TABLE B.
Estimated Jewish Population
In Arab Countries 3


pre-1948 1979-1982
Iraq 125,000-135,000 [200-300 in 1982]
Egypt 75,000 [250 in 1982]
Syria 30,000 [4,300-4,800 in 1982]
Morocco 265,000 [18,000 in 1982]
Algeria 130,000-140,000 [300-400 in 1982]
Tunisia 105,000 [2,500-4,000 in 1982]
Lebanon 5,000 [200 in 1982]
Libya 38,000 [15-20 in 1982]


Of more than 850,000 Jews in Arab lands before Israel's statehood, fewer than 29,000 remain, the vast majority fleeing to Israel fleeing religious persecution.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has been excluded from the chart because Jews have long been forbidden to enter, much less live in what has been deemed "moderate" Saudi Arabia -- with the notable exceptions of Henry Kissinger, when he was the United States Secretary of State; Secretary of Defense Harold Brown in 1979; and perhaps a few selected Jewish academicians, businessmen, or journalists. Saudi Arabia, where thriving and influential communities of Arabian Jews existed at the time of Islam's creation in the seventh century,4 has maintained a "moderate" policy that totally excludes Jews. As the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to The Hague said, upon Dutch Foreign Minister Max Van Der Stoel's proposed visit to Saudi Arabia in 1975,
No Jewish journalist will be allowed into Saudi Arabia to cover Mr. Van Der Stoel's visit.... Official policy has always been to refuse entry to Jews because they support Israel as a state.5
Noting the bigotry inherent in the Saudis' avowed institutionalized discriminatory practices, Foreign Minister Van Der Stoel canceled that visit. He advised the Dutch Parliament that
The government of Saudi Arabia has informed me that it will not issue an entry visa for the Netherlands journalist representing Urij Nederland Naturally, every government has the right to decide which foreigners it wishes to allow into its country. On the other hand, I want to emphasize that the government of the Netherlands utterly rejects any form of discrimination on the grounds of race or religion,6 which might form the basis for granting such an entry permit.7
That same month, a London journalist reported that, during his visit to Saudi Arabia,
My guide insists on giving me a copy of that horrifying old forgery about the Jews' plot to conquer the Arabs: The Protocol of the Elders of Zion. It turns out that all visiting journalists are given it.8

The Kingdom of Jordan

The Kingdom of Jordan also has been excluded from the table, because no Jews lived there in 1948, although the Jewish presence in the major portion of Palestine -- which is presently "Jordan" -- had existed long before the seventh-century creation of Islam. In fact, many of the Jews who had survived Muslim-led massacres in Arabia, only to be expelled in the seventh century from their lands in the Arabian Peninsula, had fled and found refuge in the large Jewish settlements of Eastern Palestine [See further discussions in Chapters 8 and 12] -- more than a thousand years before that eastern territory of mandated Palestine became perceived as a separate "kingdom" of "'Transjordan" in 1922.

"the West Bank"
Jews who had dwelt on historical Palestinian terrain both east of the Jordan River and in the area called "the West Bank" were driven out of that land's Arab-dominated towns over the past half century by sporadic pogroms and pillage, so that by the 1940s the Palestinian towns in Transjordan and the West Bank were considered "purely Arab" -- already purged of their former Jewish population. The Jews once living in the area of Palestine known as Jordan and the West Bank had become "Palestinian Jewish refugees" as the result of Arab violence. And the fact that there are Jewish "Palestinian refugees" of twentieth-century vintage is overlooked even in Israel. These refugees found safety only in the predominantly Jewish-settled areas of Palestine's coastal plain, which today is Israel. By 1948, the more than seventy-five percent of Palestine that the British had allocated to the Arabs as "Transjordan" already had been efficiently purged of all Jews, through periodic Arab onslaughts upon the various long-established Jewish communities. Despite that fact, the Jordanian government's nationality law of 1954 sought to safeguard its would-be racial purity: According to that law "Palestinian" living in Jordan was entitled to Jordanian citizenship unless he as a Jew.9

Muftism and Nazism: World War II Collaboration. Documents
(examples of original correspondence)
1) U.S. Confirms Role of Mufti as Nazi Middle East Leader
OFFICE OF U.S. CHIEF OF COUNSEL
FOR PROSECUTION OF AXIS CRIMINALITY
No. 792-PS
17 September 1945
Source of Original OKW Files, Flensburg

[Excerpt]

LEADS: CANARIS, IBN SAUD, GRAND MUFTI.

SUMMARY OF RELEVANT POINTS (with page references):

1. Only through the funds made available by Germany to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was it possible to carry out the revolt in Palestine. (Page 1).

2. Germany will keep up the connection with the Grand Mufti. Weapons will be stored for the Mufti with Ibn Saud in Arabia. (Page 2).

3. Ibn Saud himself has close connections with the Grand Mufti and the revolting circles in TransJordan. (Page 2).

4. To be able to carry out our work one of Germany's agents will be placed in Cairo (Page 3).

5. The document is undated but obviously written before the outbreak of the war in 1939. It is not signed.

Analyst Landmann Doc. No. 792-PS

Source:The Arab Higher Committee, Its Origins, Personnel and Purposes, The Documentary Record Submitted to The United Nations, May 1947, by Nations Associates.
2) Summons to a Intifada Against Britain
A "Fatwa " Issued by Haj Amin al-Husseini10, May, 1941*
* Translated from:-"Oriente Modemo," 1941, pp. 552-553; broadcast over the 'Iraqi and Axis radios.
In the name of Merciful and Almighty God.
I invite all my Moslem brothers throughout the whole world to join in the Holy War for God, for the defense of Islam and her lands against her enemy. O Faithful, obey and respond to my call.

O Moslems!

Proud 'Iraq has placed herself in the vanguard of this Holy Struggle, and has thrown herself against the strongest enemy of Islam certain that God will grant her victory.

The English have tried to seize this Arab-Moslem land, but she has risen, full of dignity and pride to defend her safety, to fight for her honor and to safeguard her integrity. 'Iraq fights the tyranny which has always had as its aim the destruction of Islam in every land. It is the duty of all Moslems to aid 'Iraq in her struggle and to seek every means to fight the enemy, the traditional traitor in every age and every situation.

Whoever knows the history of the East has everywhere seen the hand of the English working to destroy the Ottoman Empire and to divide the Arab countries. British politics toward the Arab people is masked under a veil of Hypocrisy. The minute she sees her chance, England squeezes the prostrate country in her Imperialist grasp, adding futile justifications. She creates discord and division within a country and while feeding it in secret openly she assumes the role of advisor and trusted hiend. The time when England could deceive the peoples of the East is passed. The Arab Nation and the Moslem people have awakened to fight British domination. The English have overthrown the Ottoman Empire, have destroyed Moslem rule in India, inciting one community against another; they stifled the Egyptian awakening, the dream of Mohammed Ali, colonizing Egypt for half a century. They took advantage of the weakening of the Ottoman Empire to stretch out their hands and use every sort of trick to take possession of many Arab countries as happened to Aden, the 9 Districts, the Hadramut, Oman, Masqat and the Emirates of the Persian Gulf and Transjordania. The vivid proof of the imperialistic designs of the British is to be found in Moslem Palestine which, although promised by England to Sheriff Hussein has had to submit to the outrageous infiltration of Jews, shameful politics designed to divide Arab-Moslem countries of Asia from those of Africa. In Palestine the English have committed unheard of barbarisms; among others, they have profaned the el-Aqsa Mosque and have declared the most unyielding war against Islam, both in deed and in word. The Prime Minister at that time told Parliament that the world would never see peace as long as the Koran existed. What hatred against Islam is stronger than that which publicly declares the Sacred Koran an enemy of human kind? Should such sacrilege go unpunished? After the dissolution of the Moslem Empire in India and of the Ottoman Caliphate, England, adhering to the policy of Gladstone, pursued her work of destruction to Islam depriving many Islamic States both in the East and in the West of their freedom and independence. The number of Moslems who today live under the rule of England and invoke liberation from their terrible yoke exceeds 220,000,000.

Therefore I invite you, O Brothers, to join in the War for God to preserve Islam, your independence and your lands from English aggression. I invite you to bring all your weight to bear in helping 'Iraq that she may throw off the shame that torments her. O Heroic 'Iraq, God is with Thee, the Arab Nation and the Moslem World are solidly with Thee in Thy Holy Struggle!

Source:The Arab War Effort-A Documentary Account The American Christian Palestine Committee (New York, n.d.).