June 1-2, 1941 The Farhud - How the Arab Leader in Palestine attacked Jews in Iraq

[Sixties Fan]

This is a lie. All Arab states signed on with the Allies by 1939.

What part of it is a lie?

Give us your source for your debunking of it.

 

[Sixties Fan]

In many countries, it was made clear to the Jews that if they resisted, they would be subjected to more Farhuds and then deported to Nazi-style concentration camps. After all, Arab regimes during WWII, led by the Mufti, made efforts to send Jews to Auschwitz.

The Mufti had been given guided tours of several camps, including the SS's camp-system headquarters. During the war, local officials throughout the Arab-influenced world set up concentration camps as centers of slave labor and torture. Of the dozens of camps in Arab lands, names such as Im Fout in Morocco, Djelfa in Algeria and Giado in Libya have been lost to faded footnotes.

By the late 1940s, Farhud-invoking songs were popular, and numerous mini-Farhud pogroms had already burned through Jewish communities. So, community by community, the Jews were carted to remote locations where clandestine airlifts – often organized by the company that became Alaska Airlines – flew the Jews, packed in like human sardines, out to Israel.

The Arabs thought that they were creating a demographic bomb for the new State of Israel. But Israel's refugee camps were quite temporary, and most of the hundreds of thousands were fully absorbed into the Jewish state.

(full article online)

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-inside-story-of-expulsion-day/

 

[Sixties Fan]

Surrounding Cairo’s Tahrir Square, houses confiscated from Jewish families host Egypt’s top foreign embassies. To this day, ambassadors from Germany, Switzerland, and the United States work or live in homes expropriated from Jews after 1948, while other formerly Jewish-owned homes became the Great Library of Cairo and government offices.

The expulsion of 850,000 mostly Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) and Sephardic Jews from Arab and Muslim countries took place before, during, and after the Holocaust. As nationalist Arab leaders aligned with Nazi Germany in the name of oil and expelling the British, Jewish communities were targeted for pauperization, expulsion, and murder.

Despite the region’s centrality to Jewish history, the narratives of Middle Eastern Jews have long been considered “supplemental” in collective Jewish memory, as well as that of the rest of the world. One of several reasons for the marginalization of their accounts is that Mizrahi Jews developed different ways of telling their stories, according to historian and journalist Edwin Black.
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"I take a more inclusive approach when it comes to looking at what happened to the Jewish people during World War II and after,” said Black, who wrote the book “The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust.” Added Black, “Hitler’s war against the Jews was global.”

‘Farhud’ pogrom in Baghdad, Iraq, 1941 (public domain)

Jews were an enduring presence in Arab and Muslim lands for nearly three millennia, yet today fewer than 4,000 Jews live in the region. This contrasts with post-Holocaust Europe, where 1.4 million Jews currently reside. So much for the Moroccan proverb, “A market without Jews is like bread without salt.”

By all accounts, the infiltration of Nazi leaders and policies into the Middle East was a tipping point in the history of the region’s Jews. Beginning with Iraq’s notorious Farhud pogrom on June 1–2, 1941, Jews in Iraq and elsewhere faced intensified persecution akin to what took place in pre-Holocaust Nazi Germany as leaders such as Iraqi prime minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani sought to emulate Hitler’s tactics.

During the two-day Farhud in Baghdad and other Jewish population centers in Iraq, Jewish homes were marked so mobs could destroy them. In the process, 180 Jews were recorded as murdered. Similar to Kristallnacht in Germany and Nazi-occupied lands, shops and religious buildings were looted and set ablaze.

Jews in Tunis, Tunisia, rounded up for forced labor, 1942 (public domain)

The word “Farhud” means “violent dispossession” in Arabic, the prophetic name given to the pogrom by Iraqi citizens. About 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq in 1941, but almost the entire community relocated to Israel within a decade of the pogrom.

“The Farhud was a turning point because it was the first step in this Jewish community’s dispossession,” said Black.

(full article online)

Ignored by the UN, Mizrahi Jews survived pogroms and expulsions, too

Persecution of Middle Eastern Jewry 'has been denied for a lengthy period,' according to historians advocating for 'more inclusive' Jewish memory

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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Canadian film describes Jewish refugee plight - Point of No Return

The experiences of Jews forced to leave Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco and Iran are told in a new documentary, 'L'Exode Silencieux'. The film , which is 56 minutes long in its full version, was made by the Communauté Sépharade Unifiée du Quebec and the Montreal Consulate of...

www.jewishrefugees.org.uk

 

[Sixties Fan]

Because the British did not wish to appear to be intervening in Iraq's internal affairs, they preferred Iraqi troops, who were loyal to Regent Abd al-Ilah, to be the first to enter Iraq's cities. British authorities also hoped to transfer control of Iraq directly to the Regent and his government. After occupying Basra in the middle of May, the British refused to enter the city and, as a consequence, there occurred widespread looting of goods in the shops in the bazaars, many of which were owned by Jews. Arab notables sent night watchmen to protect Jewish possessions and many gave asylum in their homes to Jews.

In Baghdad the results of this policy were much more severe. On the afternoon of June 1, 1941, when the Regent and his entourage returned to Baghdad and British troops surrounded the city, the Jews believed that the danger from the pro-Nazi regime had passed. They ventured out to celebrate the traditional Jewish harvest festival holiday of Shavuot. Riots broke out, targeting the Jews of Baghdad. These riots, known as the Farhud, lasted for two days, ending on June 2, 1941.

Iraqi soldiers and policemen who had supported Rashid Ali al-Gailani's coup d'etat in April and Futtuwa youths who were sympathetic to the Axis incited and led the riots. Unlike in previous incidents, rioters focused on killing. Many civilians in Baghdad and Bedouins from the city's outskirts joined the rioters, taking part in the violence and helping themselves to a share in the booty. During the two days of violence, rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes. The community leaders estimated that about 2,500 families—15 percent of the Jewish community in Baghdad—suffered directly from the pogrom. View This Term in the Glossary According to the official report of the commission investigating the incident, 128 Jews were killed, 210 were injured, and over 1,500 businesses and homes were damaged. Rioting ended at midday on Monday, June 2, 1941, when Iraqi troops entered Baghdad, killed some hundreds of the mob in the streets and reestablished order in Baghdad.

The causes of the Farhud were political and ideological. On the one hand, the leaders of this pogrom identified the Jews as collaborators with the British authorities and justified violence against Jewish civilians by linking it to the struggle of the Iraqi national movement against British colonialism. Other Arab nationalists also perceived the Baghdad Jews as Zionists or Zionist sympathizers and justified the attacks as a response to Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. Nevertheless, killing helpless Jews, including women and children, was an unprecedented phenomenon that contradicted Muslim law. In this situation, antisemitic ideology, derived in part from Nazi propaganda, helped to legitimize murdering Jews in Iraq.

The consequences of this pogrom View This Term in the Glossary stunned the Jewish community in Baghdad. Generally unarmed and lacking military training and self-defense skills, Baghdad Jews felt vulnerable and helpless. Many decided to leave Iraq. Hundreds fled to Iran, others went to Beirut, Lebanon, and some even obtained temporary visas for India. A few hundred Jews tried to reach Palestine, but most of them were forced to stop at some point on the way, either by the Iraqi police, which did not allow Jews to immigrate to Palestine, or by Palestinian police, enforcing strict immigration quotas (the White Paper of 1939). Most of the refugees, however, returned to Baghdad after the political situation had stabilized and the Iraqi economy had begun to prosper again.

(full article online)

The Farhud

encyclopedia.ushmm.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

Iraqi Jewish artist and Farhud survivor, Nessim Zelyalet's, A Month of Panic Babylonian Heritage Museum. Or Yehuda, Israel​

JIMENA Remembers the Farhud & Demands Justice​ In 1941, exactly 81 years ago today, antisemitic mobs took to the streets of Baghdad, Iraq, and violently targeted the city’s Jewish community. This pogrom, which has become known as the Farhud (meaning looting or robbing), took place during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot and sadly claimed the lives of at least 200 souls. Damage was inflicted on nearly 2,000 Jewish families, with between 700 and 1,000 people injured, while 550 stores and 900 homes were looted. On their website, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum asserts that the Farhud was a turning point for the Iraqi Jewish community and cites Nazism as a primary contributing factor in the Farhud. “Nazi influence and antisemitism already were widespread in Iraq, due in large part to the German legation's presence in Baghdad as well as influential Nazi propaganda, which took the form of Arabic-language radio broadcasts from Berlin.” Despite the well documented role of Nazism in fomenting antisemitism in Iraq in the 1940s and the long-term impact of the Farhud on Middle Eastern Jewish communities, today the Farhud is treated as an exceptional historical event that is largely ignored or dismissed out of the larger historical context it took place in. According to a new survey commissioned by Iraqi-British Jewish businessman and philanthropist David A. Dangoor CBE, of Dangoor Education, only 7% of Israeli respondents could identify the Farhud and sadly little has been done to ensure that the Farhud is taught as part of Holocaust history. Today, as many countries in the Middle East and North Africa look forward to a path of progress and normalization with Israel and global Jewry, Iraq is on a path of continued regression and violence. As Iraqi Jews, and Jews around the world honor the memory of the Farhud, many in the Iraqi government celebrate the passage of new national legislation that broadens the crime of normalization with Israel and "Zionist entities" as punishable by death. The long-term impact of Nazism reverberates in Iraq today. Today, in 2022, eight decades after crimes perpetrated against the Jews of Iraq remain largely ignored by governments and civil society, we at JIMENA demand full recognition of the rights and histories of Middle Eastern Jews impacted by the Farhud and the spread of Nazism in the Middle East. We demand the Farhud be included in Holocaust education at museums, universities, Jewish day schools, and public education institutions. We demand that the Iraqi Jewish Archive be returned to its rightful inheritors: the Iraqi Jewish people from whom it was stolen. We demand an end to complacent policies that favor the rights of antisemitic governmentsover Jewish victims of antisemitic ethnic cleansing, denationalization, economic dispossession, and continued acts of violence. We invite you to join us today as we honor the memory of the victims of the Farhud.​

 

[surada]

As well as opposing the Peel Commission’s recommendations, al-Husseini fueled violence against the Jews by claiming—much as he did during the 1920s, and much as Palestinian Authority leaders like Mahmoud Abbas do today—that the Jews were intent on conquering Muslim sacred sites in Palestine, and in particular the Temple Mount site housing the al-Aqsa Mosque. This nefarious goal was the pretext for a much larger conspiracy. “Palestine does not satisfy the Jews,” al-Husseini said, “because their goal is to rule over the rest of the Arab nations, over Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and even over the lands of Khyber in Saudi Arabia, under the pretext that this city was the homeland of the Jewish tribes in the seventh century.”

For much of 1937, al-Husseini dodged the British by holing up inside the al-Aqsa compound, from where he directed the violence and terror. By the time he escaped to Lebanon in October, according to a dispatch from a German diplomat to his superiors in Berlin, “the initially small number of Arabs active in the uprising have managed in the meantime to gain the support of the entire Arab people.”

Al-Husseini’s next move was to Iraq, where he arrived on October 14, 1939. He quickly amassed a group of loyal followers in the Iraqi army and government. In Baghdad, he became the standard-bearer for anti-British and pro-German sentiments. At this time, Iraq was fertile ground for these trends, with many army officers anxious to free Iraq from its dependence on Britain. In January 1941, the pro-German Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gailani was forced to step down. With the active backing of al-Husseini, al-Gailani and a group of military officers staged a coup in April 1941. While the rogue government was quickly unseated by a British invasion, the troops couldn’t get to Baghdad fast enough to prevent the Mufti striking out at the largest Jewish community in Iraq.

How the Mufti of Jerusalem Created the Permanent Problem of Palestinian Violence

By 1930 the population of Palestine had doubled with European immigrants. The mufti was trying to head off additional refugees. It's become fashionable to blame the mufti for the Holocaust instead of Hitler. It justifies expelling the Palestinians and taking the rest of their land.

 

[Sixties Fan]

By 1930 the population of Palestine had doubled with European immigrants. The mufti was trying to head off additional refugees. It's become fashionable to blame the mufti for the Holocaust instead of Hitler. It justifies expelling the Palestinians and taking the rest of their land.

A liar continues to be a liar. How great of you.

Magnificent, indeed.

 

[surada]

A liar continues to be a liar. How great of you.

Magnificent, indeed.

Nope. 600,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Palestine in a period of 15 years. You might read actual accounts by Iraqi Jews and why they left. Read as an Arab Sees the Jews.. I think it was written in 1945.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Nope. 600,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Palestine in a period of 15 years. You might read actual accounts by Iraqi Jews and why they left. Read as an Arab Sees the Jews.. I think it was written in 1945.

Are you discussing the Fahrud. ?

No

Should you be discussing Palestine here?

No


Brainwashed much?

Definitely !!!

 

[surada]

This is how the other guys felt. You guys aren't the center of the universe.

King Abdullah bin Al-Hussein (1882-1951)

 

[Sixties Fan]

This is how the other guys felt. You guys aren't the center of the universe.

King Abdullah bin Al-Hussein (1882-1951)

Discuss what happened before, during and after the Farhud


I dare you. !!!

 

[Sixties Fan]

Young Iraqi Jews who fled to pre-state Israel following the 1941 Farhud pogrom in Baghdad. Photo: Moshe Baruch

Jewish groups on Wednesday marked the 81st anniversary of the Farhud, a Nazi-inspired pogrom of Iraqi Jews that marked the beginning of the end for a centuries-old, once-flourishing community.

The massacre took place over the Jewish holiday of Shavuot in Baghdad on June 1, 1941, following the downfall of the regime of Rashid Ali al-Kailani, an Arab nationalist who staged a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq weeks earlier. As British troops surrounded Baghdad, widespread riots targeting the Jewish community broke out, incited and led by Iraqi soldiers and officers who backed the coup, as well as fascist youth.

By the time the violence ended midday on June 2, some 180 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, and an estimated 1,500 stores and homes looted.

The Farhud was a watershed moment for Iraqi Jews. Within 10 years, amid mounting antisemitic persecution, more than 90 percent of the community immigrated to Israel, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Last month, the Iraqi parliament passed legislation making contact between Iraqis and citizens of Israel — where most Iraqi Jews and their descendants live — a crime punishable with a lifetime prison sentence or even the death penalty.

While relatively little-known outside of the Iraqi Jewish community, there has been increasing effort in recent years by Jewish organizations, as well as the Israeli government, to raise awareness of the Farhud. In a social media post commemorating the massacre, the Board of Deputies of British Jews — a group representing Jews in the United Kingdom, where a number of Iraqi Jews resettled — shared testimonies of survivors, which can be viewed below:

Massacre of Iraqi Jews Remembered on 81st Anniversary - Algemeiner.com

Jewish groups on Wednesday marked the 81st anniversary of the Farhud, a Nazi-inspired pogrom of Iraqi Jews that marked the beginning of the end for a centuries-old, once-flourishing community. The massacre took place over the Jewish holiday of Shavuot in Baghdad on June 1, 1941, following the...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

According to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum, the spasm of violence in Baghdad resulted in 179 people being killed, over 2,000 being wounded, at least 200 children being orphaned, and some 50,000 Jews having their property looted. Other independent researchers estimate that hundreds of Jews were killed.

More than mere Arab nationalists, the rioters were directly linked to Germany’s Nazi Party. Some of them wore swastikas, while several had marched in the Nuremberg torchlight parades. It was the Nazi ideology that fueled the Faruhd — a desire to exterminate Jews from the face of the earth.

Until the 1920s there were no significant recorded demonstrations of antisemitismin Iraq. Restrictions from the Ottoman era had been abolished, and, following World War I, the establishment of the British Mandate improved the situation of Iraqi Jews.

However, the rise of such Fascist leaders as Hitler and Mussolini led to a profound change in attitudes toward Iraq’s Jews.

The intensification of hatred was incited by such provocateurs as Jerusalem grand mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who arrived in Baghdad in 1939. Al-Husseini saw Nazi Germany as a “defender of the Muslim world” and regarded the Jews as “dangerous enemies.”

The grand mufti played a prominent role in pre-1948 Palestine as one of the “founding fathers” of Palestinian nationalism.

When World War II broke out in 1939, al-Husseini hoped to secure Nazi support for Arab nationalism and the expulsion of Jews from the Middle East. In Baghdad, he supported the April 1941 pro-German coup d’état. The grand mufti also instigated the Farhud, sometimes referred to as “Iraq’s Kristallnacht.”

Throughout World War II, the cleric served as an Arab ally and propagandist for the Third Reich in Berlin, continuing the campaign of antisemitic incitement he started in Mandatory Palestine.

Jerusalem grand mufti Haj Amin al-Hussein remains a respected figure in Palestinian society, having been praised by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as a “hero” and a “pioneer.”





(full article online )

War in Ukraine and Holocaust Distortion: Why Did the Media Forget 'Iraq’s Kristallnacht' on Its Anniversary? | Honest Reporting

Moscow's invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24 has been widely condemned as an illegal act of aggression. The United Nations Human Rights Council

honestreporting.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

This Monument, ‘Prayer,’ in Ramat Gan, is in memory of the Jews who were killed in Iraq during the Farhud pogrom (1941) and in the 1960s.
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)


In 1941, Iraq's prime minister, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, allied with the Axis powers of Italy and Nazi Germany during World War II. This followed a coup where Gaylani overthrew the pro-British regent with pro-Nazi Iraqi support in what became known as the Golden Square coup.

The coup was widely supported and was seen as motivated by anti-British sentiments in the country. However, the involvement of the Nazis would also see antisemitic propaganda disseminated throughout Iraq.

Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and Haj Amin al-Husseini speaking at the anniversary of the 1941 coup in Iraq in front of black-white-green banners in Berlin. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
This soon led to the Anglo-Iraqi War, a British-led World War II battle initiated by the Allied forces against Gaylani's regime that took place throughout the month of May.

Ultimately, this war was a victory for the Allies and Gaylani was overthrown.

However, the day after the war ended, the Farhud began.

The pogrom​

What sparked the pogrom is a matter of debate between official Iraqi and British sources as well as witnesses and academics. However, ultimately, violence broke out against the Jewish community, with Iraqi civilians and law enforcement attacking Jews, Jewish-owned businesses and even a synagogue.


The violence lasted two days, over the course of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, before British forces were able to restore order. However, the result was the deaths of several Jews.


Exactly how many Jews were killed is the subject of considerable debate, with most conservative estimates placing the number at around at least 180.


However, many sources say that it was much more, some even going as high as 1,000.

 

[Sixties Fan]

The Farhud was caused by a toxic mix of Nazi influence and propaganda, anti-colonialism that scapegoated the Jews as a fifth column, and militaristic nationalism.Many blame the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who together with 400 Palestinian and Syrian exiles incited anti-Jewish hatred during the two years he spent in Baghdad. But some argue that the shadowy figure of Yunis Bahri did more harm than the Mufti. Bahri broadcast radio propaganda from Berlin. In coffee shops, Iraqis huddled around shortwave radios to hear his broadcasts. They always started with the call Huna Berlin. Hayii al Arab—“This is Berlin. Arab greetings.”

The power of Bahri’s broadcasts cannot be discounted. Four days before the Farhud broke out, he took to the airwaves to incite Arab listeners to violence. “The biggest enemies of mankind,” he declared, “are those who believe the Jews.”

The Farhud was unprecedented in the recent history of the Jews of Iraq, the world’s oldest Diaspora community. It had such a traumatic effect that within 10 years after the regime began to persecute its Jewish citizens in revenge for its failure to defeat Israel in 1948, most of the community fled as soon as they were able. Today, only three Jews remain in Iraq out of a 1948 population of 150,000. Most of those who were pushed out have resettled in Israel.

The name Farhud means “forced dispossession.” It is a euphemism for brutal murder, mutilation, drowning, poisoning and looting. It was the first of several lethal riots that preceded the establishment of Israel in 1948. These outbreaks of violence, together with a raft of anti-Jewish laws passed in Arab League countries, reminiscent of the Nazi Nuremberg laws, convinced Jews in the Arab world that they had no future in the independent Arab states that emerged from the colonial era.

Why do we need to remember the Farhud? Because the Farhud and the antisemitic rejectionism embodied in the al-Sadr law constitute a continuum. Iraq never signed a peace treaty with Israel and is still at war with it. The rejectionist baton has been passed from those who incited the Farhud to al-Sadr’s Iranian puppet-masters, who deny the Holocaust even as they express their desire to repeat it.

Lyn Julius is the author of Uprooted: How 3,000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight (Vallentine Mitchell, 2018).



(full article online)

Why We Need to Remember the Farhud

Rioters during the antisemitic pogrom in Baghdad, Iraq, known as the ‘Farhud,’ June 1, 1941. Photo: Twitter. JNS.org – Iraq …

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Questions:


Were all Jews considered to be descendants of Khazars at that time by Muslims, and not from Indigenous Jews who lived in the region before?

Did Al Husseini think that the Jews of Iraq were descendants of the Khazars?

Did Al Husseini think that all Iraqi Jews were thinking of moving to Mandate Palestine?

Why did Al Husseini decide to start riots against the Jews of Iraq and not the Jews of Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, etc?