They tell romantic stories of sleeping on the rooftops in the hot Iraqi summer and savoring barbecued fish amid Arabic sing-alongs on the islands of Baghdad’s Tigris River. But the nostalgia mingles with the bitterness of being denied entry to universities and the fear of violent pogroms.Now they get inquiries about investment from expat Iraq opposition groups, plan visits back home, and dream of helping to improve Israel-Iraq relations.
Jewish life in Iraq during the 20th century had the flavor of Jewish life in Germany before WWII.
“They were Iraqis more than anything else. They used to say ‘we are more Iraqi than the Iraqis’ because many Iraqis came to the country from Saudi Arabia and the Jews came at the time of the First Temple.” But Jews also lived a precarious existence in Iraq. Anti-Semitism exported from Nazi Germany found a receptive audience among many Iraqi Arabs, and in 1941 the army and police helped rioters who turned on their Jewish neighbors and looted shops and homes, killing 150.Mordechai Ben Porat, who directed the mass influx of Iraqi Jews after the pogroms, counsels the Israeli government to lay low for awhile and "allow the Iraqi Jews to rebuild relations by doing business with Iraqis."
Iraqi Jews point out
. . . reports of discreet contacts between the Hussein regime and Israel over the years. "[Saddam] had, and he has, a very narrow corner in favor of the Jews because of the memory of his neighbors in Tikrit . . . Still, we know what Saddam Hussein has done and what he is all about."Iraqi Jews in the US and the few left in Baghdad also have mixed feelings.
<< Home