The UN and the US did not demand a “right of return” for the Bhutanese/Nepali people to either of those countries which we very easily could have done through financial aid sweeteners (if we needed to get involved at all!).   Instead we simply moved them out to your cities.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am not promoting the mass resettlement of Palestinians (to western countries, let the Arabs take them in) now that Hamas is running the place, but just pointing out the hypocrisy of the United Nations (and fascist one-worlders) when it comes to Israel and refugees generally.

Did we really help the Bhutanese/Nepali “refugees” by bringing them to America, ripping them out of their Buddhist culture, subjecting them to crime and murders in rotten US slum neighborhoods, and jobs in chicken factories?  Really?

LOL!  There is a lot of hypocrisy in the refugee industry and pointing it out keeps me going every day!