Uprooted

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Who are the Jews from Arab countries? What were relations with Muslims like? What made Jews leave countries where they had been settled for thousands of years? What lessons can we learn from the mass exodus of minorities from the Middle East? Lyn Julius undertakes to answer all these questions and more in Uprooted, the culmination of 10 years of work studying these issues. Jews lived continuously in the Middle East and North Africa for almost 3,000 years. Yet, in just 50 years, their indigenous communities outside Palestine almost totally disappeared as more than 99 percent of the Jewish population fled. Those with foreign passports and connections generally left for Europe, Australia or the Americas. Some 650,000, including a minority of ideological Zionists, went to Israel. Before the Holocaust they constituted 10 percent of the world s Jewish population, and now over 50 percent of Israel s Jews are refugees from Arab and Muslim countries, or their descendants. This same process is now repeating in Christian and other minority communities across the Middle East. The book also assesses how well these Jews have integrated into Israel and how their struggles have been politicised. It charts the growing clamour for recognition, redress and memorialisation for these Jewish refugees, and looks at how their cause can contribute to peace and reconciliation between Israel and the Muslim world.