Jewish exodus from the Muslim world

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Jewish exodus from the Muslim world
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Antisemitism in the Arab world
Exodus by country
Remembrance
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Aliyah
Concepts
Pre-Modern Aliyah
Aliyah in modern times
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In the 20th century, approximately 900,000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia, primarily as a consequence of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the establishment of the State of Israel. Large-scale migrations were also organized, sponsored, and facilitated by Zionist organizations such as Mossad LeAliyah Bet, the Jewish Agency, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. The mass movement mainly transpired from 1948 to the early 1970s, with one final exodus of Iranian Jews occurring shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979–1980. An estimated 650,000 (72%) of these Jews resettled in Israel.[1]

A number of small-scale Jewish migrations began in many countries of the Middle East in the early 20th century, with the only substantial aliyot (Jewish immigrations to the Land of Israel) coming from Yemen and Syria.[2] Few Jews from Muslim countries immigrated during the existence of the British Mandate for Palestine.[3] Prior to Israel's independence in 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living on lands that now make up the Arab world. Of this figure, just under two-thirds lived in the French- and Italian-controlled regions of North Africa, 15–20% lived in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10% lived in the Kingdom of Egypt, and approximately 7% lived in the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 Jews lived in the Imperial State of Iran and the Republic of Turkey.

The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. In these cases, over 90% of the Jewish population left, despite the necessity of leaving their assets and properties behind.[4] Between 1948 and 1951, 250,000 Jews immigrated to Israel from Arab countries.[5] In response, the Israeli government implemented policies to accommodate 600,000 immigrants over a period of four years, doubling the country's Jewish population.[6] This move encountered mixed reactions in the Knesset; in addition to some Israeli officials, there were those within the Jewish Agency who opposed promoting a large-scale emigration movement among Jews whose lives were not in immediate danger.[6]

Later waves peaked at different times in different regions over the subsequent decades. The peak of the exodus from Egypt occurred in 1956, following the Suez Crisis. The emigrations from the other countries of North Africa peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon was the only Arab country that saw an increase in its Jewish population during this period, due to an influx of Jews from other Arab countries, though this was temporary—by the mid-1970s, the Jewish community of Lebanon had also dwindled. 600,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries had relocated to Israel by 1972,[7][8][9][10] while another 300,000 migrated to France, the United States and Canada. Today, the descendants of Jews who immigrated to Israel from other Middle Eastern lands (known as Mizrahi Jews and Sephardic Jews) constitute more than half of the total Israeli population.[11] In 2009, only 26000 Jews remained in Arab countries and Iran,[12] as well as another 26000 in Turkey.[13] By 2019, the total number of Jews in Arab countries and Iran had declined to 12,700,[14] and in Turkey to 14,800.[15]

The reasons for the exoduses are manifold, including: pull factors, such as the desire to fulfill Zionism, find a better economic status and a secure home in either Israel or Europe and the Americas, and the Israeli government's implementation of official policy in favour of the "One Million Plan" to focus on accommodating Jewish immigrants from Arab- and Muslim-majority countries;[16] and push factors, such as antisemitism, persecution, and pogroms, political instability,[17] poverty,[17] and expulsion. The history of the exodus has been politicized, given its proposed relevance to the historical narrative of the Arab–Israeli conflict.[18][19] When presenting the history, those who view the Jewish exodus as analogous to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight generally emphasize the push factors and consider those who left to have been refugees, while those who oppose that view generally emphasize the pull factors and consider the Jews to have been willing immigrants.[20]

  1. ^ Beker 2005, p. 4.
  2. ^ Simon, Laskier & Reguer 2003, p. 327: "Before the 1940s only two communities, Yemen and Syria, made substantial aliyah."
  3. ^ Picard 2018, p. 4: "In fact, few Jews from Muslim countries immigrated to Palestine during the years of the British Mandate.
  4. ^ Aharoni, Ada (2003). "The Forced Migration of Jews from Arab Countries". Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice. 15 (1). Routledge: 53–60. doi:10.1080/1040265032000059742. ISSN 1040-2659. S2CID 145345386.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference colin63 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b Hakohen, Devorah (2003). Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and Its Repercussions in the 1950s and After. Syracuse University Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-8156-2969-6. After independence, the government presented the Knesset with a plan to double the Jewish population within four years. This meant bringing in 600,000 immigrants in a four-year period, or 150,000 per year. Absorbing 150,000 newcomers annually under the trying conditions facing the new state was a heavy burden indeed. Opponents in the Jewish Agency and the government of mass immigration argued that there was no justification for organizing large-scale emigration among Jews whose lives were not in danger, particularly when the desire and motivation were not their own.
  7. ^ Schwartz, Adi (4 January 2008). "All I Wanted was Justice". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 20 March 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2010.
  8. ^ Malka Hillel Shulewitz, The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands, Continuum 2001, pp. 139 and 155.
  9. ^ Ada Aharoni "The Forced Migration of Jews from Arab Countries Archived 13 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Historical Society of Jews from Egypt website. Accessed 1 February 2009.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Blum1987p69 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Tucker, Spencer C.; Roberts, Priscilla (12 May 2008). The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History [4 volumes]: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-842-2 – via Google Books.
  12. ^ The Rebirth of the Middle East, Jerry M. Rosenberg, Hamilton Books, 2009, page 44
  13. ^ "Turkish – Jewish Friendship Over 500 Years". Retrieved 13 November 2014.
  14. ^ "Jewish Population of the World". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
  15. ^ "Jewish Population of the World". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
  16. ^ Picard 2018, p. 4-5: "There were two major changes in Zionist aliya policy in the first half of the 1940s. The first was the replacement of the preference for selective aliya by support for mass aliya. In 1944, Ben-Gurion called for bringing a million Jews to Palestine, even if public soup kitchens had to be set up to feed them... The second change was the decision to extend the aliya net to include the Jews of Muslim countries. It had become clear that they, too, would be needed to create a Jewish majority in Palestine... Independence and the removal of the British restrictions on Jewish immigration made it possible to implement these policy changes. The large-scale aliya of the next few years was the product of these two changes: it was mass aliya and it included Jews from Muslim countries."
  17. ^ a b Parfitt 1996, p. 285: "... economic straits as their traditional role was whittled away, famine, disease, growing political persecution and increased public hostility, the state of anarchy after the murder of Yahya, a desire to be reunited with family members, incitement and encouragement to leave from [Zionist agents who] played on their religious sensibilities, promises that their passage would be paid to Israel and that their material difficulties would be cared for by the Jewish state, a sense that the Land of Israel was a veritable Eldorado, a sense of history being fulfilled, a fear of missing the boat, a sense that living wretchedly as dhimmis in an Islamic state was no longer God-ordained, a sense that as a people they had been flayed by history long enough: all these played a role. ... Purely religious, messianic sentiment too, had its part but by and large this has been overemphasised."
  18. ^ Yehuda, Shenhav (15 August 2003). "Hitching a Ride on the Magic Carpet". Haaretz. Retrieved 11 May 2011. Any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition. In contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came of their own free will; others arrived against their will. Some lived comfortably and securely in Arab lands; others suffered from fear and oppression.
  19. ^ Yehouda Shenhav 'Arab Jews, population Exchange, and the Palestinian Right of Return,' in Ann M. Lesch, Ian S. Lustick (eds.), Exile and Return: Predicaments of Palestinians and Jews, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-812-22052-0, pp. 225–244, p. 225: "In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced that an agreement had been reached at the Camp David summit to recognize the Jews from Arab countries as "refugees" and that an international fund would provide compensation for the property they left behind when they immigrated to Israel during the 1950s. The immediate political significance of this declaration was to help Israel's prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak, to mobilize Shas's voters (the majority of whom are of Arab descent) in support of the peace process. However, the underlying logic – defining the Jews from Arab countries as refugees-responded to a deeper political theory that was developed in Israel in the 1950s to counterbalance the collective rights of the Palestinian refugees. It is not surprising, therefore, that Palestinians around the world reacted with dismay and rage to this announcement. In its contemporary garb, this "population exchange" theory was proposed to abdicate Israel's responsibility for the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and to alleviate demands to compensate the Palestinian refugees, and serve as a bargaining chip against their right of return. For all practical purposes, the population exchange initiative was used to legitimate Israel's wrongdoing with regard to the transfer of the Palestinian refugees in 1948."
  20. ^ Mendes, Philip (2002). The Forgotten Refugees: the causes of the post-1948 Jewish Exodus from Arab Countries. 14th Jewish Studies Conference Melbourne March 2002.
    –"The Forgotten Refugees". Archived from the original on 13 January 2013. Retrieved 12 June 2007 – via MEFacts.com.
    –"The Forgotten Refugees" – via Palestine Remembered.