How Have the Human Rights of the Jews Improved Since World War Two?

Finally in 1947, the UN voted on a partition of Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs. In May 1948 the British troops finally left Palestine and the State of Israel was declared. This now meant that Jews had an official home where there would be no persecution and their human rights would be preserved. However, the day after the state was declared, armies from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Transjordan (now Jordan) immediately invaded in an attempt to destroy the newly formed Jewish State. The Jews fought bravely and they were fuelled by thought of a home of their own, free of anti-Semitism and degradation, and that if they failed and lost the war it would have resulted in the loss of their human rights and maybe death. Because of the recent reminder of this (the holocaust), they beat the Arab nations and at the same time acquired a large portion of land of the Arabs, including West Jerusalem.

With the quota immigration system gone, Jewish immigrants began to pour into Israel from all over the world. However some Jews in various places were prevented from immigrating. As wonderful as the Jews had expected it to be in the newly formed Israel, they were wrong. The Arabs continuously bombarded the Israeli Jews with problems.

Israel was a main protagonist to a series of rescue campaigns aimed at bringing persecuted Jews to Israel from countries, which did not allow exit. For example, Israel organised a series of operations to evacuate Jews from Yemen, Iraq and Iran. In Yemen the Jews were persecuted and denied their human rights, and they were constant victims to pogroms afflicted by the Muslims. In Iraq the Jewish community also fell victim to pogroms from pro nazi groups led by a man called Rashid Ali, and they were in desperate need for help. In Iran the Jews were slightly better off than the Jews in Iraq and Yemen because they did not have half as many incidents of persecution or pogroms, however anti-Semitism was large and harsh. One of the most famous rescue operations was between June 1949 to September 1950, when the majority of the Jewish Yemenite community immigrated to Israel, in an operation called 'magic carpet'. Civil war stopped any further migration from Yemen. This ensured that the human rights of the Yemenite Jews were now reassured as they were now living in a Jewish land of Israel.

After the six-day war in 1967, Russian Jews realised that it was possible to have a Jewish state, and a state that would fully preserve their human rights and protect them against enemies with their own Jewish army, which has proved it can fight. The Russian Jews felt very strong about being protected from anti-Semitism and persecution because they were used to a lot of anti-Semitism from the ruling communist government in Russia that did not let them emigrate. There was then an influx in applications for exit visas to Palestine, in Russia. However, the Jews were now persecuted during the 1970's and 1980's for trying to leave. An example of this was with a man called Natan Sharansky. He was imprisoned for requesting immigration into Israel from Russia. His wife was granted permission to leave and she then went touring around the world, campaigning for the release of her husband. Due to worldwide pressure, Russia allowed Sharansky his freedom and emigration pass. This gave hope to other Russian Jews. Whilst Eastern European Jews were suffering, the Western European Jews had a long enjoyed a period of religious and racial freedom and the preservation of their human rights. When communism fell in Russia around 1988 and a lot of Jews immigrated to Israel, the attitude to Jews in other communist countries changed, and they were allowed to emigrate.

After Israel overcame its major wars, it could concentrate on keeping the human rights of its occupants, the Jews, and their human rights could not have been properly kept if there was no state of Israel. However in some places, anti-Semitism still occurs and so does persecution, even in places in Western Europe. For example, there was an article published in a London Jewish paper in 1999, called 'The Jewish Chronicle' that said:

"A sharp rise in the number of anti-Semitic attacks - including physical

assaults - has been recorded in the past three months by Anglo-Jewish defence

officials".

This shows that anti-Semitism still exists, more strongly in some places than others, although it is nowhere near as strong or as bad and frequent as that before the Second World War.