New Article: HASBARAH and the “Nazi” Farhud
David Shasha
HASBARAH and the “Nazi” Farhud
We have recently been hearing a good deal of HASBARAH propaganda on the 1941 Anti-Jewish pogrom in Iraq known as the Farhud.
Channeling the spirit of Bernard Lewis and his nihilistic Ashkenazi vision of Jewish history, the self-haters at the Point of No Return proudly reposted the following two articles on the tragic event:
Not surprisingly, Lewis has been effusively praised by the anonymous Point of No Return bloggers:
The first article on the Farhud comes from Edwin Black who once again promotes the long-discredited idea of a Nazi-Arab alliance, something that the Point of No Return has been peddling for some time now:
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/search?q=farhud
Lyn Julius made the point crystal clear in her 2014 article from The Times of Israel “Was the Farhud Really a Nazi Event?”:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/farhud/davidshasha/REB00Id_UXw/IbAHOCBf7CsJ
After a week of saturation Farhud coverage, the Point of No Return continued to hammer the point home with this post which reprinted a June 2015 speech by someone named Rabbi Andrea Zarnado:
A cursory look at the speech shows us why the Point of No Return reprinted it:
On 1st June, 1941, after the failure of a plot against the pro-British monarchy, Iraqi fascists, (many of them soldiers, or members of the police), decided to exterminate the Jewish population of Iraq. They were easy to find, because it was Shavuot and all the synagogues were packed. Fascists, criminals, (and the various overlapping of the two categories), killed adults and children, raped girls, decapitated babies, burned houses, looted synagogues for two days, until finally the regular forces acted to restore order. That was the Farhud: the beginning of the end of the Iraqi Jewish history, much like the Kristallnacht has been the beginning of the end of the most glorious page of German Jewish history. And as much as the German Jewish history had been glorious, so had the Iraqi Jewish history been great: the Talmud, for example was written in Iraq.
But, just as Kristallnacht, the Farhud was only the beginning. From 1947 the Jews have been forced to "donate" to Palestinian Arabs. From 1948 Jews were deprived of the right to testify in court. Zionism was outlawed. And because every Jew was considered potentially a Zionist, houses were continuously searched by the police, properties confiscated. Charged of cooperation with Israel, the leaders of the Jewish community were hanged, their bodies left exposed for hours, while the crowd was celebrating. The Jewish employees in the State administration and offices, thousands of them, were all fired in one night. The once prosperous Jewish community was now reduced to starving, Rabbis were abused in the streets, laypeople were harassed, and of course the Jewish businesses were boycotted.
That was the end, as I have said, of the most prosperous and established Jewish community in the Middle East, the one that had produced the Talmud. There is only one difference from the Kristallnacht. For the Jews living in Germany it was very difficult to find a place to take refuge from the advancing fury. At least the Iraqi Jews had a place to go, which was Israel. They went to an incredible length in order to welcome, and feed, the Iraqi refugees along with many others who, in the 50s, were flooding into the Country from the whole of the Middle East. Nonetheless, the Farhud is a tragedy of monumental dimensions and has become the symbol of the persecution of the Mizrahim, the North African and Middle Eastern Jews, who had been subjected to pogroms, massacres and dispossessions by the hands of Arab nationalists, from the 1920s up until the Six Day War. But official commemorations are quite recent. Only a few years ago the anniversary of the Farhud has been inscribed into the Israeli official calendar as a day of remembrance and mourning: June 1st-2nd, two days ago.
Once again we see the attempt to directly connect Iraqi history to the Nazi Holocaust.
And once again we see a complete refusal to acknowledge the damage done to Arab Jewish immigrants to Israel by the racist Ashkenazi authorities. Such a thing is very inconvenient in the HASBARAH world.
I could not find much on Rabbi Zarnado, but this speech commemorating World War I provides us with some indication of his political leanings:
http://www.reformjudaism.org.uk/address-by-rabbi-andrea-zanardo/
Here are the critical passages from the speech:
With your permission, I’d like to also address somebody else, someone who, most probably, is not in this room. The anonymous person, (or group of persons), who few days ago has defaced the walls of Holland Road Synagogue, spraying the words “Free Gaza”.
To the author of this graffiti, I want to tell this.
I don’t know who you are. You have strong opinions in matter of international politics. And you believe these opinions can become or be more effective, by threatening Jewish institutions and Jewish worshippers. Rest assured: this is not the case. You don’t scare us. We have no fear.
I see that Jewish buildings are for you somehow illegitimate. You feel you can take the liberty to deface them, as part of your political battle. Indeed, over the last year, no other religious building has been defaced, in Brighton. No church, no temple, no mosque. What a privilege we have. Why us? What wrong have we done? It’s nice you want freedom for the people of Gaza, which at the moment are oppressed by a terrorist, anti-Semitic organisation. But what does a religious building in England has to do with it? Are we occupying your land, my friend?
And while you care for Gaza, why don’t you spare any though to a whole generation of Israelis, Jewish children, boys and girls, that have been growing up, for a decade, under the threat of missiles, spending nights in bomb shelters, knowing that a few miles south there is an enemy, whose manifesto announces the slaughtering of the Jewish people, of their families and friends, of us? You wrote “Free Gaza” on a synagogue’s wall. But which sort of freedom are you looking for?
My friend, let me share with you a chapter of the history. In Jewish history World War One had not only been the pinnacle of Emancipation, when Jews of different nationalities forgot their common heritage and enrolled under the banners of European Countries but World War One also saw the birth of the Jewish Legion, led by a visionary man called Vladimir Jabotinsky. Five battalions of the Royal Fusiliers consisting of Jewish volunteers, from England, from Egypt, from the USA and from Russia fought with honour in Gallipoli.
And after World War One came the Sanremo Conference in 1920, and then the Declaration of Independence of Israel in 1948, etc. Out of the Jewish Legion, the Israeli Army was born. We pay honour, this evening, to the memory of these Jewish soldiers, who not only fought for England, but also for Zion.
This piece of HASBARAH finds a way to bring Zionism and Anti-Semitism into a discussion of World War I. It praises the “visionary” Vladimir Jabotinsky and his Jewish Fascism. It is a perfect example of what has been happening in the mainstream Jewish world and speaks of its current obsessions. It would appear that the Farhud is to be deployed in a similar manner.
We should also be aware that Mrs. Julius has organized a major event on the Farhud in London:
The event will feature the aforementioned Edwin Black, Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev, and the odious religious hypocrite Rabbi Joseph Dweck; none of whom are Iraqi Jews or experts on the culture and history of that ancient community. They are all however mouthpieces for the Zionist world and are dutiful servants of Israel and Ashkenazi hegemony.
It is yet another attempt to conform to the HASBARAH model, turning Arab Jews into Ashkenazim by applying the term “Ethnic Cleansing” to our recent historical experience.
We can certainly not recall such a prominent public event in Europe or America dealing with the actual cultural heritage of an Arab Jewish community.
The Farhud is a way to remake Arab Jewish history into Ashkenazi history and serves HASBARAH purposes in its demonization of the Muslims and the promotion of the idea that all Arabs were Nazis.
It therefore comes as no surprise that The Israel Project, a major HASBARAH organization, highlighted the Farhud and its spurious Nazi connection in its weekly e-mail newsletter:
https://www.facebook.com/theisraelproject/videos/10155080123762316/
The Facebook post provides a video by the group that allows us to see how the issue is being used for HASBARAH purposes and how the Zionist groups continue to march in lockstep with one another.
I have posted the excellent eyewitness discussion of the Farhud by Nissim Rejwan from his classic book The Last Jews in Baghdad that provides a more accurate understanding of the matter which is not beholden to HASBARAH concerns:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/152mzNuyZzR5UWpohF6vmWWheMnoQefygNHp4-8CK-_8/edit
For those who have never read the book, it is one of the most important accounts of the period we have:
I wrote a review of the book when it was first published in 2004:
Discussions on the Farhud by Ashkenazi writers like Edwin Black are matched by Arab Jews like Edy Cohen of Bar-Ilan University, who has recently become one of the more prominent self-hating voices in our community:
The entire discourse on Arab Jews and the so-called refugee problem is part of the attempt by Israel to counter the legitimate claims of Palestinians for restitution and a just resolution to their historical grievances.
Under the influence of Ashkenazi Orientalists like Bernard Lewis, the history of Jews in the Middle East has become distorted in order to promote a Eurocentrism that has ultimately served to undermine and minimize our history and culture.
The Zionist unification of Ashkenazim and Sephardim, the new “Convivencia,” has been the major contributing factor in the erasure of our heritage, as we now see a complete elimination of authentic Sephardic voices from the Jewish discourse.
David Shasha