Iraqi-born Edwin Shuker, who visits Baghdad regularly, expressed disappointment that the Iraqi government “wasted a historic opportunity to reconcile with its Jews by inviting them to attend the ceremony at Ur and use the occasion to recognize and correct the injustice committed against them by successive governments.”
The pope’s message was given and stood in contrast to the stance of the Iraqi government. “As the children of Abraham, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with other believers and all persons of good will, we thank you for having given us Abraham,” the pope prayed on Saturday.
However, the Iraqi government officials ignored the history of the Iraqi Jewish community. This was the case at Ur and also during the pope’s subsequent trip to Mosul, where a Jewish community once thrived. At least half a dozen ancient synagogues have been uncovered in Mosul.
The history of Jews in Iraq goes right back to the time of the Babylonian captivity, ca. 586 BC. At the end of the 19th century Jews constituted over a quarter of the population of Baghdad, and apparently were so well established that they were generally uninterested in the Zionism that was gaining traction at the time with European Jews. That all changed with World War 2, and in particular with the Farhud in 1941, when a pogrom against Jews was launched following the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali. Some 200 Jews were killed and 1,000 injured, with widespread looting and destruction of Jewish property. It was effectively the beginning of the end of the Jewish population of Iraq.
So when they say that a Jewish community once thrived in Iraq, they're not talking about something small and insignificant. Iraqi Jews constituted one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities in the world. And it's effectively all gone. Current estimates of the number of Jews in Iraq don't make double figures.
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