Posted on 08/19/2015 6:39:24 PM PDT by SJackson
n 2003, I served as the U.S. Coalition official responsible for administering the province of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. At the time, I was struck by how the different communities intermarried, spoke each others languages, and loved each others cultures.
In an attempt to defuse tensions emerging from the struggle for power after the overthrow of Saddams regime, I organized a cultural event at the Kirkuk museum. For one evening, many of the artifacts that had been looted from the museum and that were being kept in peoples homes were put back on display. Groups put on traditional performances. The night culminated with everyone spontaneously coming forward to dance the dabka , hand in hand, in a long line.
This is Kirkuk, a member of the provincial council told me. This is who we are. But the next day, the museum once again stood empty, no longer a place entrusted to protect and commemorate the rich diversity and common heritage of all Iraqis.
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and misguided policies collapsed the brittle state. Sadly, the new elites did little to foster Iraqi identity and to celebrate inter-communal coexistence. Instead, they focused narrowly on sectarian and ethnic narratives, pitting communities against each other.
Today, Iraq is poised to lose whole communities that have been a facet of the countrys landscape for millennia. In the land where history was first written, shrines, monuments and other evidence of 8,000 years of multicultural heritage are once again under threat of being erased.
In the wake of the takeover of Ninewa by the Islamic State, Yezidis and Christians have fled. In Mosul, 42 heritage sites have been demolished, including Hatra, Ashur Temple, Khorsabad, Nimrod, and Nabi Younis.
Such loss calls to mind a previous exile of Iraqis from their country: the majority of Iraqs Jews 118,000 of them who left in the 1950s.
No Place Like Home: Iraqi Jews Jakob Yusef, 70, and niece Khalda Salih, 38, stand in their home in the tiny remaining Jewish community in Baghdad, Iraq.
Image: Getty Images
No Place Like Home: Iraqi Jews Jakob Yusef, 70, and niece Khalda Salih, 38, stand in their home in the tiny remaining Jewish community in Baghdad, Iraq.
In July, I met Edwin Shuker at a workshop at Harvards Radcliffe Institute to confront the destruction of Iraqs antiquities. Edwin was one of the last Jews to leave Iraq. Despite over 50 years in exile, Iraq remains vividly preserved within his memory.
That is why physical shrines and monuments are important, he said. It is about being able to show his son, who grew up in London, who he is and where he comes from. It is the shrines that provide a connection with the past, that tangibly demonstrate to his son where and how his ancestors once lived, that serve to transmit memories from one generation to another. They bear testimony to the past, proof of the existence of his community and, by extension, himself.
Iraqs Jewish heritage is extraordinary. Babylon was the center of Jewish learning, where the Talmud was written. The Baghdad census of 1917 reveals that 40% of the citys population was Jewish. Following independence, Iraqs first minister of finance was a Jew, and members of parliament were Jews. Records testify to the contribution of Jews to the cultural life of the capital. The farhud, Edwin said, was a tragic and terrible pogrom, with 180 Jews murdered, but should be seen within the context of centuries of peaceful coexistence.
Iraqi Jews still feel a strong bond with Iraq. Their nostalgic yearning is evident in Facebook groups, websites, and YouTube videos of traditional Iraqi music now played by Jews living in Israel or London. These things serve as the repositories of memory, the modern shrines and museums to cultural identity.
At the same time, from their safety in exile, Iraqis call out for the Iraqi government to take concrete measures to protect the physical places where memories of diversity are housed the museums, sites, churches and temples; to emphasize Iraqs rich heritage, its Islamic and pre-Islamic past, through education and cultural events; and to facilitate the safe return of Iraqs ethnic and religious minorities once the security situation allows.
Echoes of Lost Civilization : An Iraqi employee examines a document in the Jewish archives in Baghdad.
Image: getty images
Echoes of Lost Civilization : An Iraqi employee examines a document in the Jewish archives in Baghdad.
But will the Iraqi government, focused on its own survival, take heed before other Iraqi minorities join its Jews in permanent exile?
Last Sunday, a couple of weeks after I first met Edwin, I received an email from him. He referred me to a passage in my book about my time in Iraq. In it, I describe how I was sitting one afternoon with my then-boss, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq General Ray Odierno, and President Masoud Barzani at his home in the mountains of Kurdistan. The conversation drifted to Iraqs Jews. Barzani told us the story of a meeting he had held a few years ago with a visiting Western politician who had brought along his senior adviser. The adviser had turned to Barzani and said to him: You may not remember me, but weve met before. I was the boy who you helped to escape from Iraq. Barzani described how everyone had broken down in tears as the adviser recounted his tale.
I remember that scene so well, Edwin wrote me. I am that boy!
Read more: http://forward.com/opinion/319303/will-the-fate-of-iraqs-jews-soon-befall-others/#ixzz3jJbizSX9
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It is as we speak.
Very sad. That will be the same in America someday. Remember there was once a sharing of power in Lebanon between Muslims and Christians then the Christians were overwhelmed. Nobody remembers that sharing of power business anymore.
The foundation is being put in place as we speak. Slick Willie just the other day was out talking about ‘America's original sin’ (as though slavery were new, unique and original to the 13 colonies) and how all whites were therefore ‘sinners’ as they have partaken of the ill gotten gains of their fathers. The whole idea idea is to brainwash and demoralize white middle class Americans, and especially white men, into agreeing they deserve anything the government and the ‘poo folks’ met out to them. Whites merit being turned into a species of government slave or serf to create wealth for the state to give to the officially anointed ‘victims of historical injustice’ and the brainwashing campaign to convince them they merit this is already in process and skuls and colledges everywhere. The finale is a little ethnic cleansing from the official victim groups which whites are being browbeaten into acting like shetl Jews before a Good Friday mob. Back about 1966/67 I remember listening to some nut case ‘peoples priest’ (white) from an inner city Detroit parish saying that the only just thing for a white person confronted by a mob of blacks to do was to submit to murder/rape as the working out of ‘historical justice’.
Then he was just some crackpot. Today his words represent a trend. Turn white Christians into the equivalent of the Jews of Poland and Russia, hated and despised and beaten down victims.
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