Moshe Gat - The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951

MOSHE GAT

Department of General History and Department of
Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

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JEWISH SETTLEMENTS IN IRAQ PRIOR TO THE EXODUS OF 19481951

More than 120,000 Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel in 1950 and 1951. Almost all of them came by air, by the largest airlift operation in the history of population transfers. Their immigration marked the end of one of the most ancient and well-established Jewish diasporas. How did it happen? What impelled this community to rise up in unison and emigrate to Israel? Was it traditional yearning for the Holy Land, Zionist ideology or perhaps the result of material and political conditions?

Some scholars believe that the Jews of Iraq had always maintained strong emotional ties with Zion. Once the State of Israel came into being and opened its gates, they joined the influx of the children returning to their own border.

The leaders of the newly-established State of Israel regarded the ingathering of the scattered Jewish communities as an opportunity not to be neglected. The policy-makers gave priority to the needs of the new state which were to take precedence over the ideal of redeeming. The prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, considered immigration to be a central component in Israel's security. The foundation of our state's security, he declared, is wide-scale immigration, at a rapid pace, in ever-wider dimensions. He described immigration as the war effort which we must conduct in times of peace as in times of war. Nothing is In principle, therefore, as Ben-Gurion saw it, there ought to be no conflict between the interests of the state and redemption of the Diaspora.

Another group of historians, some of them Arabs, claim that the Iraqi authorities were liberal in their attitude towards the Jews and cooperated with the community leaders in a spirit of conciliation and understanding. The Jewish community lived a comfortable life and its younger generation belonged to the prosperous and well-educated sector of society. While Jews sometimes came under attack, due to the state of hostilities with Israel, the threat was not grave enough to explain mass emigration of Jews to Israel. According to this school of thought, the Israeli authorities were interested, for reasons of their own, not only in rescue operations but also in importing Jews from countries where they had been well-integrated. They therefore took action, through their underground agents, and utilized drastic methods, such as bomb-throwing, so as to jolt the Jewish community, most of whom preferred life in Iraq to emigration to Israel. This approach, which perceived Zionism as a ruthless movement, is tendentious and based on fragmented information, and ignorance or distortion of the true picture.

An Israeli scholar who wrote on The Expulsion of the Jews from Arab countries, also relied on incomplete information. He asserts that the Jews of Iraq, like the Jews of other Arab countries, were expelled from their age-old home. The expulsion, he claims, was the fruit of the deliberate coordinated policy of the Arab states. This policy found expression in the Denaturalization Law of March 1950, which permitted all Jews to leave the country freely, but which demanded irrevocable renunciation of their Iraqi nationality.

As far as the Iraqi regime was concerned, the departure of the Jews meant the loss of a useful and vitally important element of the economy and the administration. Why, then, did it agree to their exodus? The departure of the Jews was anchored in legislation, which granted every Jew the right to leave if he so chose.

The immigration of the Jews of Iraq was not an extraordinary event. Since independence had been proclaimed in May 1948, masses of immigrants had flooded into Israel, far more than anticipated. Before the Iraqi Jews began to arrive, the last members of the 50,000-strong Yemenite diaspora had made their way to Israel. At the height of the aliyah, emigration to Israel, immigrants were coming from Eastern Europe, Asia and North Africa. In this context, the question is how the Iraqi aliyah fitted into Israel's official immigration policy?

In order to answer these questions, I propose to examine the events of 194851 in this part of the Middle East. The year 1948 marked the beginning of the final stage in the history of the Iraqi Jewish community, ending with its emigration. Two decisive and interrelated events affected the lives of the Jews of Iraq: the establishment of Israel, and the inauguration of the official policy of oppression. In order to understand the official policy towards the Jewish community, one must examine the economic and political situation in Iraq and the underlying factors which shaped this policy.

In this stormy period in the lives of Iraqi Jews, the Mossad le-Aliyah, known as the Mossad, played a key role, if not a decisive one. It was responsible for the underground movement in Iraq and despatched the emissaries who headed it. The activities of the underground in Iraq and the role it played in the affairs of the Jewish community take up a considerable part of this book.

The little that has been written on this subject is based on a limited selection of archival material. The literature is general in tone and often inaccurate. The present work is an attempt to investigate this period, utilizing as many sources as possible. The opening up of archives in London, Washington and Israel has contributed greatly to the achievement of this objective. On the other hand, it is regretted that access to any Iraqi archival material is barred. The same applies to the undercover operation of the Mossad for Intelligence.