Class 3: Antisemitism, Nationalism, and the Road to Israel

Antisemitism, Propaganda, and Nationalism

Various forces dislodged Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa in the 20th century, with the 1940s marking a key turning point. During World War II, the Axis powers controlled Syria, Lebanon, and all of North Africa west of Egypt, and aspired to influence or capture the rest. The fascist Italian, Vichy French, and Nazi German regimes worked to circulate anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, and anti-British propaganda in Arabic, seeking to foment Arab unrest against the British colonial regimes. Among the many Arab discontents with the British regime was its willingness to tolerate Jewish migration to the British Mandate of Palestine. A three-year Palestinian Arab revolt solidified international Muslim opposition to Zionism and led many Arabs in countries across the region increasingly to view their own Jewish populations with suspicion. While the British government attempted to quell the unrest with a 1939 white paper drastically reducing Jewish migration to Palestine, a limited number of Jews were still admitted, and more immigrated illegally. Arab nationalist movements against European powers tended to reject Jewish political claims over Palestine, with anti-Zionism often becoming dental to their cause. In part because of this dynamic, Arab nationalists often included both Muslims and Christians in their movements but sometimes declined Jews, even if they spoke Arabic. Jewish communities throughout the MENA region developed different relationships with the term Arab, with some adopting it for themselves while others used it only to refer to Muslims and other locals. Likewise, some Jews view Zionist and Arab nationalism as compatible, but as time went on that view became more challenging to maintain. 

Anti-Jewish Riots and the Decline of Communities

In the 1940s, deadly anti-Jewish riots in Iraq (1941), Libya (1945 and 1948), Egypt (1945 and 1948), Yemen (1947), and Morocco (1948) shook the Jewish communities throughout the region. Some of this violence took place after the start of the first Israeli-Arab war (1947–1949), which pitted the new Israeli state against many neighboring Arab armies, leading some Muslims to turn against their Jewish neighbors. Yet in most cases, neither local riots nor the 1948 war led to immediate mass migration. 

In sum, many forces and events—the rise of Zionism, Arab nationalism, antisemitic propaganda circulated by fascist powers, economic changes, decolonization and attendant political insecurity, the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, and the Iranian revolution of 1979—led to the uprooting of the Jewish population of the MENA region. Yet in general, even bouts of antisemitic violence and discriminatory state policies did not immediately lead Jews to flee. Waves of migration came from different communities at different times and under varied circumstances.

Different Migration Paths across the Region

While in some countries, such as Iraq and Libya, the vast majority of Jews emigrated in the years immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, in others—such as Tunisia and Morocco, the focus of “Moroccan Jews in Their Hour of Decision” and “Jewish Community of Ifrane”—emigration took place over decades. In Iran, a majority of the pre-1948 community had still remained in the 1970s, and small Jewish communities still exist in places such as Iran, Morocco, and Tunisia. Some MENA Jews migrated to the Americas and Europe, with many North African Jews moving to France, especially those from Algeria, most of whom held French citizenship. 

Mizrahi Jews in Israel: Camps and Discrimination

However, the vast majority of MENA Jews migrated to Israel, with the greatest influx (450,000) coming in the first eight years after Israel’s creation. In part because of this MENA migration, Israel’s population doubled in its first five years alone. This overwhelming population growth partially explains the harsh conditions many MENA Jews faced upon arriving in Israel in 1950s, an experience embodied by the impoverished living standards of the ma‘abarot, transit camps, where many were assigned by the government to live, as shown in this photograph. 

Those arriving often lived for months or years in small, flimsy makeshift homes, sometimes canvas tents or shacks made of aluminum, which lacked access to basic utilities. For many MENA Jews who had been middle-class shopkeepers or urban merchants, the ma‘abara was a major step down, and the “development towns” on Israel’s periphery (places farther from cities and close to dangerous border zones), to which many were eventually relocated, often kept them from educational and economic opportunities. The effects of this decline in condition are highlighted in From Babylonia to Zion, written by a former Iraqi Jewish parliament member, and in “Zohra El Fassia,” a poem about a once-famous Moroccan Jewish singer. 

Yet these dire living conditions represented only one part of the indignities experienced by MENA Jews in Israel, who came to be known as Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahim, despite differences among them. As these Jews were non-Europeans, many Ashkenazic Israelis viewed them as less civilized. Secular Israeli leaders and bureaucrats had little respect for the religious traditionalism of many MENA Jews, expecting them to change their names to Hebrew, and rid themselves of much of their “backward” identities. Israeli policy planners of the 1950s and 1960s often treated Mizrahi Jews as a mass source of semi-skilled and unskilled labor. These discriminatory and patronizing attitudes and policies left deep marks on Mizrahi society, and major economic and educational gaps between Mizrahi and Ashkenazic Israelis have endured.