Page 202

Afghanistan and some other Islamic states took a similar position. I had visited Afghanistan in the autumn of 1933, during the reign of its late king Nadir Shah, and spoke with him about the Palestine cause and the dangers Jewish immigration posed to it. He prevented Jewish migration from his country.

But it is a great cause for regret that some Arab states allowed Jews to migrate from their countries under pressure from foreign states. Despite the many memoranda we submitted and appeals we directed to them, this greatly increased the number of Jews migrating to Palestine. After the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Arab countries migrated without those states preventing them. At least 120,000 came from Iraq during the time of Nuri al-Said and others, 50,000 from Yemen after Imam Yahya’s death, and 450,000 from North Africa.

The following is a statement of the number of Jewish migrants from the Arab countries to Palestine:

| Country | Number | In words | | --- | --- | --- | | Iraq | 120,000 | one hundred twenty thousand | | Yemen | 50,000 | fifty thousand | | Libya | 35,000 | thirty-five thousand | | Egypt | 45,000 | forty-five thousand | | Morocco | 150,000 | one hundred fifty thousand | | Tunisia | 90,000 | ninety thousand | | Algeria | 15,000 | fifteen thousand | | Total | 505,000 | five hundred five thousand |

This count was through 1967, and another number of Jews migrated from some Arab countries during the last years as well.

In addition, there were Jews who migrated to Palestine from Syria and Lebanon. Of the Algerian Jews, 150,000 migrated to Palestine, while the remaining 115,000 preferred to migrate to France and other European countries.

A large part of them also filtered into Palestine. The number who migrated there from the Arab countries is estimated at about 800,000.