The festival of Succot brings the first rains

Succot is the festival where Jews are enjoined to live in structures open to the sky to recall the forty years which the Children of Israel spent in the desert before being allowed to enter the Promised Land. On the last day of the festival, Shemini Hag Atseret, Jews pray for rain.

But even the Muslims of Iraq were aware of this Jewish festival, which was associated with the first rain of the season. In fact some called it El Arazeel al Yehud.

EL Arazeel al-Yahud by Ala Atar. As a child in Iraq he recalls his mother using the expression 'Arazeel al Yahud ' to describe a heavy rainfall (عرازيل اليهود)

A friend remembers how, each year, her family would erect a succah with four upright wooden beams in the middle of the garden in Baghdad. The walls consisted of date palm leaves tied at the top and base to horizontal beams. Pomegranates and oranges hung from the roof. The roof had a trellis, but it too was bedecked with palm leaves. The whole was decorated with coloured lights. My friend remembers there was a large table in the centre and divans on three sides of the succah so that the family could sleep there.

Did you escape Iraq? Write your story

Next year Iraqi Jews will be marking 70 years to the start of the "Tasqit" - the great exodus of de-nationalised Jews airlifted to Israel. The year 2020 will also mark 50 years since the first Iraqi Jew escaped illegally through northern Iraq. A book recording their personal stories is planned:

David Kheder Basson (pictured), chairman of Academics from Iraq in Israel, plans to publish a book of personal eyewitness accounts. He is calling for all those who escaped to contribute their personal stories so that they could be collated into a book.

The 3,000-member Iraqi Jewish community which stayed behind after the 1967 Six Day War became hostage to the regime. It suffered  one of the worst periods of persecution and liquidation, particularly after the Baath  party came to power in 1968.

The remaining community suffered a terrible period of persecution after 1967: nine Jews were hanged in Baghdad in 1969.

In the summer of 1970 Fouad Sawdayee z"l managed to escape with his family via Kurdistan to Iran and to freedom. This encouraged the majority of Iraqi Jews to follow in his footsteps (via different escape routes) and to leave Iraq in 1970 and 1971. Finally, in the autumn of 1971, the Iraqi government started granting passports and within few years most of the remaining community left. Most of the Iraqi Jews ended up in Israel, though there are many who chose to live in Canada, USA, the UK and the Netherlands.

Each one has his own personal and his family story to tell. No two stories are alike.

David Basson would like to collect some 50 “personal eyewitness accounts” of 4-7 pages each and publish them in a book in commemoration of the 50 years anniversary. The writers can either write in English or Hebrew, in whatever languagethey feel comfortable with. It is likely that the book will be published in English and Hebrew. Contact [email protected]

Joe Shemtob's escape story 

Emil Somekh's story

Not without my grandmother

The tragic demise of Iraqi Jewry

In an important and wide-ranging piece, Alyssa Dwek traces the tragic demise of Iraqi Jewry through the 20th century. (Via Honestreporting) 

Zionism rose to prominence following the First World War. However, few Iraqi Jews were initially interested in making Aliyah, believing that Zionism too closely resembled socialism. In addition, Iraqi Jews were generally not interested in the agricultural work required of those moving to Mandatory Palestine. Therefore, despite their sympathies with the Zionist vision, many disregarded moving to Israel as a viable option.

 Two years after the Great War, in 1920, the “Jam’iyya Adabiyya Isra’iliyya” (Jewish Literary Society) Zionist group was founded in Baghdad. The society was initially permitted by the Iraqi government, but after two years a new law passed by the Iraqi government required societies and associations to register with the Ministry of the Interior.

 Despite existing for two years by then, the Minister delayed the Jewish Literary Society’s permit until 1924, and even then the society was allowed to operate in a limited area, thanks to much pressure from the Zionist Organisation in London.

Over the next five years, a number of Zionist societies and groups were established; some clandestinely, some openly. Just as Zionism began to gather steam as a force among Iraqi Jews, things changed for the worse when the 1929 Palestine Riots broke out in Mandatory Palestine. Angered by rumors of a Jewish attempt to convert the Western Wall into a synagogue, Muslims launched numerous unprovoked attacks on Jews, resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives and Jewish property being looted.

Distorted reports of the clashes spread across the Arab world, claiming that thousands of Arabs were killed due to Jewish aggression, and soon reached the ears of Arabs in Iraq. Hearing this, the Arabs regarded the Jews as responsible for the alleged massacres of Muslims, and turned their anger on the local Jewish community, including against those Jews uninvolved in the Zionist movement. As a result of these events, Jews were met with hostility and Zionist movements in Iraq were banned later that year.

Iraqi Jews being airlifted to Israel in 1950

According to many historians, this point marked the beginning of the end for Iraqi Jewry. Throughout the 1930s, as the status of Mandate Palestine continued to be debated, the position of the Jews in Iraq became increasingly uncomfortable, with Zionists in particular targeted. The head of the Zionist Movement was exiled and had to leave Iraq. Discrimination towards the Jews worsened throughout this period. The Iraqi authorities routinely turned a blind eye to Muslims harassing their Jewish neighbors, with antisemitism viewed as natural by many in society. Jews were the victims of various cruel acts, with one Jew, Yitzhak Bezalel, remembering a particularly nasty incident in Baghdad when a group of hooligans, aware that Jews refrain from wearing leather footwear on Yom Kippur and therefore walk barefoot, spread broken glass on the ground, resulting in many Jews cutting their feet.

 In 1934, Jews were excluded from jobs in the public sector and the number of Jews accepted into institutions for higher education was limited through the use of quotas. Anti-Jewish sentiment was once again worsened by the arrival of a number of pro-Nazi activists. These activists from both Mandate Palestine and Syria incited hatred against the Jews. Although they were spared the hell of the German death camps in Europe, Jews in Arab countries faced their own difficulties which have been largely overlooked. The eruption of the Second World War in the late thirties affected great swathes of the globe, and Iraq was no different. With the growing British presence in the country enraging Arab nationalists, support for the Germans rose.

 Iraqi government officials publicly spoke out in favor of the Germans, and pro-German messages were spread in Iraqi newspapers and radio. A nationalist movement, called the Al-Fatwa movement, was created. Inspired by the Hitler Youth movement, Al-Fatwa membership eventually became compulsory for all children and teachers. With the Nazis finding support among Arabs resentful of British rule, Baghdad was the early base for Nazi Middle East intelligence operations during World War II.

 Rashid Ali al-Gaylani attempted to carry out a coup against the British authorities, and announced that Iraq would no longer provide Britain with natural resources as required. The move infuriated the British, who were also concerned by the possibility of the Nazis gaining influence in the Middle East. By the end of the month, British forces struck back against the Iraqi army and regained control. The frustrations generated by these events led to a potent mixture of hatred and resentment stewing in an atmosphere of lawlessness, with disastrous consequences for the Jewish community of Baghdad.

The resulting massacre of Jews, known as the Farhud, is regarded by many as the death knell heralding the demise of Iraqi Jewry.

Read article in full

Abu Nur, who rescued Jews from Iraq and Iran, dies

Among Jews from Iraq, it was well known that Israel was complicit in the smuggling (kachagh - illegally) of almost 2, 000 Jews through the Kurdish mountains in 1970 - 1. The man behind the operation was Menahem Navot, known to Kurds as Abu Hur. Navot also helped evacuate Israelis from Iran ten years later. With Navot's death aged 88, Haaretz tells his story:

In 1955, Navot transfered to the Mossad where he served a variety of roles overseas, including in the department that was responsible for the Mossad’s ties to organizations worldwide. He was sent to Iran in 1969, where he forged ties with the Kurds in Iraq, who helped bring the Jews of Iraq to Israel.

Menahem Navot in Kurdish headdress

“The representatives of the Mossad had the addresses of the Jews in Baghdad and other cities in Iraq. We gave them to our friends the Kurds, and their representatives went to the Jewish homes and told them to get ready to leave,” he said. The Jewish families were driven in Kurdish jeeps to the Iraq-Iran border and from there into Iran and to Israel. The Kurds called Navot Abu Nur (“Father of Light”) because his eldest son was named Nir.

 In September 1978, when the shah's rule was tottering, Navot was responsible for ensuring the safety of the Jewish and Israeli community and preparing to evacuate them in light of concerns over the impending revolution.

In January 1979, the storm hit its peak. Navot, who had been shuttling between Iran and Israel, came for another visit to coordinate the extraction of the last  (Israeli - ed) Jews in the country. On January 22, he was on the El Al flight to Tehran, whose airport was barely functioning by then.

“The pilot was coordinating with other pilots around him,” Navot wrote in his journal. “There was no one to land them. The pilot said he couldn’t go on with the operation under these conditions, and to complete it a military plane would be needed,” Navot recalled. “I said, ‘well, then, this plane is now a military aircraft.’

They said I was crazy,” he said. “We landed. The crew left us by saying: ‘the person who comes to Tehran is a hero. Who knows if this won’t be the last flight,’” Navot wrote. Navot was eventually extracted by the Americans after he completed his mission in Tehran.

Read article in full 

The Kachagh trail to freedom: Joe Shemtob's story

Elan Carr: 'antisemitism destroys societies generally'

He's the son of an Iraqi-Jewish mother, a fluent Hebrew speaker and now in charge of combating antisemitism, a growing problem in the US since the synagogue shootings in Pittsburg and Poway, but also on campus and in academia.

Jonny Gould with Elan Carr

 In this podcast interview with Jonny Gould at the US embassy in London, Elan Carr tells how his grandfather was arrested and dragged off to prison in leg-irons in Baghdad in 1950. Carr's mother remembers visiting him in prison. This was also a time when Iraq's Jews had a window of opportunity to leave the country. Carr's grandfather urged his family not to wait for him but to leave. They duly went to Israel via Iran. From Israel Elan's mother  moved to California.

 Elan Carr tells Jonny Gould how as a major in the US armed forces he was posted to Iraq during the American invasion in 2003. It was a great thrill, he recounts, to have celebrated Hanucah in the former presidential palace. Carr lit a menorah designed and donated by Oded Halahmi, himself an Iraqi Jewish refugee. Carr led Shabbat services for the US troops, and affirms that they were never short of a minyan.

Elan Carr lights the menorah in Saddam's former palace, Baghdad 2003

Listen to Jonny Gould's podcast interview with 'Antisemitism Tsar'  Elan Carr here

More about Elan Carr

Ancient Baghdad shrine is now a semi-ruin

The remains of the tomb of Sheikh Ishaq Gaon in Baghdad

 Two young boys guide a visitor to the  site of the tomb of a Jewish  holy  man in Baghdad, the shrine of Shaykh Ishaq Gaon (around 4 mins into the video by Falah Hasan and Dhikra Sarsam).  The tomb is now a semi-ruin, surrounded by rubble and rubbish.

According to Zvi Yehuda's book Tombs of Saints and Synagogues in Babylonia, Shaykh Ishaq Gaon was the sarraf, the chief treasurer of the Caliph Ali b Abi Talib. Shaykh Ishaq Gaon died in the year 688 CE and was buried in today's Hannun neighbourhood inside the old Jewish quarter in Al-Rusafa in east Baghdad. Muslims call him Sheikh Ishaq, Ali's treasurer.

The burial place of Shaykh Ishaq Gaon also served as a synagogue populated by 'ten idle men' supported by the Baghdad Jewish community. The tomb was in Jewish hands until the exodus, when it fell into disrepair.

London Review of Books skews Iraqi Jews' story

The London Review of Books' latest issue (6 November) has published a lengthy review by Adam Shatz of two books about Iraqi Jews, Memories of Eden by Violette Shamash and Baghdad yesterday: the last Arab Jew by Sasson Somekh (with thanks: TandM).

While the LRB's focus on the Jews of Iraq is to be welcomed, the author's post-Zionism obfuscates the primary cause of the destruction of the Jewish community - Arab hostility - by spreading blame around. The Jews themselves are to blame for identifying too strongly with the colonialist British; and Zionism is to blame for making coexistence between Muslims and Jews in Iraq impossible. "If Israel was a sanctuary for the Jews of Iraq, it was also the reason why they desperately needed one," Shatz claims.

Perhaps his subtle rewriting of history is not surprising: recall that The London Review of Books was the only journal to accept Walt and Mearsheimer's 'Israel lobby ' essay, the basis for their controversial book of the same name.


I have 'fisked' some of the more controversial passages (italics) in the piece.

Recent polemics – and pro-Israeli websites – have made much of the indignities of Jewish life under Ottoman rule, seeking to expose the ‘myth’ of Muslim tolerance. This tolerance, it’s argued, is a euphemism for dependence on the goodwill of capricious, if not cruel Muslim overlords. The memoirs of Iraqi Jews, however, tell a very different story...Memories of Eden provides as sumptuous an account of the world of the Baghdadi Jewish elite as we’re likely to get.
Not exactly. By demolishing one myth, Shatz is creating another: paradise only really existed for the better-off Iraqi Jews towards the end of the 19th century, following the establishment of the Alliance Israelite Universelle school and the emancipation of Jews and Christians foisted on the Ottomans by the Western powers.

Shamash writes that Baghdad’s Jews and the British felt an ‘instant connection’: ‘the British saw that there was much to gain from befriending us, with whom they had already had contact during a century of trade under colonial rule in India.’ True: but the wealthier members of the community expected more from this friendship than the British could offer if they hoped to maintain peaceful relations with the Muslim majority of what, in 1921, would become the Arab kingdom of Iraq.
(Stop beating about the bush, Shatz!) The Jews feared Arab rule would be 'politically irresponsible, fanatic and intolerant', in the words of Professor Elie Kedourie.

Jewish fear of majority rule led, early on, to fateful miscalculations. When the British conquered Baghdad in 1918, the president of the Jewish lay council and the acting chief rabbi appealed for direct British rule, on the grounds that their Muslim neighbours weren’t ready ‘to undertake with success the management of their own affairs’. After this was rejected, a group of Jewish notables petitioned for British citizenship, giving the distinct impression that they regarded themselves as separate from and superior to the emerging national community. The British, seeking to harness – and neutralise – the energies of Arab nationalism, were in no position to grant this request.
In other words, Shatz promotes the (to my mind, outrageous) notion that the Jews petitioning for British citizenship sowed the seeds of their own downfall by appearing superior to the Arab Muslims.

Whatever pride some took in the creation of a Jewish ‘national home’ was more than offset by the worry that it would endanger them in Iraq. But the Zionists in Palestine claimed to speak in the name of the Jewish people, and thus in their name as well.
This crude side-swipe at Zionism is also a red herring. The issue here is the absence of minority rights in Iraq for Assyrians and Kurds, as well as Jews. How much more anti-Zionist could the behaviour of Iraqi Jews have been?
Note how only the Zionists have agency, never the Arabs. It was the Arabs who conflated the non- or anti-Zionist Jews of Iraq with Zionism, not the other way around. Later on in his piece, Shatz contradicts himself somewhat by describing how the anti-Zionist communist party had huge Jewish support.

The farhud continued for two days, an orgy of murder, rape and arson that left two hundred Jews and a number of Muslims dead.
(Who were these Muslims? Shatz does not tell us, but hints at a revisionist theory put about by some Iraqi Jews, including Somekh, that some Muslims died saving Jews.)

Mossad’s objective was not to improve the position of the Jews in Iraq, but to hasten their departure. Pamphlets appeared discouraging Jews from mixing with Arabs, and arguing that any attempt to do so ‘leads to butchery’.

The Israeli government circulated stories about Iraqi ‘pogroms’ and ‘concentration camps’ and denounced the hanging of seven Jews charged with Zionist activism in March 1949 – executions that Mossad’s own agents in Baghdad insisted had never occurred. Unless Iraqi Jews were allowed to emigrate, Israel warned, it would back armed resistance to al-Said’s government, or find itself unable to prevent Iraqi Jews already in Israel from killing Palestinians in revenge."
I don't know where Shatz got this from, but his introduction into the picture of Zionist scaremongering and the infamous bombs beloved of Arab propaganda obviously mitigates the effect of Arab hostility by making Israel at least partly responsible for the plight of Iraqi Jews. Absent from Shatz's account is any suggestion, documented in Elie Kedourie's essay in The break between Jews and Arabs, that it was the Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Said who was the driving force behind the expulsion of the Jews and the idea of an exchange of populations. Also absent is the fact, sorrowfully stated by the Jewish senator Ezra Daniel, that by 1950 the Jews had been deprived of their rights.

But soon after the Baath Party seized power in 1963, in a CIA-backed coup, Jews were forced to carry yellow identity cards.
Note how responsiblity for putting the Ba'ath in power (and thus the treatment of the Jews) devolves away from the Arabs on to the Americans.

Shatz's article ends with a long paragraph about the shoddy treatment of the Iraqi Jews by the Ashkenazi establishment in Israel. This was no doubt true then, but is no longer true now. Its only purpose is to denigrate Israel's ruling elite as racists and snobs:
We don’t want Israelis to become Arabs,’ (Ben Gurion) said with his usual bluntness, and the Iraqi Jews were dangerously close to being Arabs in Israel. An elite in their own country, they were now cast as a ‘primitive’, inferior people, requiring tutelage from Ashkenazi Jews, descendants of the despised Ostjuden, who were now determined to erase any trace of the East. And though many Iraqi Jews, bitter at their treatment at the hands of Arabs, became supporters of the political right in Israel, the racism they encountered made it impossible for them to identify fully with the movement that brought them ‘home’.
If resentment of Ashkenazim was as significant as Shatz makes out, the Iraqi Jews in Israel would have been expected to vote for the Left or in alliance wiht the Arabs. But this is not the case, as Shatz admits. The Israelification of immigrants was not confined to Mizrahim. Yiddish-speaking Jews were encouraged to jettison their language and change their names to Hebrew ones. And prejudice was demonstrated to other Ashkenazim too - Holocaust survivors were taunted as 'sabon' (soap). Harping on about Ashkenazi contempt for Mizrahim tends to seem hopelessly out-of-date in today's Israel, where intermarriage is at an all time high, Mizrahim have reached the highest echelons of power, and Middle Eastern culture is all the fashion.

In the early 1990s, Somekh tried to establish a solidarity association with the Iraqi people with the aim of documenting ‘the co-operation and good neighbourliness between the Jews and other Iraqis, so that the coming generations would know about this wonderful connection that had characterised Jewish life in the Arab world for 1500 years.’ His application was rejected by the Registrar of Non-Profit Associations in Jerusalem, which thought it unwise to revive such memories, a potential ‘source of Saddamist subversion’.
Shatz ends on this indignant note. Earlier he describes Somekh's memoir as an 'experiment in coexistence, rather than a Zionist parable about its impossibility'. Here in a nutshell is Shatz's own philosophy: Zionism is confrontational. No word about Arab aggression preventing coexistence. No understanding that at the time Somekh was promoting 'la-la land' solidarity with the Iraqi people, Saddam's brutal regime was in a state of war with Israel, having just fired dozens of missiles at Tel Aviv.

There is a time for peace, and a time for war.

Crossposted on Z-word blog