OUTRO LADO DA MOEDA: REFUGIADOS JUDEUS NO ORIENTE MÉDIO (em inglês)

Jewish Refugees from the Arab World

Between 1948 and 1951, as a result of the War of Independence, about 400,000 Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel after being driven from their homes from Arab lands. In total, well over 800,000 Jews indigenous to Arab and Muslim countries lost their homes and property following Israel's independence, roughly 600,000 of whom found refuge in Israel. Although the number of Jewish refugees and the total area of their lost land exceeded that of their Arab counterparts, the vaguely similar number of Jewish and Arab refugees has led some to describe the exodus of the two groups as a de facto population transfer.

With the UN's 1947 decision to partition Palestine, the Jewish community in Iraq, which only a few years earlier had suffered a devastating pogrom, faced a new wave of harsh persecution.

Sources: The Edge of the Sword: Israel's War of Independence, 1947-1949, Natanel Lorch Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Martin Gilbert Encyclopedia Judaica "1948, Israel, and the Palestinians — The True Story," Ephraim Karsh, Commentary, May 2008 "The evacuation of the noncombatant population in the 1948 war: three kibbutzim as a case study," Nurit Cohen Levinovsky, Journal of Israeli History,March 2007. Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century, Martin Gilbert The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, Maurice Roumani

The Iraqi government adopted what author and journalist Edwin Black described as "Nazi confiscatory techniques," levying "exorbitant fines as punishment for trumped-up offenses." Zionism was made a criminal offense. As Arab countries invaded the newly declared Jewish state, the Iraqi police ransacked Jewish homes and arrested hundreds of Jewish citizens. Hundreds more were dismissed from their public jobs. Crippling restrictions targeted Jewish commerce and travel. The government seized Jewish property, cut off municipal services to Jewish neighborhoods, and shut down Jewish newspapers

Researcher Esther Meir-Glitzenstein explained that "what had begun as voluntary emigration turned into an expulsion." Eventually, about 120,000 people — almost the entire Jewish community — would escape the oppression, with little more than the clothes on their backs.

A similar scenario played out in Egypt. The events of 1948 brought a revival of anti-Jewish sentiment, complete with anti-Jewish riots and murders, the confiscation of Jewish property, legal restrictions affecting the employment of Jews and mass arrests. This prompted a wave of Jewish flight from the country, a trend that only increased in the decade that followed.

Violent anti-Jewish rioting in Yemen in the wake of the UN partition plan help spur tens of thousands of Yeminite Jews to leave their homes and migrate to Israel as part of Operation Magic Carpet. Murderous pogroms in Morocco in 1948 and 1953, and in Libya in 1945 and 1948, yielded similar results. (Extraído do site Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.)