January , 2010

Four years ago I arrived to the Netherland.
To mark this occasion I would like to share with you the history of my family.
Please read and share what you think.
I recommend to watch the five part videos, you will understand more from where I'm coming from.

I’m a son to Iraqi Jewish parents that made Aliyah (emigration) to Israel in 1950's.
Here I would like to explain you the story of the Iraqi Jews.

Jews in Iraq

The Jewish community in Iraq is the oldest Jewish community in the world. It goes back to the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911-612 BC. Jewish literature says that the Assyrians launched several campaigns on Palestine and transferred Jews to distant mountainous areas in northern Iraq. When Babylonian Chaldeans ended the Assyrian era and established their state in Babylon (612-359 BC), among their most significant achievements was Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of the Kingdom of Judea in Palestine which led to Jewish captives being brought back to Babylon.

After First World War Britain got the mandate on Iraq and the majority of the lands in the middle- east.
During the British Mandate from 1918, and in the early days after independence in 1932, educated Jews played an crucial role in civic life. Iraq's first minister of finance, Sir Sassoon Eskell, was a Jew, and Jews were important in developing the judicial and postal systems. Records from the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce show that 10 out of its 19 members in 1947 were Jews and the first musical band formed for Baghdad's nascent radio in the 1930s consisted mainly of Jews. Jews were represented in the Iraqi parliament, and many Jews held significant positions in the bureaucracy which in many cases led to resentment by the Iraqi population.
It is important to mention that Iraqi Jews played very important role in the cultural field as musicians.

Farhud

June 1st 1941, on the Jewish festival of Shavuoth, the sight of Jews coming back from the Bagdad airport to greet the returning trustee Abdul al-Ilah, ruler of Iraq, was all the excuse an Iraqi mob needed to lose its vengeance.
The attack started at 3 p.m., as the Jewish delegation crossed Baghdad's Al Khurr Bridge. Violence quickly spread to the Al Rusafa and Abu Sifyan zones. The frantic mob murdered Jews openly on the streets. Women were raped and infants were killed while their horrified families looked on. Torture and mutilation followed.
Jewish shops were despoiled and torched. A synagogue was invaded, burned, and its Torahs ruined in classic Nazi fashion. The shooting, burning and havoc continued throughout the evening. Jews were dragged from their cars. Houses were invaded, despoiled and burned. On June 2, the rage carried on with policemen and slum inhabitants joining in.
At long last, the British forces plugged into the city. They fired on the rampages. A 5 p.m. curfew was broadcast. Loads of violators were shot on sight. The disturbances were finally suppressed.

The massacre of those forty-eight hours would be forever scorched on the collective Iraqi Jewish consciousness as "the Farhud," best translated as "violent dispossession."
As a result of Farhud, about 180 Jews were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were despoiled and 99 Jewish houses were demolished. Eight assaulters, including military officers and police, were condemned to death after the violence by the Iraqi government. Another reports says that the estimates higher: Nearly 200 Jews were slaughtered, more than 2000 injured; some 900 Jewish houses were destroyed and looted and hundreds of Jewish-owned shops.
It was the beginning of the end.

Operation "Ezra & Nehemia"

The riots to which the Jews of Iraq were subjected in 1941 resulted to the organization of illegal out-migration from Iraq, although there were also opportunities to leave the country legally. In 1946, emigration was stopped altogether and tension between the authorities and the Jewish community climbed up as the imminent partition of Palestine was announced. At that time many Jews, aside from those in the underground, acquired weapons, and residents of Muslim neighborhoods moved to Jewish areas where they felt safer.
The military regime which took over Iraq in May 1948 had an adverse effect on the situation of the Jews. A lot of members of the Haganah and Zionist youth movements were soon arrested. A amount of Iraqi Jews sold their properties and with the aid of the underground, left the country through Iran, which had substituted Syria and Jordan as the pathway to Israel. Between middle -Dec 1949 and Feb 1950, about 3,000 people emigrated to Israel.

This illegal emigration, led the Iraqi Minister of the Interior to propose a law allowing Jews to leave the country if they gave up their citizenship. The law got into effect in April 1950 and interested persons applied and awaited their turn to emigrate. At the start, only a small number took advantage of the opportunity, for it was suspected that the actual purpose of the law was to eliminate the Zionists among the Jews - but within a short time a lot more followed.
The 1st three planes of the American "Near East Airline", which the State of Israel had chartered, left Baghdad Airport on May 19, 1950, for Cyprus and Israel. Later, as the flow of emigrants became greater, the Iraqi Government stopped insisting that the planes must be routed through Cyprus. Illegal emigration, involving faked passports, sneaky border crossings, and a variety of daring operations, also continued throughout the entire period. In 1950 the amount number of Iraqi immigrants to Israel was 32,000. The reason for the mass exodus was that the Iraqi emigration law was to be effective for one year only, and Jews feared that they'd not be permitted to leave thereafter.
The 1st bomb thrown directly at Jews happened on April 8, 1950, at 9:15 p.m. A car with 3 young passengers threw the grenade at Baghdad’s El-Dar El-Bida Caf?, where Jews were celebrating Passover.

Four people were badly injured. That night brochures were distributed calling on Jews to leave Iraq immediately.
Following that there were some cases of bombing and grenades on Jewish locations.
The identity of the attackers is under big questioning till today.
Some of them carried out by anti Jewish organizations to put the pressure on the Jewish community to leave and some of the attacks executed by the Jewish underground to accomplish the same target.

Extra "Near East Airline" flights were chartered, and in the 1st 2 months of 1951, emigration from Iraq reached 16,000. The Iraqi authorities extended the time limit of permitted emigration, and another 65,000 Jews left between March and July of 1951. By the end of 1953, precisely 124,646 Iraqi Jews had immigrated to Israel.
Following the 1967 Six Day War, Jews were subject to severe restrictions and were forbidden, for instance, to leave their home towns. Some 300 Jewish business-owners and community leaders were arrested and tortured for "espionage" or for "economic support for Israel", and all Jewish communal property was seized by the government.
9 Jewish were hanged in the center of Bagdad in fault accusations.
When the Ba'ath Party came to power, it conducted an espionage trial and the public hanging of thirteen young Jews. By 1971 about forty Jews had either been executed or had died under torture, and many more were jailed. In the summers of 1970 and 1971 hundreds of Jews were smuggled out of Baghdad by Kurds loyal to Mullah Mustafa al-Barazani, through de facto independent Kurdistan to Iran, and on to Israel. Because of increasing international pressure, most of Iraq's remaining Jews were eventually allowed to leave the country in 1972-3.

In October 2006, Rabbi Emad Levy, Bagdad's last Rabbi and one of about 12 members of the Jewish community left in the city, compared his life to "living in a prison". He reported that most Iraqi Jews stay in their homes "out of fear of kidnapping or execution".
He moved to Israel and was proud to be Jewish and Iraqi in the same time.
That was the end of the Jewish community in Iraq.
Concerning the Jewish monuments in Iraq:
The majority of them been destroyed and the only Synagogue out of 9 in Basra is being used as a warehouse.

Thank you for reading,

Amir