One-stop blog on Jews from Arab and Muslim Countries and the Middle East's forgotten Jewish refugees, updated daily
Friday, January 26, 2018
Remembering the Baghdad hangings, 49 years ago
With thanks: Rick
Tomorrow is Holocaust Memorial Day. Although the event is not remotely
comparable to the mass extermination of six million Jews, it is also
49 years since the Ba'ath party regime hanged nine innocent Jews in
Baghdad's Liberation Square. Half a million Iraqis came to sing and dance under the corpses. Of the nine victims, four had their ages falsified because they were under the legal age for hanging of 18.
A few days ago, Richard Atrakchi appeared on the Israeli Arabic Channel to recall his memories of that fateful time. You can see his interview (Arabic) from 16:47 minutes into the video below. The clip has some rare footage of the scenes in Liberation Square on 27 January 1969.
I attended a lecture shortly after the hangings at an American University in the eastern US where Dr Ismail Faruqi was the lecturer. When I raised the issue of the hangings in Iraq, Faruqi said that "if we had wanted to destroy the Jews, we could have done it at the time of Muhammad." That is how some of the Arab academics in the USA thought at that time. And some probably still think that way today.
I attended a lecture shortly after the hangings at an American University in the eastern US where Dr Ismail Faruqi was the lecturer. When I raised the issue of the hangings in Iraq, Faruqi said that "if we had wanted to destroy the Jews, we could have done it at the time of Muhammad." That is how some of the Arab academics in the USA thought at that time. And some probably still think that way today.
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