Today is the first day of Passover. On this biblically derived holiday, Jews celebrate the commemorating of their liberation by God from slavery in Pharaonic Egypt under the leadership of Moses. It is the commemoration of the story of the Exodus as described in the Torah, where the Israelites are freed from Egyptian slavery and delivered to the "promised land."
A lesser known Exodus, that occurred just about 70 years ago, of one of the most ancient and prosperous Jewish communities in history, would be that of the Jews of Iraq. Between 1950-1951, Operation Ezra and Nehemiah airlifted Iraq's Jews to Israel, in one of the more climactic episodes of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Islamic lands. As mentioned in another article of mine "Arab Jews, The Kuwaiti's and Iraq. A Forgotten History," Iraqi Jewish history dates back to 4,000 years to the time of the Patriarch Abraham in Ur, and several generations later when the Jews were sent to exile in Babylon. In more contemporary history, The Sabbath and Jewish holidays brought commerce and trade in the city to a standstill. Not only did the Jews, who owned the majority of the shops, close their businesses and refrain from shopping, but so did the non-Jews.
An Ottoman census in 1917 numbered Baghdad’s Jews at 80,000 out of the city’s 202,000 residents. By 1947, according to the national census, the Jews were numbered at 118, 000 of Iraq’s population of 4.5 million. Unofficial sources estimated the number as high as 130,000. While smaller communities resided in provinces all over the country, communities were highly concentrated in the largest cities with 77,500 in Baghdad, 10,500 in Basra and 10,300 in Mosul. Nassim Rejwan notes that “[i]n 1904, the French vice-consul of Baghdad gave the number of Jews in the Ottoman vilayet as forty thousand, out of a total population of 60,000.”
Now that we have some background on the matter, I wish to dive into the focal point of this piece, a film review based on the film, The Dove Flyer (in Hebrew and Arabic, but for some reason in English, it is changed to Farewell Baghdad.) Based on the novel of the same name by Iraqi-Jewish author Eli Amir, the screenplay was adapted by the director, Nassim Dayan. One of the most amazing parts of the film is that the dialogue is in Judeo-Arabic, or the Baghdad Jewish dialect of Arabic, a language that will soon be extinct forever with the passing of the generation that was forced to migrate to Israel. The story depicts the last days of the Baghdadi Jews in the early 1950's, following the story of a young Jewish boy named Kabi. During that time, The Kingdom of Iraq was dealing with a great many ideological issues, torn between Royalism, separatism (of the many religious denominations) and most notably communism. The film wrestles with the Jews historical and cultural connection to their non-Jewish Iraqi neighbors, the rise and fall of communism, then zionism and their own connection to their homeland.
The film was commercially released in the Spring of 2014 and as previously mentioned, is the first Judeo-Arabic-language film in the history of cinema (specifically, Baghdad Jewish Arabic). Interestingly enough, as was the reality at the time, when the Jews spoke with Muslims, the dialect changes to become the Baghdadi Muslim dialect of Iraqi Arabic. "Haki Yahudi" as I have heard Professor Shohat mention it, or "Jewish Talk", is very much in line with the dialect of Mosul in the north of Iraq. The two most obvious differences to me in the dialects is the absence of the very notable Muslim Iraqi چ (CH) in substitute for the Standard (& Jewish) Arabic ك (K) and the Muslim pronunciation of the ق (Q) as a گ (G). Interesting to note that Judeo-Arabic is one of the only Eastern (Mashriq) Arabic dialects that pronounces the ق (Q) 'correctly' as in Standard Arabic and not like a گ (G) found in the Gulf or the ء (Hamza, glottal stop) of the eastern Metropoli, like Cairo, Beirut and Damascus.
Some criticisms of the film would be the 'mandatory' additions of Eurocentric Zionist Orientalism. One of the films protagonists, Kabi's beautiful young aunt (his fathers brothers wife) is the stereotypical looking Sabra (native born, 'pioneer' type (during the mandate period) Israeli, rendition of a "Jew," dirty blond hair, fair skin, sparkling blue eyes, outspoken and strong. While no one is saying that only Sabras are outspoken and strong women, as is Kabi's own mother in the film, Naima, I find it curious how Rachelle (his aunt) is so Western looking, where as his mother and fathers casting is much more realistic of Iraqi's during that time.
The other obvious (& just eye roll worthy) scene of Eurocentric Zionist Orientalism are all the hidden jabs towards Muslims and Islam as being uncivilized and archaic, and the Jews as the great educated modernizers. While it is true that Jews were more educated and 'modern' as far as Western Eurocentrism is concerned, showing the selling of a virgin, and showing the blood stained sheet have no bearing on the story line other then for dramatic effect. (Not to mention the fact that Jews also demanded virgin wives and up until very recently, even in the United States, would demand the proof that the bride was still a virgin!) Another super annoying and totally INACCURATE portrayal was that of Egyptian style Oriental (belly) dancer's and music outside the brothel scene were Kabi and his less then sophisticated friend visit one evening. Now why is it inaccurate? First of all, Iraq has its own culture, art, music and dance. The two piece sexy Oriental (belly) dance costume had JUST become a commodity in cosmopolitan Cairo, Beirut and Istanbul in the 1950's where only elite locals and Europeans would frequent such upscale European style supper clubs. The red light district in Baghdad most likely had it's own Kawleeyat, not another Sabra looking girl dancing to an Oud and Tabla, more likely it was an Oud and Naqqara, and fully covered, dancing with her hair.
Lastly the societal divides amongst the Jews themselves were most notable to me. The two major ones were gender and class. Kabi's mother Naima is very strict on her stance of not wanting to leave Iraq, that she is an Iraqi and that this is the land of her ancestors. One of the most emotional lines in the film (which I think is very telling of the majorities' feelings,) was something along the lines that '(over) one thousand years vanished into the air.' The Jews had been in Iraq prior to Islam and Christianity and were driven out in the blink of an eye against their own accord. Professor Shohat is very clear in her writings that this is a complex issue and was a decision made between the Zionists, the Iraqi government and to a lesser extent imperial powers and very little decision making was left to ordinary Iraqi Jews. Extremists on the side of the Zionists and the government seem to be the ones that got their way. The population exchange of Iraqi Jews to Palestine and Palestinians to Iraq, commenced, exhibited in one of the final scenes when we see Palestinians move into Kabi's families' home as they depart for the airport.
Needless to say, the women were very nationalistic and did not want to leave Iraq at all, opposed to the men that all stood behind a different ideology. Kabi's uncle, Hazkel, who is jailed at the start of the film is a communist. Once the government crushes the communists, they become Zionists. Something I am not entirely convinced of actually happened. It is well known the the Iraqi communist party was the largest in the Middle East and had many strong Jewish members. Most of them immigrated to Israel because they were escaping communist persecution, like in the case of Sami Michael, one of the most famous Iraqi Israeli authors today, not anti-semitism or even Zionist zeal. Kabi's father, Salman, initially comes off as a nationalist and royalist. Some where in the films progression he is revealed to be a zionist, and while a modestly successful business man, he has been supporting the underground with weapons from Basra, something his mother comes to call him out for and resent him for. Kabi's neighbor and fathers best friend, Abu Adwar (a pigeon keeper, hence the films name 'The Dove Flyer', even though they are pigeons and not doves) is a hardcore nationalist that wants nothing more then to stay in Iraq. However his son, a communist, turned zionist, sends his daughter (and the boys sister) to Israel (vis-a-vis) Iran before Operation E&N and sort of goes crazy after that. Similar to Trump's America, every member of the family seems to have a different opinion that is tearing homes apart.
Now for the class divid. In Rejwan’s memoir, he divides the Jewish community into four economic classifications: the rich class mainly made up of merchants and bankers, composing 5% of the population; the middle class consisting of petty traders and employees at 30%; the poor that made up of about 60% of the population and the remaining 5% composed of beggars, mostly from the north. In one of the films final scenes, Abu Adwar and Kabi cater a dinner party for Abu George, a wealth Jewish merchant and Prime Minister Nuri Said. They over hear at the dinner that the decision has been made that the Jews will be sent out of Iraq. Nuri Said states that Abu George and family however will not leave Iraq, that they will stay under his projection due to the governments need for such 'esteemed' business people. Later we hear Kabi retelling the ordeal to Abu Saleh, the head of the Zionist underground, were he responds by calling him a traitor, that he sold out his people. The class divid and its relations between the government and less politically influential is another factor to consider.
Finally I wish to wrap up with some final thoughts and considerations. On January 14, 1951, a bombing took place in the Masuda Shemtov synagogue courtyard in Baghdad. The courtyard served as a gathering place for Jews, prior to their departure to Israel. At the time of the bombing, several hundred people were present, 4 were killed and about 10 were wounded. The Iraqi authorities blamed two activists from the Zionist underground, and had them executed. The British embassy in Baghdad had its own assessment of the motives behind the attack: Activists of the Zionist movement wanted to highlight the danger for the Jews of Iraq, in order to incite Israel to accelerate the pace of their airlifts. The embassy also offered a second possible explanation: The bombs were meant to influence well-off Jews in Iraq who wished to stay there, to get them to change their minds and come to Israel, too. Nonetheless it was a means to scare the Jews to leave Iraq at the hands of the Zionist underground, not Iraqi Muslims.
This scene is significant in the film, and in the entire history of Mizrahi imigration to Israel because it highlights a common myth in the Eurocentric Zionist rhetoric of the evil Arab. It is a reminder of the destructive character of Israel’s creation. Not only did it represent a nakba (disaster) for the Palestinian people, it also forced a people deeply rooted in their respective Arab countries to become assimilated into a culture that regarded them as inferiors and endorsed their forced departure to be 'human dust' and 'human material.' While we commemorate our deliverance from Egypt on Passover, I hope if we may also contemplate the other, forced, exodus that took place during the mid twentieth century. Not only that of the Iraqi Jews but that of the Egyptian Jews in the late 1950's, Operation Magic Carpet were the entirety of Yemenite Jewry was airlifted out between 1949-1950. The Moroccans, Tunisians, Libyans, Lebanese and Syrians, just like Naima says in the film, 'vanished into the wind.' While the Zionists like to call this immigration an 'Aliyah' or a ascent, for Jews of Arab and Islamic lands it was very much a decent. Stay tuned for more in the coming days.
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