Historian Avi Shlaim: I’m not a refugee, my family left Iraq because we felt ‘insecure’ after Zionists wiped Palestine off the map

"I was five years old in 1950 when my family reluctantly moved from Baghdad to Ramat Gan. We were Arab Jews, we spoke Arabic, our roots went back to the Babylonian exile two and a half millennia ago and my parents did not have the slightest sympathy with Zionism. We were not persecuted but opted to leave because we felt insecure. So, unlike the Palestinians who were driven out of their homes, we were not refugees in the proper sense of the word. But we were truly victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict."
(Avi Shlaim reviewing "In Ishmael’s House: A History of the Jews in Muslim Lands", by Martin Gilbert) The Financial Times
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