What the Murder of Iraqi Jews in 1941 Tells us About the Middle East Today
Seventy years ago during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, June 1st and 2nd, 1941, Iraqis rampaged through the Jewish sections of Baghdad, killing between 100 and 600 individuals, injuring countless more, and looting whatever they could. This was the turning point in the history of Iraqi Jews, who had resided in Mesopotamia for over 2,500 years. In the decade that followed, the community was systematically disenfranchised, robbed, and largely expelled. What lessons does this hold for understanding the Middle East of today?
The pogrom known as the Farhud (“violent dispossession”) was conducted by Iraqis. On the first day the perpetrators were soldiers, policemen, and Baghdadis, and on the second, Bedouin from outside the city eager to claim their toll of Jews and share of loot. But the Farhud also came at the point at which the Nazi-inspired and supported coup against the pro-British Iraqi monarchy was destroyed. Like the Holocaust, it is an opportunity to examine the nature of hatred in past and present.
The question of the Nazi relationship with the Muslim and Arab worlds is far from new. Indeed, even before World War II, British and Zionist officials took note of the relationship between the “grand mufti of Jerusalem,” Haj Amin al-Husseini, and the Nazis. Long a thorn in the side of both, the mufti had been foolishly appointed by the British as the chief Muslim religious official in Jerusalem. In return, he schemed against them, the Jews, and Arab rivals from Palestine to Iraq, fomenting hatred and terrorism. Central to his ideology, and personality, was rabid hatred of Jews. Within days of Hitler’s ascent to power the mufti reached out to Nazi officials. His later record of Nazi collaboration is exceptional: conspiring against the British in Iraq after his flight from Palestine; broadcasting to the Arab world from Berlin; and raising Muslim SS divisions in the Balkans. Only by escaping to Egypt after the war with French help did he avoid a war crimes trial.
But how much were he and his minions actually inspired by Nazism? And, to the extent that he was the central Muslim figure railing against Jews and Zionism before and after World War II, how much was Palestinian and Arab opposition ‘”Nazi-inspired” or even a local manifestation of Nazism? Did this contribute to today’s “Islamo-fascism”?
Direct Nazi support for the mufti and for local fascists in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Iran was late, but when war came it was deep and pervasive. Money and arms flowed, and German forces entered Iraq from Vichy Syria in May 1941 to support the Sunni military officers who had launched the coup, with the encouragement of the German ambassador, Fritz Grobba. Incitement against the Jews of Iraq had been heightened by years of classroom propaganda by Palestinian Arab and Syrian teachers facilitated by the Minister of Education and Nazi enthusiast Sami Shawkat, propaganda broadcasts from Germany, and by semi-military fascist societies.
In return, there was extensive Muslim support for the Nazis, as subversives in the Middle East, SS troops in the Balkans, and through the mufti’s direct support for the Holocaust. It was he who went relentlessly from office to office urging Nazi officials not to barter Jews, including children, in exchange for goods but to send them to their deaths in Poland.
But do historical data show a widespread grassroots Arab desire to exterminate Middle Eastern Jews? This is impossible to quantify. On the one hand, as Robert Satloff documents in his book Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands, there were many cases of North African Muslims sheltering Jewish neighbors from the Nazis. But on the other, far more soaked up Nazi propaganda broadcasts, Islamified by the mufti and others.
Perhaps the commonality lies in a collectivist drive wherein control is exerted by a few over the masses.
Collectivism is at the heart of Nazism, Fascism, Islamisim, socialism, communism, they all come out of the same stable.
Left and right are hard to define terms and probably unhelpful in trying to reach a clear understanding, but if collective control and responsibility is left wing, and individual control and responsibility is right wing, then all the above isms come from the same left wing stable.
This is actually established if one examines how the ideologies came about (eg, Mussolini came from a socialist line of thinking and was simply trying to improve it as he saw fit.)
Very perceptive comment.
You are mistaken that the association of the Arabs and Nazis came late!
It arose almost as soon as Hitler came to power.
As shown in the books Nazi Palestine and Palestine Betrayed (among others), it came early and was pervasive. The Arabs found a kindred spirit in Hitler and a new q’ran in Mein Kampf (and still do).
When one reads details of events in the 30′s with respect to the Middle East the parallels to today are stunning and frightening.
yesjb,
Well put.There has NEVER even been six degrees of separation between the two.In fact, Islamic Jew hatred predated Nazi Jew hatred.
It is impossible to understand Islamic jihad without understanding their Nazi roots-from the Koran!!
I wrote my dissertation on Middle East radicalism. I can sum it (700 pgs) up in one short sentence: “The war on terror will be won when Mein Kampf is no longer for sale on the streets of Jordan”
Miriam, Are you implying that Mein Kampf is an essential western vindication of the Q’ran?
I would say, when neither Mein Kampf nor the Qur’an are on sale in the streets anywhere in the Middle East.
The two are one and the same.
It would not be too much of a stretch to say that Haj Amin al-Husseini was Hitler’s inspiration for the Holocaust.
My understanding is that the Arab translation of “Mein Kampf” is still the second-best selling book in Arabic countries today, outsold only by the Quran. Miriam is absolutely correct: “The war on terror will be won when Mein Kampf is no longer for sale on the streets of Jordan” and the rest of the Arabic world.
“But do historical data show a widespread grassroots Arab desire to exterminate Middle Eastern Jews?”
Well, let’s just say that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda proves that they don’t like them too much even today. Ever since World War II (as in Iraq) and shortly after World War II (with the first arab war against a newly created Israel), Middle Eastern Muslims have never had a great “love” for the Jews. Heck, they didn’t even tolerate them. Unfortunately, not much has changed since then. The only reason Israel exists today is because they have the military power TO exist. But there will come a day, probably when Iran gets a nuclear weapon, when the Muslims in the Middle East will want to totally eradicate this “thorn” in their side and try to literally blow Israel off the map in one nuclear flash.
And what are we doing about it? What is Obama doing about it? Not much. He’s letting Iran get its nuclear bomb and he is constantly demanding concessions from Israel but never, ever, from the arabs. Time is almost running out for Israel and its only hope is that in 2012 the United States gets a conservative president who will stand by its side again. Because, if we get four more years of Obama, Israel will be finished.
I really don’t get why Jews in America vote for their enemy. Do they feel it is better to have the US in disarray and no one to gang up on them or are they just self loathing and want to watch Israel disappear before their eyes? Keep voting Dem and you get a front row seat.
Excellent article touching on so many important strands that define the modern Middle East.
Any discussion of it will be Verboten by liberal Jews, mainstream journalists and Yale University’s re-constituted Department of Anti-Semitism.
The article is correct to acknowledge the 2500 year history of Arab and Jew living side-by-side–even after the rise of Islam (after all they shared a common religious and cultural heritage). But in the late 19th century, and early 20th century, the West (most predominated the Brits) began economic escapades in Iraq–most notably resulting in military adventure where Winston Churchill even approve the use of poison gas on the Kurds. The Brits also made financial alliances with some of the Jewish population which started the rift between them and the Arabs. This fact made certain Arab nationalists in charge turn to Hitler as a logical extension.
tadcf said:{But in the late 19th century, and early 20th century, the West (most predominated the Brits) began economic escapades in Iraq–most notably resulting in military adventure where Winston Churchill even approve the use of poison gas on the Kurds.}
care to back up that claim ….
tadcf: Please do not try to cover up the 2500 year history of Muslims forcing Jews to live as second-class people, tolerated only as long as they accepted inferior, exploited status.
That’s 1,400 years of history since Islam was founded in the 7th century. But you’re correct that according to Islamic law the people of the book, i.e. Jews and Christians, can have a status of dhimmis, or “protected” religious minorities (i.e. allowed to live and to warship according to their own religion within pretty serious limitations), if they agree to pay the jizya, a special tax, and accept humiliating customs to express their subjugation to Muslims. The other alternatives are conversion to Islam or death, although occasionally they were given also the option to leave the country.
The degree the dhimma laws were implemented depended on the ruler, the time and the place. At certain times and places there were benevolent rulers who allowed Jews and Christians relative prosperity and accomplishment. At others there were ultra-zealous rulers who demanded they all converts.
At the early 20th century a secularization process, influenced by Western ideas, began in certain parts of the Middle East that allowed Jews and Christians in certain places to have equal rights and even rise to positions of power, but that was soon replaced with militant Arab ultra-nationalism.
If the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups take power in their various nations and institute some kind of Islamo-fascist systems, then you can be sure that the Middle East will explode into total war and national suicide just like Germany did. It took the most destructive war in human history and millions of deaths to convince the Germans to abandon their hatreds and act like a civilized nation. I wish that it would not take a similar event to pacify the Middle East, but unfortunately it may come to that. Islamic nationalism is every bit as fanatical and suicidal as Nazism was, and every bit as entrenched in the culture.
That a fusion of Islam and Nazism exists is impossible to deny if you look, for instance, on how Islamic Jew-hatred and European antisemitic conspiracy theories are interwoven in Hamas covenant.
For instance, article 7 quotes the now infamous genocidal hadith from Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim:
This is a purely Islamic source of genocidal Jew-hatred. But other parts of the charter quote the Russian czarist antisemitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which was a major influence on the Nazis. The “Protocols” accuses the Jews of an old age conspiracy to take over the world. According to it the Jews were behind every war and every revolution ever, and the Jews also invented capitalism, socialism, and the ideas of equality and human rights as tools for the global rule conspiracy. BTW, the purpose of the “Protocols” was to try and perevent a popular uprising against the czar and the aristocracy in Russia by claiming all these revolutionary ideas are really just instruments in the hands of evil Jews, and therefore when the masses hear all these nonsense about equality, democracy and human rights they should stand firm against them and support the rule of the czar and the priviliges of the aristocracy because they and the papacy are the only obstacles standing in the way of the evil Jews to acheive world domination.
The Nazis adopted and expanded the themes in the “Protocols”. And portions of Hamas covenant include ideas identical to the Nazi propaganda, except Germany is replaced with the Islamic Caliphate the Jews are accused of destroying. For instance in article 22:
This is immediately followed by a “supporting” quote from Muslim scriptures:
Article 32 explicitly mentions the “Protocols” as their source of “information”:
Though according to Ion Mihai Pacepa the “Protocols” was disseminated in the Middle East also by the Soviets, but that was in a later period. These conspiracy theories fused with Islamic Jew-hatred were first disseminated throughout the Middle East by Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, through a German radio station that broadcasted his sermons to the Middle East for 5 years.
The link to the translation of Hamas Covenant on Yale’s website:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
More information on the subject of Islamism and Nazism can be read in the wesbite of German scholar Matthias Küntzel who reasearched it and also published a book on the subjcet.
http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/kategorie/32/?lang=en
the disinformation in Protocols is not only loved and believed by Muslims- the oxymoronically named “Truthers” and other conspiracy wackos hold these same ideas of Jewish media and alleged world domination and manipulations of money and power,secret cabals etc. The only difference between their beliefs is one holds to them for religion reason. The other? who knows? deep rooted anti Semitism? distrust of establishment? Whatever the reason, the Muslim fantasy being promoted (as if true) has given them much company and approval- a safer space to voice these perverse accusations on JEWS- A facile word game called anti-ISrael or anti-Zionist to hide behind, while in private, or Arabic the word used is JEWS. I never dreamed in my lifetime I would see Nazi fascist ideas so popular, but here we are- I am now fully able to answer the question I always had- How did Hitler convince people of this madness?
I agree. Can you believe we are actually witnessing this today? How are sane people so blind as to be insane?
Most Arab Jews in Israel vote for right wing parties such as the Likud. The left wing (or whatever is left of it) draws its support mainly from European Jews. There is a very obvious reason for this: The Arab Jews, know the Arab Muslims. They understand their language, they have amongst them people who experienced living as a minority among the Muslims.
Russian Jews are the exception. At my monthly Moledet meetings, (a party right of Likud) there were so many Russians that they had to have a translator. I went to many right-wing rallies in Tel Aviv and most were North American immigrants, Russians and religious European Israelis.
daniel teeboom,
There is no such thing as “Arab Jews”. We are different people, first to last. Half of my family is from Iraq, and we where always Jews, never Arabs.
Why limit the analysis to 1941?
A much more comprehensive analysis of Islamic terror can be observed between the time periods of the years 800 to 3:38pm, Monday, June 27, 2011