Talk:Jewish exodus from the Muslim world

Quick Grammar error/Typo

1. Could an authorised editor please make the following 2/1 character correction in the article lede? Sentence currently flips "direction" in its final third -- jarring for native English speakers. Thanks in advance.

NOW: "In total, of the 900,000 Jews who left Arab and other Muslim countries, 600,000 settled in the new state of Israel, and 300,000 immigrated to France and the United States."

BETTER AS: "~ 300,000 emigrated ~" Tom Segev's quote (footnote 300)

2. "if a man as well connected and powerful as Shafiq Ades could he eliminated by the state" - change "he" to "be"

Last paragraph in opening text

I don't understand why this line is being removed

"sometimes positing a "malicious Zionist conspiracy" to explain the exodus."

It was apparently removed for being POV but the main reference supporting it as an actual scholar and professor Philip Mendes, who has spent many years researching the Jewish expulsion from the MENA region. The main reference also has another 10 or so sources supporting it.

Lotsofsalt (talk) 10 April 2024 (UTC)

1) You have been blocked for edit warring over this. 2) It has been reverted by 3 different editors: Onceinawhile (that you personally attacked in one of your edit summaries), Selfstudier and myself. 3) You violated 1RR again. M.Bitton (talk) 11:49, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

References

The reference does not contain the number 24.000

• What I think should be changed (format using {{textdiff}}):

−

In 1948, there were approximately 24000 Jews in Lebanon.[191]

+

The 1932 national census put the country’s Jewish population at around 3,500. In 1948, there were approximately 5,200 - 20,000 Jews in Lebanon.

• Why it should be changed:
• The current linked reference does not contain the number 24,000.
• The Jews Of Lebanon, Between Coexistence And Conflict, second edition in page 6 puts it at 5,200: "Thus, in 1948 the number of Jews had increased to 5,200 and by 1951 to 9,000, 6,961 of whom were Lebanese citizens."
• Sources close to the Near east report and AIPAC put it at 20,000, for example the jewish virtual library (JVL is WP:GUNREL though) or Myths and Facts 1976 A Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (page 84)
• This jewcy opinion article says "the numbers seem to be closer to 10 – 14,000 than 24,000". It also mentions another now deleted opinion article which seems the source of the 24k claim.

• References supporting the possible change (format using the "cite" button):

Bowad91017 (talk) 02:15, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

for the 1932 census numbers, it's in the Al Jazeera article here: Uncovering Lebanon’s Jewish past | Arts and Culture | Al Jazeera Bowad91017 (talk) 01:35, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@M.Bitton Hi, since you replied to the other edit-request in this article. Could you please remove the 24k in the section for lebanon?

Here is the reference used in the current version of the article: Beirut’s last Jews (ynetnews.com) It doesn't contain 24 at all. Bowad91017 (talk) 22:59, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Having reviewed the sources, I can confirm that the current source doesn't support the 24k figure. As for the proposed change, I'm not convinced that the 20k figure should be mentioned since the source is not strong, the jump from 3.5k to 20k in 16 years (without explanation) seems implausible and the claim is contradicted by two recent RS (Kirsten E. Schulze and Al-Jazeera). What is probably worth mentioning is the fact that the population increased in the 1950s due to the wave of immigration from Syria. Here's what I suggest:

The 1932 national census put the country’s Jewish population at around 3,500. In 1948, there were approximately 5,200 Jews in Lebanon. Their number increased after the first Arab-Israeli war to roughly 9,000 in 1951, including an estimated 2,000 Jewish asylum seekers.

I'll leave it here for you and others to review. M.Bitton (talk) 13:29, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

References

 Not done: Per M. Bitton. thetechie@enwiki: ~/talk/ $ 03:11, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done I implemented the above proposal. Feel free to revert, but please, do ping me if you do. M.Bitton (talk) 20:34, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

2024 Jewish population of Yemen

Yemenite Jews says:

> As of 2024, only 5 Jew remained in Yemen, with one of them being Levi Marhabi.

Cites: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sj7dfbxic

The population table should be updated accordingly. Miraj31415 (talk) 05:42, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

In 2024 6 Jews were living in Yemen; 1 has died now there are five left alive Cite https://www.jewishrefugees.org.uk/2024/06/muslims-bury-one-of-the-last-jews-in-yemen.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:6010:BB00:288B:E920:DB09:63B3:522A (talk) 12:58, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Lybian Jews

In the paragraph about Lybia, it might be of interest to provide information on the number of Arabic-speaking and Italian-speaking Jews. Andrea Domenici, Pisa, Italy 188.217.54.52 (talk) 12:48, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 8 October 2024

Change the second line of the opening paragraph to my suggestion, or another appropriately neutral phrasing

My suggested phraseology is:

'In the 20th century, approximately 900,000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia. Involving push factors, such as antisemitism, and pull factors, such as the appeal of the newly created state of Israel, 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.'

The reason for this edit request is as follows:

The opening paragraph of this page says that the exodus was 'Primarily a consequence of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War,' and is supported by a citation to Avi Beker's 2005 THE FORGOTTEN NARRATIVE: JEWISH REFUGEES FROM ARAB COUNTRIES. There are two problems with this:

The way it is currently phrased suggests that the expulsion of the Jews from the Arab world was the result of the war (And seems to allign with the 'popular' narrative that Jewish expulsion from the Middle East was a response to Palestinian expulsion in the 1948 war), and even implies that it was retributive. But even if this was the case these Jews are not responsible for what happened in Israel, and therefore their being held responsible is not a result of the war but a result of antisemitism.

The second problem is that this isn't what Beker writes in this paper (his claim is that push factors contributing to Jewish exodus began before 1948). He writes:

' In a few years, Jewish communities that had existed in the Middle East for more than 2,500 years were brutally expelled or had to run for their lives. The statements made in the UN were harbingers of what became a total collapse of these Jews' security. Following the Partition Resolution of November 1947, and in some countries even earlier during World War II, Middle Eastern Jews were the targets of official and popular incitement, state-legislated discrimination, and pogroms -- again, all this before the massive flight of the Arabs from Palestine.

In Syria, anti-Semitism grew after the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. By the late 1930s, Syria already served as a headquarters for anti-Semitism and hosted Nazi officers. By 1945 the thirty thousand Syrian Jews already faced restrictions on emigration to Israel and some of their property was burned and looted, including the Great Synagogue in Damascus. In December 1947 there was a major pogrom against the Jews of Aleppo, the largest community with seventeen thousand; many were killed and seven thousand fled. Jewish bank accounts in the city were frozen and private property was confiscated; fifty shops, eighteen synagogues, and five schools were burned. Later, after Israel's founding, more Syrian Jews were killed and banks were instructed to freeze all Jewish accounts.

In Yemen, Jews were always treated as second-class citizens. As far back as the 1880s, 2,500 Jews moved from there to Jerusalem and Jaffa, and as conditions worsened another seventeen thousand left to Aden and Palestine between 1923-1945. Riots and massacres also occurred in Aden, which was in British-controlled Yemen. In three days of disturbances in December 1947, many Jews were killed and the Jewish quarter was burned to the ground, so that the community lost its business and economic base. Altogether in those three days, 82 Jews were killed, 106 shops looted out of 170,220 houses destroyed, and four synagogues gutted.

The Iraqi Jews' condition deteriorated parallel to the rise of Nazism in Germany. Nazi ideology pervaded Iraqi society including the school curricula, which praised Hitler for his anti-Jewish policy and called the Iraqi Jews a fifth column. Hundreds of Jews were forced out of their civil service jobs in the 1930s, and during the 1936 Arab evolt in Palestine, Jews were terrorized and murdered in Baghdad.

That year the Chief Rabbi of Iraq, Sassoon Khaddouri, was forced to issue a statement denying any connection between Iraqi Jews and the Zionist movement, and in 1938 thirty-three Jewish leaders cabled to the League of Nations a strong condemnation of Zionism.18

The worst, however, came in June 1941 with the Farhud, a pro Nazi uprising against the Jews. Beginning on the Shavuot holiday, in two days incited mobs murdered two hundred Jews, wounded over two thousand, looted more than nine hundred homes, and damaged shops and warehouses.

The Partition Resolution of November 1947 found Iraq's Jews in a state of fear. There had already been riots in the two preceding years, and Jewish children were no longer accepted in government schools. In May and again in December 1947, Jews were accused of poisoning sweets for Arab children and trying to inject cholera germs in drinking water. In 1948, Zionism was declared a crime, 1,500 Jews were dismissed from public service, and Jewish banks lost their authorization.

Many Jews were imprisoned and some hanged on the same "charge"; in 1948 the richest Jew in Iraq, Shafiq Adas, received the death penalty for "Zionist and communist crimes." His execution by hanging was a clear message that Jews had no future in the country.20 Again in 1949, numerous Jews were injured in a new wave of riots. Hence, the evacuation of more than one hundred thousand Jews to Israel between 1949-1951 was precipitated by Iraqi anti-Semitism and echoed the calls of Iraqi leaders for expulsion and population exchange.

A similar wave of persecution took place in Egypt and Libya, where in 1945 there were riots and massacres of hundreds of Jews, with destruction of synagogues and other communal buildings. This recurred in 1948 with the arrest of thousands in Egypt, and deadly attacks in both countries along with synagogue burnings and confiscation of both communal and private property.

The North African countries of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia also saw periodic waves of anti-Jewish riots including mass killings, but they were less intensive and with fewer casualties because of the better protection offered by the French authorities, who were engaged in their own conflict with the Arabs. However, many testimonies express fears of sudden deterioration that were reinforced by developments in other Arab countries and in the Arab-Israeli conflict. '

This should be edited for neutrality and fidelity to the source. HealthyBias (talk) 15:27, 8 October 2024 (UTC)