by Zvi Gabay
On Shavuot, the holiday
which Jews around the globe begin celebrating this Tuesday night, Iraqi
Jews mark 72 years since the Farhud -- the 1941 riots in which 137
people were slaughtered and hundreds more injured. The Babylonian
(Iraqi) Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda has inscribed the victims'
names, and Iraqi Jews worldwide recall the horrible disgrace of those
events, which were so reminiscent of Kristallnacht in Germany. The
Farhud riots were carried out by a mob that had been incited to
violence, and resulted in the Iraqi Jewish community losing faith in the
country they had called home for millennium; the community of some
140,000 Jewish people dwindled to just a sparse few today.
Iraqi Jews were
harassed for no apparent reason. The Jews, who had lived in Iraq for
2,600 years, weren't subverting the country from within, like the
Palestinian Arabs who fought against the Jewish settlements, and
eventually the State of Israel. Actually, Jews were the targets of
hostility in every Arab country in which they lived, not just in Iraq.
One-hundred-and-thirty-three Jews were killed in Libya as anti-Jewish
violence reached its peak in the North African country in November 1945;
in Aden, Yemen, some 100 Jews were murdered in November 1947; in Egypt,
the Jews were ejected from their homes and expelled from the state.
And, despite all the international attention paid to the "Palestinian
Nakba," little has been said about the great injustice that the Jews of
Arabia suffered. It's true that history is not a competition of
tragedies, but it's important to note the ethnic cleansing that spread
throughout the Arab nations. The scope of this tragedy was quite
extensive -- some 856,000 Jews were forced to flee their homes in Arab
countries, compared to the 650,000 Palestinian refugees. And yet, for
unknown reasons, the government in Israel still hasn't placed the
catastrophe that befell Arab Jews high on its domestic, or
international, agenda.
Jews were being
harassed before Israel was declared a state. Historian Edwin Black,
Prof. Shmuel Moreh and Dr. Zvi Yehuda have published research that
uncovers the links between then-Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali
al-Gaylani's pro-Nazi government and the Third Reich in Germany. Iraq
implemented discriminatory regulations against Jews that affected all
aspects of their daily life, and afterward incited mobs to violence
against the Jews. The Farhud riots of 1941 were the culmination of these
efforts.
The fusion of
xenophobic-tinged nationalism and a contagious anti-Jewish sentiment
created a reality that was ripe with Jew hatred. Then-German Ambassador
to Iraq, Dr. Fritz Grobba, readily fueled the attitude, and Haj Amin
al-Husseini, who had fled from Palestine, found Iraq to be a convenient
arena for anti-Jewish activities. The brutal, anti-Jewish environment
culminated in the hanging of Shafiq Ades, a wealthy Jewish businessman,
in Basra's central square, as inflammatory, anti-Jewish radio broadcasts
and speeches at the U.N. podium filled the air.
Finally, with no other
choice, the Jews of Iraq gathered their belongings and deserted their
country, the Iraq that they had ushered into the modern age. Iraqi Jews
left behind their private belongings and the ancient property of their
communities, including the supposed burial sites of the prophets
Ezekiel, Jonah, Nahum Alqoshi and Ezra the Scribe, which the Iraqi
government proceeded to take over.
There were, of course,
Iraqis who refused to condone attacks against the Jewish population, but
they were mostly silenced. The Jews had become the scapegoat in the
conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, just as today Israel stands between
Iran and the Arabs in their conflict. Were the Jews still residing in
Arab countries, it's reasonable to assume that their communities would
have been ravaged in the recent uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia,
Yemen and Syria.
The number of Jews with
a living history in Arab countries is getting progressively smaller.
Now is the time to celebrate their heritage in Israel, to prevent the
Arab propaganda, espoused by those who deny that the anti-Jewish riots
ever took place, from taking over -- much like the threat posed by
Holocaust deniers. The sooner Israel preserves those Arab Jews' heritage
and officially recognizes the victims, the faster the government can
improve its domestic and international standing.
By preserving this piece of
Jewish history, Israel can also bolster moderate voices in the Arab
world, especially those coming from intellectuals who have acknowledged a
Middle Eastern catastrophe whose victims were Jews, and not just
Palestinians. At the same time, Palestinian leaders must stop
encouraging the right-of-return delusion in their people, so that the
tragic wheel of history does not turn on itself.
Zvi Gabay
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4311
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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