Are the numbers on this Arab-Jew ethnic cleansing meme accurate?

Question

This meme is on many places on X. (I found it RTed on Ben Shapiro's X timeline). Are the numbers accurate?

Image text:

This is ethnic cleansing

Jewish population 1948 VS. 2023

[country]	[number]
EGYPT	63,550 vs 3
SYRIA	40,000 vs 0
IRAN	100,000 vs 8,500
IRAQ	150,000 vs 4
LEBANON	20,000 vs 29
MOROCCO	265,000 vs 2,100
YEMEN	55,000 vs 1
ALGERIA	140,000 vs 200
LIBYA	38,000 vs 0
TUNISIA	105,000 vs 1,000
GAZA	7,949 VS 0

This is not

Arab population 1948 VS. 2023

[country]	[number]
ARABS IN ISRAEL	156,000 VS 2,100,000
ARABS IN GAZA	80,000 vs 2,000,000

Note: This question is about the numbers, not the definition of ethnic cleansing.

Answer 1

This question literally has its own Wikipedia page.

To sum that up:

• Jewish exodus from Muslim countries happened in several stages
• The exodus was not just towards Israel, but also towards the USA and Europe
• Support for mass migration into Israel wasn't universal within Israel itself
• There were both push and pull factors at work
• This includes threats and direct actions, e.g. (quote) Iraq's prime minister Nuri al-Said told British diplomats that if the United Nations solution was not "satisfactory", "severe measures should [would?] be taken against all Jews in Arab countries".
• Another example: During the 1956 Suez Crisis 1000 Jews were arrested and 500 Jewish businesses were seized by the government. [...] Jewish bank accounts were confiscated and many Jews lost their jobs. Lawyers, engineers, doctors and teachers were not allowed to work in their professions. Thousands of Jews were ordered to leave the country. They were allowed to take only one suitcase and a small sum of cash, and forced to sign declarations "donating" their property to the Egyptian government.
• One more example: In March 1964, the Syrian government issued a decree prohibiting Jews from traveling more than three miles from the limits of their hometowns.

Additionally, a quick Google search indicates that no more than a single-digit percentage of people (2-4% of the world population) are immigrants. Most people live their entire life in the country they were born in (not counting studying a semester abroad, I mean permanent living). It is highly, highly unusual for 90%+ of only a subset of a population to become immigrants.

Including the sources given in Mark's answer, we can conclude that yes, the meme is accurate in its primary statements, even if minor details can be discussed. Specifically:

• The numbers stated are generally accurate
• The displacement of Jews out of the listed countries was largely involuntary. While not generally in the form of forced deportation, large numbers of Jews left due to increasing pressure and restrictions.

On the question of whether or not the exodus can be considered ethnic cleansing or a genocide, according to the official UN definition, only Article II, clause c) could apply:

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

and this would have to be judged differently for each country involved and even for each wave.

The meme referenced ethnic cleansing. That is not a term with an official definition, so it is difficult to answer. Given that an ethnicity has been largely removed from these countries, it does appear to be a fitting term. Again, since it has no official or legal definition, the question cannot be definitely answered.

Answer 2

Wikipedia's article on Jewish exodus from the Muslim world, sourced mostly to the 2000 Encyclopedia of World History for 1948, and to the Jewish Virtual Library for "now", gives very similar numbers for the Jewish population (except for Gaza, which isn't mentioned).

(However, the numbers aren't a simple case of ethnic cleansing: Israel, particularly immediately after the 1948 war, strongly encouraged Jewish immigration, sometimes assisting the immigration of entire national communities. The only country to explicitly expel Jews was Egypt; conversely, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq banned emigration at various times.)

The "Jews in Gaza" numbers are a different situation. The absence of Jews in Gaza is due to Israel's 2005 unilateral removal of settlements in the Gaza Strip. If you choose to call that "ethnic cleansing", it's ethnic cleansing of Jews by Israel.

The "Arab Population" numbers are a case of cherry-picking the data. At the start of 1948, the Arab population in what is now Israel was about a million; the 156,000 number is the low estimate for the number left after the Palestinian expulsion (late 1948). Conversely, the 80,000 Arabs in Gaza Strip is from early 1948, before several hundred thousand refugees fled there.

Answer 3

The meme falsely labels 2020 numbers as being from 2023

The "2023" numbers, present at the Jewish Virtual Library (Tunisia's figures as an example here, are originally from "The American Jewish Year Book, 2020," specifically "World Jewish Population, 2020" by Sergio DellaPergola, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.)

To be clear every single number in this meme is taken from the Jewish Virtual Library where it's clearly marked as 2020. The change to 2023 is not innocent but to link it the current conflict. That is academic misconduct.

The following numbers are provided by The 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom by the U.S department of state:

Jewish population (2022 U.S department of state report)

[country]	[number (source as stated by the U.S report)]	meme
EGYPT	6 - 10 (local Jewish NGO)	6
SYRIA	Before the civil war, there were small Jewish populations in Aleppo and Damascus, but in 2020, the Jewish Chronicle reported that there were no known Jews still living in the country.	0
IRAN	20,000 (community member), 9,000 (Tehran Jewish Committee)	8,500
IRAQ	100 - 250 (KRG Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs) 4 (media organizations, 2021)	4
LEBANON	70 - 100 (Jewish Community Council)	29
MOROCCO	3500 (Jewish community leaders)	2,100
YEMEN	7 (UN report)	1
ALGERIA	200 Jews (Religious leaders)	200
LIBYA	0 permanent residents (World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem)	0
TUNISIA	1,500 (members of the Jewish community)	1,000

Numbers in the meme are (under)-estimates

Numbers are not the result of an exhaustive official census but are estimates from various sources with no uniform methodology. It is difficult to get accurate numbers. This is a flaw of both the U.S report and the Sergio DellaPergola report.

For example, the official website of the Tehran Jewish Committee currently states that there are an estimated 15,000 Jewish people in Iran and 8,000 in Tehran alone. So the U.S report contradicts the very source it cites.

Permanent Residents not citizens

• Permanent residents not citizens are counted. Dual-nationals living in other countries, are not included. Many Tunisian-Israeli and Tunisian-French residents live in their higher income countries and only return for vacations. (Monthly Minimum wage in Tunisia is $220, in France $1,906). Getting the French citizenship was easier for Jewish people during colonial rule. Getting the Israeli citizenship is also easy if you have jewish grandparents (and allows you VISA free access to europe).

• Palestinian refugees and internally displaced people, in contrast, are not allowed to return (despite UN resolution 194 calling for their right to do so). Present absentees, which do live inside Israel proper, are also not allowed to return to their homes there (a fact not visible in total-resident numbers)

• Citizenship issue is also important in Algeria's case where All Jewish residents were given the French citizenship automatically by the Crémieux Decree of 1870. Many French citizens, regardless of religion, returned to live in France after the end of the French colonial rule in 1962.

Academic consensus about forced expulsions (Egypt and Israel)

As @Mark correctly states Egypt and Israel are the only countries to explicitly expel Jews rsp. Arabs.

Note, while politicians still deny it, there is a widespread academic consensus today that Zionist paramilitary and later Israel's army expelled Arabs. There is still debate though on the proportion of those who fled against those who were expelled.

For example, Benny Morris is a Pro-Zionist historian (who recently represented the Israeli side in the Lex Fridman debate). Here are:

the Decisive causes of abandonment of Palestinian villages and towns according to Benny Morris

[Decisive causes of abandonment]	[Occurrences]
military assault on settlement	215
influence of nearby town's fall	59
expulsion by Jewish forces	53
fear (of being caught up in fighting)	48
whispering campaigns	15
abandonment on Arab orders	6
unknown	44

(table copied from Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight)

No consensus on wether emigration of Jews was largely involuntary

Here is how Mark Tessler puts it in his book "A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" (2009) pp. 309-311:

While the arrival of these Jews from the Arab world played a critical role in shaping the character and evolution of Israeli society after 1948, the argument that their dislocation was comparable to that of the Palestinians is controversial and problematic. Israeli propagandists stressed the difficulties that confronted Jews in Arab lands and suggested that they had been forced to leave their homes. ... In fact, however, such statements give a distorted impression of the complex and varied situation of the Jews in Arab countries and of the diverse reasons that led most to leave.

Scholarly Israeli and Jewish sources, as well as others, offer a more realistic appraisal. ... Further, though Jewish insecurity was both real and justified in some Arab countries, it was far less significant in others, and, in any event, it was only one of the reasons that Jews chose to leave the Arab world at this time. Immigration to Israel was sometimes the result of a desire to participate in the building of the Jewish state. This motivation was most intense in the more traditional and religious Jewish communities, often located in rural areas. In these cases, and undoubtedly some others, it was the attraction of Israel, rather than a desire to flee persecution, that led Jews to leave the Arab countries in which they lived.

Socioeconomic factors may have been an even more important consideration ... Moreover, not only did an uncertain economic future lead some Jews to think about leaving, but the economic advantages and favoritism Jews had enjoyed in the past created resentment among the majority, a consideration that may also have encouraged Jewish emigration but which had nothing to do with the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine.

In some instances, cultural factors provided yet another stimulus to Jewish emigration ... In fact, many of these Jews emigrated to Europe rather than to Israel.

Finally, post-1948 Zionist efforts to promote Jewish emigration appear to have been an important factor in at least a few instances ... In any event, when Zionist involvement is added to the socioeconomic, cultural, and other factors that helped to stimulate Jewish departures, it becomes clear that it is highly oversimplified, and in many ways misleading, to equate the flight of Palestine's Arabs with the immigration to Israel of Jews from Arab countries

There are indeed both strong pull factors (The Zionist One Million Plan of 1944) and push factors. Some push factors are related to Judaism (Discrimination and antisemitism) / Israel-Palestine (anti-zionist revolts, ..) but some are general non-ethnic push factors (economic and political stability, decolonization,..)

@Tom's conclusion that that the displacement of Jews out of the listed countries was largely involuntary is not supported by the only Wikipedia article he cites. It's a hotly debated topic with dissent also coming from inside Israel (Jewish exodus from the Muslim world#Israeli criticism of the Jewish Nakba narrative).

Also, Iraqi PM Nuri al-Said was firmly against anti-Jewish measures. He was misquoted by Benny Morris and later by @Tom (as shown in @DavePhd's answer to What is the correct version of Iraq's prime minister Nuri al-Said's quote? ). The actual telegram can be found here.

An example of involuntary ethnicity-related emigration would be the Lybian case:

On 17 June 1967, Lillo Arbib, leader of the Jewish community in Libya, sent a formal request to Libyan prime minister Hussein Maziq requesting that the government "allow Jews so desiring to leave the country for a time, until tempers cool and the Libyan population understands the position of Libyan Jews, who have always been and will continue to be loyal to the State, in full harmony and peaceful coexistence with the Arab citizens at all times." According to David Harris, the executive director of the Jewish advocacy organization AJC, the Libyan government "faced with a complete breakdown of law and order ... urged the Jews to leave the country temporarily", permitting them each to take one suitcase and the equivalent of $50. Through an airlift and the aid of several ships, over 4000 Libyan Jews were evacuated to Italy by the Italian Navy, where they were assisted by the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Cherry Picking dates and propaganda techniques

@Wossname's answer (and the last part of @Mark's answer as a tl;dr), provide an excellent analysis of the issue.

Conclusion

The meme is largely inaccurate (and intentionally misleading)

• The absolute error can be as high as 11,500 (Iran)
• The relative error can be as high as 0,984 (Iraq)