Jews who Fled Arab Countries in 1948

If ever the subject of 750,000 Palestinians fleeing their homes in the months before and after Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948 is brought up, Israel supporters often reply by talking about the over 800,000 Jews who fled Arab states.

What is rarely mentioned is that the Jews fled Arab countries only after Palestinians had been forced out at gunpoint or fled their homes in fear of violence in Palestine. Zionists carried out massacres of Palestinians in villages such as Deir Yassin, or expelled residents at gunpoint as in Ramle or Lydda (now known as Lod) and Palestinians fled in fear of their lives.

There were suggestions that if Palestinians were not allowed back to their properties in the newly founded Jewish state, Jews in Arab countries may receive similar treatment. In September 1948, four months after Israel declared independence, the Civil & Military Gazette reported that United Nations officials “have received hints that unless the Jews in Palestine permit Arab refugees to return to their homes, many thousands of Jews in the middle east maybe driven out in the same condition as Arabs were driven from Palestine”. 

The report says that there are perhaps 900,000 Jews living in Muslim majority countries “from Pakistan to Morocco”  and that ”It is felt that if the smouldering resentment of the Arabs were to flare up into reprisals , the full weight would probably fall on the scores of thousands of Jews living in countries bordering Palestine”

There was also “considerable semi-official support for their demands that they should be compensated from Jewish homes and property in the Arab countries. These demands are being strengthened by reports from Palestine that the Jews are systematically destroying evacuated Arab villages and the Arab quarters in mixed towns inside Jewish-held areas from which the Arab inhabitants have been driven.”

In an article in 2014 The Times of Israel acknowledged that the Jews left Arab countries only after the state of Israel was created in May 1948 “Meir Kahlon, chairman of the Central Organization for Jews from Arab Countries and Iran, said that “Nearly 800,000 came here [in the years after the establishment of the state] and the rest (around 56,000) went to the United States, France, Italy and elsewhere.”" (All words in brackets inserted by the Times of Israel).

In 2020 Ynetnews reported that Gilad Erdan, Israels ambassador to the United Nations, said that Jews left Arab countries only after the Jewish state was created when he said he wanted the UN to “hold an annual commemoration for the hundreds of thousands of Jews exiled from Arab countries due to the creation of the State of Israel”. He goes on to say that the UN “completely ignores Jewish refugees from Arab countries.” Which brings up the question of whether Jewish people leaving one country to go to their ‘historic homeland’ in Israel can be classed as a refugee.

Joseph Massad, writing for the Middle East Eye website, writes that  “Israel has always insisted that Palestine, and later Israel, is the homeland of world Jewry, while simultaneously claiming that Arab Jews who immigrated to Israel are "refugees". The legal and internationally accepted definition of a refugee, however, is of a person who was expelled or fled their homeland, not one who "returns" to their homeland.”

The Times of Israel says that “Although many [Jewish] migrants arrived [from Arab countries] with meagre belongings packed in a single suitcase, they did not seek formal refugee status from the international community. At the time, the newly established Jewish state was struggling to attract migration from the world’s Jews and to project its legitimacy as a sovereign state, able to care for its own people. Its prime minister, David Ben Gurion, would not have wanted Jews returning to their “historic homeland” classed as refugees, [Meir] Kahlon said.”