Educational Media Reviews Online

Few Jews remain in Iraq today, though they had lived there since Biblical days. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a refugee in Iraq during World War II, urged the Iraqi government to institute Nazi-style oppressions against the Jews, while pro-Nazi Arabs trying to put an end to British influence in the Middle East saw Arab Jews as collateral damage. A prosperous and well-integrated minority group until the 1940s, Baghdadi Jews were systematically stripped of their rights and property, and, in the 1950s, were forced to give up their citizenship and leave forever. Israel mounted a daring airlift rescue of Iraqi Jews, taking them in by the thousands, which made worldwide headlines. Since then, little attention has been paid to them. This documentary aims to set the record straight and tell the rest of the story.

Forget Baghdad describes what happened to six people: four elderly Iraqi Jews now living in Israel; a young woman, the Israeli-born daughter of Iraqi-Jewish immigrants, now living in the United States; and Samir, the director-writer-narrator of the video, who, though not a Jew, was a member of a displaced Iraqi family that settled in Switzerland. Their stories unfold primarily through interviews, augmented by archival footage, photographs, and other assorted documents that attest to the people, attitudes, and events being described.

The interviews, edited using a split screen technique that combines artistic images, historical, and/or descriptive shots along with the interview clips, explore how each of the men lived in Baghdad and felt about their homeland, the circumstances of their exodus to Israel, and how they fared in their new surroundings. Three made conscious choices to integrate themselves into the Israeli environment and did so successfully, despite many initial hardships, enduring racial discrimination, and never-to-be-fulfilled longings for Baghdad. The fourth man, a writer, decided he could never be truly Israeli, and remains true to his Iraqi roots. He writes only in Arabic and, as a result, has trouble getting published in Israel. Israelis don’t read his books, because they are written in Arabic. Arabs don’t read them either, because they shun anything from Israel. The young woman left Israel and has become a professor of Arabic Studies in the United States. She describes an Israeli childhood in which she always felt like an outsider because of her Arab roots. Her discomfort eventually prodded her to leave Israel for the U.S. Samir, never appears onscreen, but he narrates a story very similar to hers.

Other technical aspects of the piece - sound, color, and pace - are professional. Most of the subtitles are readable, but a good many fail to remain on the screen long enough and some fade into the background images. Still, the melancholy tale told here is memorable, making it an appropriate teaching tool for courses relating to Jews, Arabs, and ethnic displacement.

Recommended