Nuri al-Said and the Modern Odyssey of Iraqi Jewry

Nuri al-Said was the Iraqi statesman who was most deeply involved in the Arab-Israel conflict. He linked the fate of the Jewish community in Iraq with that of the 1948 refugees of what had been British Mandate Palestine. After the establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948, he tried in every possible way to bring about the expulsion of the Iraqi Jews. In March 1950, the one-year-long “denaturalization law” was enacted. Under this law, any Jew who preferred to leave Iraq of their own volition would have to forfeit their citizenship for life. After the law was passed al-Said took every possible means to get rid of Iraq’s Jewish minority, which at that timenumbered about one hundred and thirty thousand out of a population of five million.