Jews in Iraq?

Michael Binyon in the Times (£) reports on the latest Wikileaks triumph:

The publication by WikiLeaks of the names of the seven remaining Jews in Baghdad has put their lives in immediate danger, according to Canon Andrew White, the Anglican vicar of the city.

The few remaining members of a once- thriving community have been obliged to conceal their religion after waves of persecution. They fear that if they are identified, extremists will kill them.

The Jerusalem Post covered this last month. The fact that it's now made it to the British press seems to be down to Alan Yentob:

A warning about the dangers that they face was to be broadcast this morning on the BBC Today programme by Alan Yentob, the creative director of the BBC, who has documented the exodus of Jews from Iraq and the sufferings of those who remained. The Last Jews of Iraq, a documentary by Yentob, will be broadcast on Radio 4 tomorrow.

He said that for 2,600 years, Mesopotamia had a thriving Jewish community. By the end of the First World War, a third of the population of Baghdad was Jewish, with the 1920s and 1930s seen as the golden years. The Second World War was the first blow to the community, with pogroms that forced many to flee. In one day alone, some 180 were killed. The great crisis came with the creation of Israel in 1948. Iraq sent an army to fight in Palestine, and the Government denounced the Jews living in Iraq as Zionists and traitors. Yentob, whose parents were Iraqi Jews, said that over the next two years around 90 per cent of the community left.

By the 1960s, only about 6,000 remained. They were forced to carry yellow identity cards and suffered harsh discrimination. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, they were again attacked as spies, and many were killed. Yentob said that many of those who went to Israel were overshadowed by the European Jewish immigrants. Those who went to Europe and America often did well. The Saatchi brothers, are two of the best-known in Britain.

For a moment there I thought we were going to see something on BBC TV - but no, it's just Radio 4. Better than nothing, of course...

The decimation of the Jewish communities across the Arab world - and the continuing power of Arab anti-semitism - is surely one of the great untold stories of recent Middle-Eastern history. It's worth pointing out that the day when 180 Jews were killed in Iraq - the Farhud - was in 1941, seven years before the creation of the state of Israel. Inspired by pro-Nazi Iraqi officers, it was perhaps the key moment in the death of Jewish Baghdad. 

So yes, it would surely be worth a TV programme. Credit to Yentob for getting this on Radio 4 though:

Jews in Iraq? Alan Yentob investigates a 2600 year old community, now almost disappeared. Once they thrived as a third of Baghdad's population, now only seven Jewish people remain.

Few people realise there was once a thriving Jewish community in Iraq - in 1917 it was a third of Baghdad's population. Jewish people had government jobs and dominated the music scene. They were an integral part of the community, living peacefully with Arab neighbours. The Jews had been in Iraq for more than two and a half millennia, since it was called Babylon, and remembered in Psalms. For centuries it was the centre of Jewish learning. Alan speaks to people who remember a life in Baghdad characterised by integration, religious diversity and colourful traditions.

In the 40s, everything changed. Nazism, Arab-nationalism and anti-Zionist feeling created a wave of anti-semitism. Violent pogroms flared up, young Jewish men were publically hanged, Jews were forced from jobs. By the 1970s nearly all had left, many in 1951 when 110,000 people were flown to safety in Israel. We hear from those who remember the community's traumatic final days.

Now those few Jews who remain are hidden away. They will certainly be the last of the ancient Babylonian Jewish line, says Canon Andrew White, the 'Vicar of Baghdad'.

In a very personal programme, BBC Creative Director Alan Yentob, himself the child of Iraqi Jewish immigrants, looks into his heritage and uncovers the hidden history of the Jews of Iraq. Although the community is now almost vanished in Iraq itself, its traditions survive though around the world. With interviews, archive recordings and contemporary music, Alan brings its vibrancy to life.

But it's still presented as some sort of special personal thing for Yentob - a little historical backwater that he's interested in because he happens to be descended from Iraqi Jews himself - rather than the key piece of forgotten history that it really is: with special relevance, of course, for the Israel-Palestine conflict...a relevance, you can't help feeling, that fits uneasily with the usual BBC line.

Comments

[Sura]

The problem with us Iraqis is that we have never had a real history book which descrides the evolution of mesopotamia from the time of the summarians to the 1970's. The history books in schools told one face of history that is to say the islamic sunni aspect! Thats why no Iraqi in the living day can draw a summary or conclusion as if to how Mesopotamian became the now known Iraq.