On This Day — June 1, 1941: The Farhud
Seven years before Israel’s independence, Arabs carried out a violent pogrom against the ancient Jewish community in Baghdad.
As the pro-Nazi coup of Rashid Ali collapsed, Iraqi soldiers, police, and local mobs — incited by the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini and fueled by Nazi propaganda — unleashed two days of murder, rape, and looting.
Hundreds of Jews were slaughtered — babies murdered, women raped in front of their families, homes and synagogues burned. Official counts recorded 187 dead, but many estimates put the toll closer to 400, with over 2,000 wounded. Jewish shops were looted, infants were killed, and the streets ran with blood for two full days.
There’s this theory that the Arab and Muslim world only turned on its Jews after Israel declared its independence (as if this is a rational excuse) in 1948. Well the Farhud took place seven years earlier.
This was pure, medieval-style antisemitic violence — Jews targeted simply for being Jews — inspired by Nazi propaganda and the Mufti’s calls to “kill the Jews wherever you find them.”
The British forces nearby delayed intervention, allowing the slaughter to continue.
Long before 1948, long before any “occupation,” Arab and Muslim leaders aligned with Nazi Germany were already carrying out genocidal violence against Jews. The Mufti wasn’t just a collaborator — he helped import Nazi hatred into the Middle East, where it fused with centuries-old local Jew-hatred and never went away.
The hatred and violence against Jews didn’t begin with Israel.
It didn’t begin with “settlements.”
It didn’t begin with “nakba.”
It began with the simple desire to exterminate or expel Jews from lands they had called home for 2,500 years.
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