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WikiLeaks Cables May Imperil Baghdad Jews

'The older ones are refusing to leave,' priest says

By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff

Posted Oct 8, 2011 1:59 PM CDT

(Newser) – Baghdad's few remaining Jews are being warned to flee after WikiLeaks published cables including their names last month, McClatchy reports. An Anglican priest working with the US embassy is trying to persuade the city's last Jewish members—all nine of them—that they are in danger. "Most want to stay," says Rev. Canon Andrew White. "The older ones are refusing to leave. They say: 'We're Iraqis. Why should we go? If they kill us, we will die here.'"

The cables describe deteriorating conditions for Baghdad's Jews and lay out a bleak assessment of their future—and provide biographical sketches of all of them. White and the US embassy harshly criticized WikiLeaks for releasing the cables, but the whistleblower site has declined to comment. Jews have a 2,700-year history in Iraq, once numbering around 130,000, but have fled since a Nazi-inspired pogrom in 1941 and the creation of Israel in 1948.

An Iraqi security guard stands at the entrance of a mosque at the Jewish shrine of Ezekiel in the Iraqi town of Kifl, south of Baghdad.
An Iraqi security guard stands at the entrance of a mosque at the Jewish shrine of Ezekiel in the Iraqi town of Kifl, south of Baghdad.   (Getty Images)
Bashir Zaalan, a Shiite Muslim Iraqi, cares for the shrine of Ezra in the southern Iraqi town of Al-Azair near Basra, some 550 miles from Baghdad.
Bashir Zaalan, a Shiite Muslim Iraqi, cares for the shrine of Ezra in the southern Iraqi town of Al-Azair near Basra, some 550 miles from Baghdad.   (Getty Images)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 47 comments
Chitrix
Oct 9, 2011 9:15 AM CDT
WikiLeaks published cables and endangered lives, nothing new as this is what they have done all along but this time it is the names of six Jews who are happy to stay where they are not worried over being killed as that would make them martyrs....... Lets blow a few billion and stage a full military rescue? Screw that, if they are stupid enough to stay in the hot zone let them burn, as to Wikileaks, I hope each and all concerned die in a fire or even something more inventive Wikileaks place the lives of American troops on the line and for that very reason I despise each and every member as well as donor who have helped perpetuate the actions that place lives in danger
Barack_Must_Go
Oct 9, 2011 5:25 AM CDT
Maybe Obama will grow a pair of ovaries and sanction a hit on this douchebag.  Or better yet he could kill the loser himself like he truly believes he had done with bin Laden.
fancygapva
Oct 8, 2011 6:54 PM CDT
I've supported Wikileaks, at least in sentiment, because they went to some pains to avoid placing people in danger in the early email dumps. But I can't support endangering innocent individuals. I can understand, however, how older people would not want to leave a place where they have lived all their lives and try to get a toehold in a different social milieu--even a friendly one such as Israel. Familiarity is more valuable the older we get.

 
Baghdad • Jews • anti-Semitism • WikiLeaks • Wikileaks diplomatic cables

 
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