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July 10, 2020

Remembering the Iraqi Intellectual Who Stood Up for the Jews

But didn’t dare stand up for the Jewish state.

In May 1941, a bloody pogrom, known as the farhud, ravaged Baghdad, leaving 200 Jews dead, hundreds more injured or raped, and shops and homes looted or destroyed. Between 1950 and 1952, approximately 75 percent of Iraq’s Jews left for Israel, but the remainder—some 10,000 souls—lived in relative piece until the 1960s, when conditions took a sharp turn for the worse. Raad Yahya Qassim recounts the attitudes toward the Jews of his father, Yahya Qassim, who between 1945 and 1958 was the editor of the liberal Baghdad paper al-Sha’b:

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July 10, 2020

  1. What Palestinians Want

    Pragmatic in the short term, radical in the long term.

  2. Remembering the Iraqi Intellectual Who Stood Up for the Jews

    But didn’t dare stand up for the Jewish state.

  3. The First Amendment Doesn’t Create a “Class of Special Rights”

    Getting the Supreme Court’s Little Sisters of the Poor ruling wrong.

  4. What the Story of Phineas Teaches about Morality, Politics, and Plague

    Politics must be as moral as possible if a nation is to flourish in the long run.

  5. Philip Roth Wasn’t a Nice Jewish Boy. But What Kind of Jewish Boy Was He?

    Sympathetic to Israel and hostile to the radical left, Roth was not always the rebellious Jew.