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Eight Baghdad Jews who represent the remnants of that city's Jewish community are facing security threats so grave that they need to flee the country, the community's caretaker, Canon Andrew White, told The Jerusalem Post from London on Tuesday. Locals try to move wreckage from the scene of a massive car bomb attack in the Sadr City area of Baghdad. Photo: AP [file] According to White, who himself has fled from Baghdad due to terrorist threats, the situation has become dire for the 2,600-year-old community, which only 100 years ago made up a third of Baghdad's population. Ever since sectarian...

In his worn sandals and gray spotted shirt 82-year-old Brahim -- one of the last Jews in Baghdad, perhaps the last -- seems tired but undaunted by the violence raging around him. "They came to take me away three years ago and wanted me to leave," said Brahim, explaining that well-wishers had wanted to evacuate him to safety in the chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Old, but wiry and alert, Brahim remains determined to stay put. "Why should I leave? Why change? I always lived here. I do not want to shift," said Brahim, running a hand through...

1 June 2006 65th Anniversary of the Baghdad anti-Jewish Pogrom Judeoscope Grand Mufti of Jerusalem inspecting Muslim Nazi trained troops 65 years ago on this day, Iraqi Arabs launched a Nazi-inspired two-day pogrom, the Farhud, which would anticipate the end of some 2,600 years of Jewish life in Iraq. In remembrance of this tragic event, Judeoscope presents “The forgotten Holocaust Pogrom” a short film produced by the International Sephardic Leadership Council documenting the Farhud and its exclusion from Holocaust scholarship and commemoration, as well as other relevant online articles and resources. The Farhud: The forgotten Holocaust Pogrom (Produced by the...

A Jewish storyteller from Mosul plays the rababa, an ancient Bedouin instrument. "On the Tigris River: A Trip to North Iraq," read the large pink sign at the entrance to the sixth annual academic conference of the Mosul Jewry Heritage Center in Haifa. Indeed, Iraqi-Israeli Jews who were born in the now violence-plagued city of Mosul will make a trip to Iraq to "return to their roots" this spring. This trip, promises the sign, will include visits to the grave of Jonah the Prophet, in Mosul, the grave of Rabbi Nahum al-Kushi of Mt. Sinai, the cave of Abraham, and...

In two communiqués issued today al-Qaeda in Iraq claims responsibility for the murder of eighteen Jewish people in al-Mosul, when a suicide bombed detonated his car in the city’s agricultural section on an intelligence convoy, and announces the “harvest” revenge attacks for the Sunnis in Tal Afar between Wednesday, September 14, and yesterday, in areas south of Baghdad and in Abu Ghraib. The attacks include multiple explosives, suicide bombings, and firing of rockets on American and Iraqi targets.

Exclusive: Iraqi Jews to demand compensation for billions in lost assets The Iraqi community was among the largest in the Arab world.

Baghdad, 27 July (AKI) - The first draft of the new Iraqi constitution will prevent Iraqi Jews, stripped of their nationality in the 1940s and 1950s, from re-obtaining it, Mundhir al-Fadl, an Iraqi MP and member of the constituent assembly's constitution commisssion, has told Adnkronos International (AKI). Al-Fadl, one of the commision members responsible for drafting the constitution's chapter on "rights and duties" explained that one paragraph of the draft says that "the Iraqi nationality is a right acquired by every Iraqi, which cannot be withheld for any reason and is the basis of his citizenship." "All those who have...

WASHINGTON - A damaged Torah, a centuries-old Bible and other rare documents important to Iraq's few remaining Jews were rescued from a flooded cellar in Baghdad, only to remain in limbo here. Their restoration, like so much else these days, awaits the emergence of a new Iraq. Historians at the National Archives, which preserves such priceless artifacts as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are examining the treasure trove of materials found in the basement of the headquarters for Saddam Hussein's secret police. The materials are in moderate to poor condition - they remained wet for several weeks after being...

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqis are complaining about their first weekend break, and some high schoolers even went to class Saturday to protest a decision introducing a second weekly day off that coincides with the Jewish Sabbath. It's not that the Iraqis do not want time off -- they just want the extra day moved to Thursday. ''We don't want Saturday! It's a Jewish holiday!'' students chanted as they marched in protest last week to the governor's office in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. A high schooler pulled out a hand grenade and started waving it, and police fired into...

It was a long trip from Tel-Aviv to the Iraqi elections polling station in Amman. But Jacky Khugi, 37, was not deterred. He made it twice last week. "It was a real pain," he said. "I had to go once to register and again to vote." Khugi, an Israeli journalist working at Ma'ariv newspaper was born in Petach Tikvah to Iraqi-born parents. By Iraqi law that gave him the right to participate in the Iraqi elections and he had three reasons to take advantage of that. Not only did he want to write the one-of-a-kind story for his paper and...

Baghdad, June 22, 2004. Just days before the Coalition Provisional Authority is scheduled to return power to Iraqi control, four Iraqi Jews--two in their forties, two elderly--inconspicuously board a Royal Jordanian airplane to Amman. Their travel documents and $800 airline tickets suggest nothing out of the ordinary. But their journey is being closely monitored by HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), which for more than a century has been rescuing beleaguered Jews throughout the world. In Amman, two of the refugees transit directly to Israel where their families eagerly await them; the other two travel to an undisclosed country while...

Rachel Zelon, above, comforts fever-stricken Sasson in his 12 x 12-foot room in an Iraqi shelter. Below left, a recovered, happier Sasson on the plane to Israel. HIAS PHOTOs / JEFF LUTERBACH "I'm like you. I'm Jewish. I'm here to take you home." With those few, simple words, New Jersey resident Rachel Zelon came almost full circle on an arduous journey that had begun over three years before. In the sweltering June of 2003, and then again in July and November of that year, Zelon, blonde, petite and probably weighing no more than 100 pounds soaking wet, traveled to war-torn...

Kurdish leader says Israelis free to visit Baghdad, Iraq Press, April 20, 2004 – Iraqi Kurdish Jews who migrated to Israel are free to visit relatives in northern Iraq, a Kurdish leader said. In remarks published in Azzaman newspaper the leader said even Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would be welcome “in the streets of Iraqi Kurdistan” if he was of Kurdish origin. “Muslims and Jews in Iraq were connected through marriage … and those who visit Iraq are not Israeli only but Iraqi Jews,” Azzaman, Iraq’s most influential newspaper, quoted the Kurdish official as saying. The newspaper did not...

The Ash-Sharq newspaper of Qatar carried a report earlier this month of a Zionist settlement project - in northern Iraq. This follows a paranoid obsession fomented by the Iraqi press with alleged land purchases by Jews in the newly liberated Iraq, particularly by expelled Kurdish Jews. According to an Islamic fundamentalist website, the newspaper quoted "Turkoman sources" in northern Iraq who claimed that Israel has begun to take control of a 200 sq. km. area along the Syrian border and stretching to Iran. This objective, the newspaper's sources say, is to settle more than 150,000 Jews in the area that...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 27 — For several weeks, members of the Iraqi Governing Council have been trying to decide whether they should allow tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews who fled the country in the 1950's and in later years to return. So far, the answer appears to be no. Late last year, the council approved proposed legislation that would have allowed thousands of Iraqis who fled or were expelled from the country to reclaim their Iraqi citizenship — unless they were Jewish, council members said. The proposal did not specifically mention Jews, they said, but it contained language that...

Prof. Sasson Somekh, the translator and researcher of Arabic literature, celebrated his 70th birthday Sunday at an event organized by Haifa's Beit Hagefen. The affair was held at the Al Diyar restaurant in the city's German Colony neighborhood. Somekh was toasted by friends, literary personalities, artists and academics, among them Ehud Manor, Eili Gorlitzky, Prof. Hanan Haber, Noam Semel, A.B. Yehoshua, Sami Michael, Prof. Nitza Ben Dov, Salim Jubran, Samih el Kassem and Ronny Somek. At his party, Somekh celebrated another event - the recent publication of his autobiography, "Baghdad Etmol" (Baghdad Yesterday), published by the Kibbutz Hameuhad Publishing House....

The Iraqi Governing Council is considering returning properties that were confiscated from departing Jews after the establishment of Israel, a senior source within the council told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. He said a 1951 law, which had deprived fleeing Iraqi Jews of their properties, is now under review. The aim of the revision is to restore the properties to their rightful owners. "We are determined to return all the properties that were taken from the Iraqi Jews and all the others," he said. In the meantime, he said he had assured representatives of Iraqi Jews who want to visit...

Justice Minister Yosef Lapid has urged that all material relating to Jewish property in Iraq and Iran be collected. The purpose would be a future Israeli claim over Jewish property left in those countries. Lapid yesterday met with representatives of Jews who had lived in Arab countries to discuss the issue. He criticized previous Israeli governments that had treated the Jews who immigrated to Israel from the Arab countries as "brothers who returned to their homeland." Lapid said: "At a time when the Palestinians turned into professional refugees, we gave up one of the best arguments that we have... This...

When they lived in Iraq under the fearful regime of dictator Saddam Hussein, members of the Shovar family hid their Judaism and didn't dare go to the local synagogue. Four months ago, as part of a secret mission jointly coordinated by the Jewish Agency and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), they made aliyah and arrived in Israel. Yesterday, when they heard the news of Saddam's capture by American troops, the former Iraqis literally jumped for joy. "Yes, yes, yes! He's been caught; he's been arrested," said family members, quoted in Yediot Aharonot. "What a wonderful day, what a happy...

BAGHDAD - When Imam Mahdi al-Jumeili of the small Hudheifa mosque in Baghdad's Shurti neighborhood met three American officers to resolve a dispute over soldiers entering the grounds of his mosque, his first question to them was "are any of you Jews"? When he was satisfied that none were, he allowed the meeting to proceed. Prior to the arrival of the Americans, he made his prejudices about them clear: "We are sure they came here to steal the country and protect Israel," he said, adding that "Judaism and Masonism are at war with Islam". These views are common in Iraq,...

BAGHDAD, October 30 (IslamOnline.net) - Archaeological antiquities dating back to the period of what is historically known as "Babylonian Captivity" or "Babylonian Exile" are currently facing a systematic plundering by Jews, said the Iraqi Al-Mustaqilla (Independent) newspaper Thursday, October 30. Quoting what it described as "reliable sources", the paper asserted that dozens of large trucks have been seen carrying away relics from Babylon, some 85 kilometers to the southwest of Baghdad. It added that the artifacts date back to the time of King Nebuchadnezzar, who sent his armies to occupy Palestine thousands of years ago and took thousands of Jews...

The Jews of Baghdad trace their presence in Iraq to the court of Nebuchadnezzar and ancient Babylon. But a history that spans 2600 years is unlikely to last another 20. The community that once boasted numerous synagogues and played a major role in the skilled trades have lost all hope. There are less than 20 Jews living in Baghdad, almost all to be found in the al-Bitawin district. Down from over 125,000 less than 60 years ago. End of an era Nidhal Salhi, the community's youngest member, is in her late forties. She could never marry as there were no...

Memories as old as Babylon, hopes and fears as new as the headlines out of Baghdad, all blend together in the living history of Iraq’s Jews. Eileen Khalastchy, 70, remembers falling asleep on the roof of her house near the Tigris River as a child in the 1950s, listening to “the sound of music and of people clapping; the sky was full of stars.” Now living in Britain, she longs to go back to Iraq, she says. Edwin Shuker, 48, member of the World Sephardic Congress, recalls living as if “we were in a big, virtual concentration camp” in Iraq...

The New Iraqi Press and the Jews By: Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli* The demise of Saddam Hussein's regime and the control it exerted over the media has unleashed an outburst of feelings of freedom reflected in a large number of dailies and weeklies which, for the first time in Iraq's modern history, are free, uncensored, and often highly imaginative. While some of the dailies are associated with the many burgeoning political parties and political movements which themselves are unprecedented in terms of their number and orientations, there are other dailies and weeklies which introduce themselves as politically independent. Unaccustomed to journalistic...

Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 146 August 26, 2003 No.146 The New Iraqi Press and the JewsBy: Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli* The demise of Saddam Hussein's regime and the control it exerted over the media has unleashed an outburst of feelings of freedom reflected in a large number of dailies and weeklies which, for the first time in Iraq's modern history, are free, uncensored, and often highly imaginative. While some of the dailies are associated with the many burgeoning political parties and political movements which themselves are unprecedented in terms of their number and orientations, there are other dailies...

Disregarding Iraqi Jewish HistoryBy HonestReporting.comHonestReporting.com | August 1, 2003 While the Palestinian and Israel Prime Ministers visit Washington to pursue high-level diplomatic discussions, a simple yet extraordinary humanitarian event occurred in the Mideast on Friday. Six elderly Iraqi Jews — remainders of what was once a vibrant and ancient community — were flown to safety in Israel, reuniting with long-lost family. The touching event was broadly covered by Western media, but when addressing the historical background of this story, the news outlets were remarkably vague: -- Associated Press: "Iraq once had a community of 130,000 Jews, but about 120,000...

'Climbing over the rotting garbage, I realized I was the first Jew to enter this holy place in over 50 years' I am writing to you from Nineveh, the city of the prophet Jonah. Its present name is Mosul. I have had the privilege of seeing its ancient walls, of touching its stones, of going to the grave Islamic tradition says is the prophet Jonah's. There is a mosque at the site; but hundreds of years ago, the Iraqis we work with tell me, it was a synagogue. They tell me the reason the site is so sacred is because...

This spring, Harpercollins released Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America. The author was "Anonymous" — the reason for her shielded identity obvious from the subtitle. Just prior to the book's release, 60 Minutes did a segment on the book, with "Anonymous," going into some alleged terror fronts the author had found in the U.S., among other things. In a subsequent lawsuit filed by some of those accused groups, Anonymous was revealed as Rita Katz, director of the Site Institute, an international terrorist-investigation and information group. (Katz...

A scary story of militants, FBI bungling 06/08/03 Donna Marchetti Special to The Plain Dealer Imagine you are a Jewish woman living in the United States with your husband and children. On Friday night, you and your family have a traditional Shabbat dinner. On Saturday morning, you rise and don a chador, the black baglike garment worn by many Muslim women in the Middle East. Under your clothing, you have taped a small recording device to your skin. Your husband drops you off a few blocks from your destination. At the door of a mosque, or perhaps a convention...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 13 (JTA) — It takes 15 minutes to cajole a grimacing Muhammed Fazi, literally the gatekeeper to Iraq’s dying Jewish community, to let a reporter peek into the small compound that holds Baghdad’s only remaining synagogue. Finally, Fazi cracks open the synagogue’s steel door. As if on cue, out of an adjacent cement block building, hobbles the 98-year-old Tawfiq Sofer, the oldest living member of Iraq’s Jewish community. Squinting in the glare of the blaring Iraqi sun, he sizes up his visitors and grins, displaying just a few teeth, almost as thin as needles. Gaunt and wearing...

As the last recognized rabbi in Saddam Hussein's police state, 37-year-old Emad Levy, in this recent photo with his father Ezra, 82, took on chore after chore to serve the 35 elderly men and women who survive today as the bedraggled remnant of Baghdad's once flourishing Jewish community (KRT) Emad Levy, the last recognized rabbi in Saddam Hussein's police state, became a rabbi almost by default: when the last ordained rabbi fled the country in 1999, Levy was pressed to assume the title because he knew enough Hebrew to lead Baghdad's Jewish community of 35 men and women in...

The New York Times reported yesterday that what began on Tuesday "as a hunt for an ancient Jewish text at secret police headquarters [in Baghdad,] wound up unearthing a trove of Iraqi intelligence documents and maps relating to Israel as well as offers of sales of uranium and other nuclear material to Iraq." Among the finds by the U.S. MET Alpha soldiers - the "mobile exploitation team" that has been searching for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in Iraq for the past three months - were maps featuring terrorist strikes against Israel dating to 1991, another map of Israel highlighting...

Terrorist Hunter May 4, 2003 Bob Simon talks to Sarah, an Iraqi Jew whose father was killed by Saddam Hussein.  (CBS) (CBS) For a soldier in the war on terror, she’s rather small and carries no weapon. But armed with a computer, she’s helped the U.S. government inflict severe blows on terrorists where it often hurts them most – in the pocketbook.   Sarah, who wishes to remain anonymous because she investigates U.S. links to Muslim terrorists, spoke to Bob Simon on 60 Minutes. Sarah has provided information to the FBI, the Treasury Department, Customs, the INS, even the White House....

The tomb of the prophet Ezekiel in Kifil, Iraq, 150 kilometres south of Baghdad. Edmonton Journal reporter Jim Farrell is in Baghdad to cover the aftermath of the war in Iraq. BAGHDAD - A storm blows out of Iraq's western desert and sends more dust sifting through the shattered windows of Baghdad's old Jewish school onto books that haven't been opened for decades. Downstairs from the one-room school is the office of the Jewish Committee of Iraq. The organization's 68-year-old president, Naji Diwanya, drops by once a week to sit at the desk that still bears bullet holes from a...

They survived fifty years of persecution. Now Baghdad's last Jews have some hope By Andrew Buncombe in Baghdad 18 April 2003 In their poor, crumbling house of blackened walls and floor tiles soiled by pigeons, Yacob Youssef and his two nieces were planning their usual evening meal, consisting of little more than rice. The family are one of the very last of Baghdad's once thriving Jewish community and, with last night marking the Feast of the Passover, they would normally have prepared a seder meal of unleavened bread and said prayers at the synagogue just two streets away. But with...

<p>Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates freedom from exile, evokes especially powerful memories this year for David Dror, a San Francisco filmmaker and Iraqi Jew.</p> <p>Dror was only 9 years old when he and his family fled Iraq for a new life in Israel.</p>

"In Baghdad, there are only 30 Jews left. Thirty. You can count them." The woman speaking is an Iraqi Jew. She and her husband saw their friends being hanged in the main square of Baghdad; in the early Seventies, they had all their property confiscated and were forced to flee the country. Her father-in-law was wrongly imprisoned for "one year, seven months and three days. And he suffered, he suffered a lot," her husband says. He is anxious not to single himself out as a special case, but his voice thickens and he begins to cry. I am sitting with...

1948 Jewish population: 150,000 2001: Approximately 1001 One of the longest surviving Jewish communities still lives in Iraq. In 722 B.C.E., the northern tribes of Israel were defeated by Assyria and some Jews were taken to what is now known as Iraq. A larger community was established in 586 B.C.E., when the Babylonians conquered the southern tribes of Israel and enslaved the Jews. In later centuries, the region became more hospitable to Jews and it became the home to some of the world's most prominent scholars who produced the Babylonian Talmud between 500 and 700 C.E. Iraq became an independent...

Muslims save Baghdad's Jewish community centre from looters April 14 2003 Iraqi Muslims came to the aid of Baghdad's tiny Jewish community yesterday, chasing out looters trying to sack its cultural centre in the heart of the capital. "At 3am, I saw two men, one with a beard, on the roof of the Jewish community house and I cried out to my friend, 'Hossam, bring the Kalashnikovs!'" said Hassam Kassam, 21. Heither Hassan nor Hossam, who is the guard at the centre, was armed at the time but the threat worked in scaring off the intruders. Two hours later, the...

Iraqi Muslims came to the aid of Baghdad's tiny Jewish community yesterday, chasing out looters trying to sack its cultural centre in the heart of the capital.

BAGHDAD, 13 April 2003 — Iraqi Muslims came to the aid of Baghdad’s tiny Jewish community yesterday, chasing out looters trying to sack its cultural center in the heart of the capital. “At 3:00 a.m., I saw two men, one with a beard, on the roof of the Jewish community house and I cried out to my friend, ‘Hossam, bring the Kalashnikovs!” said Hassam Kassam, 21. Neither Hassan nor Hossam, who is the guard at the center, was armed at the time but the threat worked in scaring off the intruders. Two hours later, the looters returned again and Hassan...

Looking at images from today's war- torn, poverty-ravaged Iraq, it's difficult to believe that the nation was once the center of the Jewish world and home to a thriving and well- educated Jewish community. Harder still to believe that for centuries, Jews and Arabs lived peacefully together there. But two Chicago-area Jews with Iraqi roots have family connections that reach back to those long-gone days, and that still play a part in their lives and thoughts. Dr. Moshe Zamir, an Elgin internist, was born in Baghdad and lived there with his family until he was 10 years old. Today he...

Prayers for the Wicked Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo 05 March 2003 While the winds of war with Iraq are coming closer and closer, and, in spite of our understandable concern with our own security, committed Jews have a special obligation to think about what others may not want to: the enormous loss of life this war is surely going to cost to many human beings who are or are not on our side of the conflict. First of all, there is the small Jewish community of Baghdad, which finds itself on the wrong side of the conflict and which...