 Hi friends and subscribers, welcome back to my YouTube channel. My name is Daniel Rosel and this channel focuses on life on the ground here in Jerusalem and Israel. Recently I decided that it would be kind of fun to send in a Freedom of Information request in Hebrew, and by fun I mean I thought it would be worth doing. As a former sometime journalist I'm a huge proponent of Freedom of Information laws and giving citizens the information that they deserve from the government bodies which their taxes are funding. Like many countries Israel has a Freedom of Information law which promises citizens the right to access certain information from public bodies like municipalities and government ministries. It's actually a pretty old statute dating back to 1998, but it has been amended a number of times since. I recently uploaded a video about the number of different language speaking groups in Israel, but as I pointed out in that video I hadn't been able to find any good data pertaining specifically to Jerusalem. I figured this would make a good practice run for sending in my first FOI request and so I went ahead and did exactly that. A few days later and at the very reasonable cost of 20 shekels or about five dollars I got a reply back from the Jerusalem municipality. While they said they didn't have the specific data I was looking for the number of speakers of foreign languages in Jerusalem, they had something that I think is actually more interesting. They sent back estimates sourced from the department of Aliah about the numbers of Jews who have moved to Jerusalem as part of the Aliah process since 1990 ranked in accordance with their country of birth. These can also be used in turn to infer data about the percentages of foreign language speakers in Jerusalem. I translated the table into English and did a little bit of my own analysis to try to pluck out some interesting facts. In total since the year 1990 the government estimates that 87,291 Olim have moved to Jerusalem as part of their Aliah process and they have done so from literally all over the world. The stator was derived by registering with local authorities so it doesn't necessarily account for the fact that some of the same Olim might have subsequently relocated to elsewhere in Israel or have left Israel altogether but it is still interesting to know where Jerusalemites by choice originate from. What I find very interesting is that the top three countries the USSR, the USA and France together account for more than 60% of the number of immigrants who have chosen Jerusalem as home. Of course since 1992 the USSR hasn't existed but large number of immigrants who moved to Jerusalem after the dissolution of the union were born when it was still intact hence there included statistically under that category. After these big three contributors there are in total 11 countries which contributed more than 1% of Olim each. These include England with about 4% of Jerusalem's Olim, Russia was 3%, Ethiopia was 3%, Argentina was 3% and Canada with 2%. As you can see I'm rounding these numbers off to the nearest integer. As we move further down the list we can pick out some kind of great oddities as well as some unexpected For instance I personally moved to Jerusalem from Cork in Ireland. According to these numbers I'm one of only 44 Olim born in Ireland to adopt Jerusalem as a home at least since 1990. So Irish immigrants constitute 0.05% of the total Jewish immigrant population in the city. From Denmark there have been 82 immigrants to Jerusalem and 3 from Cyprus and 2 from Ghana. In fact as we go down and down the list we can see that a huge amount of countries are represented here. This may reflect the coincidence of where Jewish people who moved to Jerusalem happened to have been born but it does also give a sense for some of the smaller and more obscure Jewish communities in the world which have sent Olim here. To cite another word example the number of people who have made aliyah to Jerusalem from Norway is listed as 30 individuals since 1990 or 0.03% of the total. To get some information about the linguister groups I added the most common language in each country to as many countries as I could at least when it wasn't ambiguous. This table listing the immigrants from the world's various English speaking countries is I think also quite revealing. If my numbers are right it shows that 72% of English speaking immigrants living in Jerusalem were born in the USA. This number is dwarfed by England in second place at 14% of the English speaking total. Australia was surprisingly low or so I thought with 677 immigrants that ranks at 3% and New Zealand actually came last in the English speaking table with only 32 New Zealand born Jews having moved to Jerusalem since 1990. The Spanish speaking table is longer than the English one given how many southern and central American countries have Jewish communities. Among those countries which I tagged as Spanish speaking Argentina came in top place with 48% of Spanish speaking Jews in Jerusalem having originated in that country. Mexico was second at 14% followed by Spain at 7% with 334 individuals and the Dominican Republic came in final place with only two Jewish people moving to Jerusalem who were born there. The Arabic speaking table is quite noteworthy too. The story of the forced exodus of Jews from the Arab speaking world after the foundation of the state of Israel is a narrative that is often overlooked even though efforts to raise awareness about it have been ongoing for the past few years and there's also a monument at the Tayyelat Promenade but it has left its imprint upon the Jewish immigrant populations of Jerusalem. In total more than 2,000 Jewish Jerusalemites were born in Arab speaking countries at least since 1990 when these statistics began to be compiled. The top contributor is 945 Jews born in Tunisia made aliyah to Jerusalem which alone constitutes 41% of the total of those who originated in Arabic speaking countries. Surprisingly there were 16 individuals registered as having been born in Jordan and even three in Saudi Arabia. These numbers in my opinion present a really fascinating picture about the kaleidoscope of immigrants who have moved to Jerusalem since the foundation of the state and left an indelible imprint on the city both of themselves and their countries of origin. It also throws some statistical cold water on a few preconceptions about immigrants to Israel that often hold currency even among those born in Israel. One of those is that all immigrants to Israel are American Jews. These numbers show that although American Jews constitute the majority among English speaking contributors to aliyah, overall only 21% of immigrants to Jerusalem were born in the US. With no disrespect intended to Americans, the true nature of the immigrant community in Jerusalem is far more colorful. It's Russian speaking francophone and even has a few oddbots thrown into the mix from places like Denmark and of course Ireland. I hope this video proved interesting. Thanks to the Jerusalem Municipality and the Department of aliyah for handling my information requests so quickly especially over the busy Haguean period and if you'd like to get more videos from me about life in Jerusalem and Israel then please do consider liking this video and subscribing to this YouTube channel.