The World Jewish Congress today made public a survey showing that more than 200,000 Jews have been driven from Iraq, Egypt and Syria during the past 25 years and another 100,000 have fled other Arab lands, including Yemen and Libya.
The survey, prepared by Dr. Nehemia Robinson, covers 11 countries–Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemen. “The accession of the Nazi Party to power in Germany had dire consequences for the status of the Jews in the Moslem lands,” the report states. “The waves of anti-Jewish terror following the Israel War of Independence and the establishment of Israel swept away the last barriers to Jewish disenfranchisement and elimination in Iraq and Syria and contributed to the exodus from Yemen, Libya and Egypt,” the survey continues. “The call of the reborn Jewish state caused large-scale emigration from Iran, Turkey, Morocco and Tunisia.”
The former community of about 100,000 Jews in the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria has been reduced to between 15,000 and 20,000. Considerable communities remain in Morocco, with more than 200,000 Jews, and in Tunisia, with about 67,000, the report states. A few hundred families reside in Afghanistan, he reports, with about 80,000 Jews living in Iraq, 4,000 to 5,000 in Iraq, 4,000 in Libya, 48,000 to 55,000 in Turkey and several hundred in Yemen.
“The only country which has not practiced considerable discrimination is Lebanon,” Dr. Robinson reports, adding that the 3,500 Jews in Lebanon in 1933 have swelled today to 10,000, due to a considerable extent to the forced exodus of several thous and Jews from Syria.
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