UN - Middle Eastern Jews’ Lost Assets

Jewish refugees from 11 Middle Eastern countries lost an estimated $263 billion in assets due to persecution, ethnic cleansing, and violence, researchers explained at a United Nations side event for the opening sessions of the UN Human Rights Council.

The report details how systematic state oppression, pogroms, and expulsions depopulated the nearly million Jews of Aden, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen down to almost 12,000. The Jewish refugees had their assets forfeited, expropriated, and destroyed, or had to use them to pay ransoms, with the Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) report scouring 22 archives in six countries over several years to understand the extent of the financial damages.

The Jewish communities of those countries, after enduring centuries-long oppression as second-class citizens under the system of Dhimmitude, as detailed in the report by JJAC, began to gain rights and economic freedoms in the 19th century under Ottoman reforms or Colonial rule.

Iraq serves as one of the bloodiest examples of the persecution of Middle Eastern Jews. The 1941 Farhud pogrom by pro-Nazi forces saw Jews murdered and raped, and their belongings looted.

In the 1950s, Jewish assets were frozen, and those who wished to leave the country had to forfeit their citizenship. By 2025, the Iraqi Jewish population had dwindled from 135,000 to an estimated five.

The report recalled that Yemeni Jews were targeted in anti-Zionist riots in the 1947 Aden Pogrom, which killed dozens and destroyed Jewish properties. By 1950, only a few hundred Jews remained in Aden, with an additional 3,500 in Yemen. The JJAC estimated that today there is only one Jew in Yemen.

-www.jpost.com, 8 September 2025

Commentary: Experts say that there is little to no possibility of Jews receiving any reparations from the countries mentioned. Besides, most of them are in dire poverty and barely function in a civilized manner.

Interestingly, Israel—made up mostly of escaped Jewish refugees—is now far advanced when it comes to prosperity, quality of life, and personal freedom.

Here again we point to Scripture: “And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain” (Zechariah 14:16-17).