Jewish Population and Israel Background Information

World Jewry and Israeli Demographic Shifts Through the 20th Century

Population Shifts in Europe, North America and Israel

At the start of World War II, approximately 10 million Jews lived in Europe, including 5.5 million Jews in Poland and Russia.The numbers here come from the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Holocaust Encyclopedia, and the Pew Research Center. We have not attempted to reconcile the sometimes-varying numbers in these reports which this section roughly summarizes. Polish Jewry was largely wiped out during the Holocaust and over a million Russian Jews perished too. The overall Jewish population of Europe was reduced to less than 3 million people.

In North America, the Jewish population grew from 50,000 in the mid-19th Century to over 5 million by 1948. While the European Jewish population plummeted in the 20th century and continues to decline, Israel grew to become home to approximately half of the world's Jewish population.

While Israel's Jewish population grew dramatically after the Holocaust and following a mass exodus of Russian Jews, thousands of Jews lived in the area that is now Israel since Biblical and Medieval times. In 1914, the Jews in Israel numbered nearly 100,000 and made up 13% of the population. (Jewish Virtual Library.) 630,000 Jews lived in the area declared to be the State of Israel in 1947.

The entire Jewish population of the world is tiny—just 15 million people—smaller than Romania or the Netherlands and just two million more than the population of Pennsylvania.

The current Jewish population of Israel is 7.2 million, while the current Jewish population of the United States is 6.5 million. Jews make up just 2% of the population of the United States, and just 0.2% of the world's population. The entire rest of the world is home to the world's other 1.5 million Jews.

Jewish immigration to the US (including from Russia) was steady between 1880 and 1924, representing the largest wave of Jewish immigration to this country. The US largely closed its doors to Jewish migration in 1924, and more definitively after 1939. An international youth-led human rights campaign to free Soviet Jews from the deep antisemitism that restricted Jewish life in Russia began in 1970, effectively concluding in 1992 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. During this period, over a million Russian Jews emigrated to Israel. While Soviet Jews were not allowed to emigrate to the US until 1979, the later waves of Russian Jewish annual emigration to the US exceeded immigration to Israel.

Outside of Israel and the United States, the next largest concentrations of Jews are in France, Great Britain, and Canada. Robust Jewish communities that once existed throughout the Middle East were largely depopulated through the 20th Century, through expulsion and persecutions of Jewish populations there. The Jews who hail from Europe (including Eastern Europe) are known as Ashkenazi Jews, while those from the Middle East are known as Sephardic Jews and Mizrahi Jews, corresponding to different customs that evolved in both places during the Middle Ages.

Israel's current population is approximately 50% Sephardic/Mizrahi, and nearly 20% of Israel's population has direct ties to the mass exodus from the former Soviet Union.

Jewish history puts the Jewish people into the dispossessed company of many Palestinians themselves, as well as Uyghurs, Baha'is, Kurds, Karen/Pakanyor, Tibetans, and Native Americans. Yet, for reasons that include millennia of persecution and conspiratorial beliefs about Jewish power, Jews and Israelis are often treated as powerful and feared oppressors rather than immigrants or victims of persecution.

Migration to Israel from North Africa and the Middle East

Jewish communities once thrived across North Africa and the Middle East and Persian countries. Not anymore. Rampant antisemitism, including Nazi ties with leaders of several Arab countries, led the vast majorities of Jews to flee North Africa, the Middle East and Persia/Iran and emigrate to Israel. A large contingent of Ethiopian Jews also emigrated to Israel (currently the Ethiopian Jewish population there is 177,000).Israel’s Jewish Ethiopian population reached 177,600 in 2024 — JNS.org.

In 1948, the following countries had significant Jewish populations (Mizrachi Jews statistics). Click a column header to sort:

Country	Jewish Population (1948)
Morocco	250,000
Iraq	150,000
Algeria	140,000
Iran	120,000
Tunisia	100,000
Egypt	75,000
Yemen	55,000
Libya	38,000
Syria	30,000
Lebanon	20,000

Approximately one-third of Israel's population (3.2 million people) have ancestry in North Africa and the Middle East. Currently the Jewish population in these countries is minimal, with Jews remaining in Morocco (2,000–3,000), Tunisia (1,000), and Iran (8,000–10,000).

Most North African, Ethiopian and Middle Eastern immigrant Jews are either Black or brown skinned. Many Americans do not realize that Israel's population is so diverse. Within the US too, 8–12% of Jews can trace their origins to countries in Africa, the Middle East or Latin American countries. The perception that both American and Israeli Jews are “white” is a false overgeneralization that fails to recognize Jewish diversity.

For an interesting documentary that demonstrates racial and cultural diversity within Israel, watch Rock in the Red Zone, by American Israeli filmmaker Laura Bialas, which portrays life in the border town of Sderot, near Gaza, in 2014.

Palestinian Population Information

The description of people as Palestinian, vs. Arab or Arab Israeli, refers to the people who themselves or whose ancestors lived within the boundaries of the British Mandate of Palestine. With the exception of Jordan, which granted Palestinian refugees and Palestinians living in the West Bank citizenship in 1954, Palestinians were not absorbed as citizens of the Arab countries to which they fled or emigrated after 1948. In Lebanon, for example, Palestinian refugees are denied property rights and restricted from working in certain professions, even if they have lived there since 1948. Gazans are Palestinians who are not citizens of Egypt and West Bank Palestinians may or may not also be citizens of Jordan.

According to the Middle East Journal, there are currently 14.8 million Palestinians in the world, with the largest concentration of Palestinians (5.3 million) living in the West Bank, 2.2 million living in Gaza and 2.3 million living in Jordan. The number of Palestinians has dramatically increased since World War I, when the Arab population within the Palestinian Mandate was approximately 500,000. Reportedly, the number of Palestinians who left or fled Israel during the Israeli Independence War is approximately 750,000.

Additional Demography, Historical Facts about Israel and Its Government

Demographic Highlights

Given the centrality of the Israel-Palestine conflict in public discourse, many people are surprised when they learn that Israel is a very small country. Israel is the 98th largest country in the world in population, with 11 million citizens. This places it right behind Hungary and just ahead of Austria in population. And it is the 153rd largest country in the world by geographic size. In other words, it's tiny. It is the size of New Jersey.

Israel is also the world's sole majority Jewish state, though it is more ethnically and racially diverse than many other Middle Eastern countries, with a citizenry that is 74% Jewish, 20% Arab, and 5–6% “other.”

During the 20th century the Muslim population grew to 1.9 billion. Christianity has grown even faster, and there are now over 2.2 billion Christians in the world. That's 1,466 times more Christians than Jews on the planet, and 1,133 times more Muslims than Jews.

Key Dates in Modern Israel's History

After the fall of the Ottoman empire in 1917, Britain was given the mandate of Palestine, a status formally granted by the League of Nations in 1920. Britain's support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine was declared in the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 and legally confirmed in the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920.

The efforts of the Zionist leadership in Mandatory Palestine, the growth of the Jewish population on the land to approximately one-third of the population, and an international refugee crisis caused by the Nazi's Final Solution to wipe out the Jewish people led to a vote in the United Nations in late 1947 to consider a partition of Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

Timeline of Conflicts Involving Israel, Palestinians and Arab States

Note: Periods between these key dates in the conflict have not been times of peace. Rocket attacks into Israel have been a fact of daily life, particularly in southern Israel during the period between 2005 and 2023. Terror attacks have continued to occur within Israel and violence on the West Bank, including seizure of Palestinian land, detention of Palestinian suspects through administrative detention, and destruction of Palestinian homes, with increasing tensions.

Israel's Government

Israel is governed as a democracy. Israeli citizens vote for members of its Parliament (known as the Knesset). Israeli citizens vote for parties and the parties that can form a majority in the Knesset will form a coalition government. Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel vote in Parliamentary elections and there are currently 12 Arab members of the Knesset (10% of its 120 members).

The Prime Minister is selected by the coalition and generally corresponds to the party with the plurality of votes. Currently, Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party is the Prime Minister, and his cabinet includes two far-right ministers from other parties in his coalition. Israel has a Supreme Court that can exercise judicial review of Israeli laws, comparing them to Basic Laws that form a quasi-Constitutional authority.

Israel's government is formed by coalitions that may (and currently do) include leaders on the extremes. In the event of a narrow coalition majority, these leaders have the power to dissolve the government by leaving the coalition if the Prime Minister does not adhere to their positions. Israeli policies are often dictated by groups that do not represent the mainstream of public opinion.

The current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, served from 1996–1999, then regained his position from 2009 through 2021, and resumed his position in 2022. Netanyahu's conservative politics and attempt to weaken the liberal Israeli Supreme Court sparked widespread protests throughout Israel starting in July 2023.