Imagine seeing these pictures today and being told they are from Gaza.
They aren't.
These are Jewish refugees in Israel in the 1950s. More than 850,000 Jews fled or were expelled from Arab countries and Iran. They left behind homes, businesses, property, savings, careers, languages, communities and entire lives. Many were educated, prosperous professionals and business owners. They weren't looking for a better lifestyle. They were escaping persecution, pogroms, confiscation and the threat of extermination.
They arrived in a country barely out of a war, with little money and even fewer resources. Many were sent to ma'abarot: makeshift refugee camps made of tents, tin shacks and temporary shelters. No proper sanitation, inadequate medical care, overcrowding, mud, cold and flooding. Take another look at the picture. The misery wasn't theoretical. It was their everyday life.
Nobody pretended their conditions were acceptable. Nobody claims the Israeli authorities got everything right. There was neglect, discrimination and plenty to criticize.
But here's the part that seems to get lost in today's endless performances of moral outrage:
Those refugees didn't turn their camps into permanent monuments to victimhood. They learned a new language, found work, built homes, drained swamps, raised children and helped build a country. Their children and grandchildren became doctors, engineers, professors, artists, soldiers, politicians and entrepreneurs.
They didn't establish an inheritance system for refugee status. Their grandchildren aren't still living in refugee camps, waiting for the world to solve their problems.
And no, they didn't become a movement dedicated to murdering civilians and destroying the country that took them in.
They had every reason to be bitter. Instead, they built a future.
So the next time someone posts pictures of flooded tents in Gaza and calls it proof that an entire people has no future, perhaps they should look at these photographs.
The Jewish refugees of the 1950s had less, started with almost nothing, and still managed to build a country.
Apparently, the difference isn't always the tent. Sometimes it's what you decide to build after you leave it.
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