The Second Exodus

By Tom Brennan

Jewish Refugees from Yemin

The aliyah of Jews from the Arab countries since 1948, 850,000 and counting.

Since the first Zionist pioneers came to what is today’s Israel in the early 1900’s Jews have sought to return to the land given to them in the Covenant with Abraham. And yet they still come. When the State of Israel was declared, actually restored, in 1947 the Jewish residents of most of the Arab nations of North Africa and the Near East suddenly found themselves as targets for persecution as Jews. Many also realized that moving to the newly declared Jewish homeland was something they had to do since they were heirs to the covenant.

Up until the 1947 partition into the two states of Israel and Jordan most of the Jews in surrounding Arab countries lived relatively at peace within. But the declaration of the Jewish State brought about persecutions, expulsions, dispossession and danger. So much that many fled leaving behind property and businesses. Between 1948 and 1972 over 820,000 Jews were displaced or forced to flee for their lives. Approximately 200,000 went to Europe and the United States, 586,000 went to Israel. Israel was overburdened with the expenses and support of these refugees whose assets had been confiscated by their former homelands. Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria and Yemen all eagerly added the lands, businesses and bank accounts of the expelled Jews to their treasuries.

Although over 100 resolutions have been before the United Nations in the name of Palestinian refugees, never once has one been passed in favor of the Jewish refugees who left the hostile states where they once lived in peace. This prejudiced attitude is still common today. As anti-Israel and anti-Semitism renews itself with the connivance of the world’s commercially owned media outlets, Jews in France and other countries are seeing hostile actions and threats.

The Law of The Return has opened up the doors of the Jewish homeland to all who are Jews and wish to return to the Land given to Abraham’s descendants, no matter where. Jews from the farthest corners of the world, India, Ethiopia, Africa and wherever the diaspora took them are returning. Organizations such as Keren Hayesod are working to help these arrivals assimilate to their home and become productive citizens.

The Jewish refugees have been welcomed and made a part of the nation. They serve in the IDF, have businesses and trades and have contributed their languages, culture and traditions to the colorful landscape that is Israel. Perhaps only a nation such as Israel could accomplish such a venture, opening its doors to all Jews from the world who wish to return to the ancestral and Biblical homeland.

As Jews from Ethiopia, China and India make their aliyah, the land grows rich in people and traditions. Christians can only wonder in amazement how a land with so little territory and resources can open its arms and doors to refugees from a world that has rejected them. Only Israel seems to be able to do this great work of receiving the Second Exodus.