Point of No Return — February 19, 2025
Justice for Jews from Arab Countries have launched a report on the Jews of Iraq which puts their losses in assets and property at $34 billion at today's prices. As debate rages over a population transfer from Gaza, JJAC reminds us that a transfer of the Jews of Iraq was attempted in the 1950s. The report comes soon after the launch of a report on the losses sustained by the Jews of Syria, estimated to be $10 billion.
All but one of the Baghdad Broadcasting House ensemble we're Jews in 1938. Today only three Jews remain out of a community of 150,000
The far-ranging report—the product of six years of intricate research, and the second in a series of eleven—details the rich life and culture that flourished in Iraq for two and a half millennia, beginning in the year 586 BCE. Tragically, this important historic community, which numbered over 135,000, was forced to leave Iraq beginning in 1941, owing to violence and persecution.
In addition to the loss of its Jewish citizens, forensic accounting work reveals that assets, institutions and property seized from Jews in Iraq total over $34 billion by today's valuation.
The mission of JJAC is to preserve this history in the name of truth and justice, explained Sylvain Abitbol, co-president of JJAC. To ignore the fact that the grand and impressive Jewish community in Iraq was persecuted, imprisoned, expelled and destroyed is not just to erase 2500 years of Jewish life and culture; it is to deny reality. We compiled this Iraqi Jewish Community Report so that the Jews of Iraq will not be forgotten and their contributions to Iraq—to that region—are duly recorded.
JJAC's eleven country reports we're commissioned to document the history and heritage of Jews from Arab countries, as we'll as the individual and communal assets that we're lost. The first report, on Syria, was released two months ago. The remaining reports will be released in the coming months.
Jews are an indigenous people of the Middle East, having lived in the region continuously for millennia, fully one thousand five hundred years before the advent of Islam. The truth about the uprooting of Jews from the Arab totalitarian regimes, dictatorships and monarchies has been denied for over 75 years. In the 20th century, the breadth and scale of the near-total displacement of Jews from eleven Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf region ranks among the more significant cases of mass displacement in modern history, stated Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie, who is co-president of JJAC.
From the 1,000,000 Jews in 1948 based in 10 Arab countries plus Iran, today, less than 1% remain.
The historic significance of the Iraqi Jewish community cannot be overstated, said Dr. Stanley Urman, executive director of JJAC. Over centuries, Babylonian Jews played a central role in Judaism, producing the Babylonian Talmud and influencing Jewish communities worldwide. The abrupt cancellation of this culture constitutes a tremendous loss to civilization, he said.