Operation Ezra and Nehemiah was the exodus of over 120,000 Jews from Iraq to Israel between 1950 and 1951. The Iraqi government had been persecuting Jews and made emigration to Israel illegal, but then passed a bill in 1950 allowing Jews to leave. The Iraqi prime minister organized an airlift to encourage Jews to depart as he wanted to remove Jews from Iraq. Between May 1951 and early 1952, over 120,000 Iraqi Jews were airlifted to Israel, leaving only around 6,000 Jews remaining in Iraq.