Jewish-Arab Relations: A Deep Dive Into The History
- Ofek Kehila
- May 6
- 7 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
How did the history of Jewish-Arab relations come to be, in many ways, a story of paradise lost? And, is there any way back to that lost paradise or Golden Age of coexistence? To answer these questions, we must delve into the history of Jewish-Arab relations, its major milestones, and the relation to today’s conflict in the Middle East.
How did Jewish-Arab relations evolve historically?
Relations between Jews and Arabs go back to ancient times, predating Islam and even Judaism as we know it. Although such contact is presumed to have begun in the Arabian Peninsula, it extended through the centuries to Al-Andalus, Africa, the Middle East, and other places across the globe.
The presence of Jews in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to the 6th century BCE. By the rise of the prophet Muhammad in the 6th century CE, Jewish and Arab tribes had been interacting for hundreds of years in the Hejaz region and cities such as Mecca and Medina. In the Constitution of Medina, a document formalizing tribal affairs in the city, Jews were given equal rights to Muslims in exchange for political loyalty. Even though Muhammad eventually became hostile toward the Jewish tribes of Arabia, this early period saw a relative inter-faith harmony between early Muslims and Jews.
However, it may be argued that the period that constitutes the pinnacle of Jewish-Arab relations was the 8th-12th centuries, and the place, Al-Andalus, located in modern-day Spain. Under a succession of Muslim-ruled caliphates, emirates, and taifas, not only were Jews allowed to live and prosper in the Iberian Peninsula, but together with their Christian and Muslim counterparts, they managed to bring about a true social and cultural Golden Age: Jewish poets such as Shlomo Ibn Gabirol and Yehudah Halevi were guests of honor in Christian and Muslim courts alike, figures such as Shmuel Hanagid held high-ranking positions in the Muslim taifas, and Torah scholars such as Rambam were allowed to develop an influential body of Jewish wisdom while living amid Arab society.
Read more: Where Are Jews From?
The Iraqi case In Babylon, located in modern-day Iraq, a Jewish community dating back to the 6th century BCE has turned Baghdad, by the 9th century, into one of the most important rabbinic centers in the world. There, notable figures such as Saadia Gaon wrote books on linguistics, philosophy, and Jewish religious law in Judeo-Arabic under the Abbasid Caliphate.
Even though the Babylonian community, like many others, experienced ups and downs under different regimes, it was considered to be one of the most prosperous Jewish communities in the Arab world. By 1920, Mandatory Iraq included nearly 100,000 Jews, with five representatives in the parliament, religious and educational freedom, and the right to hold high-ranking positions within the state. Nevertheless, over the following decades, the situation of Jews in Modern Iraq got increasingly precarious while facing open hostility from both the government and the general Arab population.
As a result, extensive immigration waves to the newly founded state of Israel took place, where over 120,000 Jews (this reporter’s grandmother being one of them) left their homes, property, lives, and former identities in Iraq. In the aftermath, the Babylonian community practically ceased to exist: whereas in 1947, 125,000 Jews were living in Iraq, in 1968, there were only 2,500. As of today, it is estimated that there are only four Jews left in the entirety of Iraq.
When I talk with my Iraqi grandmother, she talks about the charming city with the Hiddekel River running through it; her family used to visit the river banks on weekends and bury a watermelon deep in the sand to get it nice and cold during the hot summer days. She describes her home in Baghdad, her father’s shoe store, and the coexistence with their Arab neighbors, which was shattered in the Farhud pogrom that claimed the lives of nearly 200 Iraqi Jews and left 1,000 more injured during the Shavuot holiday of 1941.
Jewish populations dwindle in Muslim-majority countries
In the 20th century, Jewish-Arab relations took a sharply negative turn due to a series of dramatic events forming the modern-day Arab–Israeli conflict: the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism, the 1929 Palestine riots, the 1936 Arab revolt, the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the ensuing Independence War of 1948, the Six Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and more. One of the consequences of the full-blown hostility was the immigration of Jews from all over the Arab world to Israel and the extinction of the Jewish communities in Arab countries.
The aforementioned case of the Babylonian community in Iraq is certainly not the only one: In Morocco, the Jewish population in 1948 was 250,000; in 2019, its number dropped to 2,000. The same goes for Algeria (1948: 140,000; 2021: 200), Tunisia (1948: 75,000; 2019: 1000), Libya (1948: 35,000; 2019: 0), Egypt (1948: 75,000; 2019: 100), Yemen (1948: 50,000; 2016: 50), Syria (1948: 20,000; 2019: 100), and more. In sum, nearly 1 million Jews fled the Arab world never to return.
According to political analyst Oren Kessler, the 1936 Arab revolt stands out as a major turning point in the history of Jewish-Arab relations, since it was then that the self-segregation between Arabs and Jews became solidified. “Before 1936,” Kessler explains, “it was very common for Jews from the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community in Mandate Palestine) to take summer vacations to resorts in the cooler weather of the Lebanese mountains. Trains left daily from Tel Aviv and Haifa for Beirut. There was a whole network of hotels in Lebanon that had kosher restaurants and advertised in the Hebrew newspapers. All of that ended after the outbreak of the revolt, especially after the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, fled Palestine to Lebanon in 1937. The bloody three-year revolt convinced each side that the fate of the Holy Land would ultimately be decided by force of arms.”
Jewish-Arab relations: Key events
6th century BCE: The genesis of Jewish-Arab relations in the Arabian Peninsula.
622 CE: Establishment of the Medina Constitution.
8th-12th centuries: Jewish-Arab Golden Age in Al-Andalus and Babylon.
19th-20th centuries: Emergence of the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.
1929: The Palestine riots.
1936: The Arab revolt.
1948: Israeli Declaration of Independence and the Independence War.
1967: The Six-Day War.
1973: The Yom Kippur War.
1979: Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty
1987: First Palestinian Intifada.
1993: The Oslo Accords.|
1994: Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty.
2000: Second Palestinian Intifada.
2020: The Abraham Accords (peace with UAE and Bahrain).
2023: The October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the Gaza War.
Historical Jewish-Arab relations and today’s conflict
As of today, most of the immediate Jewish-Arab relations take place in the state of Israel, where out of nearly 10 million citizens, 73% are Jews and 21% are Christian, Muslim, or Druze Arabs. In Israel, Jewish and Arab populations interact daily, mainly in big cities such as Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv, but also in many other places across the country. Jews and Arabs work and live together, meeting at the supermarket, the university classrooms, the workplace, or at the beach. Living together in Israel is not without ethnic, cultural, political, and religious tension. Indeed, it is far from a true paradise or Golden Age. Attesting to this are the violent incidents, terrorist attacks, and uprisings that threaten to tear Israel’s delicate social fabric. However, as far as life within Israel is concerned (as opposed to the relations with the Palestinian Authority or Hamas-ruled Gaza), it is possible to talk about a daily albeit fragile Jewish-Arab coexistence. Evidence for this can be found in 2023’s Gaza war, where despite a massacre of 1,200 Israeli citizens and a consequent war between Israel and Hamas-led militant groups, Arabs in Israel have continued living in relative peace with their Jewish neighbors.
Post-Oct. 7 massacre: What matters now
When we step back from the population’s daily life to look at the bigger picture of relations between Israel and the Arab world, it is evident that even though there is a deep-seated animosity between Israel and various Arab and Muslim states, principally the Iran-backed “axis of resistance,” many other Arab nations have signed peace treaties with Israel (Jordan, Egypt, UAE, and Bahrain) or are currently negotiating normalization (Saudi Arabia). It appears that the improvement or deterioration of relations between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East and elsewhere depends largely on the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which lies at the heart of the general Israeli-Arab conflict.
There are even numerous cases of Jews and Arabs saving each other’s lives during the October 7 massacre.
Wrap up
Only time will tell if Jewish-Arab relations are up for a second Golden Age, or if the hostility of our time will increase in the centuries to come.
The major events of the 20th century in the Middle East and beyond have turned Jewish-Arab history into a story of paradise lost: a cultural Golden Age like that of Al-Andalus was a historical event that will be hard to replicate; the virtually extinct communities of Jews in Arab countries such as Iraq, Morocco, and Egypt are unlikely to return to their former glory. Nevertheless, let's look beyond the 20th century at a nearly 3,000-year history of Jewish-Arab relations. From this broader perspective, those relations stand out as more positive than negative; much more positive than Jewish-Christian relations. It is even possible to argue that the events of the 20th century portray Jewish-Arab relations in a way that distorts the bigger historical picture. If a recurrence of strong relations between Jews and Arabs is somehow possible, it will only be possible at the contemporary epicenter of Jewish-Arab interaction: the Middle East and Israel.
Ofek Kehila (Israel, 1987) is a scholar of Spanish Golden Age literature and Latin American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. His research bridges the gap between those traditions, highlighting their aesthetic, cultural, and historical dialogue. He holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2022) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (2023-2025).