When international discourse turns to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, one term echoes with deep emotional resonance: the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” used to describe the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during and after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. This event and its legacy remain central to Palestinian identity and continue to dominate media, academic, and diplomatic conversations worldwide.
But there is another Nakba — one far less known, rarely taught, and seldom acknowledged in global forums. It is the story of the forced exodus of over 850,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the years following Israel’s creation. This “Jewish Nakba” saw ancient Jewish communities — some predating Islam by over a millennium — uprooted, dispossessed, and erased.
These two displacements — Palestinian and Jewish — occurred in the same historical moment. Yet only one is widely remembered. The other is buried under silence. And the fate of the two populations, seven decades on, reveals a telling contrast: while Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab world, Israel’s Arab minority has grown, flourished, and integrated into the fabric of Israeli society.
The Forgotten Exodus: Jews from Arab and Muslim Lands
From Iraq to Egypt, Libya to Yemen, Morocco to Syria, Jews had lived as indigenous communities across the Arab and Islamic world for over 2,500 years. They spoke Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, or Berber; they contributed to commerce, scholarship, and culture; and in some cases, such as Baghdad in the 1940s, they formed up to one-third of the urban population.
But the creation of Israel in 1948 triggered a ferocious backlash. Fuelled by rising pan-Arab nationalism, state-sponsored antisemitism, and violent popular uprisings, Jews were branded as Zionist traitors and subjected to collective punishment.
- Pogroms broke out in major cities: in Tripoli, Aden, Cairo, and Baghdad.
- Homes, businesses, and synagogues were looted or torched.
- Citizenship was revoked, assets confiscated, and thousands were jailed or killed.
- In Iraq, show trials led to hangings; in Egypt, mass expulsions followed Suez.
By the early 1970s, the Jewish populations of Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen had all but vanished. Even in relatively tolerant countries like Morocco and Tunisia, what were once vibrant communities numbering in the hundreds of thousands had shrunk to mere symbolic remnants. Today, less than 4,000 Jews remain in the entire Arab world.
Unlike the Palestinian refugees, these Jews received no international aid, no UN agency, and no right of return. They were resettled mainly in Israel — then a struggling, resource-poor state. Their trauma was absorbed into the broader project of building the Jewish homeland. They were not offered a narrative of eternal victimhood; they were given the burden of survival.
A Different Story in Israel
In 1948, as five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish state, roughly 160,000 Arabs remained within Israel’s borders. Far from being expelled en masse, these individuals became Israeli citizens.
Over the next 75 years, the Arab population of Israel grew more than tenfold. Today, over 2 million Arab citizens live in Israel, comprising about 20% of the population.
This population is not a marginalized or segregated underclass, as some critics contend.
Despite ongoing challenges, Arab citizens of Israel:
- Worship freely in mosques, churches, and Druze sanctuaries.
- Speak Arabic, which holds official status under Israeli law.
- Send their children to Arab-language public schools with curricula adapted to their communities.
- Elect Arab members to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, including representation in governing coalitions.
- Serve as judges, including on the Supreme Court, and work as doctors, professors, business owners, and artists.
- Study at Israel’s leading universities, such as Technion and Hebrew University, in growing numbers.
Mixed Jewish-Arab communities flourish in cities like Haifa, Acre, and Jaffa. Arab parties and politicians play an active — sometimes pivotal — role in national politics.
Yes, disparities remain. Arab citizens of Israel face socioeconomic gaps, cultural tensions, and episodes of discrimination. But their civil rights are enshrined in law, and there is ongoing, active debate within Israeli society about how to further advance equality and integration.
This is not the behaviour of an apartheid state. It is the imperfect but earnest effort of a democracy to include minorities within its national fabric — even those whose national identity is sometimes in tension with the majority ethos.
Two Trajectories, One Question
Here, then, is the stark contrast.
- Jews were driven out of Arab countries, never to return, their property expropriated, their heritage erased.
- Arabs remained in Israel, became citizens, and are today represented in every major sphere of Israeli life.
While Arab governments chose exclusion and ethnic cleansing, Israel, even while at war, chose enfranchisement.
The international response to these twin Nakbas only sharpens the contrast. The United Nations established UNRWA, a unique, perpetual refugee agency exclusively for Palestinian refugees and their descendants — now numbering in the millions. No such agency was created for Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Their cause was largely ignored. There was no international compensation fund, no global solidarity movement, no right of return.
This imbalance distorts our moral compass. It reinforces a narrative in which Israel is uniquely guilty and Arab states are spared accountability for their own acts of dispossession and intolerance.
Recognising Both Histories
None of this is to deny the suffering of Palestinian refugees or to suggest that their displacement was not real. It was, and it deserves recognition and engagement — especially as part of a sincere process toward peace and mutual understanding.
But a just peace can only be built on truth, and truth demands a reckoning with all histories — not just the ones that conform to fashionable ideologies.
To honour only the Palestinian Nakba while erasing the Jewish Nakba is not justice. It is selective memory. It perpetuates grievance while silencing reconciliation. And it allows one of the greatest episodes of postwar ethnic cleansing—the destruction of 2,500 years of Jewish civilization in the Arab world — to fade into oblivion.
A Deeper Truth
The contrasting fates of these two populations—one included, one erased—illuminate the moral choices made in 1948 and ever since.
- Israel absorbed both Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees from the Arab world, building a state where minorities can vote, speak, challenge, and thrive.
- Arab states expelled their Jews, and to this day refuse to account for that injustice.
So we are left with a question the world rarely asks:
Why are there over 2 million Arabs living as equal citizens in Israel, but almost no Jews left in the Arab world?
In that question lies a deeper truth about the Middle East — a truth that the world must finally confront.
