Israelis Rap Iraqi Denial That Jews Have Been Killed

A denial by the Iraqi UN Mission that some Iraqi Jews have been imprisoned or executed was rejected today by the Israeli Mission as “transparent and primitive lies.” The Iraqi statement attributed the reported executions to “the Zionist propaganda machine” which it said was circulating “falsehood and fabrication in an attempt to discredit the government of Iraq.”

The Iraqi statement was the first denial from an official source of reports that have been circulating for the past month that the Iraqi Jews were imprisoned last fall and that some or all of them may have been executed or died in prison. The Iraqis claimed that “a thorough investigation has revealed that most of the Iraqi Jews mentioned in the list had in fact illegally departed from Iraq,” and that “unofficial reports” indicated “that some of these Iraqi Jews have been seen in the United States.

IRAQI CLAIM TERMED SHEER MOCKERY

The Israeli Mission said the Iraqi statement “would be considered farcical in its transparent and primitive lies if the situation of Iraqi Jewry were not as tragic as it is. To dismiss the suffering and torture of the Iraqi Jews imprisoned in Baghdad, some apparently murdered in jail, by claiming that these people are not even in Iraq, is sheer mockery. The growing international out-cry against the persecution of Jews in Iraq belies the frivolous assertion in the press release.”

The Iraqi statement claimed that the alleged Israeli campaign to discredit Iraq coincided with rising dissent among Iraqi Jews in Israel. The statement quoted an article of Nov. 9, 1972 from the Black Panther magazine in Jerusalem, edited by Kokhavi Shemesh, which alleged that Iraqi Jews were “lured, threatened and terrorized” by Zionist agents to migrate to Israel.