Anti-semites like to repeat the claim that Jews have been expelled from 109 countries, which shows that the expulsions were justified and that there is something wrong with Jews (and presumably, that that justifies discriminating against them today).
I had some trouble finding a list of these 109 countries, but eventually found one (oddly, a Christian site) (ironically, the same list is also shared by an "American Jewish Zionist" on Twitter).
The first thing that strikes one about this list is that it is not a list of countries, since cities and territories are also included. So it is not right to say that Jews have been expelled from 109 countries - at most one can say that they have been expelled from 109 areas.
Also, there is a lot of double counting. For example "Germany" appears on the list 3 times, and one instance is only 45 years after the other: should this really be counted as 2 separate expulsions, much less 2 different countries expelling Jews?
One also wonders if examples such as "Bavaria" (which appears 5 times) should be included under "Germany", the problems with anachronistically projecting modern nation states' borders into the past aside.
So even taking this list at face value, one can at most say that Jews have been expelled from various territories 109 times. Indeed, the original document makes this clearer, as it is titled "109 Locations whence Jews have been Expelled since AD250" (though that still elides over the double counting issue).
Digging into some of the 109 instances, one finds (naturally) more problems.
1. 250 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Carthage
I cannot find any evidence for this at all.
2. 415 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Alexandria
In Religious and Intercommunal Violence in Alexandria in the 4th and 5th centuries CE by Lauren Kaplow, she notes that Cyril became the bishop of Alexandria and he hated the Jews after reading and studying scripture, and concludes that "he begaun (sic) his campaign against the Jews for religiously motivated reasons" and "provoke[d] them into combat". John of Nikiu and Socrates report that the Jews were threatened by Cyril and feigned a church burning to kill Christians, and in retaliation the Christians drove them out.
3. 554 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Diocèse of Clermont (France)
The timing for this is off. In 576, Avitus, the bishop of Clermont, gave an ultimatum to the Jews: either convert or be expelled. Those who refused went to Marseille.
4. 561 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Diocèse of Uzès (France)
It was hard to find information on this, but I have ascertained that this refers to Saint Ferréol (Ferreolus) of Uzès. The Jewish Encyclopedia notes that Ferreol "converted them by living in familiar intercourse with them" but that in 555, Childebert "banished Ferreol... for having had too friendly relations with the Jews" (in the context of church councils that disapproved of and discriminated against the Jews) and then in 558 Ferreol expelled the ones who wouldn't convert "from his diocese". So we can see that the expulsion was motivated by a desire to get into the king's good graces and not be banished again - he had to show that he had a hardline stance.
5. 612 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Visigoth Spain
Some of the information on this is contradictory, but the best account I can find is in God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 by David Levering Lewis, where he notes that "Jews were now the only non-Catholic population of any significance after the regime's formal renunciation of Arianism" and that "to King Sisibut, the existence of a large, prosperous Jewish population was utterly incompatible wit hthe unitary Christian kingdom he was devoted to building". In other words, Jews were persecuted because they were the only significant minority left, rather than because of their Jewishness. Lewis also notes that "tens of thousands of Jews converted to Catholicism under Sisibut's terrible sanctions - so while they were persecuted, they were not forced to convert upon pain of expulsion (and, indeed, by vaxhole logic they were not even forced to convert since they weren't physically converted or put at gunpoint).
6. 642 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Visigoth Empire
This is off and actually even a moment of reflection would cause one to wonder why, if the Jews had been expelled from "Visigoth Spain" in 612, they would need to be expelled again from the "Visigoth Empire" only 30 years later. Chintila in 638 did not exactly expel the Jews. Heinrich Graetz in History of the Jews, Vol. 3 (of 6) notes that everyone in the Visigothic empire had to "embrace the Catholic religion", and Jews had to convert or leave. So this is a further complication to the "109 countries" narrative that we have seen earlier - those who were Jewish by ethnicity were not expelled, only those with a Jewish religion. Furthermore, Visigothic kings alternated between being pro- and anti-Jewish so politics comes into it. There is also the context of Christian religious motivation - "Isidore of Seville wrote two books against the Jews... attempted to prove the doctrines of Christianity by means of passages from the Old Testament".
7. 855 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Italy
Ludwig II (Louis II) supposedly issued an edict ordering Italian Jews to leave, but this edict was never carried out. According to Bernard S Bachrach in Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe, this wasn't even approved by Louis, but was just prepared by one political faction. This must also be viewed in the context of the traditional Carolingian pro-Jewish stance, which came up against an ecclesiastical anti-Jewish stance (in other words, political jockeying was a factor).
8. 876 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sens
Accounts of this are mixed. Most sources that mention this expulsion don't give any details, but the Jewish Virtual Library notes that "The mention of an expulsion of the Jews from Sens around 876 in an 11th-century chronicle is seemingly a confusion and probably refers to the expulsion, at the beginning of the 11th century, of Duke Raynaud of Sens, who "Judaized" and called himself the "king of the Jews." However, it is certain that in 1146 King Louis VII officially authorized the settlement of Jews in Sens". David Malkiel in Jewish-Christian relations in Europe, 840–1096 notes that the source, Odoranne de Saint-Pierre de Sens, "is almost incomprehensible" and places accounts of Jewish treachery in the context of a history of depicting them "as the enemies of Christ, Christianity and Christendom" for centuries.
9. 1012 -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mainz
David Malkiel (ibid) notes that "The background of the expulsion is unclear" but notes that many sources say Emperor Henry II was enraged at a cleric named Wecelin, a clerk of Duke Conrad converting to Judaism. Other historians attribute it to a supposed plot by the Jews of Orleans to get the Holy Sepulchre destroyed, but one suggests that they weren't expelled in the end.
(Part 2)
(Part 3 - which goes live on 30 July)
(Part 4)
(Part 5)
