Israelis Israelis Israelis ( "Yiśraʾelim", "al-ʾIsrāʾīliyyin") are citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel, a multiethnic state populated by people of different ethnic backgrounds. The largest ethnic groups in Israel are Jews (75%), followed by Arabs (20%) and other minorities (5%). Among the Israeli Jewish population, hundreds of thousands of Jews born in Israel are descended from Ashkenazi Jew, Mizrahi Jews, Sephardi Jews and an array of groups from all the Jewish ethnic divisions, though over 50% of Israel’s Jewish population is of at least partial Mizrahi descent. Large-scale Jewish immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Ethnoreligious group and ancestral ties. The legal assignement what is an ethnoreligious group can differ from the above given definition. Some ethnoreligious groups' identities are reinforced by the experience of living within a larger community as a distinct minority. Ethnoreligious groups can be tied to ethnic nationalism if the ethnoreligious group possesses a historical base in a specific region. In many ethnoreligious groups emphasis is placed upon religious endogamy, and the concurrent discouragement of interfaith marriages or intercourse, as a means of preserving the stability and historical longevity of the community and culture. Prior to the Babylonian exile the Israelites had already