Plight Deepens for Baghdad's Last Jews

A synagogue is seen behind a wall in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007. An Anglican clergyman testified before U.S. congress on July 25 that there are only eight remaining Jews in Iraq, the remnant of a community 2,700 years old. The clergyman, who watches over the tiny group of aging Jews says they are increasingly desperate, as are all minorities in the ravaged Iraqi capital, and that they want to leave Iraq for the Netherlands. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban) (Hadi Mizban - AP)

"They are not in the best situation, but they are not frightened. They are not in direct danger," she said.

White, director of the Foundation for Reconstruction and Reconciliation in the Middle East and vicar of St. George's Anglican Church in Baghdad, refused to elaborate on his remarks to the commission, telling The Associated Press he had thought the hearing was confidential.

White is a respected figure in the Middle East, active not only in Iraq but also involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The eight Jews, belonging to four families, are all that is left in Iraq from one of the world's oldest Jewish community, dating to the 6th century B.C. when the Babylonians conquered ancient Palestine and exiled many Jews. Over the centuries, Baghdad became a center of Jewish culture and learning.

By World War I, one-third of Baghdad's population was Jewish. Anti-Jewish campaigns began in earnest with Israel's creation in 1948, and Israel brought more than 100,000 Jews out by the early 1950s.

Another wave of emigration came in the early 1970s, several years after the public hanging of Jews accused of spying for Israel. Thousands settled in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe. In 2003, a dozen of the few remaining Jews in Baghdad moved to Israel.

Some Iraqis who claim ancestral Jewish roots also have left. The Jewish Agency says a few dozen Iraqis who have at least one Jewish grandparent have been granted citizenship and have come to Israel in recent years _ including one who claimed last month to be a cousin of Israel's Parliament speaker, Dalia Itzik.

Jewish tradition says the faith can only be passed by birth along maternal lines. But Israel's Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jews, has looser definitions about who is accepted as a Jew.

About 500 Iraqis from mixed backgrounds went to Israel after the first Gulf War in 1991 _ mostly from the Kurdish area of northern Iraq _ and subsequently moved to the Netherlands, said Jankelowitz and the Israeli Embassy.