Tuesday, May 8, 2007

BBC fiction about why Jews "left" Iraq

Anti-Zionist propaganda has spread a myth that Jews lived happily in Arab countries until evil Zionists somehow forced them to leave. BBC distorts the reasons why Jews escaped Iraq.
 
The Farhoud mentioned below was a pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad, during the pro-Nazi coup engineered there by the escaped Palestinian Nazi Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini. It is rather surprising if the British do not mention this little incident, since they went to quite a bit of trouble to put down the revolt in 1941.
 
And let's not forget that the Jews of Iraq left behind all their property. That doesn't sound like "voluntary" immigration to me.
 
Point of No Return explains

BBC ARTICLE MISREPRESENTS WHY JEWS LEFT IRAQ
Suddenly, Jews from Iraq living in Israel have become BBC news. The bad news is that, while its interviewees wallow in nostalgia, this article misrepresents the true context in which the Jews left Iraq in 1950 -51.

Jews from Arab countries never 'flee' - like Palestinian refugees - they always 'emigrate' - and for religious reasons. The article also assumes that the UN decision to partition Palestine in 1947 was the turning point in the
Jews' fortunes. In fact, conditions for the Jews began to deteriorate in the 1930s, culminating in the massacre of 180 Jews in the 1941 Farhoud, seven years before the establishment of Israel.
 
 

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