[citation needed] Beginning in 1863, groups of Jews began making aliyah, mostly for religious reasons.
In the course of the 1929 riots, a group of muslim Arabs stormed the Jewish neighborhood of Eshel Avraham in Jerusalem on 23 August.
[4] After the Six-Day War, huge numbers of Soviet Jews began protesting for the right to immigrate to Israel, and many applied for exit visas.
In August 1969, eighteen families wrote to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations demanding permission to make aliyah.
During the 1970s, the Soviets permitted limited Jewish emigration to Israel, and about 30,000 Georgian Jews made aliyah, with thousands of others leaving for other countries.
Although Prime Minister Golda Meir criticized the Georgian Jews' desire to "isolate themselves into ghettos", the Israeli Immigrant Absorption Ministry eventually bowed to their demands, and began to create concentrations of around 200 families in twelve areas of the country.
[5] In Israel, most Georgian Jews settled near the coast in cities such as Lod, Bat Yam, Ashdod, Holon and Rehovot.