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The Jews Expelled from Jaffa in World War I

(Jerusalem Post) Liat Collins - A little-known chapter in Israel's pre-state history is the fate of the Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportees, Jews expelled by the Ottoman authorities during World War I. Fearing that the Jews might support the British war effort, the Turks decided to remove them from coastal areas. Even before the expulsion of April 1917, thousands of Jews left the area or were deported for refusing to "Ottomanize." Many of the internally displaced were poor people who lacked the means to travel abroad to safety. Some 1,500 reached Kfar Saba, where they lived in overcrowded, makeshift huts and suffered during the first harsh winter from the heavy rains and the cold. Diseases like typhus spread easily and starvation was widespread due to the war. As a result, 240 people are buried in a section of the Kfar Saba Military Cemetery in unidentified graves. There are hundreds of Tel Aviv and Jaffa deportees buried elsewhere - more than 300 in Tiberias, more than 100 in Safed, others in Haifa, Yavne'el, Kinneret, and elsewhere, and even 75 in Damascus. The survivors were able to return home to Tel Aviv only in 1918, under British rule, after the war.
2022-06-09 00:00:00
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