ijao's Latest Posts
Iraq Still Honors This Jewish Star Known as the ‘Voice of Baghdad’
by: Eness Elias Salima Mourad, a singer who rose to fame in the early 1900s in Iraq – but remained there unlike many Jewish musicians – still strikes a chord […]
A Group of Young Iraqis Risk Imprisonment to Reconnect With Their Country’s Jewish Past
by: Eetta Prince-Gibson Seven decades after the mass Jewish exodus from Iraq, a group of intrepid Iraqis and Israelis are holding clandestine meetings and talks in a bid to rekindle […]
Why Have Transit Camps for Mizrahi Jews Been Written Out of Israeli History?
In 1951, a quarter of a million people were living in what was known as ma’abarot, 80 percent of them from Islamic lands. Most of the camps were dismantled by […]
Back to the roots: Iraqi Jews want their citizenship reinstated
Youngsters sit in their classroom in Baghdad’s Jewish Frank Iny School, one of three Jewish school in the Iraqi capital, Feb. 6, 1969. (AP) Staff writer, Al Arabiya English Monday, […]
Iraqis want their Jewish neighbors back
Months after a Shiite cleric who won the parliamentary elections in Iraq said Jews “are welcome,” an online poll on the matter suggests that Iraqis are ready to discuss the right of […]
In Exile, Iraqi Jews Are Desperate To Reclaim Their Artifacts
by Talia Zax Shortly after the Iraqi Jewish Archive was found, Doris Hamburg, then director of preservation programs at the National Archives, and Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler, then the National Archives’ […]
The Last Relics Of Iraq’s Jewish Past Are In America. Should They Be Returned?
by Talya Zax On a leafy parkway in the Jamaica section of Queens, there is a house that is no longer a house. It’s one of New York’s two Iraqi […]
The Iraqi Jewish Archive Could Reshape Foreign Policy. But Its Future Is Uncertain
by: Talya Zax Iraqi Jews are sure the Iraqi Jewish Archive belongs to them, and they’re determined to get it back. Meanwhile, Iraq is holding firm to the claim […]
The Iraqi Jewish Archive is stolen property that should go back to its original owners
By Carole Basri and David Dangoor, In the preamble to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, it says that “damage […]
Is the Lost Language of Iraqi Jews Really Lost?
By Mardean Isaac On the anniversary of the Farhud of 1941, when Iraqi Jews’ violent dispossession began, a look at how the Baghdadi diaspora’s eventual return to Israel fostered scholarly […]
How Iraqi Jews are Reclaiming their Cultural Legacy in Israel
By Pablo Jairo Tutillo Maldonado Last December, after Shabbat ended, I was walking near the Machane Yehuda, Jerusalem’s famous open-air market, when I saw people celebrating the beginning of […]
With Jews largely gone from Iraq, memories survive in Israel
By Maher Chmaytelli, Jeffrey Heller and Stephen Farrell BAGHDAD/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Behind the high concrete walls of Baghdad’s Jewish cemetery, Violette Saul lies at rest under a weathered […]
