Who are the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa?
A. There has been an uninterrupted presence of large Jewish communities in the Middle East from time immemorial. In the eighth and sixth centuries BCE* Assyria and Babylon respectively conquered the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judea. This marks the beginnings of the ancient Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, some 1,000 years before the Arab Muslim conquests of the these regions — including the Land of Israel — and about 2,500 years before the birth of the modern Arab states. Despite the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, the Land of Israel under various Jewish governments remained the central locale of most of ancient Jewry. Nonetheless, strong and vibrant Jewish communities remained in Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, North Africa and (pre-Muslim) Arabia. In the 7th century CE, Arab armies under the banner of the new religion of Islam conquered the vast regions of the Middle East and North Africa, encountering indigenous peoples living in their own lands. Over
