During the Holocaust , the Middle East was in turmoil . Britain prohibited Jewish immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine . In Cairo the Jewish Lehi ( also known as the Stern Gang ) assassinated Lord Moyne in 1944 fighting as part of its campaign against British closure of Palestine to Jewish immigration , complicating British-Arab-Jewish relations . While the Allies and the Axis were fighting for the oil-rich region , the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni staged a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and organized the Farhud pogrom which marked the turning point for about 150,000 Iraqi Jews who , following this event and the hostilities generated by the war with Israel in 1948 , were targeted for violence , persecution , boycotts , confiscations , and near complete expulsion in 1951 . The coup failed and the mufti fled to Berlin , where he actively supported Hitler . In Egypt , with a Jewish population of about 75,000 , young Anwar Sadat was imprisoned for conspiring with the Nazis and promised them that " no British soldier would leave Egypt alive " ( see Military history of Egypt during World War II ) leaving the Jews of that region defenseless . In the French Vichy territories of Algeria and Syria plans had been drawn up for the liquidation of their Jewish populations were the Axis powers to triumph
Farhud
Farhud
Persecution of Jews