Operation Ezra and Nehemiah

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Operation Ezra and Nehemiah was an operation conducted by Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee that airlifted between 120,000 and 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel via Iran and Cyprus from 1951 to 1952. The massive emigration of Iraqi Jews was among the most climactic events of the Jewish exodus from the Muslim World. The operation is named after Ezra and Nehemiah, who led groups of Jews from exile in Babylonia to return to Judea in the 5th century BC, as written in the books of the Hebrew Bible that bear their names. Most of the $4 million cost of the operation was financed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The original code name for the operation was Operation Ali Baba. Contemporaneous reporting used this name.

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