Approximately 900,000 Jews migrated, fled, or were expelled from Muslim-majority countries throughout Africa and Asia in the 20th century, primarily after the establishment of the State of Israel. Large-scale migrations were also organized, sponsored, and facilitated by Zionist organizations such as Mossad LeAliyah Bet, the Jewish Agency, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. The mass movement mainly transpired from 1948 to the early 1970s, with one final exodus of Iranian Jews occurring shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979–1980. An estimated 650,000 (72%) of these Jews resettled in Israel.
A number of small-scale Jewish migrations began across the Middle East in the early 20th century, with the only substantial aliyot (Jewish immigrations to the Land of Israel) coming from Yemen and Syria.: "Before the 1940s only two communities, Yemen and Syria, made substantial aliyah." Few Jews from Muslim countries immigrated during the British Mandate for Palestine. Prior to Israel's independence in 1948, approximately 800,000 Jews were living on lands that now make up the Arab world. Of these, just under two-thirds lived in the French- and Italian-controlled regions of North Africa, 15–20% lived in the Kingdom of Iraq, approximately 10% lived in the Kingdom of Egypt, and approximately 7% lived in the Aden Colony, Aden Protectorate and the Kingdom of Yemen. A further 200,000 Jews lived in the Imperial State of Iran and the Republic of Turkey. The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. In these cases, over 90% of the Jewish population left, leaving their assets and properties behind. Between 1948 and 1951, 250,000 Jews immigrated to Israel from Arab countries. In response, the Israeli government implemented policies to accommodate 600,000 immigrants over four years, doubling the country's Jewish population. Reactions in the Knesset were mixed; in addition to some Israeli officials, there were those within the Jewish Agency who opposed promoting a large-scale emigration movement among Jews whose lives were not in immediate danger.
Later waves peaked at different times in different regions over the subsequent decades. The exodus from Egypt peaked in 1956, following the Suez Crisis; emigrations from other North African countries peaked in the 1960s. Lebanon's Jewish population temporarily increased due to an influx of Jews from other Arab countries, before it dwindled by the mid-1970s. 600,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries had relocated to Israel by 1972,Malka Hillel Shulewitz, The Forgotten Millions: The Modern Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands, Continuum 2001, pp. 139 and 155.Ada Aharoni "The Forced Migration of Jews from Arab Countries , Historical Society of Jews from Egypt website. Accessed 1 February 2009. while another 300,000 migrated to France, the United States and Canada. Today, the descendants of Jews who immigrated to Israel from other Middle Eastern lands (known as Mizrahi Jews and Sephardic Jews) constitute more than half of all Israelis. The Jewish Agency for Israel estimated that the total number of Jews in Arab and Muslim countries in 2023 was 27,000, with Turkey having 14,200 Jewish residents and Iran having 9,100."Jewish Population Rises to 15.7 Million Worldwide in 2023", Jewish Agency for Israel, September 15, 2023. Accessed November 30, 2025. "About 27,000 Jews live in Arab and Muslim countries, of which 14,200 live in Turkey, 9,100 in Iran, 2,100 in Morocco, 1,000 in Tunisia, and 500 in the Emirates."
The reasons for the exoduses include: pull factors such as the desire to fulfill Zionism, better economic prospects and security, and the Jewish Agency for Palestine's 1944 "One Million Plan" to encourage and accommodate Jewish immigrants from Arab- and Muslim-majority countries; and push factors such as violent and other forms of antisemitism in the Arab world, political instability,: "... economic straits as their traditional role was whittled away, famine, disease, growing political persecution and increased public hostility, the state of anarchy after the murder of Yahya, a desire to be reunited with family members, incitement and encouragement to leave from [Zionist agents who] played on their religious sensibilities, promises that their passage would be paid to Israel and that their material difficulties would be cared for by the Jewish state, a sense that the Land of Israel was a veritable Eldorado, a sense of history being fulfilled, a fear of missing the boat, a sense that living wretchedly as dhimmis in an Islamic state was no longer God-ordained, a sense that as a people they had been flayed by history long enough: all these played a role. ... Purely religious, messianic sentiment too, had its part but by and large this has been overemphasised." poverty, and expulsion. The history of the exodus has been politicized, given its proposed relevance to the historical narrative of the Arab–Israeli conflict.Yehouda Shenhav 'Arab Jews, population Exchange, and the Palestinian Right of Return,' in Ann M. Lesch, Ian S. Lustick (eds.), Exile and Return: Predicaments of Palestinians and Jews, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, , pp. 225–244, p. 225: "In July 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced that an agreement had been reached at the Camp David summit to recognize the Jews from Arab countries as "refugees" and that an international fund would provide compensation for the property they left behind when they immigrated to Israel during the 1950s. The immediate political significance of this declaration was to help Israel's prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak, to mobilize Shas's voters (the majority of whom are of Arab descent) in support of the peace process. However, the underlying logic – defining the Jews from Arab countries as refugees-responded to a deeper political theory that was developed in Israel in the 1950s to counterbalance the collective rights of the Palestinian refugees. It is not surprising, therefore, that Palestinians around the world reacted with dismay and rage to this announcement. In its contemporary garb, this "population exchange" theory was proposed to abdicate Israel's responsibility for the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and to alleviate demands to compensate the Palestinian refugees, and serve as a bargaining chip against their right of return. For all practical purposes, the population exchange initiative was used to legitimate Israel's wrongdoing with regard to the transfer of the Palestinian refugees in 1948." Those who view the Jewish exodus as analogous to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight generally emphasize the push factors and consider those who left to have been refugees, while those who oppose that view generally emphasize the pull factors and consider the Jews to have been willing emigrants.––
North Africa
French colonial rule In the 19th century, Francization of Jews in the French colonial North Africa, due to the work of organizations such as the Alliance Israelite Universelle and French policies such as the Algerian citizenship decree of 1870, resulted in a separation of the community from the local Muslims.Shaked, Edith Haddad. "On the State of being (Jewish) between 'Orient' and 'Occident'" in Bat-Ami Bar On and Tessman, Lisa, eds. Jewish Locations: Traversing Racialized Landscapes. (City: Rowman & Littlefield 2002), "Quite many observers have noted that it is remarkable how quickly Tunisian Jews shifted their identification and leapt from a way of life quite similar to that of the Muslim Arab population into a new European cultural world, following the establishment of the French Protectorate in Tunisia in 1882. Under the French Protectorate, the Jews had a different position, "one small notch above the Muslims on the pyramid which is the basis of all colonial societies." ... For the generation born under the protectorate, the French language replaced Judeo-Arabic as the Tunisian Jews' mother tongue.... Under French colonial rule, the Jews of Tunisia deconstructed many aspects of their "Oriental" selves, and experienced an image shift, from resembling the "Oriental" colonized Arabs to resembling the "Occidental" French colonizers, through their rapid adaptation to the French language, customs, and culture. Since the French administrators strongly encouraged the French acculturation of Tunisian Jews through many educational and economic opportunities, their "Oriental" past started just to fade away. As a result, a new society of French-assimilated Jews emerged. When Tunisia gained its independence from France and emerged as a Muslim Arab country, Tunisian Jews were not let to forget that after all, they were French-acculturated Jews."
France began its conquest of Algeria in 1830. The following century had a profound influence on the status of the Algerian Jews; following the 1870 Crémieux Decree, they were elevated from the protected minority dhimmi status to French citizens. The decree began a wave of Pied-Noir-led anti-Jewish protests (such as the 1897 anti-Jewish riots in Oran), which the Muslim community did not participate in, to the disappointment of the European agitators.: "A number of factors finally led to the defeat of the anti-Semitic party in Algeria and to its disappearance in 1902.... Most important perhaps was the refusal of the Moslems of Algeria to allow themselves to be drawn into the anti-Jewish manifestations, thus confounding the hopes and plans of the agitators. This phenomenon is a telling proof that the assertions regarding the so-called axiomatic hatred of the Moslems for the Jews were utterly unfounded." Though there were also cases of Muslim-led anti-Jewish riots, such as in Constantine in 1934 when 34 Jews were killed.
Neighbouring Husainid Tunisia began to come under European influence in the late 1860s and became a French protectorate in 1881. Since the 1837 accession of Ahmed Bey,: "Although the French Protectorate was established only in 1881, the occupation of Algeria in 1830 exerted a profound influence on Tunisia's rulers and on the life of the Jews there. The accession of Ahmed Bey to the throne in 1837 marked a turning point in the evolution of Tunisia, and during his eighteen-year reign the Jews had a foretaste of the security and freedom that they were to enjoy under the Protectorate." and continued by his successor Muhammed Bey,: "Immediately after [Mohammed Bey's 1855] accession, he abolished the corvee duty to which Jews were still subjected under the old laws for the dhimmis, and he made the Jews subject to the same fiscal laws as Moslems." Tunisia's Jews were elevated within Tunisia society with improved freedom and security, which was confirmed and safeguarded during the French protectorate.": "But for the Jews of Tunisia [the 1881 French Protectorate] did not signify the revolutionary change ... [but] rather, to confirm and safeguard through the French presence the existing liberal tendencies which had characterized the Regency since the reign of Ahmed Bey." Around a third of Tunisian Jews took French citizenship during the protectorate.: "Altogether, 7,311 Jews were granted French nationality in Tunisia between 1911 and the end of the Protectorate. These, with their descendants, eventually made up one-third of the Jewish population of Tunisia."