Introduction & Overview
Following their expulsion and after the fall of Jerusalem to the
Romans in 70 CE, the majority of the Jews were dispersed throughout
the world. The Jewish national idea, however, was never abandoned,
nor was the longing to return to their homeland.
Throughout the centuries, Jews have maintained a presence in the
Land, in greater or lesser numbers; uninterrupted contact with
Jews abroad has enriched the cultural, spiritual and intellectual
life of both communities.
Zionism, the political movement for the return of the Jewish people
to their homeland, founded in the late 19th century, derives its
name from word "Zion," the traditional synonym for Jerusalem
and the Land of Israel. In response to continued oppression and
persecution of Jews in eastern Europe and disillusionment with
emancipation in Western Europe, and inspired by Zionist ideology,
Jews immigrated to Palestine toward the end of the nineteenth
century. This was the first of the modern waves of aliyah (literally
"going up") that were to transform the face of the country.
On May 14, 1948, the State
of Israel was proclaimed.
The Proclamation
of the Establishment of the State of Israel stated: "The State of Israel will be
open for Jewish immigration and the ingathering
of the exiles; it will foster the development
of the country for all its inhabitants; it
will be based on freedom, justice, and peace
as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it
will ensure complete equality of social and
political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective
of religion, race or sex . . . ."
This was followed in 1950
by the Law
of Return, which granted every
Jew the automatic right to immigrate to Israel
and become a citizen of the state. With the
gates wide open after statehood was declared,
a wave of mass immigration brought 687,000
Jews to Israel's shores. By 1951, the number
of immigrants more than doubled the Jewish
population of the country in 1948. The immigrants
included survivors of the Holocaust from displaced
persons' camps in Germany, Austria and Italy;
a majority of the Jewish communities of Bulgaria and Poland, one third of the Jews of Romania,
and nearly all of the Jewish communities of Libya, Yemen and Iraq.
The immigrants encountered
many adjustment difficulties. The fledgling
state had just emerged from the bruising war
of independence, was in grievous economic
condition, and found it difficult to provide
hundreds of thousands of immigrants with
housing and jobs. Much effort was devoted
toward absorbing the immigrants: ma'abarot — camps
of tin shacks and tents — and later
permanent dwellings were erected; employment
opportunities were created; the Hebrew
language was taught; and the educational system was
expanded and adjusted to meet the needs of
children from many different backgrounds.
Additional mass immigration
took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
when immigrants arrived from the newly independent
countries of North Africa, Morocco and Tunisia.
A large number of immigrants also arrived
during these years from Poland, Hungary and Egypt.
2014 saw a large spike in immigration to Israel, with a 32% increase in general immigration over 2013's numbers. As opposed to 2013's number of 16,968 immigrants making Aliyah to Israel, in 2014 approximately 26,500 individuals made Aliyah. Immigration from the Ukraine increased more than 190% due to the ongoing civil war and social unrest, and for the first time in history immigration from France surpassed immigration from every other country. Looking forward, Israeli officials predicted over 10,000 French individuals to make Aliyah in 2015. During 2014 more people immigrated to Israel from free countries rather than from countries in distress, demonstrating Israel's attractiveness as a place to live and do business. Aliyah from Western Europe in general was up 88% over the previous year's data, and Aliyah from the former Soviet Union was up 50%.
The rising tide of anti-Semitism and fear of terror attacks prompted the largest immigration of Jews to Israel from Western Europe in history during 2015. The Jewish Agency reported that 9,880 Western European Jews made aliyah to Israel in 2015, the largest annual number ever recorded. The vast majority of these immigrants (7,900) came from France, where there were two large national terror attacks as well as many individual violent attacks against Jews during the year. An estimated 800 of these individuals made aliyah from England. In total, 2015 saw 31,000 Jewish individuals from around the globe make Aliyah to Israel, a 12-year high.
Immigration
from Western Countries
While mass immigrations
to Israel have mostly been from countries
of distress, immigration of individuals from
the free world has also continued throughout
the years. Most of these persons are motivated
by idealism. This aliyah gained strength after
the SixDay War, with the awakening feelings
of Jewish identity among Diaspora
Jewry.
Immigration
from the Soviet Union & former Soviet
Union
From 1948 to 1967, the
relations between Jews
in the Soviet Union and the State
of Israel were limited. Following the SixDay
War, Jewish consciousness among Soviet
Jews was awakened, and increasing numbers
sought aliyah. As an atmosphere of detente
began to pervade international relations
in the early 1970s, the Soviet Union permitted
significant number of Jews to immigrate
to Israel. At the end of the decade, a quarter
of a million Jews had left the Soviet Union;
140,000 immigrated to Israel.
Soviet Jews were permitted
to leave the Soviet Union in unprecedented
numbers in the late 1980s, with President
Gorbachev's bid to liberalize the country.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in late
1991 facilitated this process. After 190,000 olim reached Israel in 1990 and 150,000 in 1991,
the stabilization of conditions in the former
Soviet Union and adjustment difficulties
in Israel caused immigration to level off
at approximately 70,000 per year. From 1989
to the end of 2003, more than 950,000
Jews from the former Soviet Union had made
their home in Israel.
Immigration
from Ethiopia
The last decade has witnessed
the aliyah of the ancient Jewish community
of Ethiopia. In 1984, some 7,000 Ethiopian
Jews walked hundreds of miles to Sudan, where
a secret effort known as Operation
Moses brought
them to Israel. Another 15,000 arrived in
a dramatic airlift, Operation
Solomon, in
May 1991. Within thirty hours, fortyone
flights from Addis Ababa carried almost all
the remaining community to Israel.
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