Maybe if the Arabs didn't kick out the Jewish populations of their various nations, the Jews wouldn't have needed to form Israel. This is the moral failure they refuse to bring up.
It is within the last 55 years that the world witnessed the mass displacement of ... long-time Jewish residents from the totalitarian regimes, the brutal dictatorships and monarchies of Syria, Trans-Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.
...The result: over 850,000 Jews were uprooted from the lands where they and their ancestors had lived for generations.
In 1934, Muslims incited by events in Nazi Germany, rampaged in Constantine killing 25 Jews and injuring many more. Before 1962, there were 60 Jewish communities, each maintaining their own rabbis, synagogues and educational institutions. After being granted independence in 1962, the Algerian government harassed the Jewish community and deprived Jews of their economic rights. As a result, almost 130,000 Algerian Jews immigrated to France and, since 1948, 25,681 Algerian Jews have immigrated to Israel.
Egypt
Jews have lived in Egypt since Biblical times. Israelite tribes first moved to the Land of Goshen (the north-eastern edge of the Nile Delta) during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1375-1358 B.C).
Over the years, Jews have sought shelter and dwelled in Egypt. By 1897, there were more than 25,000 Jews in Egypt, concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria. In 1937, the population reached 63,500.
In the 1940’s, with the rise of Egyptian nationalism and the Zionist movement’s efforts to create a Jewish homeland in adjoining Israel, anti-Jewish activities began in earnest. In 1945, riots erupted – ten Jews were killed; 350 injured, and a synagogue, a Jewish hospital, and an old-age home were burned down. After the success of the Zionist movement in establishing the State of Israel, between June and November of 1948, violence and repressive measures by the Government and Egyptians began in earnest. Bombs were set off in the Jewish Quarter, killing more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200. Rioting over the next few months resulted in many more Jewish deaths. 2,000 Jews were arrested and many had their property confiscated.
In 1956, the Egyptian government used the Sinai Campaign as a pretext to order almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews to leave the country and confiscated their property. 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. Approximately 1,000 more Jews were sent to prisons and detention camps. On November 23, 1956, a proclamation signed by the Minister of Religious Affairs, and read aloud in mosques throughout Egypt, declared that “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state,” and promised that they would be soon expelled (AP, November 26 and 29 1956; New York World Telegram).
Iraq
Iraq is the modern designation fro the country carved out of ancient Babylonia, Assyria, and the southern part of Turkey after World War I.
It is also the place of the oldest Jewish Diaspora and the one with the longest continuous history, from 721 BCE to 1949 CE, a time span of 2,670 years.
By the 3rd century, Babylonia became the center of Jewish scholarship, as is attested to by the community’s most influential contribution to Jewish scholarship, the Babylonian Talmud. Jews had prospered in what was then Babylonia for 1200 years before the Muslim conquest in 634 AD. Under Muslim rule, the situation of the Jewish community fluctuated. Some Jews held high positions in government or prospered in commerce and trade. At the same time, Jews were subjected to special taxes, restrictions on their professional activity. Under British rule, which began in 1917, Jews fared well economically, but all of this progress ended when Iraq gained independence in 1932.
In June 1941, the Mufti-inspired, pro-Nazi coup of Rashid Ali sparked rioting and a pogrom in Baghdad. Armed Iraqi mobs murdered 180 Jews and wounded almost 1,000.
Additional outbreaks of anti-Jewish rioting occurred between 1946-1949. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime.
In 1950, Iraqi Jews were permitted to leave the country within a year provided they forfeited their citizenship. A year later, however, the property of Jews who emigrated was frozen and economic restrictions were placed on Jews who chose to remain in the country. From 1949 to 1951, 104,000 Jews were evacuated from Iraq in Operations Ezra and Nehemiah; another 20,000 were smuggled out through Iran. Thus a community that had reached a peak of some 150,000 in 1947 dwindled to a mere 6,000 after 1951.
Lebanon
Jews have lived in Lebanon since ancient times. King Herod the Great, in the 1st century CE supported the Jewish community in Beirut.
During the first half of the 20th century, the Jewish community expanded tremendously due to immigration from Greece, and Turkey, and later from Syria and Iraq.
There were instances of rioting and incitement around the time of the establishment of the State of Israel. As reported in the New York Times on May 16, 1948:
“In Lebanon Jews have been forced to contribute financially to the fight against the United Nations partition resolution on Palestine. Acts of violence against Jews are openly admitted by the press, which accuses Jews of ‘poisoning wells,’ etc.”
Libya
The Jewish community of Libya traces its origin back some 2,500 years to the 3rd century BCE.
Around the time of the Italian occupation of Libya in 1911, there were about 21,000 Jews in the country, the majority in Tripoli.
In the late 1930s, anti-Jewish laws were gradually enforced, and Jews were subject to terrible repression. Still, by 1941, the Jews accounted for a quarter of the population of Tripoli and maintained 44 synagogues. In 1942, the Germans occupied the Jewish quarter of and times were extremely difficult for Jews in Libya although conditions did not greatly improve following the liberation. During the British occupation, rising Arab nationalism and anti-Jewish fervour were the reasons behind a series of pogroms, the worst of which, in November of 1945, resulted in the massacre of more than 140 Jews in Tripoli and elsewhere and the destruction of five synagogues (Howard Sachar, A History of Israel).
The establishment of the State of Israel led many Jews to leave the country. In June 1948, protesting the founding of the Jewish state, rioters murdered another 12 Jews and destroyed 280 Jewish homes. Although emigration was illegal, more than 3,000 Jews succeeded to leave to Israel. When the British legalized emigration in 1949, and in the years immediately preceding Libyan independence in 1951, hostile demonstrations and riots against Jews brought about the departure of some 30,000 Jews who fled the country up to, and after the point when Libya was granted independence and membership in the Arab League in 1951 (Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times).
Morocco
Jews first appeared in Morocco more than two millennia ago, travelling there in association with Phoenician traders. The first substantial Jewish settlements developed in 586 BC when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem.
By 1948, this ancient Jewish community, the largest in North Africa, numbered 265,000. In June 1948, after the establishment of the State of Israel, bloody riots in Oujda and Djerada killed 44 Jews and wounded scores more. That same year, an unofficial economic boycott was instigated against Moroccan Jews.
Immigration to Israel started upon the initiative of small groups who arrived at the time of Israel’s independence. However, the waves of mass immigration, which brought a total of more than 250,000 Moroccan Jews to Israel, were prompted by anti-Jewish measures carried out in response to the establishment of the State of Israel. On June 4, 1949, riots broke out in northern Morocco killing and injuring dozens of Jews. Shortly afterwards, the Jews began to leave.
During the two-year period between 1955 and 1957 alone, over 70,000 Moroccan Jews arrived in Israel. In 1956, Morocco declared its independence, Jewish immigration to Israel was suspended and by 1959, Zionist activities became illegal in Morocco. During these years more than 30,000 Jews left for France and the Americas. In 1963, the ban on emigration to Israel was lifted bringing another 100,000 to her shores.
Today, the Jewish community of Morocco has dwindled to less than 10% of its original size. Of the 17,000 Jews that remain, two-thirds live in Casablanca.
Syria
Jews have lived in this land since biblical times and the community’s history is intertwined with the history of Jews in the land of Israel. Jewish population increased significantly after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Throughout the generations, the main Jewish communities were to be found in Damascus and Aleppo.[1]
In 1943, the Jewish community of Syria had 30,000 members. This population was mainly distributed between Aleppo, where 17,000 Jews lived and Damascus, which had a Jewish population of 11,000.
In 1945, in an attempt to thwart efforts to establish a Jewish homeland, the government restricted emigration to Israel, and Jewish property was burned and looted. Anti-Jewish pogroms erupted in Aleppo in 1947, stimulating 7,000 of the town’s 10,000 Jews to flee in terror. The government then froze Jewish bank accounts and confiscated their property.
Tunisia
The first documented evidence of Jews living in what is today Tunisia dates back to 200 CE.
After the Arab conquest of Tunisia in the 7th century, Jews lived under satisfactory conditions, despite discriminatory measures such as a poll tax.
In 1948, the Tunisian Jewish community had numbered 105,000, with 65,000 living in Tunis alone.
After Tunisia gained independence in 1956, a series of anti-Jewish government decrees were promulgated. In 1958, Tunisia’s Jewish Community Council was abolished by the government and ancient synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish quarters were destroyed for “urban renewal.”
Similar to the conditions for Jews in Algeria, the rise of Tunisian nationalism led to anti-Jewish legislation and in 1961 caused Jews to leave in great numbers. The increasingly unstable situation caused more than 40,000 Tunisian Jews to immigrate to Israel. By 1967, the country’s Jewish population had shrunk to 20,000.
Yemen
The Jews of Yemen have various legends relating to their coming to that country, the most wide-spread of which states that they arrived there before the destruction of the First Temple (587 BCE). The first historical evidence of their existence in Yemen dates from the third century.
Jews had begun to leave Yemen in the 1880s, when some 2,500 had made their way to Jerusalem and Jaffa. But it was after World War I, when Yemen became independent, that anti-Jewish feeling in that country made emigration imperative. Anti-Semitic laws, which had lain dormant for years were revived (e.g. Jews were not permitted to walk on pavements – or to ride horses). In court, a Jew’s evidence was not accepted against that of a Moslem.
In 1922, the government of Yemen reintroduced an ancient Islamic law requiring that Jewish orphans under age 12 be forcibly converted to Islam. When a Jew decided to emigrate, he had to leave all his property. In spite of this, between 1923 and 1945 a total of 17,000 Yemenite Jews left and immigrated to Palestine.[1]
