The Second Exodus: How 850,000 Jews Were Erased From the Arab World | With Dr. Henry Green

In 1948 there were 38,000 Jews in Libya. Today there are none. Across the Arab world, some 850,000 Jews — communities that predated Islam by a thousand years — were driven out, dispossessed, and denationalized in barely three decades. Most of the world has never heard the story.Dr. Henry Green, founder of Sephardi Voices and emeritus professor at the University of Miami, has spent more than fifteen years recording the testimonies of those who lived it. In this conversation with Ben Chertoff, he traces how the Jews of Baghdad, Benghazi, Cairo, Casablanca, Aleppo and beyond went from flourishing — at one point Jews were 35–40% of Baghdad — to gone: the Farhud, the rise of the Mufti, Nazi propaganda in Arabic, the great rescue operations, the ma'abarot transit camps, and the long erasure of an entire refugee history.Henry explains why this exodus was left out of the textbooks, what justice might look like, and why his new work puts a forensic dollar figure on what was taken — work he carried to the UN in Geneva in September 2025. And he closes with the story of a young Hillel president who found her own grandparents in the Sephardi Voices archive and wept.Guest: Dr. Henry Green — founder, Sephardi Voices; emeritus professor of Religious & Judaic Studies, University of Miami. Co-author of Sephardi Voices: The Untold Expulsion of Jews from the Arab Lands (2021, with Richard Stern­berg) and author of new work, The Forgotten Exodus of Arab Jews, presenting a forensic valuation of seized Jewish assets.The scale of the exodus: From 150,000 to 3 Jews in Iraq, 38,000 to 0 Jews in LibyaIndigeneity and antiquity — the Talmud written in Babylon; "I'm a Babylonian Jew"Life as dhimmi under Islam vs. persecution in Christian EuropeThe Farhud (1941 Baghdad pogrom) and Nazi reach into the Arab worldBaghdad's golden age — Jews 35–40% of the city; the Zilkha banking familyThe rescue operations: Magic Carpet (Yemen) and Ezra and Nehemiah (Iraq)The ma'avarot transit camps and the dominant Ashkenazi diaspora narrativeAntisemitism vs. anti-IsraelThe Abraham Accords and Morocco's reckoningRecognition, justice, and reparations; the case taken to the UN in Geneva, September 2025Notable quotes"Libya in 1948 had 38,000 Jews. Today there are zero.""I'm a Babylonian Jew." / "How can I deny that I'm Iraqi? I've been there for 3,000 years.""I have no Jews. I only have Moroccans." — the King of Morocco"Why would a million people leave in 30 years? That is ethnic cleansing.""You can't talk about one refugee story without the other."