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The Jews of Iraq ( Long Read )

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mosquewatch:
1948 Jewish population: 150,000
2004: Approximately 35

(Excerpt ) Yet, following the end of the British mandate, the 2,700-year-old Iraqi Jewish community suffered horrible persecution, particularly as the Zionist drive for a state intensified. In June 1941, the Mufti-inspired, pro-Nazi coup of Rashid Ali sparked rioting and a pogrom in Baghdad.

Armed Iraqi mobs, with the complicity of the police and the army, murdered 180 Jews and wounded almost 1,000. Immediately following, the British Army re-entered Baghdad, and success of the Jewish community resumed. Jews built a broad network of medical facilities, schools and cultural activity. Nearly all of the members of the Baghdad Symphony Orchestra were Jewish. Yet this flourisng environment abruptly ended in 1947, with the partition of Palestine and the fight for Israel's independence.

Outbreaks of anti-Jewish rioting regularly occurred between 1947-49. After the establishment of Israel in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/iraqijews.html

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