Two years has passed since the Israel-Hamas war began with the horrific massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Palestinian Hamas terrorists and the taking of 250 hostages during an invasion marked by methodically planned, unprecedented levels of barbarism. On the grim and somber first anniversary of this heinous event, VisionTV presented the world premiere of the eye-opening new documentary by filmmaker Martin Himel, The Forgotten Expulsion: Jews from Arab Lands, on Monday, October 7, 2024 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT, commercial free.

On Tuesday, October 7, 2025 at 9pm ET / 6pm PT, VisionTV presents an special encore of The Forgotten Expulsion: Jews from Arab Lands to mark the somber second anniversary of the October 7th massacre. Next month on November 30, the official day of remembrance of the departure and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries and Iran in the late 1940s is marked yearly.

It is widely known that 700,000 Palestinians were displaced during Israel’s War of Independence in 1947/48. However, in The Forgotten Expulsion, Himel explores a largely overlooked chapter in that same period, the forced displacement of 850,000 Jews from Arab countries including Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Morocco as the State of Israel was established. The Forgotten Expulsion argues that if Palestinians are to be repatriated and compensated for their loss, then Jewish refugees from Arab Lands should also be repatriated and compensated for theirs.

Not only was October 7, 2023 the most extensive slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, it also sparked a wave of Pro-Palestinian/Antisemitic protests worldwide. The protestors claim that Israel should be destroyed because it is allegedly a colonial state artificially created by North American and European Zionists. The Forgotten Expulsion: Jews from Arab Lands shows that these Zionists are Jews, and that Jews have been indigenous to the Land of Israel and the Middle East for the past 3,500 years and challenges the narrative that Israel is a colonial state.

In an interview with ILTV’s Israel Daily, Himel underscored why this page of Jewish and world history is widely overlooked.

“It’s inconvenient for the people who are always advocating an ant-Israeli perspective, or antisemitic perspective. I think it’s more antisemitic than anything else,” noted Himel. “Anything that will justify Jewish presence in the Middle East is expunged, moved out and taken away. They follow a false narrative that it was just European Jews who came here and it was just Europeans who were looking for a place to come to, which is completely false.”

WATCH MARTIN HIMEL’S FULL INTERVIEW WITH ISRAEL DAILY

In The Forgotten Expulsion, Himel also highlights the strange case of the Palestinian refugee population that never declines. An original population of 500,000 now numbers 5 million.

Through scholars’ knowledge of the period and moving recollections from victims of the orchestrated expulsion of Jews from Arab Lands, The Forgotten Expulsion, “manages to refute the nasty lies and half-truths about Israel that its enemies have been spreading with renewed ardor for nearly the past year,” says journalist Sheldon Kirshner in a feature on the documentary in The Times of Israel.

The Forgotten Expulsion: Jews from Arab Lands encores commercial free Friday, November 29 at 11PM ET / 8PM PT on VisionTV.

WATCH THE OFFICIAL TRAILER