Iraqi Jews: A History of Mass Exodus
The 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime and the occupation of Iraq by Allied Coalition Forces has served to generate a good deal of interest in Iraqi history. As a result, in 2005 Saqi reissued Abbas Shiblak’s 1986 study The Lure of Zion: The Case of the Iraqi Jews. The revised edition, which includes a preface by Iraq historian Peter Sluglett as well as minor additions and modifications by the author, is entitled The Iraqi Jews: A History of Mass Exodus. Shiblak’s book, which deals with the mass immigration of Iraqi Jews to Israel in 1950-51, is important both as one of the few academic studies of the subject as well as a reminder of a time when Jews were an integral part of Iraq and other Arab countries.
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