Farhud memories: Baghdad's 1941 slaughter of the Jews

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13610702

By Sarah Ehrlich Reporter, Witness

On 1 June 1941, a Nazi-inspired pogrom erupted in Baghdad, bringing to an end more than two millennia of peaceful existence for the city's Jewish minority. Some Jewish children witnessed the bloodshed, and retain vivid memories 70 years later.

Steve Acre witnessed the bravery of his Muslim landlord from a palm tree

Heskel Haddad, an 11-year-old boy was finishing a festive meal and preparing to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot, oblivious to the angry mob that was about to take over the city.

Thousands of armed Iraqi Muslims were on the rampage, with swords, knives and guns.

The two days of violence that followed have become known as the Farhud (Arabic for "violent dispossession"). About 800 Jews were killed, spelling the end for a Jewish community that dated from the time of Babylon. Only 180 bodies were identified, but the Israeli-based Babylonian Heritage Museum says about another 600 unidentified victims were buried in a mass grave.

"On the first night of Shavuot we usually go to synagogue and stay up all night studying Torah," says Haddad, now a veteran ophthalmologist in New York.

"Suddenly we heard screams, 'Allah Allah!' and shots were fired. We went out to the roof to see what's happening, we saw fires, we saw people on the roofs in the ghetto screaming, begging God to help them."
The violence continued through the night. A red hand sign, or hamsa, had been painted on Jewish homes, to mark them out. Families had to defend themselves by whatever means they could.

“Start Quote

To Britain's shame, the army was stood down - the ambassador in Baghdad, for reasons of his own, held our forces at bay”

End Quote Tony Rocca British historian

 

Haddad remembers the marauders coming down his street at dawn, and watching them from the roof as they looted his neighbour's house.

"My father had a dagger in his hand and a pipe to prevent people from attacking us on the roof. An idea came to me and I took some bricks from breaking the walls and started throwing them. Other kids came with me and began throwing rocks on these people.

"And when we hit somebody and they began to bleed, they began screaming 'Allah!' and they left. And they left the loot behind them."

Some families bribed policemen to stand guard, paying half a dinar for each bullet fired. Others owe their lives to Muslims who took great risks to protect them.

Woman's breast

In a nearby street in a mixed Jewish and Muslim quarter, Steve Acre lived with his widowed mother and eight siblings in a house owned by a Muslim.

Acre, now 79 and living in Montreal, climbed a palm tree in the courtyard when the violence began. He still remembers the cry "Cutal al yehud" which translates as "slaughter the Jews".

Nazi influence in Baghdad fanned anti-British and anti-Semitic sentiments

From the tree he could see the landlord sitting in front of the house.

"When the mob came he talked to them. He told them that we are orphans who took refuge in his house and they cannot touch us. If they want us they have to kill him. So lucky for us, the mob moved away, moved to other houses," he remembers.

The men then crossed the street and screams began to emanate from the house of his mother's best friend.
"Later lots of men came outside and set the house on fire. And the men were shouting like from joy, in jubilation holding up something that looked like a slab of meat in their hands.

"Then I found out, it was a woman's breast they were carrying - they cut her breast off and tortured her before they killed her, my mother's best friend, Sabicha."

Until the Farhud, Baghdad had been a model of peaceful coexistence for Jews and Arabs. Jews made up about one in three of the city's population in 1941, and most saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second.
Nazi tide

So what caused this terrible turn of events?

The Grand Mufti and Hitler, pictured, were closely linked with Rashid Ali

A month earlier, a pro-Nazi lawyer Rashid Ali al-Gilani, had overthrown Iraq's royal family, and started broadcasting Nazi propaganda on the radio.

But when an attack on a British Air Force base outside Baghdad ended in humiliating failure, he was forced to flee. The Farhud took place in the power vacuum that followed.

In a tragic twist to the tale, it turns out the British Army could have intervened to halt the violence. On 1 June, British cavalry were just eight miles from the city, having raced 600 miles from Palestine and Egypt under orders to prevent Iraqi oil falling into Nazi hands.

"To Britain's shame, the army was stood down," says historian Tony Rocca, co-author with Farhud survivor Violette Samash of the book, Memories of Eden.

"Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, Britain's ambassador in Baghdad, for reasons of his own, held our forces at bay in direct insubordination to express orders from Winston Churchill that they should take the city and secure its safety. Instead, Sir Kinahan went back to his residence had a candlelight dinner and played a game of bridge."

 

A move to halt the pogrom was finally taken by the Mayor of Baghdad and police loyal to the Iraqi monarchy, who imposed a curfew at 5pm on 2 June.

After the Farhud, life changed drastically for the city's Jews. Up to that point Haddad had had many Muslim friends.

"Suddenly I changed my attitude. I didn't feel any more Iraqi. I felt I'm a Jew and I vowed that I wanted to kill an Arab," he says.

One day, swimming in the River Tigris, he encountered a drowning man, and instinctively helped him to the shore.

"When I came home I was shook up. Not because I saved the guy but because I didn't follow my vow to kill an Arab. And when I went to see the rabbi, he said, 'You can't make a vow to kill. You can only make a vow to help.'

"That's what stimulated me to go into medicine, actually. I knew that I want to save lives, not to kill people."
Lingering distrust

The anti-Semitism that Hitler had successfully exported to Iraq made life unbearable for the Jewish community. There were frequent arrests on false charges of spying and public hangings of prominent Jews.

Morris Zebaida, a survivor who now lives in London, says: "We learnt to live like mice. If we didn't, we would be spat upon or arrested."

In 1950, Jews were finally allowed to leave, on condition they give up all their property and assets, including their bank accounts. By 1952, only 2,000 of 150,000 were left.

Acre and Haddad still feel a lingering distrust of the British, because of their failure to stop the violence.
For Haddad, another legacy of the Farhud is a contradictory attitude to Iraqi Muslims. He has operated on injured Iraqis free of charge, has visited Iraq as an adviser to the government, and is described by Iraq's ambassador in Washington as "the best Iraqi I know". But while he numbers some Iraqi Muslims among his friends, he remains on his guard in the presence of others.

"I have this feeling, a sort of distrust, that the Farhud created," he says. "It's an emotional thing that you cannot eradicate that easily."

Bill Warner May 12 2011 Nashville Tn

Have Christians Gone Overboard in Outreach to Muslims?

 

by David J. Rusin

http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2011/05/have-christians-gone-overboard-in-outreach-to

In the Muslim world, Islamists increasingly target Christians for persecution; in the Western world, Christians increasingly target Muslims for outreach. Extending a hand to followers of Islam can be praiseworthy, but the lengths to which some Christians have gone may come as a shock. Consider a few recent cases on the congregational level:

• Muslims using churches for prayer. Last year, Muslims awaiting construction of their mosque accepted a neighborly offer to pray at Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tennessee. An analogous arrangement exists at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. (Interestingly, each of the two Islamic communities is stained by radicalism: the first via Yasir Qadhi and the second via ICNA.) Opposition has grown rapidly, with Anglican priest Mark Durie contending that Muslim worship has "no place in a Christian church" due to Islam's differing view of Jesus and prayers that chide Christianity.
• Christians distributing Korans. In response to Christian pastor Terry Jones burning the Islamic holy book on March 20, leaders of Salt Lake City's Wasatch Presbyterian Church pooled their money to purchase Korans, which later were passed out for free at an area store. This was done to help "push back against the lunatic fringe," said Russell Fericks of the church's governing board. "We're not afraid of the truth," he added.
• Joint Christian-Muslim worship. On May 22, St. John's Episcopal Church in Montclair, New Jersey, held an interfaith service that reportedly began with the Muslim call to prayer and incorporated readings from the Koran — even during Communion. "I've grown concerned about the demonization of Muslims. I want Montclair to develop an understanding of the religion," Rev. Andrew Butler explained.
• Half church, half mosque. A project in the Stockholm suburbs aims to graft a mosque onto an existing church. Bishop Bengt Wadensjö of the Church of Sweden, which owns the property, recently described this as a way to "demonstrate how people can get along together regardless of culture, language, or faith." The plan is to renovate the current facility, expand space rented by Catholics, sell land to a Muslim group, build an adjacent mosque, and link the structures through a "communal foyer" to create "God's House."

In addition, peculiar examples of individual Christian leaders reaching out to Muslims by mixing their faith with Islam include a Dutch Catholic bishop urging everyone to call God "Allah" in 2007, an American emergent church pastor joining the Ramadan fast in 2009, and an Episcopal minister in Missouri practicing aspects of Islam during this year's Lent.

There is nothing wrong with outreach to Muslims. However, when pursued in ways that come off as highly deferential and spiritually confused, it can embolden Islamists by suggesting that Christians are uncertain and weak. Encouraging tolerance of Muslims is laudable, but the unreciprocated trend of Christians effectively promoting Islam is troubling.

First Amendment Trumps Sharia in Dearborn

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2011/05/29/first-amendment-trumps-sharia-in-dearborn/



Posted By Andrew Bostom On May 29, 2011

^[1]

Robert Muise, Senior Counsel for the Thomas More Law Center: Teaching us how to solve the problem of Sharia

A seminal, if ominous report ^[2] released May 17, 2011 by the Center for Security Policy described fifty appellate court cases from 23 states which involve conflicts between Islamic law—Sharia ^[3]—and American state law. Nothwithstanding the delusive mindslaughter ^[4] on display across America’s political spectrum which denies Sharia ^[5] encroachment in the US, the CSP analysis revealed ^[2] that,

Sharia has been applied or formally recognized in state court decisions, in conflict with the Constitution and state public policy.

But the grim, seemingly inexorable, progressive acceptance of Sharia-based mores in the US—despite this totalitarian ^[3] religio-political “law” being antithetical to American law—was at least temporarily reversed late last week, in of all places, Dearborn, Michigan. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled ^[6] 2:1 on Thursday May 26, 2011 (in GEORGE SAIEG, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF DEARBORN; RONALD HADDAD, Dearborn Chief of Police ) that Dearborn, and its police department, violated the free-speech rights of a Christian evangelist by barring him from handing out leaflets at an Arab-American street festival last year. The court’s two judge majority opinion concluded ^[6],

On the free speech claim, we REVERSE the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendants and its denial of summary judgment to the plaintiffs. We thereby invalidate the leafleting restriction within both the inner and outer perimeters of the Festival.1 The restriction on the sidewalks that are directly adjacent to the Festival attractions does not serve a substantial government interest. The City keeps those same sidewalks open for public traffic and permits sidewalk vendors, whose activity is more obstructive to sidewalk traffic flow than pedestrian leafleting is. Moreover, the prohibition of pedestrian leafleting in the outer perimeter is not narrowly tailored to the goal of isolating inner areas from vehicular traffic. The City can be held liable because the Chief of Police, who instituted the leafleting restriction, created official municipal policy.

Elaborating on the issue of Dearborn’s liability for depriving George Saieg, an American Christian pastor of Sudanese descent, of his first amendment rights, the judges opined ^[6],

The City may be held liable for the restriction of Saieg’s free speech rights that the leafleting restriction caused. A municipality is liable if a constitutional injury results from a policy or custom “made by its lawmakers or by those whose edicts or acts may fairly be said to represent official policy.” Monell v. Dep’t of Soc. Servs., 436 U.S. 658, 694–95 (1978). In this case, the City approved the Festival “subject to . . . the rules and regulations of the Police Department.” R. 47-13 (Ex. M: Council Resolution)…Chief Haddad described the leafleting policy as his department’s policy, subject only to the approval of the city council and the mayor. R. 47-11 (Ex. K: Haddad Dep. at 95–96) (stating that “the police department will supply the standards that must be met,” such as the “prohibition of individuals handing out . . . materials on the public sidewalk”). The police department’s leafleting policy, made with the authority that the City Council delegated to it, fairly represents official City policy. Therefore, Saieg may hold the City liable for violating his First Amendment right to free speech.

Most remarkably, the majority opinion of Justices Moore and Clay included a salient observation ^[6] revealing how these judges understood the Sharia-based objections to non-Muslim proselytization which motivated Dearborn’s attempt to abrogate Pastor Saeig’s freedom of speech—mainstream Islam’s ^[7] continued rejection of freedom of conscience:

Saieg also faces a more basic problem with booth-based evangelism: “[t]he penalty of leaving Islam according to Islamic books is death,” which makes Muslims reluctant to approach a booth that is publicly “labeled as . . . Christian.” R. 48 (Ex. A: Saieg Dep. at 75). Saieg believes that evangelism is more effective when he can roam the Festival and speak to Muslims more discreetly.

Roberta Aluffi Beck-Peccoz ^[8], Associate Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Turin, made this rather understated assessment of contemporary Islamdom’s strict opposition to the proselytization of Muslims by non-Muslims—rooted in the Sharia, and ultimately, the grave offense of “ridda,” or apostasy from Islam, deemed “treasonous” against the Muslim community, and punishable by death ^[7] under Islamic Law—published ^[8] in 2010:

Islamic States have always strongly opposed this specific freedom [i.e., freedom of conscience as per the first amendment of the US Bill of Rights, or more specifically article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights], claiming that it contravenes Islamic Law. [Note: It does, and that is why the 57 Muslim nation Organization of the Islamic Conference drafted and ratified the antithetical Cairo Declaration which insists upon having Sharia exert supremacy over all “manmade” law!]…Moreover they express fear that proselytism represents a kind of foreign interference in their internal affairs. Consistently, Islamic States do not favor proselytism; they sometimes tend to restrict it even in its lightest forms, such as the simple expression of one’s intimate beliefs…Proselytism is perceived as a major threat to the coherence and cohesion of the umma [i.e., the global Muslim community]: it can lead to ridda [apostasy from Islam] the paradigm of political treason, or fitna, the temptation, the civil war involving doctyrinal dissensions…

Even in moderate, pseudo-secular Arab Tunisia—prior to the “Jasmine revolution” which may have already empowered ^[9] the formerly banned Tunisian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood under Rachid Ghannouchi ^[10]—according to a 2010 US State Department report ^[11],

It was illegal to proselytize to Muslims as the government viewed such efforts as disturbing the public order.

Neighboring Morocco ^[12], also deemed “moderate,” aggressively deports Christians who dare proselytize to Muslims. The globally representative Sharia-based penal law (circa1982) of Comoros ^[13] (the Muslim archipelago island nation in the Indian Ocean, located off the eastern coast of Africa, on the northern end of the Mozambique), for example, defines the “criminal” proselytizer as one who, “…indulges, promotes, or teaches Muslims a religion other than Islam.”

The attempt by Dearborn’s large Muslim population to enforce Sharia-based injunctions against non-Muslim proselytism confirms local attitudes documented via polling data collected in 2003, and reported during 2004. “The Detroit Mosque Study: Muslim Views on Policy and Religion,” was conducted by Ihsan Bagby an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky and a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy Understanding—a Muslim organization. Data were gathered during the summer of 2003 and published online in 2004.

These alarming results were described on page 37 of the report ^[14]:

Mosque participants were asked, whether they agree or disagree with the statement, “Shari’ah should be the law of the land in Muslim countries?”

Apply Islamic Law in Muslim Lands
Strongly Agree — 59%
Somewhat Agree — 22%(i.e., collectively = 81%)

Somewhat Disagree — 8%
Strongly Disagree — 3%
Don’t Know — 8%

Such data supposedly reflected the Detroit area (read Dearborn) Muslims views of “Islamic countries,” only. But given the intrinsic, universally supremacist nature of Islam and the global umma (i.e., as stated in Koran 3:110 ^[15], and the Orwellian-named Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam ^[16], “Ye are the best community that hath been raised up for mankind. Ye enjoin right conduct and forbid indecency; and ye believe in Allah”), once an area has a Muslim majority it is assumed by Muslims that Islamic Law should prevail—hence the “enclave” phenomenon, now evident in the United States.

Following the issuance of the verdict, Pastor Saeig’s intrepid attorney, Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, made these apposite remarks ^[17], which all who cherish our unique Western freedoms must heed, and support:

Everybody should be pleased. Dearborn is getting a pretty strong reputation as being the enemy of the First Amendment. As long as they keep passing these draconian restrictions that violate the rights of everyone, we’re going to challenge them.

The Two Faces of Al-Naqba

 

Nancy Kobrin, PhD, Joan Lachkar, PhD

 

 

The current events and uprising in the Arab world inspired us to write this article on Al Naqba, a term used to refer to the Palestinian loss of the 1948 war and the fleeing of Palestinians to surrounding Arab lands. In Arabic naqba means catastrophe or disaster, a name they attached to the occurrence of losing the war in 1948 with Israel. Much to their humiliation, Israel won! Translated into psychological terms – saving face and redeeming honor to the defeated Arab world becomes a more pervasive force than life itself.

 

Arabs are predestined to be poor losers, not because they want to be but because of severe childhood deprivation, abuse and the lack of early healthy childrearing practices, which all contribute to create a weak collective group ego that can not succumb to admit defeat in a shame honor culture. In fact, even when they lose, they tweak and twist to say they won and reassert themselves for a comeback in order to ward off shame, or will do anything to save face even at the sacrifice of their own lives, their children or their needs. Defeat gets repackaged and recycled under the guise of a new narrative--Al Naqba.

 

 

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9635/pub_detail.asp