Posted by Jeff from d53-152-230.try.wideopenwest.com (64.53.230.152) on Saturday, March 29, 2003 at 10:27PM :
-- -- -- warning: assinine post.
Note: there is an intelligent response below it.
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What Are You Implying?
Posted By: StarDrifter (Asshur) <stardrifter@ameritech.net> (adsl-67-37-224-96.dsl.chcgil.ameritech.net)
Date: Saturday, 29 March 2003, at 3:46 p.m.
In Response To: Re: IDF-Israel Defense Force (Shlama)
To answer your question, I must first ask, "Did you check out the content of the website? If you did, then I am sure anyone, without bias, would have to agree that it is indeed a good resource for information. There is nothing opinionated in the content. It is all objective and factual information.
Secondly, I do not agree with you. Ancient history aside, we share more in common with our Israeli cousins than with any other group of people that I can think of. Patronizing other groups certainly hasn't helped us. I am a full-blooded Assyrian, but I have two cousins with Jewish spouses. They are the nicest people you could ever want to meet and I have had Jewish friends throughout my life that have always treated me with the greatest respect and friendship. Perhaps I don't understand what you are trying to imply, but I hope it is not what it seems.
Back in 1948, the Jewish population of Iraq was 125,000.The Jewish community up to that time, had a 2,700 year history.
The 1941 Mufti-inspired pro-Nazi coup of Rashid Ali sparked rioting and pograms in which dozens of Jews were killed. There were vicious anti-Jewish riots in 1947 and most Jews fled to Israel in 1947.
In 1952, Iraq's Hashemite government ended the emigration right of Jews and publicly hanged two Jews after falsely charging them with hurling a bomb at the Baghdad USIA Office.
With the rise of competing Ba'ath factions in 1963, the Jews were condemned to purgatory. Synagogues and schools were sequestered, the sale of property was forbidden, freedom of movement was curbed, and all Jews were forced to carry yellow identity cards.
After the Six-Day War there were more virulent measures. Jewish property was expropriated: Jewish bank accounts were frozen; Jews were dismissed from public posts; businesses were shut; trading permits were cancelled; telephones were disconnected. Jews were placed under house arrest for long periods or restricted to the cities or their living quarters. Emmigration was prohibited. Even Assyrians were never subjected to all of these humiliations during this time.
All these restrictions were contained in statutes and regulations, specifically Iraqi Law Number 10 of 1968 and Iraqi Law Number 64 of 1967. Formally, these laws were "rescinded" in June 1969; yet they were still in operation in 1980.
Persecution was at its worst at the end of 1968. Scores were jailed on the "discovery" of a local "spy ring." Nineteen were sentenced to death in staged trials and hanged in the public squares of Baghdad: others died of torture.
Baghdad Radio, Jan. 27, 1969, called upon Iraqis to come and enjoy the feast." Some 500,000 men, women and children paraded and danced past the scaffolds where the grotesque bodies of the hanged Jews swung; the mobs rhythmically chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to all traitors."
The barbaric display brought a world-wide public outcry which Iraqi President Bakr dismissed as "the barking of dogs."
Another 18 Jews were hanged in secret between 1970 and 1972. Jews were forced to house Palestinians and raise money for Al Fatah and other terrorist groups.
The Ba'ath Party apparatus grew in 1972 and Jews began to disppear, their possessions seized by rapacious officials who posted signs on their houses that the "Jewish occupants have fled the country."
Nazeim Kazzar, head of the Secret Police, ordered the murder of five members of the Reuven Kashkush family on April 12, 1973, in retaliation for the Israeli assassination of Palestinian terrorist leaders in Beirut the day before. Kazzar's guilt was confirmed by Bakr, who later executed Kazzar as a psychopath... who murdered more than 2,000 people." (Beirut Daily Star, July 28, 1973).
The only bright spot in the recent past of Iraq's Jews is that international pressure after the public hangings in the late 1960s led the government to quietly allow most of the remaining 2,500 Jews to emigrate in the early 1970s, even while leaving other restrictions in force.
More than two dozen Iraqi Jews are still missing. Most of Iraq's remaining 300 Jews, in 1980, were too old to leave. They were pressured by the government to turn over title (without compensation) to over $200 million worth of Jewish community property, apartments, schools, hospitals and fields. (New York Times, Feb. 18, 1973. All of the foregoing facts are documented by the Near East Report, Washington letter on American Policy in the Middle East.
When the Jews were driven out of Iraq, many of them who were able to sell their homes before they left, sold them to Assyrians and many of those who escaped did so with the help of Assyrian taxi drivers. Assyrians even today, in Iraq, still remember the Jews with deep affection.
Before you fall into the trap of believing the satanic propaganda fomented against Jews, I would advise you to get the facts. If that doesn't change your mind, then, if you have nothing good to say about them, it is better that you say nothing at all. Personally, I support Israel 1000%. I also believe that the so called Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank should be relocated in Arab lands.
StarDrifter (Asshur)
- - - intelligent response below...
Re: What Are You Implying?
Posted By: Qasrani <Qasrani2003@yahoo.com> (free-ppp023.MODEMS.CWRU.Edu)
Date: Saturday, 29 March 2003, at 9:19 p.m.
In Response To: What Are You Implying? (StarDrifter (Asshur))
The Jews of Iraq were among the most influential and affluent segment of Iraq's population. They were also very loyal to King Faisal.
Many of them never wanted to leave Iraq, too much at stake and too risky to go toward the "promise land." You are right in your accounts. But you failed to include the period in which Mossad would detonate bombs outside of synagogues to fabricate a threat and get those Iraqi Jews to move to Israel.
Have you met Iraqi Jews that still remember their lives in Iraq? (if they actually have memories, they'd be at least 60-65 years old by now) Nasha, they speak with such love and nostalgia and longing. They never have had it as good in the sephardic ghettos that they emigrated to in Israel.
Qasrani
-- Jeff
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