Monday 5 December 2011

Wikileaks good and bad

It is right that Wikileaks bring phone hacking to attention. Indeed often I am in support of them. Recently, though they published the names of the seven remaining jews in Baghdad putting thier lives at risk. The once thriving community has already been driven underground and all but wiped out. The Anglican church in Baghdad had been trying to help them but Wikileaks has made this impossible. Alan Yentob has documented the exodus of jews from Baghdad. For 2600 years Mesopotania had a thriving Jewish community. By the end of the first world war a third of the population of Baghdad was Jewish. The Second World War saw many forced to leave, in one day 180 were killed. The great crisis came with the creation of Israel in 1948. Iraq sent an army to fight in Palastine and the government denounced the Jews living in Iraq as Zionists and traitors. Over the next 2 years 90% left. By the 1960s about 6000 remained but suffered harsh discrimination. During the 1967 Arab Israeli war they were again attacked as potential spies. Those who went to Israel were overshadowed by European Jews but those who came west did remarkably well, the Saatchi brothers being a well known example.

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