The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the World Jewish Congress and the Pensioner Affairs Ministry of Israel are beginning a new stage in the campaign to attract international attention to the rights of Jewish refugees who have left Arabian countries after 1948. This topic is to become key in the negotiations agenda between the Arabian countries and Israel.

According to the data of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, over 850 thousand of Jewish refugees from Arabian countries have left the countries of their residence due to persecution that had begun after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. In many cases, their property had also been seized.

The Israeli government is currently finishing the layout for the National Memorial Day of Jewish Refugees from Arabic Countries. It is also planned to create a special museum to document the history of Jewish community of a number of countries, as well as to preserve their cultural heritage; the comparison of the stories of thousands of refugee witnesses will help to make this one of the central questions on the international diplomatic arena.

The law passed by Knesset in 2010 obliges any Israel government conducting peace talks with Palestinians to include demands of compensation to Jewish refugees as an important part of any treaties regarding the final status of a just and peaceful coexistence in the Near East.

Currently, the Pensioner Affairs Ministry of Israel has been able to digitize over 20 thousand documents related to the history of Jewish refugees, and the work on further collecting such documents and witness reports will be continued in coordination with various interested parties representing Jews from Arabic countries.

The “I Am a Refugee” project, which has a start fund of 2 million shekels, calls for refugees and their descendants to provide their own witness accounts (documents and photos) to fill the consolidated archive, similar to the Holocaust victms' archive in the Yad Vashem Center.

The World Jewish Congress calls for the governments of different countries, as well as the UN, to take the appropriate legislative initiatives, which would guarantee the importance of the problem of Jewish refugees for the entire global community.

The WJC and the Israel MFA are preparing a number of media events at the UN headquarters in New York, to convincingly attract attention of the global community to this important Jewish program. These events will be timed to the beginning of the UN General Assembly.

The WJC and the Pensioner Affairs Ministry of Israel are also preparing an international conference in September titled “Justice for Jewish Refugees From Arabian Countries.”

The Euro-Asian Jewish Congress calls to the member organizations of the EAJC to make an effort to elucidate the Jewish position on this question to the governments and ministries of foreign affairs of their respective countries in our region.