From Baghdad to Be’eri, the same hatred has struck — and the same silence has followed.
On October 7, 2023, the Jewish people witnessed a nightmare. Hamas terrorists stormed the Israeli border, murdering over 1,200 civilians in their homes, at a music festival, and on the roads. Women were raped, children executed in front of their parents, the elderly burned alive. It was a pogrom, not a military operation. For many Israelis, it was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
But while October 7 was shocking, it was not new. The world may see it as a sudden eruption of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but for Jews — especially those with roots in the Middle East — it was part of a long and painful historical pattern. To understand this pattern, we must turn back the clock to a time before the State of Israel existed, to an atrocity that took place in Baghdad on June 1 and 2, 1941. That atrocity is known as the Farhud.
A Forgotten Pogrom in the Heart of the Arab World
The Farhud, meaning “violent dispossession” in Arabic, was a state-enabled massacre of Iraqi Jews that occurred during the Jewish festival of Shavuot. At the time, Iraq was a British-controlled kingdom teetering between nationalist revolt and foreign influence — fertile ground for Nazi ideology to take root.
Over two days of lawlessness, mobs rampaged through Jewish neighbourhoods in Baghdad, killing, raping, and mutilating innocent civilians. At least 180 Jews were confirmed murdered — though many believe the number was much higher. Thousands were injured. Homes were looted. Synagogues were desecrated. Girls were gang-raped in front of their families. Infants were thrown into the Tigris River.
The scale and cruelty of the violence is difficult to comprehend. It left a psychological scar on Iraqi Jews and marked the beginning of the end for one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world — one that dated back over 2,600 years to the Babylonian exile. Within a decade, over 90% of Iraq’s Jews had fled, leaving behind their property, citizenship, and history.
The Farhud was not caused by “Zionism” or by “the occupation” — common tropes today used to rationalize anti-Israel violence. It happened in 1941, years before the establishment of the State of Israel. The Jews of Baghdad were not settlers or colonizers. They were native to the land, predating Islam and Christianity in Mesopotamia. They had no army, no state, no power — and no refuge.
The Role of Imported Antisemitism
What made the Farhud possible? The answer lies in a toxic convergence of ideologies. Nazi Germany had invested heavily in the Arab world, spreading antisemitic propaganda through radio, literature, and political alliances. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini — a virulent antisemite and Nazi collaborator — had forged ties with pro-Nazi elements in Iraq. One of his protégés, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, led a failed fascist coup in 1941 with German support.
When that coup collapsed, the British were slow to reassert control, leaving a deadly power vacuum. In that brief window, Iraqi nationalists and religious fanatics took out their fury on the Jews of Baghdad, whom they had been taught to view as traitors and enemies. The violence wasn’t spontaneous. It had been seeded for years.
Today, this history is barely known — even among educated Western audiences. The Holocaust is rightly taught around the world. But the Farhud? It rarely makes it into textbooks, human rights reports, or refugee discussions.
From Baghdad to Be’eri: The Pattern Repeats
Fast-forward to October 7. Again, a Jewish holiday — this time, Simchat Torah. Again, a pogrom, marked by extreme cruelty, rape, and mutilation. Again, Jewish civilians were attacked in their homes, with no warning and no chance to defend themselves. Again, the ideology behind it was genocidal: Hamas’s charter openly calls not merely for the “liberation” of land but for the destruction of the Jewish people.
And again, much of the world rushed not to condemn the attackers but to rationalize the violence.
This pattern — attack, erase, justify — is not new. It was used after the Farhud. It is being used again now.
Recognizing this pattern does not mean ignoring Palestinian suffering. But no cause — however passionately framed — justifies the mass murder of civilians in their homes. Historical grievance is no license for atrocity.
The Silenced Refugees
There is another lesson from the Farhud that today’s discourse desperately needs: the recognition of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. In the mid-20th century, roughly 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (UNHCR estimate, 1967). Their synagogues were destroyed, their assets confiscated, their histories erased.
Unlike Palestinian refugees, they received no dedicated UN agency, no commemorative day, no international campaign for “right of return.” Most rebuilt their lives in Israel, where they make up the majority of the Jewish population today. But their trauma remains — and their story is vital to understanding Israel’s national consciousness and its need for self-defence.
The Farhud was not an isolated event. It marked the onset of a regional campaign that saw entire Jewish communities erased from Arab countries — not by conquest or war, but by persecution and expulsion. That is ethnic cleansing by any definition.
Why the Farhud Matters Now
As antisemitism surges globally — in protests, on campuses, in parliaments — the Farhud is more relevant than ever. It reminds us that Jews have faced persecution not just in Christian Europe but in the Muslim world as well. It shows that antisemitism doesn’t require Israel as a pretext — it existed long before 1948. And it underscores why the Jewish people need sovereignty, safety, and the ability to protect themselves.
New Zealand, as a nation committed to justice, truth, and reconciliation, should recognize the Farhud as a case of ethnic cleansing. It should support international efforts to document and teach the history of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. And it should condemn the ideological and cultural forces that continue to glorify terror against Jews.
Memory Is a Form of Resistance
We must remember the Farhud not only to honour its victims but to resist the selective memory that fuels anti-Israel bias today. We must remember it to understand what Hamas — and groups like it — really stand for. We must remember it because Jewish suffering does not begin or end with the modern State of Israel.
Let us say the names of Miriam and Yaakov, whose children were thrown into the Tigris. Let us say the names of Tamar and Yitzhak, murdered in Be’eri. From Baghdad to Be’eri, the same hatred has struck — and the same silence has followed.
We must break that silence.
Because silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.
