Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel: 5 

Most Israeli Jews are indigenous to the Middle East

Some years ago, I switched on one of those Sunday morning TV programmes about current affairs. I was just in time to catch a highly respected MSP (member of the Scottish parliament) angrily denouncing Israel as “an artificial state” because (she asserted) the Jewish state was established by immigrants from Europe and Russia. I couldn’t help wondering whether she regarded the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other immigrant-founded countries in the same light. Sadly, I can’t ask her as she is now deceased. 

I do know that she, like many of Israel’s “critics”, was a strong supporter of the allegedly superior national rights of the “indigenous Palestinians” despite the fact that the Palestinian Arabs were almost as heterogeneous a group, in terms of their countries of origin, as the Jews they brand as foreigners. Indeed numerous Palestinian families reveal this phenomenon in their surnames – al-Masri (Egypt), al-Sham (Syria), al-Yamani (Yemen), al-Baghdadi (Iraq), al-Mughrabi (Morocco) and many more. Ironically, the main reason for the upsurge of Arab immigration to Palestine in the early twentieth century was the search for a better life in a land that was rapidly being transformed economically and socially by the Zionist pioneers.

That Scottish politician’s jaundiced view of Israel, however, resonates with many of the country’s enemies who endlessly parrot the view that Israel is an alien, Western colonialist outpost in the largely Arab-Muslim Middle East. Does that accusation accord with reality? (Spoiler – no). 

Contrary to a popular misconception, European and Russian Ashkenazi Jews – all of whom arrived in the West after taking the “high road” from Judea following their expulsion by the Romans from their homeland – are a minority in today’s Israel (though a majority among Jews worldwide). Along with the descendants of Jews who had remained in Israel throughout the generations, over 60% of Israel’s Jewish population today are Mizrachi (“Eastern”) Jews who hailed mainly from the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. This community adheres to many of the religious and cultural traditions of Sephardi (or “Spanish”) Jews with whom they are often confused, and indeed there is considerable overlap between them. (In passing, it’s worth noting that the distinctions between these various so-called Jewish ethnicities is somewhat artificial: genetic studies have shown a strong connection between them all – an unsurprising discovery since they all originated from their common ancestral homeland).  

Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, almost 900,000 Jews who had lived for centuries in the predominantly Muslim countries of the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa fled in fear of their lives or were ruthlessly and often brutally expelled. Unlike the Palestinian refugees and their descendants, with whom the world empathises through countless UN resolutions and massive financial support via specially created UN agencies, the Mizrachi Jewish refugees and their descendants are today all but invisible. 

Many of these Jewish refugees arrived penniless in Israel, receiving no compensation for property or other assets they were forced to leave behind, and no international recognition as refugees deserving sympathy and support. Even more remarkable, the Jewish exodus from Arab countries, unlike the parallel Palestinian displacement, was not the result of conflict: most of these Jewish communities had lived in relative peace (despite being treated as second-class citizens) for generations in their host countries. They were entirely innocent victims of a wave of visceral, lethal, state-sponsored hatred that was deliberately unleashed against them by Arab regimes enraged by the establishment of the world’s only Jewish state. The contrast with the Palestinian refugees, whose plight was the direct result of a war of annihilation launched by five Arab states (reinforced by contingents from two more) against the embryonic Jewish state, could not be starker.

A short quiz: how many UN resolutions have been passed highlighting the plight of the Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa? Answer: zero. How many times has the UN Human Rights Council or any other UN committee condemned the Arab states for their inhumane treatment of their Jewish citizens and their continuing refusal to offer recompense? Answer: zero. How much money has the international community allocated to support the Jewish refugees who had to flee their homes having had their possessions stolen and their homes appropriated? Answer: zero.

This double standard is self-evidently scandalous.Yet the Mizrachi refugees didn’t complain. They looked firmly to the future and set about creating new lives for themselves and their families in Israel, a struggling young country that welcomed them with open arms. Life was tough in the ma’abarot – hastily erected shanty towns that were, in essence, refugee camps – and the new state was overwhelmed by demands on its limited resources. Ethnic tensions between Ashkenazim andSephardim sometimes reached breaking point; the latter felt, with justification, that many of the former treated them with contempt. But somehow the newcomers were nevertheless housed, fed, rehabilitated and ultimately integrated. Modern Israeli culture, language and politics have been hugely influenced and enriched by the Mizrachim.

Why does all this matter? Three reasons. First, it explains many aspects – political, social and economic – of modern Israel that would otherwise baffle the outsider.  Second, it’s a largely untold story that most of the world, shamefully, has chosen to ignore or even erase from history. Finally, it nails the lie that Israel is a country of incoming “Western” colonialists that have no connection with the region. 

Jews are not immigrant interlopers in the Middle East. The roots of all Jews lie in Israel, the country to which they have yearned to return for almost two thousand years. Most of those who undertook the journey home since Israel's rebirth have done so from within the Middle East itself. Denying that reality is simply an attempt to delegitimise the entire Zionist enterprise. 

This isn’t a matter of “competing narratives” but of incontrovertible historical facts (remember those?). Jews rather than Arabs – who arrived on the scene around 1700 years after the establishment of the first Kingdom of Israel – are the true indigenous inhabitants of Israel. 

In the words of the late Charles Krauthammer: “Israel is the only country in the world with same name, the same language, the same faith and inhabiting the same land as it did 3,000 years ago.” That is an inconvenient truth for many Israel-haters but it’s one that they will have to swallow if there is ever to be peace between Israel and her enemies.