The mass exodus of MENA Jews was equal to or greater than the flight of Arab refugees from then-Palestine. These Jews and their descendants now comprise over half of Israel’s Jewish population. Yet Israel is held solely responsible for the Palestinian “nakba,” even though the Palestinian flight was a consequence of the Arab rejection of the Partition Plan of 1947 and a wholly avoidable invasion of Israel by multiple Arab armies.
Ethnic and religious apartheid is the scourge of the Muslim Middle East. While Israel has over a million Arab citizens, some 99% of the Jewish population of Arab and Muslim countries was driven out by state-sanctioned discrimination or violence, leaving just 4,000 out of a pre-1948 population of a million.
Remembering the Farhud and the Jewish Nakba 