Susan Cohen
2023-08-04 03:15:55 UTC
WRITTEN BY
Justin Marozzi
(Justin Marozzi is the author of Baghdad City of Peace, City of Blood)
Avi Shlaims family led the good life in Baghdad. Prosperous and
distinguished members of Iraqs Jewish minority, a community which
could trace its presence in Babylon back more than 2,500 years, they
had a large house with servants and nannies, went to the best schools,
rubbed shoulders with the great and the good and sashayed elegantly
from one glittering party to the next. Shlaims father was a
successful businessman who counted ministers as friends. His much
younger mother was a socially ambitious beauty who attracted admirers,
from Egypts King Farouk to a Mossad recruiter. For this privileged
section of Iraqi society, it was a rich, cosmopolitan and generally
harmonious milieu. And for the young Shlaim, born in Baghdad in 1945,
these were halcyon days.
They were not to last. In 1950, during a series of bombings targeting
the Jewish population in the Iraqi capital, he and his family fled
their ancient homeland to begin new lives in the fledgling state of
Israel. His father, by then in his fifties, could not speak Hebrew and
was completely undone by the move. After a couple of failed attempts
to start a business, he never worked again. Shlaims vivacious mother
was forced to take up the slack, exchanging the gilded life of a
society hostess in Baghdad for a mundane job as a telephonist in Ramat
Gan, east of Tel Aviv, where they lived in much diminished
circumstances. The couple drifted apart and divorced, and Shlaims
father died in 1970.
Disinterring his turbulent childhood more than 70 years later, Shlaim,
a retired Oxford professor and distinguished historian of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, comes to understand that his earliest
relationship with Israel was defined by an inferiority complex. The
Sephardim, Jews from Arab lands, were looked down upon by the
Ashkenazim, their European counterparts. He was tongue-tied and
taciturn at school and only regained his confidence, after an unhappy
period in Israel, when resettled as a teenager in Britain.
At the heart of this riveting and profoundly controversial book is
Shlaims investigation into the Baghdad bombings against Jewish
targets in 1950 and 1951. Between those years around 110,000 Jews of a
population of approximately 135,000 emigrated from Iraq to Israel.
Although Israel has consistently denied any involvement in these
attacks, suspicion has hung over the clandestine activities of Zionist
agents tasked with persuading the Jewish community to flee Iraq and
settle in Israel. Shlaims bombshell is to uncover what he terms
undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks,
which helped terminate the millennial presence of Jews in Babylon. It
is quite a charge and will always be hotly disputed.
This is a beautifully written book which artfully blends the personal
with the political. The recollections of family life in both its glory
and its anguished tribulations are vividly recreated. Shlaims is a
powerful and humane voice which reminds us that the Palestinians were
not the only victims of the creation of Israel in 1948. He argues that
the Zionist project dealt a mortal blow to the position of Jews in
Arab lands, turning them from accepted compatriots into a suspected
fifth column allied to the new Jewish state. He resolutely clings to
his identity as both Arab and Jew, hence the title of this memoir.
After national service and his arrival as an undergraduate in
Cambridge in 1966, Shlaim brings his story to a close with an
extraordinary epilogue in which he launches a full-frontal assault on
Zionism and the modern state of Israel. Even after everything that has
come before this, its sheer ferocity stuns.
This is a lacerating JAccuse that will leave some readers reeling. He
argues that the Eurocentric Zionist movement and Israel together have
intensified divisions between Arabs and Jews, Israelis and
Palestinians, Hebrew and Arabic and Judaism and Islam. It has actively
worked to erase an ancient heritage of pluralism, religious
tolerance, cosmopolitanism and coexistence. Above all, Zionism has
discouraged us from seeing each other as fellow human beings. Israel,
originally created by a settler-colonial movement which perpetrated
the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, has become a fortress state with
a siege mentality that attributed genocidal intentions to its
neighbours. This is bitterly contested territory. Shlaim confesses
that the majority of Israelis, including his family, are outraged by
the designation of Israel as an apartheid state, yet this is
precisely what he considers it.
As for the most effective way forward, it is difficult to mount a
credible argument against his conclusion that the so-called
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a busted
flush. After years of the relentless and illegal expansion of Israeli
settlements, the clearest way to demonstrate this is to pose a simple
question. Where exactly would the Palestinian state be?
Shlaims preferred resolution of the conflict, once dismissed as an
extreme fringe pursuit but now considered with increasing seriousness,
including by Palestinians but extremely few Israelis, is the one-state
solution, with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of
ethnicity or religion. That would equate to the end of the Jewish
state of Israel. Why should that even be contemplated? Shlaim answers
with a final thrust of the knife: Apartheid in the 21st century is
simply not sustainable.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-shocking-truth-behind-the-baghdad-bombings-of-1950-and-1951/
Justin Marozzi
(Justin Marozzi is the author of Baghdad City of Peace, City of Blood)
Avi Shlaims family led the good life in Baghdad. Prosperous and
distinguished members of Iraqs Jewish minority, a community which
could trace its presence in Babylon back more than 2,500 years, they
had a large house with servants and nannies, went to the best schools,
rubbed shoulders with the great and the good and sashayed elegantly
from one glittering party to the next. Shlaims father was a
successful businessman who counted ministers as friends. His much
younger mother was a socially ambitious beauty who attracted admirers,
from Egypts King Farouk to a Mossad recruiter. For this privileged
section of Iraqi society, it was a rich, cosmopolitan and generally
harmonious milieu. And for the young Shlaim, born in Baghdad in 1945,
these were halcyon days.
They were not to last. In 1950, during a series of bombings targeting
the Jewish population in the Iraqi capital, he and his family fled
their ancient homeland to begin new lives in the fledgling state of
Israel. His father, by then in his fifties, could not speak Hebrew and
was completely undone by the move. After a couple of failed attempts
to start a business, he never worked again. Shlaims vivacious mother
was forced to take up the slack, exchanging the gilded life of a
society hostess in Baghdad for a mundane job as a telephonist in Ramat
Gan, east of Tel Aviv, where they lived in much diminished
circumstances. The couple drifted apart and divorced, and Shlaims
father died in 1970.
Disinterring his turbulent childhood more than 70 years later, Shlaim,
a retired Oxford professor and distinguished historian of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, comes to understand that his earliest
relationship with Israel was defined by an inferiority complex. The
Sephardim, Jews from Arab lands, were looked down upon by the
Ashkenazim, their European counterparts. He was tongue-tied and
taciturn at school and only regained his confidence, after an unhappy
period in Israel, when resettled as a teenager in Britain.
At the heart of this riveting and profoundly controversial book is
Shlaims investigation into the Baghdad bombings against Jewish
targets in 1950 and 1951. Between those years around 110,000 Jews of a
population of approximately 135,000 emigrated from Iraq to Israel.
Although Israel has consistently denied any involvement in these
attacks, suspicion has hung over the clandestine activities of Zionist
agents tasked with persuading the Jewish community to flee Iraq and
settle in Israel. Shlaims bombshell is to uncover what he terms
undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks,
which helped terminate the millennial presence of Jews in Babylon. It
is quite a charge and will always be hotly disputed.
This is a beautifully written book which artfully blends the personal
with the political. The recollections of family life in both its glory
and its anguished tribulations are vividly recreated. Shlaims is a
powerful and humane voice which reminds us that the Palestinians were
not the only victims of the creation of Israel in 1948. He argues that
the Zionist project dealt a mortal blow to the position of Jews in
Arab lands, turning them from accepted compatriots into a suspected
fifth column allied to the new Jewish state. He resolutely clings to
his identity as both Arab and Jew, hence the title of this memoir.
After national service and his arrival as an undergraduate in
Cambridge in 1966, Shlaim brings his story to a close with an
extraordinary epilogue in which he launches a full-frontal assault on
Zionism and the modern state of Israel. Even after everything that has
come before this, its sheer ferocity stuns.
This is a lacerating JAccuse that will leave some readers reeling. He
argues that the Eurocentric Zionist movement and Israel together have
intensified divisions between Arabs and Jews, Israelis and
Palestinians, Hebrew and Arabic and Judaism and Islam. It has actively
worked to erase an ancient heritage of pluralism, religious
tolerance, cosmopolitanism and coexistence. Above all, Zionism has
discouraged us from seeing each other as fellow human beings. Israel,
originally created by a settler-colonial movement which perpetrated
the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, has become a fortress state with
a siege mentality that attributed genocidal intentions to its
neighbours. This is bitterly contested territory. Shlaim confesses
that the majority of Israelis, including his family, are outraged by
the designation of Israel as an apartheid state, yet this is
precisely what he considers it.
As for the most effective way forward, it is difficult to mount a
credible argument against his conclusion that the so-called
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a busted
flush. After years of the relentless and illegal expansion of Israeli
settlements, the clearest way to demonstrate this is to pose a simple
question. Where exactly would the Palestinian state be?
Shlaims preferred resolution of the conflict, once dismissed as an
extreme fringe pursuit but now considered with increasing seriousness,
including by Palestinians but extremely few Israelis, is the one-state
solution, with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of
ethnicity or religion. That would equate to the end of the Jewish
state of Israel. Why should that even be contemplated? Shlaim answers
with a final thrust of the knife: Apartheid in the 21st century is
simply not sustainable.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-shocking-truth-behind-the-baghdad-bombings-of-1950-and-1951/