Mick Hartley

A hundred years ago Jews constituted some quarter of the population of Baghdad. The Jewish community in Iraq had a history going back 2500 years. Now, of course, it's all finished, with the number of Jews remaining there estimated to be in single figures. The beginning of the end came with the Farhud in 1941, a pogrom against the Jewish community following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government while the city was in a state of instability: over 180 Jews were killed and 1,000 injured, with mass looting of Jewish property

One significant event which further emphasised to Jews in Iraq that they had no future there, as described in Tablet today by Adi Schwartz, was the 1948 trial and execution of Shafiq Adas, "the richest Jew in Iraq".

The Iraqi street and much of the press were demanding Shafiq Adas’s head, after his conviction in a military tribunal on charges of treason and aiding the “Zionist enemy.” Nearly everyone who had followed the lightning trial, which lasted three days without any time given to the defense to call up witnesses, knew that Adas had been tried in a kangaroo court, designed to terrorize the Jewish community. Adas stood accused of selling decommissioned ex-British military gear from the Second World War to Iraq’s sworn enemy: Israel….

The trial stunned the Jews of Iraq. What unfolded before their eyes was a tragedy that they had never believed could happen: their country was about to execute an innocent man, one of its leading citizens, simply for being a Jew. Few Jews had taken an interest in Adas’s career until then, but his widely reported trial and cruel death sentence made him an icon of the entire Jewish community. He had done most of his business with Iraqi Muslims, but the moment the scandal was underway, it was clear to all Jews in Iraq that Adas’s fate would affect their own. From now on, their lives would forever be divided into two distinct chapters: the time before Adas’s trial, and the time afterwards.

But read it all for the full picture.

To complete the history lesson:

With the rise of the Ba'ath Party to power in 1963, restrictions were placed on the remaining Iraqi Jews. Sale of property was banned, and Jews had to carry yellow identity cards.

After the 1967 Six-Day War, Jewish property was expropriated, bank accounts were frozen, Jews were dismissed from public posts, their businesses were closed, trading permits owned by Jews were cancelled, they were not allowed to use telephones, they were placed under house arrest for extended periods of time, and were under constant surveillance and restricted to the cities. In late 1968, scores of Jews were jailed on charges of spying for Israel, culminating in the 1969 public hanging of 14 men, 9 of them Jews, who were accused of spying for Israel. Other suspected spies for Israel died under torture. After Baghdad Radio invited Iraqi citizens to "come and enjoy the feast", half a million people paraded and danced past the scaffolds where the men were hanged, which resulted in international criticism. An Iraqi Jew who later left wrote that the stress of persecution caused ulcers, heart attacks, and breakdowns to become increasingly prevalent in the Jewish community. A further 18 Jews were hanged in secret from 1970 to 1972, and in April 1973 five members of a single Jewish family were killed on the orders of the head of the Iraqi secret police in retaliation for an Israeli assassination of a Palestinian leader. As a result, Jews escaped the country by traveling to Iraqi Kurdistan and then slipping into Iran with the help of Kurdish smugglers. From there many emigrated to Israel while some also moved to other countries such as the UK and Australia. In the early 1970s, bowing to international pressure and having concluded that its emigration ban was useless, the Iraqi government allowed Jewish emigration and most of the remaining Jews left. The majority of those who stayed behind were elderly, and the community was subsequently pressured by the government to turn over $200 million worth of Jewish community property without compensation. In 1974, about 400 Jews still lived in Iraq.

All of this is now forgotten, of course, while any and every brutality against the Palestinians, back to 1948 and earlier, is endlessly rehearsed and recycled….