A synagogue is seen behind a wall in Baghdad, Iraq. 2007
Amsterdam, Netherlands (Aug 08, 2007) They number only eight, but are caretakers of a story stretching back 2,600 years. Now, it's up to the last Jews of Baghdad to decide whether to remain or flee their ancient home.
An Anglican clergyman who watches over the remaining Jewish families says they are increasingly desperate to emigrate to the Netherlands, where there is an active Iraqi Jewish community. But Israeli, Dutch and Jewish officials dispute the claims by the Rev. Andrew White that they want to fully abandon a city where Jews accounted for one-third of the population as recently as a century ago.
The attention on Iraq's Jews increased after White's appearance July 25 before the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, in which he stressed the growing threat to Baghdad's minorities.
"In the last three or four months things have deteriorated very considerably," he said, according to a transcript of the proceedings held in Washington.
White said he gives the Jews enough money every month to live, funds which they then share with other Iraqis.
"Even though they are very small and they have suffered very greatly, they still want to help those who suffer as well as themselves," said the British priest, who began visiting Iraq regularly in 1998 and was allowed by Saddam Hussein's regime to preach at an Anglican Church. "I personally think they should all leave, because they have no future, no security, no ability to survive at the moment."
He claims that the Jews want to join the Iraqi Jewish community in Holland - and that the Dutch have refused to accept them. The statements, however, were met with surprise by Dutch officials and members of the Dutch Jewish community.
"We have had no official request or visa applications," said Rob Dekker, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Michael Jankelowitz, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem which is responsible for immigration, said none of the eight Jews left in Baghdad has expressed a desire to leave.
"They survived under Saddam Hussein, and there is no need for them at their late age to pack up and move to different surroundings," he said. Half of them are over 80 years old.
They live discreetly in a dangerous area of Baghdad, and could not be contacted for comment.
Hamutal Rogel, the Israeli Embassy spokeswoman in The Hague, quoted a member of the Iraqi Jewish community who is in weekly contact with the group in Baghdad as saying they don't want to leave.
"They are not in the best situation, but they are not frightened. They are not in direct danger," she said.
White, director of the Foundation for Reconstruction and Reconciliation in the Middle East and vicar of St. George's Anglican Church in Baghdad, refused to elaborate on his remarks to the commission, telling The Associated Press he had thought the hearing was confidential.
White is a respected figure in the Middle East, active not only in Iraq but also involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The eight Jews, belonging to four families, are all that is left in Iraq from one of the world's oldest Jewish community, dating to the 6th century B.C. when the Babylonians conquered ancient Palestine and exiled many Jews. Over the centuries, Baghdad became a center of Jewish culture and learning.
By World War I, one-third of Baghdad's population was Jewish. Anti-Jewish campaigns began in earnest with Israel's creation in 1948, and Israel brought more than 100,000 Jews out by the early 1950s.
Another wave of emigration came in the early 1970s, several years after the public hanging of Jews accused of spying for Israel. Thousands settled in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. In 2003, a dozen of the few remaining Jews in Baghdad moved to Israel.
Some Iraqis who claim ancestral Jewish roots also have left. The Jewish Agency says a few dozen Iraqis who have at least one Jewish grandparent have been granted citizenship and have come to Israel in recent years - including one who claimed last month to be a cousin of Israel's Parliament speaker, Dalia Itzik.
Jewish tradition says the faith can only be passed by birth along maternal lines. But Israel's Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jews, has looser definitions about who is accepted as a Jew.
About 500 Iraqis from mixed backgrounds went to Israel after the first Gulf War in 1991 - mostly from the Kurdish area of northern Iraq - and subsequently moved to the Netherlands, said Jankelowitz and the Israeli Embassy.
A synagogue is seen behind a wall in
Baghdad, Iraq. 2007
