The year of Israel’s independence was a rough one for the Iraqi Jewish community, which numbered at the time more than 135,000. The Jewish businessman Shafiq Ades was arrested and executed in 1948 for allegedly selling goods to Israel. Following that, the Jews began to leave the country—first illegally and then officially, after the Iraqi government passed a law in March 1951 allowing Jews to emigrate on condition of relinquishing their Iraqi citizenship. The government subsequently froze their assets. More than 121,000 Jews left the country in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, and about 8,000–10,000 Jews stayed in Iraq. The emigrated Iraqi Jews left behind extensive property.
During 1950–1951, a series of bombings in Baghdad occurred—first at centers where the Jews registered to leave the country and then at a synagogue—resulting in several deaths and injuries among the Jews. The Iraqi government accused members of the Jewish community of being responsible for the bombings. Two of them, Shalom Saleh Shalom and Yosef Basri, were executed on January 21, 1952. Shalom stated at his trial that he was tortured into confessing, and Basri maintained his innocence throughout.
Starting in 1964, the members of the small Jewish community that remained in Iraq and did not relinquish their citizenship in 1951 had to be identified through yellow cards. They were prevented from leaving the country.
Less than three years later, the community faced an extremely difficult situation. Their condition underwent the most radical change as a result of the intensification of the Jewish-Arab conflict.
On June 5, 1967, the Six Day War broke out. Three days later, it became clear that the Arabs had suffered a defeat on all fronts. All over Iraq a sense of doom set in, but not for long. The shame and anger at having failed was directed at the Jews. They were chosen as the most convenient target for venting the feeling of revenge. The Iraqi Minister of Interior warned the populace against “Zionist agents from the fifth column.” Dozens of Jews were arrested.
The 3,000 remaining Jews were the target of the government’s hatred. The authorities claimed that Zionism was the major trend in Judaism, and that therefore an opposition to Zionism entailed an opposition to the central goals and interests of Jewish life.
The Jews who were not in prison were, in effect, under house arrest. Their financial assets were frozen. Many of them remained without employment and without a minimum sense of security for their lives. Foreign trade agencies were taken away from the Jews and handed over to Muslims. Jewish school graduates were prevented from attending universities. Phones at Jewish homes were disconnected. Anti-Jewish sentiment rose to a greater degree than ever.
The Iraqi authorities did not cooperate with international organizations that attempted to help the Jews on a humanitarian basis. A representative of the International Red Cross who visited Iraq after the war learned that the Jewish community was living in fear and under great stress; he was not allowed to meet the community leaders.
In July 1968, the Baath Party came to power with Saddam Hussein being the number two man in the country. The Jewish community entered into an atmosphere of terror on October 9, 1968. In an item which appeared in the Iraqi press, it was stated: “A military airplane took off last night from Basra with 17 Zionist spies on board, most of them Jews, and landed at a military airbase in Baghdad.” This news item descended upon the entire Jewish community like thunder on a clear day. A spokesman of the military Baath Party junta announced that an espionage network had been uncovered after it had been operating in the service of Israel and the imperialists.
The Iraqi government had additional “reasons” for harassing the Jews. During the war of attrition between Israel and its neighbors that was taking place at the time, Iraqi forces stationed in Jordan were active partners in shelling the Israeli town of Beit Shean. On December 1, 1968, Israeli warplanes bombarded the Iraqi positions in Irbid, Jordan. Heavy losses were inflicted on the Iraqi units.
During the funeral processions for the fallen soldiers conducted in Baghdad on December 5, tens of thousands of people participated, among them 2,000 Palestinians, who excited the crowds in the Iraqi capital demanding “Jewish blood.” The president of Iraq, Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, gave a speech before the participants in the funeral procession and said: “I swear to you in the name of the revolution, that there will not remain a single spy alive in the territory of Iraq.”
The crowd was thirsting for blood. The regime bowed to the pressure and ordered that a trial be staged for the Jews. During the trials, members of the Jewish community fasted on Mondays and Thursdays, fearing the predetermined script.
On January 26, 1969, the death sentences were pronounced against 14 people, among them 9 Jews. A few hours before that, the Baath authorities contacted the head of the Jewish community and informed him of the verdict. He sent a religious person to recite the “Shema” and verses of Psalms to the condemned men prior to their execution. They were reprimanded to say it in Arabic, and so they did.
The next day, January 27, the nine Jews were executed and their corpses were hung in Baghdad and Basra, with their faces exposed. A sign was attached to each body titled “spy” and stating the name, religion, profession, and address of the executed person. Iraqi President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and his deputy Saddam Hussein came to witness the “refreshing” sight in al-Tahrir Square in Baghdad.
The rulers of Iraq promised the public that there would be more hangings. But the wave of protest from all corners of the world against the hanging of the Jews apparently persuaded the Iraqi authorities to employ an interim tactic for a while. They started to publish pictures in newspapers of Jews who were arrested but had escaped prisons, and the authorities were asking citizens who knew of their whereabouts to inform on them. This way, many more Jews disappeared.
In mid-1970, Jews started to think of ways to flee the country, since there was no legal path to leave Iraq. Many gambled their lives in trying to escape through the north with the help of the Kurds to Iran, during the time of the Shah. It involved traveling through steep mountains, empty-handed and fearful; yet many opted to take that dangerous route.
During the rule of the Baath Party, mostly in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the number of Jews who were executed, killed in prisons, disappeared, kidnapped, and never found reached more than 50 out of a community that numbered at the time about 3,000 Jews. Even after the demise of the Baath Party following the war in Iraq in 2003, one of the handful of Jews who remained in the country was kidnapped in December 2005 and never found.
On November 20, 2008, the World Organization of Jews from Iraq (WOJI) sent a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with a list of names of those Jews who were kidnapped from the streets and those who were arrested and disappeared in the Iraqi prisons, asking for any information about their fate from among the thousands of documents of disappeared persons that were found in the Iraqi intelligence files after the 2003 war. WOJI’s request was never answered. Since then, several additional letters to the Iraqi government about the status of some of the Jewish religious shrines in Iraq (namely, the Ezekiel Tomb in al-Kifil and Ezra the Scribe’s Tomb in al-Uzair) were sent by WOJI to the Iraqi prime minister, following Iraqi media reports that the Hebrew writings on the walls of these shrines were being removed by the Shiite Religious Endowment Directorate that reports to al-Maliki’s office. But these letters were never answered either.
In several meetings that WOJI’s board members had with the former Iraqi ambassador to Washington, Samir Sumaidaie, the organization’s members explained to the ambassador that the new Iraqi constitution was founded on a basis of non-discrimination toward all Iraqis. WOJI, which was established to protect, preserve, and promote Iraqi Jewish heritage, including holy sites, shrines, and cemeteries remaining in Iraq, as well as to protect Jewish communal assets remaining in that country, applaud the new constitution and take pride in this non-discrimination concept.
WOJI will continue to pursue its goals; first among them is to find any information on the tens of Jews who disappeared in Iraq during a period that lasted several decades.
Maurice Shohet is president of the World Organization of Jews from Iraq.