WASHINGTON — The author of a work on the Nazi-era massacre in Baghdad believed to have precipitated the Jewish exodus from Iraq is commemorating its 75th anniversary with candle lightings in four cities. Edwin Black, who in 2010 published “The Farhud,” about the June 1-2, 1941 massacre of at least 180 Jews in Baghdad, will…
Despite mounting questions about his credibility and criticism that he may be supporting terrorism, a Canadian businessman says he is more determined than ever to continue his controversial quest to buy the freedom of Yazidi and Christian women and girls enslaved by the brutal terrorist group, Islamic State. In a September 1 interview with the…
(JTA) — Seeing that no one was investigating the looting of Iraq’s National Museum in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s fall, Col. Matthew Bogdanos put the Marines under his command on the job. A first-generation Greek American with a master’s degree in classical history, Bogdanos appreciates cultures that value their history and preserve their antiquities….
In 2003, I served as the U.S. Coalition official responsible for “administering” the province of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. At the time, I was struck by how the different communities intermarried, spoke each other’s languages, and loved each other’s cultures. In an attempt to defuse tensions emerging from the struggle for power after the overthrow…
Am I a person of color? You’d think there would be a straightforward answer to a question like that. And for a while, I thought there was. I thought the answer was yes. When I look at my grandparents — four Mizrahim, or Jews from Arab lands — I see people who were born in…
As a journalist and tourist, one feels like an invader of this quiet sanctuary. Had these young women seen the evils of ISIS? Did they know people who were still in captivity or had been murdered? Luqman Mahmood, a local Yazidi journalist and economics teacher, had volunteered to give us a tour. “They have suffered…
The Iraqi site believed to be the burial place of the biblical prophet Nahum is in danger of being destroyed by the Islamic State, or ISIS. Nahum’s Tomb in Al Ooosh, an annual pilgrimage spot for generations of Iraqi Jews, is 10 miles from territory controlled by ISIS, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported. Until the…
In her for the Forward, Shayna Zamkanei correctly asserted that American (and European) Jews are largely unaware of the Farhud, the Baghdad anti Jewish pogrom of 1-2 June, 1941. The flourishing Babylonian Community which existed for 24 centuries is also largely unknown in the West. Jews felt very much at home in Iraq and considered…
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