About Compassion - Out of Iraq

Brown, Aaron.  "The Last Jews of Baghdad."  CNN NewsNight, Aaron Brown and Rachel Zelon, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) of New York, originally aired: October 20, 2004, and posted to YouTube March 19, 2009 by "samuelhbs2": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0hX7M7nIwc

Prior to the established and worldwide recognition of the State of Israel in 1948, Iraq (Mesopotamia) had hosted a continuous Jewish community for some 2,500 years.

Other Reference

Bard, Mitchell.  "The Jews of Iraq."  Jewish Virtual Library: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/iraqijews.html

Lyn, Julius.  "Iraq's Jews."  London Review of Books, Letters, 30:23, December 4, 2008: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n23/letters.html. Excerpt:

The Jews did not leave because they were pushed by Zionist rumours or bombs. Bombs and murders in 1936 had not led to a mass exodus, and sixty thousand Jews had registered to leave before the only fatal bombing in January 1951. Until Iraq permitted legal emigration, Jews were being smuggled out at a rate of a thousand a month – because they were banned from higher education, could not travel abroad, were denied work and suffered restrictions in business. ‘But for these severe handicaps, Iraqi Jews would not have gone so far as to attempt large-scale flight from the country,’ the Jewish senator Ezra Daniel said, making his last futile appeal against the Denaturalisation Bill in March 1950.

Julius Lyn's article contains a special twist (italics mine):

The Iraqi Jews had every right to be bitter when they arrived in Israel, having lost everything. They were housed in dusty refugee camps for up to 12 years. At the time, they did experience prejudice, but so did Holocaust survivors, taunted on arrival as ‘sabon’ (soap). Today the Iraqi community is one of the most successfully integrated in Israel. Iraq-born Palestinians, meanwhile, have been denied citizenship and expelled from Iraq.

A response by Adam Shatz follows Julius Lyn's piece and provides a counterpoint, including this damning allegation:

"Writers often contrast Israel’s generous absorption of more than a hundred thousand Iraqi Jewish refugees with Iraq’s paltry acceptance of ‘only’ fourteen thousand Palestinian Arabs. But the situations are not symmetrical: Israel was determined to settle the Iraqi Jews in the Jewish state, while Iraq had no interest in settling Palestinian refugees (who for their part wanted to return home)."

Magnet, Julia.  "The Terror Behind Iraq's Jewish Exodus."  Telegraph, April 16, 2003: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1427687/The-terror-behind-Iraqs-Jewish-exodus.html.  This is an excerpt from that article:

In the past week, I have spoken to a dozen Iraqi Jews about their memories. I was expecting to hear only about suffering and persecution, but they wanted to talk about the vibrant society in which they grew up.

They recalled a privileged life: elite schools, close communities, two-storey houses with indoor courtyards and evening promenades along the Tigris. Some of the best neighbourhoods were almost entirely Jewish, because only Jews could afford the houses. "It was a good life," I was told again and again.

Pipes, Daniel.  "The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951." Review of book by Moshe Gat.  Middle East Quarterly, September 1997: http://www.danielpipes.org/759/the-jewish-exodus-from-iraq-1948-1951.  Excerpt from Pipes' note:

The author puts to rest the notion that Israeli agents used terrorism to get Iraqi Jews to make aliyah: "there was no connection between the bomb-throwing incidents and the departure of the Jews." The sudden rush to leave Iraq overwhelmed Israel's capacities and resulted not from mischief but from the Iraqi Jews' well-grounded sense of impending doom unless they took advantage of a unique chance to escape.

Point of No Return.  "Abbas Shiblak blames Iraqi Exodus on Zionism."  Blog, May 15, 2008: http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2008/05/abbas-shiblak-blames-iraqi-exodus-on.html

Shiblak says no evidence exists that 'serious harm' was done in May 1941 when the pro-Nazi Rashid Ali was in power, ' except for a few cases of harassment'. (As Violette Shamash in Memories of Eden explains, that harassment extended to rapes, pillage and murders). Even when the government started persecuting the Jews in earnest in 1948 - civil servants dismissed from their posts, education and travel bans, arrests, extortion, internment and hangings - Shiblak says that no specific official laws could be called discriminatory.

Shamas, Violet.  Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad: http://www.memoriesofeden.com/

Sternthal, Tamar.  "AFP Whitewashes History of Iraq's Jews."  CAMERA, May 3, 2009: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=147&x_article=1662.  Excerpt:

The Government of Iraq began to take specifically anti-Jewish steps practically from the moment of its independence; in 1934 the teaching of Hebrew was prohibited and students' entry into high schools and universities restricted. Jews began to be dismissed from certain government positions. Physical attacks on Jews in Baghdad - including murders - became frequent from 1936 on; anti-Jewish propaganda was spread by an openly pro-Nazi and anti-Zionist regime. The tension and "shadowy persecution" erupted into violence in other cities too, where local Muslim leaders used the opportunity to extort money from the Jews. (Maurice M. Roumani, The Case of the Jews From Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, 1983).

Wikipedia.  "History of Jews in Iraq": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iraq

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