Unlike mythology, Tom Segev’s 1949: The First Israelis describes the complex history of early Sephardic immigration to Israel..
https://twitter.com/EinatWilf/status/1396898312184340481
Some Arab governments were oppressive and wanted Jews to leave; others wanted Jews to stay. 
Mossad agents could report that the condition of Jews in Arab countries varied widely. Some were in danger; others comfortable.
In Iraq, probably the most revealing case, the new Israeli government used a range of methods, from fair to quite foul, to pressure Iraq to effectively expel its Jew, many of whom would have preferred to remain in a land Jews had lived in uninterrupted for 2,500 years.
There are few clean hands in this story & inter-communal violence was real. But Israeli leaders saw an advantage in maximizing the fears & risks to encourage immigration, even if the liberal establishment was also pretty racist against the "quality" of non-European Jews.
They could have worked to make Jews safer in the lands of their births. This they did not do. Many, no doubt, having just lived through WWII, surely believed this was a fantasy. But it was also a road not taken.
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