The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries (Hebrew: יציאת יהודים ממדינות ערב, Yetziat yehudim mi-medinot Arav; Arabic: هجرة اليهود من الأراضي العربية Hijrat al-Yahud min al-arad' al-Arabiya) was a mass departure, flight and expulsion of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Muslim countries, from 1948 until the early 1970s. Though Jewish migration from Middle Eastern and North African communities began in the late 19th century, and Jews began fleeing some Arab countries in the 1930s and early 1940s, it did not become significant until the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
From 1948 until the early 1970s, 800,000–1,000,000 Jews left, fled, or were expelled from their homes in Arab countries; 260,000 of them reached Israel between 1948 and 1951; and 600,000 by 1972.[1][2][3] Lebanon was the only Arab country to see an increase in its Jewish population after 1948, which was due to an influx of refugees from other Arab countries.[4] However, by the 1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon too dwindled due to hostilities of the Lebanese Civil War. By 2002 Jews from Arab countries and their descendants constituted almost half of Israel's population.[3]
The reasons for the exodus included push factors such as persecution, antisemitism, political instability and expulsion, together with pull factors, such as the desire to fulfill Zionist yearnings or find a better economic and secure home in Europe or the Americas. A significant proportion of Jews left due to political insecurity and the rise of Arab nationalism, and later also due to policies of some Arab governments who sought to present the expulsion of Jews as a crowd-driven retaliatory act for the exodus of Arab refugees from Palestine.[5] Most Libyan Jews fled to Israel by 1951, while the citizenship of the rest was revoked in 1961, and the community remnants were finally evacuated to Italy following the Six Day War. Almost all of Yemeni and Adeni Jews, were evacuated during 1949–1950 in fear of their security. Iraqi and Kurdish Jews were encouraged to leave in 1950 by the Iraqi Government, which had eventually ordered in 1951 "the expulsion of Jews who refused to sign a statement of anti-Zionism".[6] The Jews of Egypt began fleeing the country in 1948,[7] and most of the remaining, some 21,000, were expelled in 1956.[8] The Jews of Algeria were deprived of their citizenship in 1962 and had mostly immediately left the country for France and Israel. Moroccan Jews began leaving for Israel, as a result of the 1948 pogroms, with most of the community leaving in 1960s. Many Jews were required to sell, abandon, or smuggle their property out of the countries they were fleeing.[9][10][11]
An additional 200,000 Jews from non-Arab Muslim countries left their homes due to increasing insecurity and growing hostility since 1948. Many Iranian and Kurdish Jews fled Iran and abandoned their property in fear, that they would remain hostages of a hostile regime.When combined all together, as much as 37% of Jews in Islamic countries—the Arab world, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, left for Israel between May 1948 and the beginning of 1952. They amounted for 56% of the total immigration to the newly founded State of Israel.[12] The exodus of Iranian Jews peaked following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when around 80% of Iranian Jews left the war-torn country for US and Israel. Turkish Jewry had mostly immigrated due to economic reasons and Zionist aspirations, but since the 1990s increasing terrorist attacks against Jews caused security concerns, with the result that many Jews left for Israel.
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Many Jews had experienced tension within the Arab countries, similar to other minorities. Conversely, the idea of Zionism and of a Jewish state was appealing to the Jews; however, this entailed leaving the land in which they had lived for many generations. Insecurity was exacerbated by the process of the Arab struggle for independence and the conflict in Palestine and in some cases this led to physical expulsion and appropriation of property.
A constant flow of Jews from European, Middle Eastern and North African communities increased during the Ottoman period. However, only by the end of the 19th century a more significant immigration from Middle Eastern communities had begun. The Yemeni Jews, first to arrive, were driven primarily by Messianic and religious Zionist aspirations, even though they faced periodic suppression and violence. Yet, the waves of anti-Jewish pogroms in the 19th and the early 20th century across the Middle East and North Africa provided a solid ground for many Jews to consider a new home, whether Israel or elsewhere.
Antisemitism |
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The British mandate over Iraq came to an end in June 1930, and in October 1932 the country became independent. The Iraqi government response to the demand of Assyrian autonomy (a Semitic tribe, affiliated to Nestorian church), turned into a bloody massacre by Iraqi army in August 1933. This event was the first sign to the Jewish community that minority rights were meaningless under Iraqi monarchy. King Faisal, known for his liberal policies, died in September 1933, and was succeeded by Ghazi, his nationalistic anti-British son. Ghazi began promoting Arab nationalist organizations, headed by Syrian and Palestinian exiles. With 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, they were joined by rebels, such as the Mufti of Jerusalem. The exiles preached pan-Arab ideology and fostered anti-Zionist propaganda.[13]
Under Iraqi nationalists, the Nazi propaganda began to infiltrate the country as Nazi Germany was anxious to expand its influence in the Arab world. Dr. Fritz Grobba, who resided in Iraq since 1932, began vigorously and systematically to disseminate hateful propaganda against Jews. Among other things, Arabic translation of Mein Kampf was published and Radio Berlin had begun broadcasting in Arabic language. Anti-Jewish policies had been implemented since 1934, and the confidence of Jews was further shaken by the growing crisis in Palestine in 1936. Between 1936 and 1939 ten Jews were murdered and on eight occasions bombs were thrown on Jewish locations.[14]
In June 1941 a pro-Nazi regime was formed in Iraq, headed by Rashid Ali al-Galyani. Following a widespread propaganda campaign, an anti-Jewish pogrom erupted in the final days of the regime in Baghdad, leading to deaths of 180 Jews. The Farhud pogrom was a shocking event to Iraqi Jewish community, with much of Jewish property seized and as many as 50,000 Iraqi Jews affected. Many displaced Iraqi Jews began fleeing for Israel reaching a rate of 1,000 per year by 1949.[15] Some 10,000 Jews left Iraq in 1941–1949, following the Farhud.
During the Second World War Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya came under Nazi or Vichy French occupation and these Jews were subject to various persecution. In 1942, German troops fighting the Allies in North Africa occupied the Jewish quarter of Benghazi, plundering shops and deporting more than 2,000 Jews across the desert. Sent to work in labor camps, more than one-fifth of that group of Jews perished. At the time, most of the Jews were living in cities of Tripoli and Benghazi and there were smaller numbers in Bayda and Misrata.[16]
In other areas Nazi propaganda targeted Arab populations in order to incite them against British or French rule.[17] National Socialist propaganda contributed to the transfer of racial antisemitism to the Arab world and is likely to have unsettled Jewish communities.[18]
Following the liberation of North Africa by allied forces, antisemitic incitements were still on the high. The most severe racial violence erupted in Tripoli (Libya) in November 1945. Over a period of several days more than 130 Jews (including 36 children) were killed, hundreds were injured, 4,000 were left homeless (displaced) and 2,400 were reduced to poverty. Five synagogues in Tripoli and four in provincial towns were destroyed, and over 1,000 Jewish residences and commercial buildings were plundered in Tripoli alone.[19] The same year, violent anti-Jewish pogroms occurred in other cities across the Arab World, including Cairo (Egypt), which resulted in 10 Jewish victims.
Jewish exodus from Arab countries 1947-1972 |
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Main articles |
Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries |
Background |
Nazi relations with the Arab world · Farhud · Tripoli (1945) · Cairo (1945) · Immigration during and after World War II Israeli Declaration of Independence · Suez Crisis · Algerian War · Six Day War |
Key incidents |
Aleppo (Syria) · Aden (Yemen) · Oujda and Jerada (Morocco) · Tripoli (Libya) · Baghdad (Iraq) |
Arbitration |
WOJAC · JIMENA · The David Project |
Resettlement |
Aliyah · Law of Return · Development towns · North African Jewry in France |
Related topics |
Jewish history · Jewish diaspora · History under Muslim rule Mizrahi Jews · Sephardi Jews · Arab Jews |
With the November 1947 declaration of United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, severe anti-Jewish pogroms with massive casualties erupted across the Arab World. Arab pogroms against Jews in Yemen and Syria were particularly violent. The violence prompted a severe increase in Jewish exodus, with the Aleppo Jewish community deteriorating into decline and soon after the pogrom half the city's Jewish population had left.[20] In 1948, the violence had spread to Egypt, Morocco and Iraq as well, practically covering all Arab countries. At the same time, independent Arab countries began to encourage Jewish emigration to Israel.[21][22][23]
In Libya, Jews were deprived of citizenship, and in Iraq, their property was seized. Those Jews who were forced to emigrate were not allowed to take their property. From 1948 to 1949, the Israeli government secretly airlifted 50,000 Jews from Yemen and from 1950 to 1952, 130,000 Jews were airlifted from Iraq. From 1949 to 1951, 30,000 Jews fled Libya to Israel. In these cases over 90% of the Jewish population opted to leave, despite the necessity of leaving their property behind.[24]
In total it is estimated that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews were forced out or fled from their homes in Arab countries from 1948 until the early 1970s. Some place the emigration peak to a slightly earlier time window of 1944 to 1964, when some 700,000 Jews moved to Israel from Arab countries and were dispossessed of nearly their entire property.[25]
A body representing the Jewish refugees, the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC) estimated in 2006, that Jewish property abandoned in Arab countries would be valued at more than $100 billion, later revising their estimate in 2007 to $300 billion. They also estimated Jewish-owned real-estate left behind in Arab lands at 100,000 square kilometers (four times the size of the state of Israel).[1][9][26][27] estimated by Sidney Zabludoff to be at minimum $700 million in period prices and $6 billion today.[9] The organization asserts that a major cause of the Jewish exodus was a deliberate policy decision taken by the Arab League.[28] In 2007, a Jewish advocacy group JJAC (Justice for Jews from Arab Countries) has too alleged that Arab League members formulated a coordinated policy to expel or force the departure of the Jewish population.[29][30][31]
Almost all Jews of Algeria left upon independence in 1962, particularly as "the Algerian Nationality Code of 1963 excluded non-Muslims from acquiring citizenship",[32] allowing citizenship only to those Algerians who had Muslim paternal fathers and grandfathers.[33] Algeria's 140,000 Jews, who had French citizenship since 1870 (briefly revoked by Vichy France in 1940) left mostly for France, although some went to Israel.[34]
Following the Algerian Civil War most of the thousand-odd Jews living mainly in Algiers and Blida, Constantine, and Oran, left the country. The Algiers synagogue was consequently abandoned after 1994.
Jewish migration from North Africa to France led to the rejuvenation of the French Jewish community, which is now the third largest in the world.
Bahrain's tiny Jewish community, mostly the Jewish descendants of immigrants who entered the country in the early 1900s from Iraq, numbered 600 in 1948. In the wake of the November 29, 1947, U.N. Partition vote, demonstrations against the vote in the Arab world were called for December 2–5. The first two days of demonstrations in Bahrain saw rock throwing against Jews, but on December 5, mobs in the capital of Manama looted Jewish homes and shops, destroyed the synagogue, beat any Jews they could find, and murdered one elderly woman.[35]
Over the next few decades, most left for other countries, especially England; as of 2006 only 36 remained.[36]
In 1948, approximately 75,000 Jews lived in Egypt. About 100 remain today, mostly in Cairo. The exodus of Egyptian Jews had begun following the 1945 Cairo pogrom, though was not significant until 1948. In June 1948, a bomb exploded in Cairo's Karaite quarter, killing 22 Jews. In July 1948, Jewish shops and the Cairo Synagogue were attacked, killing 19 Jews.[1] Hundreds of Jews were arrested and had their property confiscated. Nearly 40% of the Jewish population of Egypt had left the country by 1950.[12]
In 1951, the fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion was translated into Arabic and promoted as an authentic historical document, fueling anti-Semitic sentiments in Egypt.[37] In 1954, the Lavon Affair served as a pretext for further persecution of Egyptian Jews.
In October 1956, when the Suez Crisis erupted, 1,000 Jews were arrested and 500 Jewish businesses were seized by the government. A statement branding the Jews as "Zionists and enemies of the state" was read out in the mosques of Cairo and Alexandria. Jewish bank accounts were confiscated and many Jews lost their jobs. Lawyers, engineers, doctors and teachers were not allowed to work in their professions. Thousands of Jews were ordered to leave the country. They were allowed to take only one suitcase and a small sum of cash, and forced to sign declarations "donating" their property to the Egyptian government. Foreign observers reported that members of Jewish families were taken hostage, apparently to insure that those forced to leave did not speak out against the Egyptian government. Some 25,000 Jews, almost half of the Jewish community left, mainly for Europe, the United States, South America and Israel, after being forced to sign declarations that they were leaving voluntarily, and agreed with the confiscation of their assets. Similar measures were enacted against British and French nationals in retaliation for the invasion. By 1957 the Jewish population of Egypt had fallen to 15,000.[38]
In 1960, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were the subject of an article by Salah Dasuqi, military governor of Cairo, in al-Majallaaa, the official cultural journal.[39] In 1965, the Egyptian government released an English-language pamphlet titled Israel, the Enemy of Africa and distributed it throughout the English-speaking countries of Africa. The pamphlet used the Protocols and The International Jew as its sources and concluded that all the Jews were cheats, thieves, and murderers.[40] In 1967, Jews were detained and tortured, and Jewish homes were confiscated.[1]
In 1948, there were approximately 150,000 Jews in Iraq. The community was concentrated in Baghdad and Basra. By 2003, there were only approximately 100 left of this previously thriving community. In 1941, following Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup, riots known as the Farhud broke out in Baghdad in which approximately 180 Jews were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were looted and 99 Jewish houses were destroyed.[41]
Like most Arab League states, Iraq initially forbade the emigration of its Jews after the 1948 war on the grounds that allowing them to go to Israel would strengthen that state. However, by 1949 Jews were escaping Iraq at about a rate of 1,000 a month.[15]
Hoping to stem the flow of assets from the country, in March 1950 Iraq passed a law of one year duration allowing Jews to emigrate on condition of relinquishing their Iraqi citizenship. They were motivated, according to Ian Black, by "economic considerations, chief of which was that almost all the property of departing Jews reverted to the state treasury" and also that "Jews were seen as a restive and potentially troublesome minority that the country was best rid of." Israel was at first reluctant to absorb all the Jews, but eventually yielded and mounted an operation called "Ezra and Nehemiah" to bring as many of the Iraqi Jews as possible to Israel.
At first, the Zionist movement tried to regulate the amount of registrants, until several issues relating to their legal status were clarified. Later on it gave up on that position and allowed everyone to register. Two weeks after the law went into force, the Iraqi interior minister demanded a CID investigation as to why the Jews were not registering. A mere few hours after the movement allowed registrations, a bomb attack injured four Jews at a café on Abu-Nawas street in Baghdad.
On August 21, 1950, the Iraqi minister of interior threatened the company flying the Jews to have its license revoked if it does not fulfill the quota of 500 Jews per day. Later on, on September 18, 1950, Nuri As-said summoned a representative of the Jewish community and told him that he knows that Israel is behind the delay in the departure of the Jews, and threatened to "take them to the borders". On October 12, 1950, Nuri as-said summoned a senior official of the company and made similar threats again, equating the expulsion of Jews with the expulsion of Palestinians.
Two months before the expiry of the law, by which time about 85,000 Jews had registered, a bombing campaign against Jews in Baghdad began. The law expired in March 1951, but was later extended after the Iraqi government froze and later appropriated the assets of departing Jews (including those who had already left). In 1951 the Iraqi Government passed legislation that made affiliation with Zionism a felony and ordered, "the expulsion of Jews who refused to sign a statement of anti-Zionism".[6]
Between April 1950 and June 1951, five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad occurred. Iraqi authorities eventually arrested 3 Zionist activists for the bombings, sentencing two—Shalom Salah Shalom and Yosef Ibrahim Basri—to death and a third—Yehuda Tajar—to 10 years in jail.[42] Over the decades, there has been much heated debate over whether the bombs were in fact planted by the Mossad in order to encourage Iraqi Jews to emigrate to the newly created state of Israel or whether they were the work of genuine anti-Jewish extremists in Iraq. The issue has been the subject of lawsuits and inquiries in Israel.[43] In May and June 1951, the arms caches of the Zionist underground in Iraq, which had been supplied from Palestine/Israel since the Farhud of 1941, were discovered.
Historian Moshe Gat contends that the claim that the bombings were carried out by Zionists is contrary to the evidence, and in any event the impetus for the Jewish-Iraqi exodus was the imminent expiration of the denaturalisation law (allowing Jews to leave), not the bombing.[44][45]
However, anti-Zionist[46] Naeim Giladi's position that the bombings were "perpetrated by Zionist agents in order to cause fear amongst the Jews, and so promote their exodus to Israel" is shared by other anti-Zionist[47] authors and journalists such as Israeli Black Panthers (1975), David Hirst (1977),[48] Uri Avnery (1988),[48] Abbas Shiblak (1986),[49] and Marion Wolfsohn (1980).[48] Wilbur Crane Eveland held a similar view, outlining the allegation in his 1980 book Ropes of Sand.[50]
During the months after the first bomb, all but a few thousand of the remaining Jews registered for emigration. In total, about 120,000 Jews left Iraq.
In 1969 some 50 of the remaining Iraqi Jews were executed, 11 were publicly executed after show trials and several hundred thousand Iraqis marched past the bodies amid a carnival-like atmosphere.[51]
The area now known as Lebanon was the home of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, dating back to at least 300 BCE. In 1948, there were approximately 24,000[52] The largest communities of Jews in Lebanon were in Beirut, and the villages near Mount Lebanon, Deir al Qamar, Barouk, Bechamoun, and Hasbaya. While the French mandate saw a general improvement in conditions for Jews, the Vichy regime placed restrictions on them. The Jewish community actively supported Lebanese independence after World War II and had mixed attitudes toward Zionism.
Unlike in other Arab countries, the Lebanese Jewish community did not face grave peril during the 1948 Arab-Israel War and was reasonably protected by governmental authorities. Lebanon was also the only Arab country that saw a post-1948 increase in its Jewish population, principally due to the influx of Jewish refugees coming from Syria and Iraq.[4]
However, negative attitudes toward Jews increased after 1948, and, by 1967, most Lebanese Jews had emigrated—to the United States, Canada, France, and Israel. In 1971, Albert Elia, the 69-year-old Secretary-General of the Lebanese Jewish community was kidnapped in Beirut by Syrian agents and imprisoned under torture in Damascus along with Syrian Jews who had attempted to flee the country. A personal appeal by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Prince Sadruddin Agha Khan to the late President Hafez al-Assad failed to secure Elia's release.
The remaining Jewish community was particularly hard hit by the civil war in Lebanon, and, by mid 1970s, the community collpased. In the 1980s, Hezbollah kidnapped several Lebanese Jewish businessmen, and in the 2004 elections, only one Jew voted in the municipal elections. There are now only between 20 and 40 Jews living in Lebanon.[53][54]
In 1948, about 38,000 Jews lived in Libya.[55][56] A series of pogroms started in Tripoli in November 1945; over a period of several days more than 130 Jews (including 36 children) were killed, hundreds were injured, 4,000 were left homeless, and 2,400 were reduced to poverty. Five synagogues in Tripoli and four in provincial towns were destroyed, and over 1,000 Jewish residences and commercial buildings were plundered in Tripoli alone.[19] The pogroms continued in June 1948, when 15 Jews were killed and 280 Jewish homes destroyed.[57]
Between the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and Libyan independence in December 1951 over 30,000 Libyan Jews emigrated to Israel. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, the Jewish population of 4,000 was again subjected to pogroms in which 18 were killed, and many more injured. The Libyan government "urged the Jews to leave the country temporarily", permitting them each to take one suitcase and the equivalent of $50. In June and July over 4,000 traveled to Italy, where they were assisted by the Jewish Agency. 1,300 went on to Israel, 2,200 remained in Italy, and most of the rest went to the United States. A few scores remained in Libya.[58][59]
In 1970 the Libyan government issued new laws which confiscated all the assets of Libya's Jews, issuing in their stead 15 year bonds. However, when the bonds matured no compensation was paid. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi justified this on the grounds that "the alignment of the Jews with Israel, the Arab nations' enemy, has forfeited their right to compensation."[60]
Although the main synagogue in Tripoli was renovated in 1999, it has not reopened for services. The last Jew in Libya, Esmeralda Meghnagi, died in February 2002. Israel is home to about 40,000 Jews of Libyan descent, who maintain unique traditions.[61][62]
In Morocco the Vichy regime during World War II passed discriminatory laws against Jews; for example, Jews were no longer able to get any form of credit, Jews who had homes or businesses in European neighborhoods were expelled, and quotas were imposed limiting the percentage of Jews allowed to practice professions such as law and medicine to two percent.[63] King Muhammad V expressed his personal distaste for these laws, and assured Moroccan Jewish leaders that he would never lay a hand "upon either their persons or property". While there is no concrete evidence of him actually taking any actions to defend Morocco's Jews, it has been argued that he may have worked behind the scenes on their behalf,[64] though this has been refuted by local research.[65]
In June 1948, soon after Israel was established and in the midst of the first Arab-Israeli war, violent anti-Jewish riots broke out in Oujda and Djerada, leading to deaths of 44 Jews. In 1948–9, after the massacres, 18,000 Moroccan Jews left the country for Israel. Later, however, the Jewish exodus from Morocco slowed down to a few thousand a year. Through the early fifties, Zionist organizations encouraged emigration, particularly in the poorer south of the country, seeing Moroccan Jews as valuable contributors to the Jewish State:
...These Jews constitute the best and most suitable human element for settlement in Israel's absorption centers. There were many positive aspects which I found among them: first and foremost, they all know (their agricultural) tasks, and their transfer to agricultural work in Israel will not involve physical and mental difficulties. They are satisfied with few (material needs), which will enable them to confront their early economic problems.—Yehuda Grinker, The Emigration of Atlas Jews to Israel[66]
In 1956, Morocco attained independence. Jews occupied several political positions, including three parliamentary seats and the cabinet position of Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. However, that minister, Leon Benzaquen, did not survive the first cabinet reshuffling, and no Jew was appointed again to a cabinet position.[67] Although the relations with the Jewish community at the highest levels of government were cordial, these attitudes were not shared by the lower ranks of officialdom, which exhibited attitudes that ranged from traditional contempt to outright hostility".[68] Morocco's increasing identification with the Arab world, and pressure on Jewish educational institutions to arabize and conform culturally added to the fears of Moroccan Jews.[68] As a result, emigration to Israel jumped from 8,171 persons in 1954 to 24,994 in 1955, increasing further in 1956.
Between 1956 and 1961, emigration to Israel was prohibited by law; clandestine emigration continued, and a further 18,000 Jews left Morocco. On January 10, 1961, a boat carrying Jews, attempting to flee the country sank off the northern coast of Morocco; the negative publicity associated with this prompted King Muhammad V to allow Jewish emigration, and over the three following years, more than 70,000 Moroccan Jews left the country.[69] By 1967, only 50,000 Jews remained.[70]
The 1967 Six-Day War led to increased Arab-Jewish tensions worldwide, including Morocco, and significant Jewish emigration out of the country continued. By the early 1970s, the Jewish population of Morocco was reduced to 25,000; however, most of this wave of emigration went to France, Belgium, Spain, and Canada, rather than Israel.[70]
Despite their dwindling numbers, Jews continue to play a notable role in Morocco; the King retains a Jewish senior adviser, André Azoulay, and Jewish schools and synagogues receive government subsidies. Despite this, Jewish targets have sometimes been attacked (notably the 2003 bombing attacks on a Jewish community center in Casablanca), and there is sporadic anti-Semitic rhetoric from radical Islamist groups. The late King Hassan II's invitations for Jews to return to Morocco have not been taken up by the people who had emigrated.
According to Esther Benbassa, the migration of Jews from the Maghreb countries was prompted by uncertainty about the future.[71] In 1948, over 250,000[72]-265,000[55] Jews lived in Morocco. By 2001 an estimated 5,230 remained.[73]
The Jewish community in Sudan was concentrated in the capital Khartoum, and had been established in the late 19th century. By the middle of the 20th century the community included some 350 Jews, mainly of Sephardic background, who had constructed a synagogue and a Jewish school. Between 1948 and 1956, some members of the community left the country, and it finally ceased to exist by the early 1960s.[74][75]
In 1947, rioters in Aleppo burned the city's Jewish quarter and killed 75 people.[76] As a result, nearly half of the Jewish population of Aleppo opted to leave the city.[12] In 1948, there were approximately 30,000 Jews in Syria. The Syrian government placed severe restrictions on the Jewish community, including on emigration. Over the next decades, many Jews managed to escape, and the work of supporters, particularly Judy Feld Carr,[77] in smuggling Jews out of Syria, and bringing their plight to the attention of the world, raised awareness of their situation.
Following the Madrid Conference of 1991 the United States put pressure on the Syrian government to ease its restrictions on Jews, and on Passover in 1992, the government of Syria began granting exit visas to Jews on condition that they do not emigrate to Israel. At that time, the country had several thousand Jews; today, under a hundred remain. The rest of the Jewish community have emigrated, mostly to the United States and Israel. There is a large and vibrant Syrian Jewish community in South Brooklyn, New York. In 2004, the Syrian government attempted to establish better relations with the emigrants, and a delegation of a dozen Jews of Syrian origin visited Syria in the spring of that year.[78]
In 1948, approximately 105,000 Jews lived in Tunisia. About 1,500 remain today, mostly in Djerba, Tunis, and Zarzis. Following Tunisia's independence from France in 1956, a number of anti-Jewish policies led to emigration, of which half went to Israel and the other half to France. After attacks in 1967, Jewish emigration both to Israel and France accelerated. There were also attacks in 1982, 1985, and most recently in 2002 when a bomb in Djerba took 21 lives (most of them German tourists) near the local synagogue, in a terrorist attack claimed by Al-Qaeda. (See Ghriba synagogue bombing).
If one includes Aden, there were about 63,000 Jews in Yemen in 1948. Today, there are about 200 left. In 1947, rioters killed at least 80 Jews in Aden, a British colony in southern Yemen. In 1948 the new Zaydi Imam Ahmad bin Yahya unexpectedly allowed his Jewish subjects to leave Yemen, and tens of thousands poured into Aden. The Israeli government's Operation Magic Carpet evacuated around 44,000 Jews from Yemen to Israel in 1949 and 1950.[79] Emigration continued until 1962, when the civil war in Yemen broke out. A small community remained unknown until 1976, but it appears that all infrastructure is lost now.
In 1948, there were between 758,000 and 881,000 Jews (see table below) living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,600. In some Arab states, such as Libya, which was about 3% Jewish, the Jewish community no longer exists; in other Arab countries, only a few hundred Jews remain.
Country or territory | 1948 Jewish population |
1972 Jewish population |
2001 Jewish population[73] |
2008 Jewish population |
---|---|---|---|---|
Aden | 8,000[55] | ~0 | ~0 | |
Algeria | 140,000[55][72] | 1,000[80] | ~0 | ~0 |
Bahrain | 550–600[81] | 36 | around 50[82] | |
Egypt | 75,000[55]–80,000[72] | 500[80] | ~100 | 100 in 2006[83] |
Iraq | 135,000[55]–140,000[72] | 500[80] | ~200 | fewer than 100[84] 7-12 in Baghdad[85][86][87] |
Lebanon | 5,000[55]–20,000[88] | 2,000[80] | < 150 | 20–40 exclusively in Beirut[53][54] |
Libya | 35,000[72]–38,000[55] | 50[80] | 0 | 0 |
Morocco | 250,000[72]–265,000[55] | 31,000[80] | 5,230 | 3,000 in 2006[83] |
Palestine Mandate (Jordanian part) | 10,000 (dwindled to zero after 1948 Palestine War) | 0 (West Bank repopulated) | 0 (West Bank repopulated) | 0 (West Bank repopulated) |
Sudan | 350[74] | ~0[75] | ~0 | |
Syria | 15,000[72]–30,000[55] | 4,000[80] | ~100 | 100 in 2006[89] |
Tunisia | 50,000[72]–105,000[55] | 8,000[80] | ~1,000 | Estimated 1,100 in 2006.[83] |
Yemen | 45,000[72]–55,000[55] | 500[80] | 400–600 | 330[90]–350.[91] |
Total | 758,350–881,350 | <7,300 | <6,400 |
By 1948, about 5,000 Jews existed in Afghanistan, and after they were allowed to emigrate in 1951, most of them moved to Israel and the United States.[92] By 1969, some 300 remained, and most of these left after the Soviet invasion of 1979, leaving 10 Afghan Jews in 1996, most of them in Kabul. More than 10,000 Jews of Afghan descent presently live in Israel. Over 200 families of Afghan Jews live in New York City in USA.[92]
The violence and disruption in Arab life associated with the founding of Israel in 1948 drove an increased anti-Jewish sentiment in neighbouring Iran as well. This continued until 1953, in part because of the weakening of the central government and strengthening of clergy in the political struggles between the shah and prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. From 1948–1953, about one-third of Iranian Jews, most of them poor, emigrated to Israel.[93] David Littman puts the total figure of emigrants to Israel in 1948–1978 at 70,000.[94]
After the deposition of Mossadegh in 1953, the reign of shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the most prosperous era for the Jews of Iran. Prior to the Islamic revolution in 1979, some 80,000 Jews lived in Iran, primarily in the capital Teheran. Since the revolution, the Persian Jewish community has experienced a collapse, plunging to about one fourth of its sizde within three decades, and continues to shrink to this day. Most of Iranian Jews found their way to the US, with lesser numbers arriving to Europe and Israel. About 15% of the Persian Jewish community in Israel were admitted between 1975 and 1991. They immigrated chiefly because of religious persecution.[95]
At the time of Pakistani independence in 1947, some 1,300 Jews remained in Karachi, most of them Bene Israel Jews, observing Sephardic Jewish rites. The exodus of Jewish refugees from Pakistan to Bombay and other cities in India came just prior to the creation of Israel in 1948, when many Muslims, including mohajirs, committed violent anti-Semitic acts against the Bene Israel Jews of Karachi and other Jewish communities in Pakistan. By 1953, less than 500 Jews were reported to reside in all of Pakistan. Anti-Jewish sentiment and violence often flared during ensuing conflicts in the Middle East, resulting in a further movement of Jewish refugees out of Pakistan.
The Jews of Turkey were little affected by the 1948 events in the Arab World, and thus no significant Jewish immigration emerged from Turkey due to persecution, but rather Zionist reasons.
Even though historically speaking populist Antisemitism was rarer in the Ottoman Empire and Anatolia than in Europe,[96] since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, there has been a rise in Antisemitism. On the night of 6/7 September 1955, the Istanbul Pogrom was unleashed. Although primarily aimed at the city's Greek population, the Jewish and Armenian communities of Istanbul were also targeted to a degree. The caused damage was mainly material - a total of over than 4,000 shops and 1,000 houses, belonging to Greeks, Armenians and Jews – were destroyed, it deeply shocked minorities throughout the country, and 10,000 Jews subsequently fled Turkey.[97]
Since 1986, increased attacks on Jewish targets throughout Turkey impacted the security of the community, and urged many to immigrate. The Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul has been attacked by Islamic militants three times.[98] First on 6 September 1986, Arab terrorists gunned down 22 Jewish worshippers and wounded 6 during Shabbat services at Neve Shalom. This attacked was blamed on the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal.[99][100][101] In 1992, the Lebanon-based Shi'ite Muslim group of Hezbollah carried out a bomb against the Synagogue, but nobody was injured.[99][101] The Synagogue was hit again during the 2003 Istanbul bombings alongside the Beth Israel Synagogue, killing 20 and injuring over 300 people, both Jews and Muslims alike.
Despite the increasing anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish attitudes in modern Turkey, Jewish community there is still believed to be the largest among Muslim countries, numbering about 23,000.
Country or territory | 1948 Jewish population |
1972 Jewish population |
2001 Jewish population |
2008 Jewish population |
---|---|---|---|---|
Afghanistan | 5,000 | 500[80] | 1[102] | |
Bangladesh | Unknown | 175, up to 3,500[103] | ||
Iran | 70,000–120,000,[104] 100,000, 140,000–150,000 | 80,000[80] | 10,800 in 2006[83] | |
Pakistan | 2,000, 2,500[105] | 250[80] | A tiny community in Karachi, about 200.[103] | |
Turkey | 80,000[106] | 30,000[80] | 17,800 in 2006[83] | |
Total | 202,000–282,500 | 110,750 | 32,100 |
Within a few years by the Six Day War (1967) there were only remnants of Jewish communities left in most Arab countries. Jews in Arab countries were reduced from more than 800,000 in 1948 to perhaps 16,000 in 1991.[107] Most Jews in Arab countries eventually immigrated to the modern State of Israel,[107] and by 2003 they and their offspring, (including those of mixed lineage) comprised 3,136,436 people, or about 61% of Israel's Jewish population.[108] As of 2011 the Jewish refugees from Arab countries and their descendants (including those of mixed lineage) number between 3,500,000 and 4,000,000. France was also a major destination and about 50% (300,000 people) of French Jews now originate from North Africa.
Of the nearly 900,000 Jewish refugees, approximately 680,000 were absorbed by Israel; the remainder went to Europe (mainly to France) and the Americas.[109][110] Hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees to Israel were temporarily settled in the numerous tent camps. Those were later transformed into ma'abarot (transit camps), where tin dwellings were provided to house up to 220,000 residents. The ma'abarot existed until 1963.
The population of transition camps was gradually absorbed and integrated into Israeli society, a substantial logistical achievement, without help from the United Nations' various refugee organizations. Many of the refugees had a hard time adjusting to the new dominant culture, change of lifestyle and there were claims of discrimination.
In response to the Palestinian Nakba narrative, the term "Jewish Nakba" is sometimes used to refer to the persecution and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries in the years and decades following the creation of the State of Israel. Israeli columnist Ben Dror Yemini, himself a Mizrahi Jew, wrote:[111]
However, there is another Nakba: the Jewish Nakba. During those same years [the 1940s], there was a long line of slaughters, of pogroms, of property confiscation and of deportations against Jews in Islamic countries. This chapter of history has been left in the shadows. The Jewish Nakba was worse than the Palestinian Nakba. The only difference is that the Jews did not turn that Nakba into their founding ethos. To the contrary.
Professor Ada Aharoni, chairman of The World Congress of the Jews from Egypt, argues in an article entitled "What about the Jewish Nakba?" that exposing the truth about the expulsion of the Jews from Arab states could facilitate a genuine peace process, since it would enable Palestinians to realize they were not the only ones who suffered, and thus their sense of "victimization and rejectionism" will decline.[112]
Additionally, Canadian MP and international human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler has referred to the "double Nakba". He criticizes the Arab states' rejectionism of the Jewish state, their subsequent invasion to destroy the newly formed nation, and the punishment meted out against their local Jewish populations:[113]
The result was, therefore, a double Nakba: not only of Palestinian-Arab suffering and the creation of a Palestinian refugee problem, but also, with the assault on Israel and on Jews in Arab countries, the creation of a second, much less known, group of refugees—Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
Yehuda Shenhav has criticized the analogy between Jewish emigration from Arab countries and the Palestinian exodus. He also says "The unfounded, immoral analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi immigrants needlessly embroils members of these two groups in a dispute, degrades the dignity of many Mizrahi Jews, and harms prospects for genuine Jewish-Arab reconciliation."[114]
Advocacy groups acting on behalf of Jewish refugees from Arab countries include:
In March 2008, "[f]or the first time ever, ... a Jewish refugee from an Arab country" appeared before the United Nations Human Rights Council. Regina Bublil-Waldman, a Jewish Libyan refugee and founder of JIMENA, "appeared before the UN Human Rights Council wearing her grandmother's Libyan wedding dress".[121] Justice for Jews from Arab Countries presented a report to the UN Human Rights Council about oppression Jews faced in Arab countries that forced them to find amnesty elsewhere.
At a July 2008 joint session of the United Kingdom's House of Commons and House of Lords convened by Labour MP John Mann and Lord Anderson of Swansea, in co-operation with Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Canadian MP Irwin Cotler said Arab countries and the League of Arab States must acknowledge their role in launching an aggressive war against Israel in 1948 and the perpetration of human rights violations against their respective Jewish nationals. Cotler cited evidence from a report titled Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights And Redress which documented for the first time a pattern of state-sanctioned repression and persecution in Arab countries—including Nuremberg-like laws—that targeted Jewish populations.[122]
Among other notable advocates are the Egyptian born writer Bat Ye'or, who considers herself an Egyptian refugee and considers that experience as one that shaped her perspective.
The assertion that Jewish emigrants from Arab countries should be considered refugees has received mixed reactions from various quarters.
Iraqi-born Ran Cohen, a former member of the Knesset, said: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee". Yemeni-born Yisrael Yeshayahu, former Knesset speaker, Labor Party, stated: "We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations". And Iraqi-born Shlomo Hillel, also a former speaker of the Knesset, Labor Party, claimed: "I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."[123]
Historian Tom Segev stated: "Deciding to emigrate to Israel was often a very personal decision. It was based on the particular circumstances of the individual's life. They were not all poor, or 'dwellers in dark caves and smoking pits'. Nor were they always subject to persecution, repression or discrimination in their native lands. They emigrated for a variety of reasons, depending on the country, the time, the community, and the person."[124]
The official position of the Israeli government is that Jews from Arab countries are considered refugees, and it considers their rights to property left in countries of origin as valid and existent.[125]
In 2008, the Orthodox Sephardi party, Shas, announced its intention to seek compensation for Jewish refugees from Arab states.[126] In 2009, Israeli lawmakers introduced a bill into the Knesset to make compensation for Jewish refugees an integral part of any future peace negotiations by requiring compensation on behalf of current Jewish Israeli citizens, who were expelled from Arab countries after Israel was established in 1948 and leaving behind a significant amount of valuable property. In February 2010, the bill passed its first reading. The bill was sponsored by MK Nissim Ze'ev (Shas) and follows a resolution passed in the United States House of Representatives in 2008, calling for refugee recognition to be extended to Jews and Christians similar to that extended to Palestinians in the course of Middle East peace talks.[127]
The type and extent of linkage between the Jewish exodus from Arab countries and the Palestinian Exodus has also been the source of controversy. Advocacy groups have suggested that there are strong ties between the two processes and some of them even claim that decoupling the two issues is unjust.[128][129][130]
Holocaust restitution expert Sidney Zabludoff has published a calculation that the losses sustained by the Jews who fled Arab countries since 1947 amounts to $6 billion, in contrast to the losses of the Palestinian Arab refugees which he estimates at $3.9 billion (both sums in 2007 dollars).[131]
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