United Nations intervention was expected today following the first detailed report, confined by Arab sources, of measures taken against Iraqi Jews by the Baghdad Government.
A detailed account from a special correspondent at Baghdad of El Ahram, the foremost Arabic newspaper published at Cairo, disclosed that the Iraq Government launched a drive against the wealthiest section of Iraqi Jewry, which has already netted the Baghdad Government a sum greater than did all the measures hitherto taken by the Egyptian authorities to penalize the Jews in that country.
It is expected that when further “trials” are instituted and completed, the Iraqi treasury will have collected about 20,000,000 diner, or the equivalent of $80,000,000, the correspondent estimated.
Trials already concluded have brought into the Iraqi coffers more than 6,000,000 diner, but according to the correspondent this is only the beginning. He confirmed that following the public execution last month by hanging at Basra, Iraq, of Shafiq Ades, a millionaire merchant, the Baghdad Government confiscated all his property estimated at 5,000,000 pounds ($20,000,000), and ordered that all debts to Ades be paid immediately into the Iraq treasury.
Another eight prominent Jews of Basra have been arrested, according to the El Ahram correspondent, on the same capital charge of high treason for allegedly supplying arms and other war equipment to the Zionists. Among them are Elijah Kuwuiti, Rubin Nissim, Moshe Dalial, Daoud Juri and Elijah Zanmi–all leading Jews in their community and wealthy ones. On the same treason charge, the Iraq Government has also arrested a Jew named Sohet, who is deputy director of the Iraq State Railways, and who will be arraigned before a military court.
Zalman Dilha, one of the largest Jewish bankers in all Arab countries, has been arrested on a charge of having been in contact with Palestine Jews. Chaim Nathanel, the owner of a flourishing transport business at Baghdad, was arrested while in Aleppo, Syria, at the orders of the Baghdad Government. Salem Simeaon, a prominent Baghdad Jew, was recently tried before a military court for having been in contact with “Israeli bauds” and for being the alleged cause of the “economic confusion” in Iraq. He was found guilty, the correspondent of the Cairo newspaper related, fined one million pounds ($4,000,000), and sentenced to four years in prison.
The government police recently arrested Sasson Kadouri, Chief Rabbi of Baghdad, on a charge of arousing the Jews against the Iraq Government in the course of a synagogue sermon. The Chief Rabbi, as indeed almost all of Baghdad’s 100,000 Jews, has been particularly careful to avoid association with Zionists, the correspondent emphasized. Moreover, the Chief Rabbi repeatedly issued statements denouncing Zionism, at the request of the Iraq Government, but it appears that this will not avail to save him from his fate.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
