Celebrating Jewish Heritage: From Arab Lands to Israeli Culture

Описание: November 30 is Yom Haplitim, Jewish Refugee Day (the official Day Marking the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from Arab Countries and Iran).

850,000 Jews were forced to flee from their homes and to leave the countries where they had lived for millennia, solely because of their Jewish identity.

According to the World Jewish Congress, until the 1960s, approximately one million Jews lived in Iran and other Arab countries, having arrived in the region more than 2,000 years before. Nowadays, it is estimated that only around 15,000 remain, as the majority of the Jewish population in Muslim lands were forced to flee their homes in the years following the establishment of the State of Israel. This mass expulsion and exodus is part of modern history, but it’s neither taught at schools nor remembered within the context of the conflicts in the Middle East.

For over 2,500 years, Jews lived continuously in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Gulf region, where the Jewish population had settled at least 1,000 years before the advent of Islam.

Despite the positive influence that Jews brought to the places where they lived, more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab countries in the 20 years that followed the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Another significant forced migration took place from Iran in 1979–80, following the Iranian Revolution and the collapse of the Shah’s regime, adding 70,000 more Jewish refugees to this number.

The commemoration of Yom Haplitim underscores the importance of keeping these historical facts alive. This is particularly crucial in the context of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the narrative often neglects the experiences of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.