The Mizrahi exodus

What happened

In 1948 there were roughly 851,000 Jews living in eight Arab countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. ¹ By 2018 the same eight countries held about 3,330 Jews between them. ¹ Some of these communities had been in place for more than 2,500 years. ¹⁰ They emptied out in about a generation.

It did not happen the same way twice. Iraq's community numbered about 135,000 in 1948. ¹ It had already been shaken by the Farhud, the pogrom in Baghdad on June 1 and 2, 1941, in which an official Iraqi commission counted 128 Jews killed and 210 injured, with other estimates running between 150 and 180 dead, and roughly 1,500 Jewish homes and businesses looted. ² In 1950 the Iraqi parliament allowed Jews to leave within a year on the condition that they forfeit their citizenship. ¹ Between May 1950 and August 1951 about 110,000 were airlifted out in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, with another 20,000 leaving by way of Iran. ¹ The property of those who left was then frozen. ¹ Conditions for the few who stayed kept deteriorating. On January 27, 1969, fourteen men, eleven of them Jews, were hanged in Baghdad's public squares after staged trials, and crowds paraded past the scaffolds. ³

Egypt's 75,000 Jews were bombed before they were expelled. ¹ Between June and November 1948, bombs in Cairo's Jewish quarter killed more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200. ⁴ After the 1956 Sinai campaign, Egypt's minister of religious affairs issued a proclamation, read in mosques on November 23, declaring that all Jews were Zionists and enemies of the state. ⁴ Almost 25,000 were expelled, allowed one suitcase and a limited amount of cash, and made to sign papers "donating" their property to the Egyptian government. ⁴ About 1,000 more were imprisoned or detained. ⁴

Libya's 38,000 Jews lived through a pogrom in Tripoli on November 5, 1945 that killed more than 140 people and looted nearly every synagogue, and riots on June 12, 1948 that killed 12 more and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. ¹⁵ The roughly 7,000 who remained by 1967 faced violence after the Six-Day War that killed 18 and effectively ended the community. ⁵ When Muammar Gaddafi took power in 1969, all remaining Jewish property was confiscated and all debts owed to Jews were canceled. ⁵ Syria's government had frozen Jewish bank accounts and confiscated Jewish property as early as 1945. ¹

Yemen had about 55,000 Jews in 1948. ⁷ Rioters in Aden, joined by the local police force, killed 82 Jews in 1947. ⁷ Between June 1949 and September 1950, roughly 50,000 Yemenite Jews, close to the entire community, were flown to Israel in what became known as Operation Magic Carpet. ⁷

Morocco held the largest community, about 265,000. ¹ Riots in Oujda and Jerada in June 1948 killed 44 Jews. ⁶ After Morocco declared independence in 1956 the government suspended Jewish emigration to Israel; when it resumed in 1963, more than 100,000 left. ⁶ About 2,000 Jews were still living in Morocco as of 2019. ⁶

Algeria went a different direction entirely. Algerian Jews had been French citizens since the Crémieux Decree of October 24, 1870. ⁸ When Algeria became independent in 1962, the government stripped them of economic rights and harassed the community, and almost 130,000 went to France rather than Israel. ⁸ Only 25,681 Algerian Jews have immigrated to Israel in the entire period since 1948. ⁸

Add it up and roughly 820,000 Jews left Arab countries between 1948 and 1972. About 586,000 were resettled in Israel and more than 200,000 found refuge in Europe and North America. ¹ Israel absorbed 687,624 immigrants in the four years from 1948 through 1951 alone, from Arab lands and from post-Holocaust Europe together. ¹¹ The country's population nearly doubled under the strain. ¹ Assets left behind by Jewish refugees have been estimated at about $700 million in period dollars, roughly $6.7 billion in 2012 terms, against roughly $450 million for Palestinian refugee losses. ¹ Both of those are estimates.

Why it still matters

Security Council Resolution 242, adopted unanimously on November 22, 1967, is the text most peace frameworks since have been built on. Its second operative paragraph affirms the necessity "for achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem." ⁹ The phrase is unqualified. The resolution never says which refugees it means.

That omission is the hook for the claim that Jews from Arab lands belong in the same file. The U.S. House took that up in H.Res. 185, which asserted that roughly 850,000 Jews were displaced from Arab countries, that they meet the international definition of refugees, and that U.S. representatives should insist any UN resolution referencing Palestinian refugees include a comparable reference to Jewish refugees from Arab countries. ¹⁰ The resolution also framed the broader position that a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace should resolve the claims of all displaced groups, Jews and Christians included. ¹⁰

Palestinian refugees and their descendants are still stateless or in limbo, while Mizrahi arrivals received Israeli citizenship almost on landing, so the two claims sit in different postures. Israel also wanted this immigration and organized much of it, and some of the people who boarded those planes were pulled by Zionism as much as pushed by persecution.

Where that argument runs out is on the property. Egypt's 1956 expulsion was an expulsion by proclamation, with the departing signing their homes over to the state. ⁴ Iraq's 1950 law was permission to leave at the price of citizenship, followed by the freezing of everything left behind. ¹ Libya confiscated all remaining Jewish property in 1969 and canceled the debts owed to Jews. ⁵ Syria had frozen Jewish bank accounts back in 1945. ¹ Where people ended up living afterward does not answer any of that.

Our position: the claims are real, mostly uncompensated, and not an argument against Palestinian claims.

The words you'll hear

Mizrahi. Literally "eastern." The catch-all term for Jews from Middle Eastern and North African communities, the ones counted in that 851,000 figure from 1948. ¹

The Farhud. The pogrom in Baghdad on June 1 and 2, 1941, in which an Iraqi commission recorded 128 Jews killed and 210 injured. It radicalized the younger generation and left the community with lasting trauma, and by 1951 about 124,000 of Iraq's 135,000 Jews had gone to Israel. ²

Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. The airlift that moved about 110,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel between May 1950 and August 1951, made possible by the 1950 law trading exit for citizenship. ¹

Operation Magic Carpet. The airlift of roughly 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel between June 1949 and September 1950, effectively the whole community. ⁷

The Crémieux Decree. The French decree of October 24, 1870 granting Algerian Jews French citizenship, which is why the majority of them ended up in France in 1962 rather than in Israel. ⁸

"The refugee problem." The exact phrase in Resolution 242, adopted November 22, 1967. The resolution calls for a just settlement of it without saying which refugees are covered, which is why both sides quote the same line. ⁹