Mizrahi Jews - Post-1948 Dispersal

Post-1948 Dispersal

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and subsequent establishment of the state of Israel, most Mizrahi Jews were either expelled by their Arab rulers or chose to leave and emigrated to Israel. Roughly half of Israeli Jews are of Mizrahi origin.

Anti-Jewish actions by Arab governments in the 1950s and 1960s, 25,000 Mizrahi Jews from Egypt left after the 1956 Suez Crisis, led to the overwhelming majority of Mizrahim leaving Arab countries. They became refugees. Most went to Israel. Many Moroccan and Algerian Jews went to France. Thousands of Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian Jews emigrated to the United States and to Brazil.

Today, as many as 40,000 Mizrahim still remain in communities scattered throughout the non-Arab Muslim world, primarily in Iran, but also Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. There are few remaining in the Arab world. About 5,000 remain in Morocco and fewer than 2,000 in Tunisia. Other countries with remnants of ancient Jewish communities with official recognition, such as Lebanon, have 1,000 or fewer Jews. A trickle of emigration continues, mainly to Israel and the United States.