Mordechai Ben-Porat, director of the Heritage Center for Babylonian Jewry, told Arutz-7 about his memories of his birthplace in Baghdad:
"I left there at age 22, in 1945... What I, and all the Jews, remember from Baghdad is the Hidekel (Tigris) River, especially in the summer when the tide dropped and there would suddenly be islands in the middle, and we would swim there, and there was music, and fish on the grill - these were very pleasant memories, up until the pogrom of 1941 when 137 Jews were killed. This was an earthquake for Iraqi Jewry…"
Ben-Porat, a former government minister and winner of the 5761 (2001) Israel Prize for his key role in the immigration of Iraqi Jewry to Israel, also noted the two waves of hangings of Jews in Iraq in 1969 on trumped-up charges of communism and Zionism - "when Saddam Hussein, that butcher, was Vice President." Ben-Porat said there are currently about 40 Jews and a synagogue in Baghdad, "and I hope that they are OK." Asked whether he sympathizes with the Americans' term "liberation of Iraq," he said, "Yes, very much so. Look, there are some 250,000 Iraqi Jews in Israel (and another 50,000 around the world), of whom 30% were born in Iraq, and they feel pity for the people there and understand the oppression they are undergoing."
"I left there at age 22, in 1945... What I, and all the Jews, remember from Baghdad is the Hidekel (Tigris) River, especially in the summer when the tide dropped and there would suddenly be islands in the middle, and we would swim there, and there was music, and fish on the grill - these were very pleasant memories, up until the pogrom of 1941 when 137 Jews were killed. This was an earthquake for Iraqi Jewry…"
Ben-Porat, a former government minister and winner of the 5761 (2001) Israel Prize for his key role in the immigration of Iraqi Jewry to Israel, also noted the two waves of hangings of Jews in Iraq in 1969 on trumped-up charges of communism and Zionism - "when Saddam Hussein, that butcher, was Vice President." Ben-Porat said there are currently about 40 Jews and a synagogue in Baghdad, "and I hope that they are OK." Asked whether he sympathizes with the Americans' term "liberation of Iraq," he said, "Yes, very much so. Look, there are some 250,000 Iraqi Jews in Israel (and another 50,000 around the world), of whom 30% were born in Iraq, and they feel pity for the people there and understand the oppression they are undergoing."