J. Daniel Khazzoom: The Life of Jews in Iraq Before He Fled to Israel

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J. Daniel Khazzoom: The Life…

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J. Daniel Khazzoom (b. 1933) was raised in Baghdad, Iraq. At age 8, he witnessed the infamous Farhud pogrom against the Jewish community of Baghdad, in which hundreds were murdered and thousands injured. Ten years later, Khazzoom left his family and fled to Israel, where he served in the IDF and earned a doctorate in economics. Eventually, he had a long academic career teaching at the University of California, Berkeley. He authored the book A Journey of a Jew From Baghdad. In the moving video linked below, Khazzoom describes what life was like for Iraqi Jews during the time of his youth.

Quote: “I think I was probably 10 or 11 years old when I decided if I could ever leave this country, I would even if I had to leave by myself. It wasn’t really a good life. We were picked on. It was not safe even to walk to school. We were beaten in the streets quite often. People were kidnapped, tortured. All of those were things we lived through and endured.”

Sources: Wikipedia, TheMizrahiProject.org

Learn about the very long history of the Jews in Iraq on Wikipedia. >>

Watch “Daniel’s Story — ‘No Way Back: The Journey Of A Jew From Baghdad’ ” [2:34]. Be sure to read the text below the video. >>

Photo: TheMizrahiProject.org

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“[T]he foundations for extremism usually are held in check by various restraints. Societies are not liberal, moderate, progressive, and free because almost all their citizens – let alone their politicians — are liberal, moderate, progressive or committed to the freedoms of others.

“But societies consistently avoid extremism when the infrastructures of freedom are strong: when key institutions and norms encourage a more decent, rights-respective, lawful politics; when powerful social movements and independent media hold leaders to account, expose rather than reinforce political fantasies, and champion the rights of the vulnerable; and when information is produced and scrutinized by scholars, civil servants, and non-governmental organizations devoid of either government repression or vested interests.

“Yet no infrastructure is rigidly immovable, and once key components are eroded and weakened, once sections of the political and cultural elite attempt to mobilize the foundations of extremism, the system of restraints can swiftly collapse.

“While genocide on the scale of the Holocaust is historically exceptional, its central lesson is that the broader danger of extreme atrocities is not. In the words of the great historian Ian Kershaw, the Holocaust ‘lit a warning beacon that still burns brightly: it showed how a modern, advanced, cultured society can so rapidly sink into barbarity… It showed what we are capable of.’ Only by rejecting false narratives of conflict and polarization, and maintaining systems of rights and freedoms for all, can we hope to prevent that capability from once more becoming a reality.”

— Jonathan Leader Maynard in his incisive article “Could It Happen Here?: The Holocaust and Atrocities in the 21st Century” To read the entire article, click here.