You know what? To hell with everything.
A couple of days ago, for my own reasons, I decided to have a look at the Wikipedia page for the Partition Plan. I already knew the general lines of it - mandatory Palestine being partitioned between Jews and Arabs based on population centers, the division looking sort of similar to the current state of things if you made the Gaza strip bigger and gave it a further strap of land by the Egyptian border, each future state having three blobs that get really thin in the connective areas - the Arabs getting most of the central mountain range, a part of the coast around Gaza and some of the Galilee, and the Jews getting the Negev and Aravah, most of the Mediterranean coast from north of Ashdod (Ashdod itself if Arab) all the way to Acre (Acco), and the east galilee, including the Sea of the Galilee (Kineret), while Jerusalem is internationally owned, the Jews accepting the proposal and the Arabs rejecting it, a vote in the UN for it during 29th November 1947, 33 for including the US and the USSR; 13 against including all Arab countries and most Muslim ones; one absent, the proposition being accepted, war breaking immediately and the resolution ending up never being fulfilled to the letter. Those are the basic stuff that I remember from learning it in History class and from the general surrounding culture, not really detailed.
Anyway, on the other side of things, I often heard that Mizrahi and Maghrebi Jews, following this resolution and the founding of the State of Israel, were kicked out of all Arab countries. More importantly, I was told no one cared for all the Jews who now became refugees aside from the State of Israel. However, reading this article poured new light on that situation for me. Now please try to stay with me, the next paragraph is going to be heavy with sarcasm.
It's actually a false narrative, I discovered, that nobody cared for the Jews in Arab countries. Why, representatives from both Egypt and Iraq came foreward to the UN prior to the vote and cautioned that, while currently Jews in their countries are living in peace and perfect harmony with their Arab neighbours, they can't vouch for what might happen if this resolution will pass! They implored the UN to not think only of these Zionist Jews who are a minority anyway, but consider the poor Jews in Arab countries who will suffer due to this resolution! I didn't know that the Egyptian and Iraqi delegations cared so much for the Jews in their country! Especially the Iraqi one, I'm so glad he learned from the Farhud and got better at caring for the Jews in his country!
All right. Sarcasm done. This was a freaking barely-veiled threat, in addition to being absolute rubbish. Beyond that I'm fairly certain dhimmi laws were still applied in most Arab countries, the Farhud wasn't that long ago for Iraq, to my understanding. Now, I admittedly don't know much about it - which is a shame - but I'm pretty sure that it's not something you can call "living in harmony". Also, please. If you can predict your people being violent jerks who will attack the Jews of your country despite them having no connection to the Jewish State to be founded in Palestine, maybe make the effort to actually protect them? You know, instead of victim blame and say it's all the fault of these filthy Zionists? Oh, you don't feel required to protect the Jews of your country? Fancy that, doesn't really sounds like living harmoniously and having equal rights to me!
So, yeah. The expulsion of Jews from Arab countries was not unpredicted. It's just that of those non-Jews who predicted it, they just didn't think any responsibility for it lay on the hands of the people actually harassing Jews. Please remember that next time someone blames Zionists for the exodus of Jews from SWANA countries during the 1940s.
