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Moshe Gat
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The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951 1st Edition

by Moshe Gat (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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In this study, Moshe Gat details how the immigration of the Jews from Iraq in effect marked the eradication of one of the oldest and most deeply-rooted Diaspora communities.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0714642231
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0714642239
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publication date
    January 4, 1997
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
  7. Print length
    220 pages
  8. See all details
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  • E.A.
    4.0 out of 5 stars Valuable addition to historical narrative
    Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Gat’s manuscript provides a window into the Iraqi Jewish predicament that led to the immigration of almost all of Iraq’s Jews to Israel in the aftermath of Israeli independence. His manuscript is meticulously researched and his presentation is relatively balanced. A handful of typos and some inconsistencies across themes does not detract from the broader usefulness of the text.
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  • Alyssa A. Lappen
    5.0 out of 5 stars Shatters a myth
    Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2005
    When the British mandate over Iraq ended in 1930, and the country won its independence in October 1932, the official attitude towards Jewish and other minorities in Iraq changed markedly. Before that, the Iraqi constitution promulgated in 1925 had granted, in Article 6, equal rights to all before the law, regardless of religion, nationality or language.

    Nevertheless, in response to a demand by the (Nestorian Christian) Assyrians for autonomy, the army conducted a massacre in August 1933. This, as Moshe Gat observes in this all-encompassing study, was an ominous sign for the Jewish community, and indeed, much worse for the Jewish people of Iraq was soon to follow. Indeed, the declarations of King Faisal, who died in 1933, were somewhat meaningless, and in any case, were followed by the nationalistic attitude of his young anti-British, anti-Zionist son Ghazi.

    Roughly 120,000 Jews lived in Iraq, (the census of 1920 listed 87,000, the census of 1947, 118,000), making up some 3 percent of the overall population, most of them in the major cities of Baghdad, Basra and Mosul. They were shortly to suffer the oppression spearheaded by nationalistic forces, whose leaders included the British-appointed Jerusalem Mufti, Hajj Amin el-Husseini.

    The Mufti arrived in Iraq in 1939 and his hatred made no distinction between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews. At the same time, anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda began to infiltrate Iraq, at the instigation of Fritz Grobba, the charge d'affairs at the German Consulate from October 1932, who purchased a major daily newspaper. Nazi propaganda penetrated deeply into the society also thanks to the pre-existing predilection to Jew-hatred in the Islamic society at large.

    This led to the October 1941 farhud, or pogrom, in which 180 Jews were murdered in the course of two days--including women, children and the elderly--and several hundred others were severely injured. Property damage amounted to several hundred thousand pounds sterling.

    At that point, the Jewish community awakened to the fact that living peaceably among Muslims was not in the cards. But flight was not yet possible en masse. Only a few thousand Jews managed to escape to India, Britain and Iran. Almost none went to Israel, where they considered it folly to go.

    Riots occurred again in January 1948, reflecting deep hostility to the regime, and 300 to 400 people were killed or injured. That May, riots targeting the Jewish community were feared. The government instituted martial law, primarily to protect itself from the expected fallout from such a development.

    Eventually, all 120,000 Iraqi Jews fled the country. Contrary to rumors and historical myths, this exodus was not resultant from Jewish terrorism (which did not occur), but from the anti-Jewish policies of the Iraqi government and people.

    All together this is a fine read, which dispels the myth once and for all.

    --Alyssa A. Lappen
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  • Iraq historian
    3.0 out of 5 stars confused but exposes new sources
    Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2005
    This is an excellent book, but its slightly flawed and distorts events to make political points.

    The British created Iraq after the first world war. From its creation, it was ungovernable. The British spent the next decade fighting a string of uprisings by almost all the groups in the country. They partially gave up in 1932. In that year, they handed over security in the country to an Iraqi government. Independence was in theory granted, but in practice the British wrote the constitution, controlled the oil industry, controlled Iraqi foriegn affiars and demanded a military treaty were the British had the rights to bases and an unlimited right to station troops in the country.

    A year after independence, the so-called Assyrians attempted to challenge the government and were crushed. Contrary to the book, their treatment was no worse than what the British had been doing to rebel groups in Iraq for the ten years previous. Also contrary to the book, this was not any sort of turning point for Iraqi minorities. Every group in Iraq was a minority. Politics were a careful balance between the army, the king and the prime minister. The official banning of most politics led to a situation where politics were conducted by other means. Specifically, scandals, threats of coups and ethnic uprising by tribal or other groups.

    In 1939, the King (Ghazi) died in mysterious circumstances. The book wrongly suggests he was anti-british. The monarchy was actually the most pro-british institution in the country. In part, because it could not exist without the British. With the King's death, the monarchy passed to a child. The country fell quickly to chaos. The Mufti was invited into the country by an army faction and the situation began to get worse for the Jewish community.

    In the spring of 1941, the army attempted to repudiate the treaties forced on the country by the British including the military treaty. The British response was to invade and occupy Iraq in May/June 1941. The Iraqi officers, as the book points out, were involved with the germans and took assistance from them.

    In the fall of 1941, as the book points out, there was a Pogrom in Baghdad. The book is wrong however in blaming the Iraqi authorities for what happened. Iraq was under British Military Occupation at the time of the incident. If anyone is to blame for what happened, it is the British. Ask them why the vast armies they had present in Iraq didn't move in to stop the disturbances until it was too late. This does not eliminate the guilt of those Iraqis who participated, but the British role in allowing it to happen can not be ignored. The Mufti was long gone as well by that time.

    The book goes too far in trying to portray Iraq in the 1940s as some sort of massively anti-jewish state. Aside from the one riot, he is unable to put together a pattern of events (before 1948) to show that the situation was anything like as bad as what he claims.

    There was also no attempt of the jewish population to flee en mass in 1941. Some did leave the country after the riots, but the population as a whole were not looking to flee in 1942. And if they had been looking to flee from muslims, they would not have gone to places like Iran and India which are full of Muslims and communal problems every bit as bad as Iraq.

    In 1948, the British introduced a new treaty that would have reduced Iraq to the status of a puppet colony. The riots which swept the country defeated the treaty and forced the start of the British withdrawal from the country. Those riots had nothing to do specifically with the Jews of Iraq. There was certainly fear in the community, but by Iraqi standards it nothing like 1941.

    In 1950, a mysterous series of bomb-throwing incidents occured in Iraq starting in April. Leaflets of an unknown source also began appearing calling on Jews to leave. Who was throwing the bombs and putting out the leaflets is still unclear but there are those who suspect groups in Israel. This includes Jews from the ex Iraqi Jewish community and american ex-intelligence officials.

    Moshe Gat does not prove who did and did not throw the bombs. At best, he presents an argument that no organized plot/plan existed at the highest levels of the Israeli government along those lines because of a lack of organization in the evacuation. He also makes a case based on the obvious: that in retrospect the evacuation happening at that time was a good thing for the Jewish community. But he can't disprove the facts of the bombings or definitively prove who was behind them. At his best, he can only make a conveluted argument that the bombings were incidental in the Iraqi Jews choosing to leave.

    The story of the Iraqi Jews is not a happy one and there were things done to them during the evacuation by both Israel and Iraq that were horrible. They faced financial confiscations from both governments. They also found on arriving in Israel an Israel culture dominated by European Jews whose culture was both largely foriegn to them and dismissive of them. Those tensions still exist exist in Israel to this day.

    All in all, its an excellent but incomplete book on the topic. What the book needed was more perspectives from those in Israel who were not (and are not) happy with their treatment and the events of 1950-52. He does show how the Iraqi Jews were used as pawns against their own interests during the evacuation. But there is a bigger story here than this book had the courage to tell.

    Nothing in this review is meant to suggest that the Iraqi Jewish community staying in Iraq would have been a good thing. It would have been a disaster after the coup in 1958. But there are still many open issues historically about how the evacuation was conducted in 1950 and what the circumstances were in Iraq.
    17 people found this helpful
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