Report: Increase in Moroccan Jews immigrating to Israel

Over the past few days I've seen a number of articles in Arabic that quote the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics as saying that there has been an increase in the number of Jews immigrating to Israel from Arab countries.

I have not been able to find anything on the Israel CBS site, though.

Hespress (Morocco) reports that according to the bureau, 729 Moroccan Jews emigrates to Israel is 2014, compared to 297 people in the 2013, an increase of about 230 percent.

That sounds somewhat reasonable. There are several thousand Jews in Morocco (6000 according to CIA Factbook, 2500 according to Jewish Virtual Library) . However, an article from Algeria, quoting the same source, makes no sense.

Algeria's El Heddaf says that according to the report, 782 Jews left Algeria for Israel in 2014. However, most experts say that Algeria had less than 75 Jews in total in 2013.

El Haddaf agrees with Hespress in saying that 729 Moroccan Jews emigrated and says that more Jews came from Tunisia in 2014 than both, with 874 Jews making aliya. The Tunisian numbers also make little sense as there were estimated to be only 900 Jews left in Tunisia in 2013.

So I have no idea where El Haddaf is getting these numbers from, and what incentive they have to make them up.

---

This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 11 years and over 22,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

---