Jewish Refugees from the Middle East and North Africa
Rights and Redress
Jewish Refugees from the Middle East and North Africa
Nearly one million Jews were uprooted from communities their families had lived in for more than 2,500 years. Recognizing their history, culture, and rights is the purpose behind everything JIMENA does.
Jews lived across the Middle East and North Africa for millennia, in Baghdad and Cairo, Fez and Tripoli, Aleppo, Sana’a, Tunis and Tehran, long before the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests. They built synagogues and schools, wrote poetry and law, traded across the region, and shaped the cultures they lived in.
In the twentieth century, nearly all of those communities disappeared. As Arab nationalism rose and the State of Israel was established, governments across the region turned on their Jewish citizens. Jews were stripped of citizenship, dismissed from their jobs, imprisoned, and attacked by mobs. Their bank accounts were frozen and their homes, businesses, and communal property confiscated. Most were forced to flee with little more than a suitcase. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, most of Iran’s Jewish community followed.
These were refugees. Yet for decades their story was left out of how the world understands the Middle East. JIMENA was founded to change that.
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~1,000,000 Jews in 1948 Living in ten Arab countries and Iran |
99% Uprooted Fewer than 13,000 Jews remain in these countries today |
$263B In lost assets Estimated present value of Jewish individual and communal property left behind |
Figures from Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC), 2025. About 70% of those who left between 1948 and 1972 resettled in Israel; most others rebuilt their lives in France, Britain, the United States, and Canada.
Our families did not simply leave. In country after country, governments used the law itself to make Jewish life impossible.
The legal record
A history written into law
The uprooting of these communities was not only the work of mobs. Nationality codes defined citizenship by religion or race. “Zionism” became a crime, and “Zionist” became a legal label that could be attached to any Jew. In Iraq, the propagation of Zionism was punishable by seven years in prison. In Egypt in 1956, an official proclamation declared that “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state.” In Libya, a 1962 decree revoked the nationality of anyone who had any contact with Zionism. Explore the laws, country by country.
Communities that all but disappeared
Country | Jews in 1948 | 2025 estimate |
Morocco | 265,000 | 2,500 |
Algeria | 140,000 | 0 |
Iraq | 135,000 | 5 |
Tunisia | 105,000 | 1,500 |
Iran | 100,000 | 8,756 |
Egypt | 75,000 | 2 |
Yemen | 55,000 | 1 |
Libya | 38,000 | 0 |
Syria | 30,000 | 3 |
Aden | 8,000 | 0 |
Lebanon | 5,000 | 50 |
Total | 956,000 | 12,817 |
Source: Facts and Figures, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries. Earlier estimates from Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress (2007).
Recognition
Recognized, but not yet remembered
The status of these Jews as refugees has been affirmed by international and national bodies. Leaders including U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Canadian and British prime ministers have acknowledged them. Yet the UN General Assembly has never passed a resolution on their behalf, and their history is still largely absent from textbooks, international discussions of the Middle East, and peace efforts.
1957 and 1967 |
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees determines that Jews fleeing Egypt (1957) and North Africa (1967) fall within the agency’s mandate as refugees. |
1967 |
UN Security Council Resolution 242 calls for “a just settlement of the refugee problem,” language that makes no distinction between Arab and Jewish refugees. |
2008 |
The U.S. House of Representatives passes a resolution recognizing Jewish refugees from Arab countries and calling for their rights to be addressed alongside those of other Middle East refugees. |
2014 |
Israel’s Knesset, with JIMENA among the advocates for the law, designates November 30 as a national day to commemorate the departure and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries and Iran. |
2023 |
The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism calls for students to learn the histories of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews and “their stories of exclusion, persecution, and expulsion.” |
2025 |
JJAC presents its economic analysis of Jewish refugee losses, estimated at over $263 billion, at the UN Human Rights Council. |
November 30 and Mizrahi Heritage Month
Bringing a day of remembrance to America
After advocating for the passage of Israel’s 2014 law designating November 30 as a day to remember the Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran, JIMENA became the first organization to bring that day of recognition to the United States. In October 2014, JIMENA led the launch of a month of remembrance in San Francisco together with the Israel Center of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation, the Consulate General of Israel, and Bay Area Sephardic and Mizrahi congregations.
We then expanded November 30 into a full month: Mizrahi and Sephardic Heritage Month, celebrated every November in the United States. It has since been embraced by Jewish organizations across the country, from OneTable, which partners with JIMENA on Mizrahi Heritage Shabbat dinners, to the Jewish Women’s Archive, synagogues, Hillels, and federations. Explore Mizrahi Heritage Month.
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Since 2014 A national hub For Jewish American institutions seeking content, speakers, and expertise |
50+ College campuses Where JIMENA speakers have shared the history of Jewish refugees |
Countless Synagogues and schools Across the country that have welcomed JIMENA speakers and programs |
Since 2014, JIMENA has served as a resource and hub for most Jewish American institutions marking November 30 and Mizrahi and Sephardic Heritage Month, providing educational content, speakers, and expertise. Today we are proud to have brought speakers to more than 50 college campuses and to countless synagogues, schools, and community organizations.
The research
Grounded in the research of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries
JIMENA’s work is responsive to, and builds on, the research and legal scholarship of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC). JJAC’s 2007 report, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress, prepared with an international committee of legal experts, documented the state-sanctioned decrees that drove Jews from their homes and made the legal case for their rights. In 2025, JJAC presented Jewish Refugees from Muslim Countries: Historical and Economic Analysis at the UN Human Rights Council, estimating the present value of lost Jewish individual and communal assets at over $263 billion.
We bring that research to life: into classrooms through our curricula, onto campuses and into synagogues through our speakers, into our oral history archive through firsthand testimony, and into the halls of government and the United Nations through our advocacy.
Our work
Everything we do serves this goal
Every JIMENA program advances the recognition of the history, culture, and rights of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa and their descendants.
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Preserving voices Oral History Recorded testimonies of Jewish refugees and their families, preserving firsthand accounts before they are lost. |
United Nations UN Advocacy Bringing refugee testimony to the UN, from Gina Waldman’s historic testimony to our submission to the Commission of Inquiry. |
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Education For Educators Lesson plans, training, and resources that bring Sephardic and Mizrahi histories into classrooms. |
Anti-Zionism Countering Anti-Zionism How anti-Zionism was used against our families, and why we speak up when that language returns. |
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Heritage Cultural Property Rights Advocating for the rights of displaced communities to their confiscated heritage, beginning with the Iraqi Jewish Archive. |
Culture Cultural Heritage Celebrating the music, food, languages, and traditions our communities carried with them. |
Is this your family’s story?
Help us preserve it
If you or your family were uprooted from the Middle East or North Africa, your story is part of the historical record. Share it with JIMENA, and help make sure the world remembers.
Our histories are not a footnote to the story of the Middle East. They are part of it.