1/ Antisemitism in the Arab world was rife during and immediately after World War Two. Egyptian society became enamoured with the Nazi war against the Jews, and this spread to Iraq - which had a significant Jewish population.
2/ In particular in June 1941, a violent pogrom, now called the Farhud, swept through Baghdad's significant Jewish population and killed 180 Jews, with over 1,000 injured. Looting of Jewish property took place and 900 Jewish homes were destroyed. The Jews were now on notice.
3/ After the war, the targeting of Jews in Iraq increased, and in the months leading up to the UN Partition Vote, the Iraqis exacted reprisals against their Jews with blood-libel type attacks.
4/ The Jews still remained loyal Iraqis - they'd lived there for 2,600 years and had embedded themselves in Iraqi life. However the Iraqis continued to remind them that they were different.
5/ After the Nov '47 UN Vote, the Iraqi's tries a systemic pauperization of the Jews, confiscating property and charging Jews with trumped-up offences and fined exorbitant amounts of money.
In the days leading to Israel's independence, tensions heightened significantly.
6/ In July '48, Iraq amended its penal code to include "Zionism" as an offence. This made every Jews a criminal as every Jew was thought to be a Zionist. Jewish homes were searched for cash so that money couldn't be sent to Israel, and the Iraqis saw conspiracy everywhere
7/ The biggest shock to the community was when Shafiq Ades, the wealthiest Jew in Iraq - a Ford car importer - was accused of sending cars to Israel. He was tried, found guilty, fined $20 million, had his entire estate liquidated, and was hanged in Sept 1948.
8/ Many more arrests, executions and confiscations followed. In Oct '48, all 1,500 Jewish government workers were dismissed from their jobs (which crippled Iraq's infrastructure organizations). Jewish banks, important for foreign commerce, lose their licenses to import money.
9/ Soon, the Nazi-style pauperization began. Jewish businesses were boycotted, owners arrested, firms went out of business, people were fired, and Jewish wealth (once incredible in Iraq) decreased significantly. The wonderful life Jews once led in Iraq was about to end.
10/ The Jews then turned to Israel. An underground was set up to start smuggling Jews to Israel through Iran.
The Iranian PM announced that his country would open its doors for Jewish Iraqis, and 1,000 Jews began transiting through Iran per month.
11/ Many of the Jews left with their money and possessions, which further hit the Iraqi economy. 130,000 Jews lived in Iraq in 1949, with 90,000 in Baghdad. They were key to the Iraqi economy.
12/ Therefore, on Mar 3, 1950, to stop the uncontrolled flight of assets and people, Iraqi PM as-Suwaydi authorized the revocation of citizenship to any Jew who left the country. Upon exit, Jewish assets were frozen, and once Jews registered to leave, the decision was permanent.
13/ The Iraqi govt thought that the most undesirable Jews would leave, but the wealthier Jews would be forced to stay, and keep their wealth in the country.
They were wrong. Thousands registered to leave. Soon, refugee camps sprung up in Iran to accommodate this new exodus.
14/ In Israel, they soon realized an airlift was needed to rescue as many Jews as possible. The Mossad turned to Alaska Airlines, who had helped rescue the Jews of Yemen immediately after Israel was established. Together with El Al, they formed Near East Air Transport (NEAT)
15/ On May 19, 1950, the first 175 Jews were airlifted out of Iraq on two C-54 Skymasters. At 1st the operation was called "Ali Baba" but it later became known as "Operation Ezra and Nehemia", for the prophets who'd led the Jews out of their Babylonian exile back to Israel in 539
16/ Within days of the 1st airlift, 30,000 Jews registered in Iraq to leave, and were required to go within 15 days. As the number of Jewish refugees within Iraq now swelled, NEAT realized they needed many more planes to get the Jews out quickly.
17/ The Israeli economy was strained by the number of Iraqi Jews coming, but they were determined to help them: they were Jews who needed help. They could not call on their former wealth from Iraq, as it had been confiscated, and so these Iraqis arrived penniless in a new land.
18/ Israel condemned Iraq's theft of millions (today hundreds of millions) of dollars of Iraqi Jewish wealth.
Israel absorbed 120,000 Iraqi Jews - the flights increased, day and night, with 15,000 arriving in some months. On their way out of Baghdad, Jews were stoned and mocked
19/ By December 1951, all but a few thousand Jews had left Iraq. To its own detriment, Iraq had thrown out its most commercially, industrially, and intellectually viable groups. They put their skills to work in Israel and similarly became some of Israel's most productive people.
20/ In total, after Israel's establishment, about 850,000 Jews were expelled from their homes in Arab lands. They transformed Israel from a European haven to a properly Middle Eastern country and played an enormous role in the development of Israel.
@MattiFriedman's recent book "Spies of No Country" is also a great story of the role that Arab-Jews played in Israel's establishment. amazon.ca/Spies-No-Count…
1/ Today marks 1 year since I began this Twitter feed, and this marks my last formal tweet in the year of learning all about Israeli and Zionist history. I've certainly learned a lot through this endeavour, and hope everyone who has been following along has learned something too.
2/ Given the oversized role that Israel and its history plays in the geopolitical dialogue today, it has always been my belief that the world is better served knowing more about the intricacies of Israeli history.
3/ Over the last year, through this feed, I've tried to highlight as much as I can about Israeli/Zionist history and culture, making moments in military and general history, music, art, early Zionism, etc. It has been an incredibly journey, and I've only scratched the surface.
1/ The War of Independence ended in 1949 with Israel signing a series of Armistice Agreements with Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. Nevertheless, the countries maintained a state of belligerency against Israel after the agreements were signed.
2/ For Egypt, the first manifestation of such belligerency was the closing of the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping in 1949. Israel appealed to global bodies, and on Sept 1, 1951, the Security Council ordered Egypt to open the Canal to Israel. They refused.
September 6, 2007: Israel launched Operation Orchard, a secret military operation designed to destroy a Syrian nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria, the 2nd known time Israel acted unilaterally to destroy an Arab nuclear reactor.
1/ In March 2007, the Mossad undertook a secret raid in Vienna, which targeted the head of Syria's Atomic energy Commission. With the information gleaned from the operation, the Israelis discovered that Syria had been working with North Korea to build a nuclear reactor.
2/ With information they deemed unimpeachable, the Israelis went to the Americans (notably, @IsraeliPM Ehud Olmert spoke directly with POTUS George W Bush) and told them they discovered that Syria had been building a nuclear reactor.
1/ During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich Germany, Israel was participating with a delegation of 15 athletes.
On the morning of Sept 5, 1972, members of the Palestinian terror group Black September, scaled the wall of the Olympic compound, and made their way to the Israelis.
2/ Quickly, 8 members of the terrorst group took 9 members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, after killing 2 of them, along with a West German police officer.
September 4, 1997: Israel's Shayetet 13, a special operations unit, was ambushed by Hezbollah in Lebanon, losing 12 @IDF soldiers. It was the worst single-day casualty toll for Israel in Lebanon since 1985.
1/ On Aug 3, 1997, a unit from Israel's Golani Brigade was taken by helicopter near Nabatiya in Lebanon. They went to the village of Kfour and planted explosives in a wall outside the house of Hussein Qassir, an Islamic Resistance Commander.
2/ As they were leaving, they were detected, and fired at, but they escaped. In the morning, patrols searched the village for roadside bombs, and when a group of Lebanese fighters passed the wall, the bombs were detonated. Qassir and 4 other combatants were killed.
1/ By the time the State of Israel was established in May 1948, 3 years had passed since the end of the WW2 and the Holocaust. Given the enormity of the crime, it became difficult to choose a single day as the most appropriate to commemorate this dark time in recent history.
2/ In fact, in 1947, even before Israel was established, the Chief Rabbinate of Mandatory Palestine set up a committee to think of a date for a memorial. They thought to relate it to the annihilation of the Warsaw Jewish community, which before the war at 500,000 Jews.