Übergeek 바둑이: The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries was a mass departure of Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab and Muslim countries, in the 20th century. Though Jewish migration from Middle Eastern and North African communities began in the late 19th century, 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. 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. However, by the 1970s the Jewish community of Lebanon too dwindled due to hostilities of the Lebanese Civil War.

The reasons for the exodus included persecution, antisemitism, political instability, and the desire to fulfill Zionist yearnings. A significant proportion of Jews left due to political insecurity and the rise of Arab nationalism. Many were required to sell, abandon, or smuggle their property out of the countries they were fleeing. By 2002 Jews from Arab countries and their descendants constituted about 40% of Israel's population.

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 and abandoned their property in fear, that they would remain hostages of hostile regimes. 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.

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