Ezra and Nehemiah Operations
EZRA AND NEHEMIAH OPERATIONS
Massive airborne transfer in 1950–1951 of the overwhelming majority of the Jews of Iraq to Israel.
The mass emigration, invoking names of the two organizers of the return of Jews from the Babylonian Exile to the Holy Land some 2,500 years earlier, was made possible by a draft law introduced into Iraq's Parliament on 2 March 1950, permitting Jews to leave the country provided they surrendered their Iraqi nationality. The measure came in the wake of a massive wave of illegal emigration of Jews via Iran, organized by the Zionist underground. Prime Minister Salih Jabr told Parliament, "It is not in the public interest to force people to stay in the country if they have no desire to do so."
The number of emigrants far exceeded original estimates. Whereas immigration authorities in Israel had planned to receive about 300 persons a day—and this with difficulty—the daily influx at its peak reached an average of 1,400. By the end of 1951, Iraqi Jews airlifted to Israel totaled 107,603; some 16,000 others had departed the country by other means—some illegally to Palestine, some legally to countries in the West. By the beginning of 1952, it was estimated that no more than 6,000 (out of a total of some 130,000) Jews remained in Iraq.
See also Jabr, Salih.
Bibliography
Rejwan, Nissim. The Jews of Iraq: 3000 Years of History and Culture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985.
nissim rejwan