It is arguably the case that any sweeping ban on entry to the U.S., or any other country, of refugees from one particular background is reprehensible, whether temporary or not, whether enacted by President Trump, or former President Obama. Some linguistic textual interpretations cannot dispel the bad smell which is in the air right now, and bad smell takes time to disappear. That said, there is no need to exaggerate, and compare the current American ban relating to seven Muslim states, to anything connected with the Jewish Holocaust in Europe. The ban is bad enough, so just describing the truth about it will do. Exaggerations just turn it into another political hard ball, and that is unhelpful, as there is so much hypocrisy and double standards involved in the debate. For example, many of those who condemn and rightly so, this shameful ban, openly laud the sweeping ban on entry of Israelis into many Arab and Muslim states. Another such point is the support given by many of the opponents of the current President Trump ban to the Palestinian demand to return Palestinian refugees from the First Arab-Israeli war of 1948 to Israel, while they demand, that current Syrian refugees will ALL be admitted to the U.S. as well as other Western countries. Here is where the reality of the Middle East problems is of such importance, but alas, THIS element of the situation is completely missing from the public discourse.
Regarding Syria, the problem of refugees as unfolding to us right now is not nearer to an end, simply because there is a distinct reason as to why we are grappling with this issue in the first place. This is the intentional genocidal policy of the Assad regime in Syria, deliberately creating ethnic cleansing on a huge, unprecedented scale, designed to dramatically change the demographic balance in Syria against the Sunni Muslim majority and in favor of the Alawite minority, the sect which Assad is a member of. The situation already is horrific, nearly beyond belief. Almost a half of Syria's population are refugees, in their own country and outside of it. Turkey alone has almost three million Syrians, and altogether we can define the problem being in the stage of the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end. Syria is currently the most dramatic example of the Arab predicament, but millions more, many millions from other Arab countries are in line to become refugees. The numbers of today will be dwarfed in the not too distant future by the considerably larger numbers of refugees. With that in mind, the problem of refugees requires solutions which will address the fundamentals of the tragedy, and will go beyond the need to oppose and change bans of all kinds. We talk here about a lot of money, about international cooperation, about resettlement's and rehabilitation on a grand scale.
The UN is the most likely organization which is mandated to deal with these issues, at least if it was to do its job properly, and live up to its charter, both in letter and in spirit. In fact, there are two agencies which are supposed to do exactly that. One is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency For Palestine Refugees In The Near East (UNRWA), of course nothing about the LARGER number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, who were absorbed in Israel without the UN], the other is United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees. Let us dwell a little about UNRWA-an agency of the UN, which has become a hotbed of hatred towards Israel, an agency which constantly inflates the number of people under its care, whose many installations in Gaza , for example, serves in times of hostilities with Israel as a military outpost of Hamas, an agency whose entire mandate is bogus. It deals with "refugees," from 70 years back, and in actual terms, it perpetuates the problem,rather than removes it. The idea is to perpetuate its own existence, and thus provide the Palestinians with another propaganda weapon against Israel. Here is a practical suggestion to people of goodwill in the international community. Scrap the outdated UNRWA, amalgamate it with UNHCR, arrange a world refugees relief fund of 50-100 BN dollars, and invest the money in resettlement in the affected countries of the Middle East, in other Arab countries of the Middle East, as well as in countries where there already are sizable communities of Middle Easterners, mainly Syrians, such as in South America, and first and foremost, stop immediately the ethnic cleansing in Syria. That means an international force of substantial size to be stationed in Syria. The genuine needs of those Palestinians who still use the services of UNRWA can be taken care of by the new united UN refugees agency.
Here is a challenge to the international community -- start dealing with the REAL refugees problems of the Middle East with a view to terminate them, rather than to perpetuate them.