| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation explores the rise of anti-Semitism in 20th-century Iraq, how it evolved into a powerful force in governing circles, and gave rise to mass violence, discriminatory legislation, and an official desire to eliminate the country’s Jewish population.
Iraq can be a roadmap to study anti-Semitism in the Middle East. The country has a Jewish history dating back to the biblical era; no common border with Israel/Palestine; and no direct interaction with the Yishuv, Palestine’s Jewish settlement, nor rival interests with it. These characteristics enable researchers to better differentiate political strife from anti-Semitism, in contrast to areas with political antagonism or shared boundaries.
At World War I’s end, Baghdad was home to a venerable and prosperous Jewish community. Many historians have argued that the 1920s was a Jewish ‘Golden Era,’ when Jews were the largest ethno-religious group in Baghdad. Through a study of Iraqi Jewish, British, Israeli and American archival sources, and data-sets of arrests and murders, this dissertation follows anti-Semitism’s development. Current historiography focuses on the Jewish Exodus in 1950-51, or the Farhūd, the mass violence against Jews on June 1-2, 1941. Yet these monographs were not infrequently veiled debates on Israel and Palestine. This study will avoid political debate, but will concentrate instead on the topic stricto sensu – anti-Semitism, broadening the scope to analyze Iraq’s Jew-hatred as a history from the 19th century until the mid-twentieth century, when the overwhelming majority Jews departed.
The Historical literature contains three theories of anti-Semitism in Iraq, which are wrong, ahistoric and lack progression: 1) that anti-Semitism was adopted from Europe; 2) there was no anti-Semitism; or 3) anti-Semitism was high and constant since Islam’s introduction.
This dissertation departs from these Eurocentric interpretations and repositions of anti-Semitism back in the Middle East. Iraq’s anti-Semitism, which is the focus of this dissertation, was not acculturated from Europe. On the contrary, negative notions of Jews, derived from popular stereotypes that evolved from medieval religious texts, a social hierarchy wherein Muslims monopolized politics, opposition to equality and the evolution of a unique nationalism, Qawmiyya, which defined Arabs as Muslim descendants of the 7th-century Islamic conquerors and excluded Jews as an ‘internal enemy.’ Iraq became an anti-Semitic state, and by 1951, this led to the forced mass exodus of Jews. Whereas previous scholars understood clearly enough that the position of Iraq’s Jews declined, they could not explain the process by which this occurred. The present dissertation examines how Jews declined from ostensibly equal citizens into internal enemies.
This dissertation moves away from an ahistoric, static model, excluding Iraq and the Middle East, to a developmental model, centered on Iraq and the region, with a concrete cause, that can explain the decline of Jewish status, anti-Jewish laws, and ultimately, the Jewish exodus. Anti-Semitism was a developmental process in Iraq fueled by the desire to preserve the hierarchy of faith, a monopoly in politics and the development of Qawmiyya. Understanding these factors will produce a better understanding of the origins and development of anti-Semitism in the Middle East more generally as well. | en_US |
