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The Farhud Pogrom: When the knives came out

75 years ago, Iraq expelled its Jews to Israel. They were to became some of the Jewish state’s most productive citizens

June 1, 2016 15:05
Iraqi tribal fighters in a desert village May 1941

ByEdwin Black, Edwin Black

6 min read

The day after Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, the new nation was invaded from all sides by Arab armies. That failed. So the humiliated Arab governments turned on their own Jewish citizens to exact the revenge they had publicly promised: the confiscation of assets, denaturalisation and, finally, expulsion to the new state of Israel as a demographic time bomb. Iraq was the model. Here's how they did it.

On July 19, 1948, Iraq amended penal code Law 51 against anarchy, immorality, and Communism, adding the word "Zionism". Zionism itself now became a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison. Every Jew was thought to be a Zionist, and so every Jew was effectively criminalised .

After the Third Reich fell, some 2,000 ex-Nazis escaped to Arab countries to continue the war against the Jews. Soon, the familiar sequence of Nazi-style pauperisation began in Baghdad.

Jewish businesses were boycotted; their owners were systematically arrested; funds dried up. Many purged Jewish government employees, highly skilled and formerly well paid, were now destitute and reduced to selling matches on the streets to avoid being arrested for vagrancy. Jewish home values dropped by 80 per cent.