Leading up to the time of the Partition of India, some 1300 Jews remained in Karachi, most of them Bene Israel Jews observing Sephardic Jewish rites. The first real exodus of Jewish refugees from British India to Bombay and other cities in India came just prior to the creation of Israel in 1948 when antisemitism spread to Pakistan. When Israel came into being in 1948, many Jews migrated to Israel, and after the Arab-Israel war a majority of them left Karachi. By 1953, fewer than 500 Jews were reported to be in all of Pakistan.