By the late 1940s, Iraq was home to 180,000 Jews, of whom 90,000 lived in Baghdad, the capital. It was an ancient community whose origins could be traced back two millenniums. But by 1951, Iraq was virtually bereft of Jews, with only 6,000 still remaining in the country.
What happened?
The simple answer: Israel.
The struggle between Jews and Palestinian Arabs in Palestine, followed by the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, doomed a community that had fared reasonably well in Iraqi society.
Orit Bashkin, an associate professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Chicago, elaborates on this theme in a thoughtful and nuanced book, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq, published by Stanford University Press.
Bashkin, who has written extensively on Iraq, provides a reader with a bird’s eye view of a community that reached the heights of prosperity and acceptance, only to lose it all in a flash.
Jews had been in Iraq since time immemorial, but Ottoman constitutional, administrative and legal reforms in the 19th century enhanced their position. The formation of a monarchy in Iraq after World War I was also beneficial for Jews.
The Iraqi constitution enshrined the principle of religious equality. Jews were allotted a fixed number of seats in parliament — four out of 88 in 1925 — and several Jews served as ministers in the Iraqi government. Indeed, Iraq’s first minister of finance, Sasson Heskel, was Jewish. In addition, Jews gained positions in the new civil service.
On the economic front, Jewish merchants thrived as Iraq’s economy expanded.
And in in the arts, Jews played an important role. As she puts it,”In no other Arab country did Jews figure so prominently in the greater cultural arena. In part, this was because Iraqi Jews felt they belonged to an Arab Jewish culture …” Jews were active in literary circles as journalists, poets and short story writers, she says, citing, among others, Anwar Shaul, Shalom Darwish and Maliha Sehayek.
Jews were one minority among many in this ethnically and religiously diverse country of Muslim and Christian Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, and the Arabic language bound them together.
At the end of World War II, the Jewish community was broadly divided into three camps, she points out.
The first camp comprised of politicians, bureaucrats and intellectuals who had a vested interest in the status quo and were ardent believers in the viability of the Iraqi state and monarchy. The second consisted of younger, militant Jews who had drifted into communism and supported the Palestinian national movement. The third was made up of Zionists who had been traumatized by a 1941 pogrom in Baghdad, which claimed the lives of at least 170 people, and who sought to immigrate to newly-created Israel.
By her reckoning, Zionism was a “minor phenomenon” in Iraq until 1948, after which it became a “meaningful force” in Jewish Iraqi life. Zionism complicated the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. “Ultra-nationalist elements and the Iraqi state itself were unable or unwilling to draw a distinction between Judaism and Zionism,” she writes. “No matter how adamant Jews were in emphasizing their Iraqi identity, or how vigorously their fellow Iraqis defended them in this regard, radical elements within the Iraqi nationalist elite dismissed their claims.”
From 1948 onwards, she adds, Jews were singled out as a “major problem” because of their suspected disloyalty to Iraq.
Anti- Zionism was a component of the Iraqi national discourse, with anti-Zionist demonstrations having taken place in Baghdad as early as 1928. The Arab revolt in Palestine, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, worsened the situation, as did the arrival in Iraq of the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and a group of Palestinian exiles.
In response, the Iraqi Jewish intellectual elite adopted a pro-Palestinian line, contributing money to, and publishing petitions on behalf of, the Palestinian cause. The chief rabbi, she notes, also professed solidarity with the Palestinians.
Another problem faced by Jews in 1930s Iraq was connected to the changing labor market. As Jews were displaced from jobs by educated Muslims, they blamed their dismissals on antisemitism. This, in turn, drew Jews to communism.
Nazi propaganda was a third cause for concern among Jews.
Germany’s ambassador to Iraq, Fritz Grobba, who had arrived in Baghdad to take up his duties almost two years before Adolf Hitler rose to power, played a central role in the dissemination of Nazi propaganda, though he maintained friendships with local Jews.
Germany, too, pressured German companies in Iraq to fire Jewish employees.
The farhud, the first pogrom in a modern Arab state, brought to the fore both “the worst and the noblest aspects of Jewish-Arab relations,” she notes.
The Iraqi state, to which Jews had pledged their loyalty, betrayed them during this pogrom. The government did not send forces into Baghdad to stop the pogromists, nor did the British colonial army intervene.
But the pogrom — which unfolded in poorer neighbourhoods in Baghdad and was related to a coup staged by the pro-German Iraqi army officer Rashid Ali al-Kaylani — was also a moment of “inter-communal solidarity,” she observes. It was a time when Muslim neighbours risked their lives to protect Jewish friends, neighbours and business partners.
The escalation of the conflict in Palestine after the 1947 United Nations partition plan cast a giant shadow on the Jewish community.
The mainly non-Zionist Jewish leadership tried to distance itself from the fighting in Palestine, but to no avail. Iraq’s parliament defined support of Zionism as a crime, and Jews employed in government ministries were sacked. When Iraq sent troops to fight Israel, Iraqi Jews responded by contributing funds to Palestinian causes, but their outreach had little or no effect on public opinion or policy.
When travel restrictions were lifted, Jews took flight, prompting the Iraqi government to freeze the assets of Jews who had left.
Jews who opted to remain behind were eventually driven out, particularly after the Baath party seizure of power in the 1960s.
Once Saddam Hussein seized power in 1979, the community’s days were numbered.
Bashkin tells this story lucidly in authoritative fashion.