- 27 Jul 2003 07:17
#19645
Iraq's Jews head to Israel
Six of Iraq's 34 known remaining Jews immigrated to Israel on Friday, the first members of the tiny community in Baghdad to do so since the US-led invasion, an Israeli immigration official said.
"We have a lot of respect for these people who carried the Jewish burden and maintained their Judaism all these years," Giora Rom, director-general of the Jewish Agency for Israel, said about the newcomers, all of them elderly.
"I am happy to come here today," Ezra Levy, 82, said in Hebrew in an interview with Channel Two from inside the airport arrival hall. "I haven't spoken Hebrew since 1930."
The group, which arrived on a flight from Amman, included a 99-year-old woman. Some were met at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport by family members who immigrated from Iraq to Israel decades ago.
"We want them to be able to end their days with dignity," Rom said.
He gave no other details of their exodus from Iraq, where the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that arranges immigration to the Jewish state, carried out a survey of the Jewish community last month.
It found there were no children among the Jews of Baghdad, half of whom are over the age of 70, and there had not been a Jewish wedding in the city since 1978.
The Jewish Agency said that while Jews in Iraq had faced some persecution and confiscation of property over the years, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had made sure they were not harmed.
But since Saddam's fall, fears have grown among Baghdad's Jews that they could become targets for radicals gaining strength in Iraq.
One Muslim cleric issued a decree last month forbidding followers from selling land to Jews and promised death to any Jew who bought real estate.
Iraq's Jewish community traces its roots to the deportation of thousands of Jews from Jerusalem some 2,500 years ago, after the city was captured by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.
More than 129,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to Israel after its establishment in 1948.
Six of Iraq's 34 known remaining Jews immigrated to Israel on Friday, the first members of the tiny community in Baghdad to do so since the US-led invasion, an Israeli immigration official said.
"We have a lot of respect for these people who carried the Jewish burden and maintained their Judaism all these years," Giora Rom, director-general of the Jewish Agency for Israel, said about the newcomers, all of them elderly.
"I am happy to come here today," Ezra Levy, 82, said in Hebrew in an interview with Channel Two from inside the airport arrival hall. "I haven't spoken Hebrew since 1930."
The group, which arrived on a flight from Amman, included a 99-year-old woman. Some were met at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport by family members who immigrated from Iraq to Israel decades ago.
"We want them to be able to end their days with dignity," Rom said.
He gave no other details of their exodus from Iraq, where the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that arranges immigration to the Jewish state, carried out a survey of the Jewish community last month.
It found there were no children among the Jews of Baghdad, half of whom are over the age of 70, and there had not been a Jewish wedding in the city since 1978.
The Jewish Agency said that while Jews in Iraq had faced some persecution and confiscation of property over the years, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had made sure they were not harmed.
But since Saddam's fall, fears have grown among Baghdad's Jews that they could become targets for radicals gaining strength in Iraq.
One Muslim cleric issued a decree last month forbidding followers from selling land to Jews and promised death to any Jew who bought real estate.
Iraq's Jewish community traces its roots to the deportation of thousands of Jews from Jerusalem some 2,500 years ago, after the city was captured by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.
More than 129,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to Israel after its establishment in 1948.
- By Unthinking Majority
- By Saeko
- By wat0n