Sunday March 3, 2013, 8:06 am
What an extraordinary life and story! I have been opposed to Netanyahu and the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians from the outset - I'm glad that I am not alone on this -- as I felt I had been - for some reason the US would have us believe that Israel is "beyond reproof" -- I'm not anti-Jewish -as an Atheist, I let people believe in whatever "myth" strikes ttheir fancy, but I've been progressively anti -Israel as the years go on.

Sunday March 3, 2013, 8:09 am
Thanks a lot Nancy for this very insightful article ! Although very long I read all of it !

Sunday March 3, 2013, 9:19 am
I quote: " The Link interviewed Naeim Giladi, a Jew from Iraq, for three hours on March 16, 1998, two days prior to his 69th birthday. For nearly two other delightful hours, we were treated to a multi-course Arabic meal prepared by his wife Rachael, who is also Iraqi. "It's our Arab culture," he said proudly."

Sunday March 3, 2013, 9:28 am
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria's ongoing internal conflict, a Palestinian group said Sunday.

The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria said in a statement that around 1,038 Palestinians have been killed in the 22-month Syrian conflict, which has claimed the lives of around 70,000 people and created hundreds of thousands of refugees, including Palestinians.

In January, UN Relief and Works Agency chief Filippo Grandi said conditions in Lebanese camps for Palestinian refugees were "horrible."

"The main problem they have is accommodation. They rent small, cramped, very unsanitary premises without running water, without ventilation, without electricity," he said.

In November, the PLO said that around 600 Palestinians had been killed in the Syrian conflict.

Syria hosts half a million Palestinian refugees, descendants of those admitted after the creation of Israel in 1948, and has always cast itself as a champion of the Palestinian struggle, sponsoring several guerrilla factions.

Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer)
3/3/13 9:36 AM
News: Over 1,000 Palestinians killed in Syria conflict. UN: If #Israel can't be blamed, frankly we don't give a damn

Sunday March 3, 2013, 1:11 pm
What an incredible article. It gave me pause. I thought I was reasonably well versed in history....Was I ever mistaken.
Thanks Nancy for the eye opening article.

Sunday March 3, 2013, 1:40 pm
Opposite to you David, my response when I read this item is best expressed by René Descartes:

....And although my speculations greatly please myself, I believe that others have theirs, which perhaps please them still more...
...In what regards manners, everyone is so full of his own wisdom, that there might be as many reformers as heads...
...The most widely shared thing in the world is good sense, for everyone thinks he is so well provided with it that even those who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else do not usually desire to have more good sense than they have...

Sunday March 3, 2013, 1:51 pm
Mr. Giladi forgot to mention the Farhud. Farhud refers to the pogrom or "violent dispossession" carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on June 1–2, 1941 during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. The riots occurred following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali. Before British and Transjordanian forces arrived, around 175 Jews had been killed and 1,000 injured. Looting of Jewish property took place and 900 Jewish homes were destroyed. By 1951, 110,000 Jews—80% of Iraqi Jewry—had emigrated from the country, most to Israel. The Farhud has been called the "forgotten pogrom of the Holocaust" and "the beginning of the end of the Jewish community of Iraq", a community that had existed for 2,600 years.

Now if an Iraqi Jew does not write about the Farhud,then I have some doubts about the rest of his story. My daughter-in-law's family comes from Iraq and their story is much different than that of Mr.Giladi as is that of many other Jews who came from Iraq and settled in Israel.

Sunday March 3, 2013, 2:02 pm
For those interested Edwin Black wrote a book "The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust" which chronicles the centuries of intersection between Islam and Jewry that led to the Farhud pogrom in Baghdad in 1941 and the ensuing Arab-Nazi alliance in the Holocaust.It sheds light on the under-researched, 14-century-long confrontation between the Caliphate and the Jewish communities, and offers new exhaustively documented details of exactly how the Pan-Arabist and Jihadist movement of the Levant, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, partnered with the Nazis during the darkest days of the Holocaust.

Sunday March 3, 2013, 2:43 pm
Amazing story. Noted with thanks Nancy.

Sunday March 3, 2013, 7:21 pm
Interesting story.

Sunday March 3, 2013, 7:30 pm
One set of beliefs we share until another equally informed shares an opposite point of view.

Truth is, it self, a fantasy.

But, for Israel, I stand with Israel who has done so much to benefit mankind, I looked up their offerings to the world a year or so ago. It was awesome.

What has their enemy done to benefit other countries?

Sunday March 3, 2013, 7:49 pm
Impressive. he describes exactly the kind of Israel that would have attacked US targets and blame the attacks on Arab states to get our national anger focused on Israel's enemies. the attack on the USS Liberty was one of these and the events of 9/11/2001 involving a group of Israelis with explosives, in New York, who were there "to document the events" may have been another. I would not put anything past members of Israeli government in an attempt to get the USA to fight a war for them.

Sunday March 3, 2013, 8:23 pm
Kevin A. (81)
Sunday March 3, 2013, 7:49 pm
Impressive. he describes exactly the kind of Israel that would have attacked US targets and blame the attacks on Arab states to get our national anger focused on Israel's enemies

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Which planet are your from Kevin? This one that we live on has the national and international anger focused on Israel quite undeservedly:

UN Resolutions Targeting Israel and the Palestinians

Israel is the target of at least 65 UN Resolutions and the Palestinians are the target of none.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks too for the tip off: "the kind of [Arab states] that would have attacked US targets and blame the attacks on Israel to get our national [and international] anger focused on Israel.

I quote (and Turkey is one of the more moderate Arab states in their leaders' expressed hatred towards Israel ..):

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s repugnant speech calling Zionism a “crime against humanity” -- at a UN forum supposedly dedicated to tolerance -- today both the United Nations and the United States strongly condemned him:

• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Erdogan’s “hurtful and divisive comments” were “not only wrong" but “contradict the very principles on which the Alliance of Civilizations is based.”

• U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, now visiting Turkey, condemned the speech at a joint news conference with Foreign Minister Davutoglu, saying, “We not only disagree with it. We found it objectionable.”

• A senior State Department official added that the pattern of Turkish denunciations of Israel was having a “corrosive effect” on American-Turkish relations. “This was particularly offensive, frankly, to call Zionism a crime against humanity,” the official said. A White House spokesman said Erodgan’s remark was “offensive and wrong.”

Monday March 4, 2013, 1:56 am
The father of one of my closest friends was publicly hanged in Baghdad in 1948.
His crime? He was a prominent member of the Jewish community. He wasn't even a Zionist!!!
Lee E. I've been progressively pro Israel as the years go on.

Monday March 4, 2013, 2:35 am
Kevin A. (81) You might like to see how Israel is an asset to the USA. It's a chance to be open-minded and learn something new.

https://sites.google.com/site/mtevansco/Home/israel-aid-to-the-usa

Monday March 4, 2013, 11:16 am
A short comment based on one man's perspective. I have spoken with people forced from their homes in the Middle East by the Muslims after WWII and Husseini's close friendship with Hitler, not one of them, or their children, agrees with this.

One Iranian woman cried as she told me how her father had fought in the Iranian army as an officer and considered himself as Iranian as those who chased him out. He died in Israel, the only country to accept him, as a broken man. And no-one wanted to hear this story and she was angry and asked me why her father didn't count.

I met some Egyptians in London during the early 1970s, a couple of whom told me that their parents regreted that fellow Jews were made to leave. They said it was a sad day that Egyptians were not welcome in their land. Of course, we only have to look at modern Egypt to know that it is no longer true and that the Coptic Christians are being abused and killed with no-one here objecting.

Stan, I was sorry to hear about your father's friend. The fact that he was picked at random must make it worse. It is difficult to find sources that explain simply what happened to the Jews but, basically, they were Jews! I think that Wikipaedia does a good a job as any other. Also note the number of Jews as show in the Jewish Virtual Library dated 2008, LESS THAN 10!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Iraq

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/iraqijews.html



Then there is the Jew that returned to rebuild a synagogue in Libya after the overthrow of Ghadaffi and there was a statement that Libyans were free to return. Not true, you have to not be Jewish.

Monday March 4, 2013, 1:44 pm
Thank you

Monday March 4, 2013, 1:55 pm
For those interested, one can find more information about Iraqi Jews during WWII in a book by Jeffrey Herf' "Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World". http://www.danielpipes.org/8257/nazi-propaganda-for-the-arab-world