The Last Eight Jews in Baghdad

I don’t usually get political on this blog. It’s not because I don’t care about politics. It’s because I like to have all the information before I do or say something, and I rarely have all the information.

But sometimes all the information is hard to get, and sometimes waiting for all the information means people die.

Yesterday at GetReligion.org, a blog that critiques how the press covers religion, there was a link to this Washington Times article about the presecution of religious minorities in Iraq.

News about the Iraq war is so often overwhelming, I cannot process it. The thousands of people who die so far away and beyond my help become a numbing blur. Suffering in such numbers seems incapable of relief. I pray for peace in Iraq, but don’t know what else to do. The small community mentioned in this story made it all seem so personal - someone’s grandfather, someone’s son. I have not been able to get this story out of my head.

There are only eight Jews left in Baghdad.

There are four religious minorities in Iraq: Christians, Yezidis, Mandeans and Jews. In the middle of the violence between Sunnis and Shia, the religious minorities are targeted for being non-Muslim.

Religious persecution is real, but demonstrating religious persecution in order to get asylum is not easy. The US government does not give religious asylum if they believe the victimized person is merely suffering as a result of general violent conflict. There has to be evidence that they were targeted because of their religion.

Maybe I’m naive, but when a fourteen-year-old Christian boy in Basra is crucified, that seems religiously motivated. When a fatwa orders Mandeans to convert to Islam or leave the country, that seems religiously motivated.

There are only eight Jews left in Baghdad, and they are in hiding.

There is an Iraqi Jewish community in the Netherlands, and according to the article, Canon Andrew White (whose infrequently updated newsletter you can read here) told the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that the eight remaining Jews in Baghdad want to emigrate to the Netherlands to be with the Iraqi Jewish community there, but the Netherlands will not let them in.

Julia Duin, the reporter who wrote the article for the Washington Times, has a few more details in a post on her blog.

The story easy gets lost in the vast numbers of death and misery from Iraq. There are over two million refugees who have fled Iraq. The United States has pledged to accept only 7000 this year, and is moving slowly even on those.

In these vast numbers of suffering, it is easy to forget that there are only eight Jews left in Baghdad.

And soon there may be none.

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Please pray for the people of Iraq, but also consider contacting your government, asking them to help ease the plight of Iraqi refugees.

U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
800 N. Capitol Street, N.W., Suite 790
Washington, D.C. 20002
Phone: (202) 523-3240
Fax: (202) 523-5020
Email: communications@uscirf.gov

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
Email: comments@whitehouse.gov