#the farhud

[ambient-entropy]

[girlactionfigure]

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.

@CptAllenHistory

[magnetothemagnificent]

Tomorrow is Farhud Day, the day marking the violent ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Jews in 1941, equivalent to Kristallnacht and the Holocaust.

There used to be thousands of Jews in Iraq. The ancient Talmudic centers of Surah and Pumbedita were in Iraq. Jews in Iraq, and indeed most of the world, had never been treated as equal citizens, being subject to Dhimmi laws, but still the Iraqi Jewish culture flourished.

Today, it is estimated that there are only four Jews left in Iraq. Four Jews.

The Iraqi Jewish community is one of the oldest Jewish communities outside of Israel, and it was razed to the ground.

If you talk about the Holocaust but don't talk about the multiple ethnic cleansings and genocides of Jews in the SWANA region, you are being deliberately ignorant and antisemitic.

My ancestors lived and died and were buried in Iraq but I can't visit their hometowns and gravesites because they're all gone.

Remember Iraq's Jews.

[totallyhussein-blog]

Remembering The Farhud - June 1 and 2, 1941

In the 1940’s, a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all of Iraq’s 150,000 Jews had fled. The Wolf of Baghdad is a graphic memoir of a lost homeland and a wordless narrative for a home never visited, with its own original soundtrack of Judeo-Arabic and Iraqi music recorded by the ground-breaking band 3yin.

The Wolf of Baghdad is a unique audio-visual journey through a Jewish family’s memories of their lost Iraqi homeland and speaks to audiences about the little-known story of Iraqi Jews. This music based and visual narrative is illuminated by the words and portraits of Carol Isaacs own family, whose stories provide a fascinating insight into the experiences of Baghdadi Jews.

The Wolf of Baghdad film is based on Carol Isaacs book of the same title, which was published by Myriad Editions. The Wolf of Baghdad was included in the Guardian's best graphic novels of 2020. Sandi Toksvig also described it as a book "where you actually fall inside the story. It's wonderful.' Pictured is Carol signing copies at the Manchester Jewish Museum.

The Wolf of Baghdad film had its world premiere in New York in 2020 and it's first screening in Manchester, England, on the 4th Nov 2021. Visitors at the Manchester Jewish Museum were transported from Carol Isaacs current home in London, to her ancestral home in the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad. Audiences encountered ghost-like inhabitants and got to explore Baghdad through their memories.

The Manchester Jewish Museum provided the ideal setting for The Wolf of Baghdad film, especially with the former synagogue having such strong ties with Manchester's Iraqi community. Opening its doors in 1874, as the first Sephardi synagogue in Manchester, Iraqi's who worshipped there included the family of the famous World War One poet Siegfried Sassoon, who came to Britain from Basra in 1858.

The Wolf of Baghdad book and film are now available to buy from the Manchester Jewish Museum, 190 Cheetham Hill Rd, Cheetham Hill, Manchester M8 8LW. Both can be purchased online and you can also rent The Wolf of Baghdad film, and have it streamed to your home through Carol Isaacs TSM Cartoons website.

 Hussein Al-alak is the editor of Iraq Solidarity News (Al-Thawra)