So much for Democracy in Iraq - Iraqi Council Weighs Return of Jews, Rejecting It So Far
By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: February 28, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 27 — For several weeks, members of the Iraqi Governing Council have been trying to decide whether they should allow tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews who fled the country in the 1950's and in later years to return.
So far, the answer appears to be no.
Late last year, the council approved proposed legislation that would have allowed thousands of Iraqis who fled or were expelled from the country to reclaim their Iraqi citizenship — unless they were Jewish, council members said. The proposal did not specifically mention Jews, they said, but it contained language that would have kept in place the revocation of citizenship of tens of thousands of Jews by the Iraqi government in 1950.
"My feeling is, as long as the Palestinian problem exists, as long as there is a state of war, then we should not allow the Jews to return," said Muhammad Bahaddin Saladin, a member of the Governing Council. "The minister of defense in Israel is an Iraqi Jew. Should we let him return?"
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A spokesman for Iraqi Jews in the United States said he traveled to Baghdad in December and discussed the issue of Jewish repatriation with American officials.
The debate over the possible return of Iraq's Jews reopens a turbulent chapter in the country's history, which included the official harassment and killing of Jews and the flight of tens of thousands of them to Israel.
While the number of Jews in Iraq has dwindled to near extinction, they used to make up one of the oldest and most storied communities in the Diaspora. Many traced their origins to the sixth century B.C. and the release, by Cyrus the Great, of the Jews held captive in Babylon. By 1948, the year of Israel's independence, the Jews of Baghdad numbered nearly 120,000.
The trouble for Iraq's Jews began in the 1930's with the end of the British Mandate, when successive Iraqi governments embarked on discriminatory policies against them. With Israel's independence, the Iraqi government at first discouraged and finally allowed the Jews to emigrate, and in 1950 enacted a law requiring that any Jews leaving for Israel renounce their citizenship.
By the early 1950's, all but a few thousand of Iraq's Jews had fled. Many of those who remained left after 1969, when a dozen men, seven of them Jews, were hanged from lampposts in Liberation Square in Baghdad on charges of treason. Saddam Hussein, then a senior Baath Party member, toured the scene.
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Council members said they ultimately agreed that that they would allow all Iraqis who had been stripped of their citizenship to return except for the Jews.
"No one said the Jews, but this was the clear intention," said Mahmood Othman, a council member. "The law was written in such a way as to exclude them."
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