This is a question I’ve been mulling for a couple of weeks. It has frozen my writing, because I am debating should I be silent too?
The last couple of weeks have been harrowing. As a Jew.
Yet I don’t want to write about being a Jew today. I don’t want to write politics. How has being Jewish, a fact of birth and destiny, become political?
Really I want to write about the incessant noise of birds in the backyard. I could swear one of them is a raspy chukar bird from Iraq, except it’s not. It’s more likely green parakeets or seeking crows. There are certainly singing blackbirds. They will not be silent. And when they are silent it is a warning. A rocket has launched, a siren is coming, there will be a boom, hopefully distant.
Do the birds also know they are living on miracles here in Jerusalem?
Do they flap their wings along with the summer Judean mountain breezes, singing thank you for being alive?
I look forward to the day I can take being alive for granted.
There are many silences. Silence is like a desert breeze you hear in your chest. Cavernous and all consuming. It echoes on the distant cliffs, all the colors of sunlit sand. The shadows are loud in the silence. The hidden scorpions are the loudest. Such a scuttling of silence.
The sound of peace is silence. We are silent as we just want to get on with our daily jobs. Our school drop offs, pickups, supperings. What to make for the next meal? A lovely problem. A lovely question we can ask out loud safely.
There are many more questions I want to ask aloud safely.
The sound of safety is silence. But how safe are we if we feel and wonder certain thoughts that we cannot say aloud. It is not safe. Perhaps we will disturb the fragile peace silence lulls us into.
Perhaps we will create through our silence true peace.
History suggests otherwise.
Last week I read an article about anti-Zionism being the new form of antisemitism. The oldest form of Jew hatred self righteously repackaged as virtuous humanity and justice for the oppressed.
But the loud, hateful slogans on the streets that declare Zionism as the worst crime against humanity is not new. They were demonstrating on the streets of Baghdad when my Jewish grandparents were still there. When my father was a little boy. My grandparents were scared and silent. Their neighbors were scared and silent. To be friends with a Jew, to fraternize, was to be friends with a Zionist. How many bravely stood and said we will stand up for Jews? Perhaps they were confused - convinced by the slogans - that Jews were really evil - that my grandparents held dual loyalties, and were Zionists and therefore could not be trusted. Were dishonoring Islam, dispossessing Arabs in Israel. Pan-Arab Nationalism united around anti-Zionism. A Jewish State must not exist.
Last week we commemorated the Farhud, the two day long mass massacre of Jews on June 1, 1941. On the festival of Shavuot. We have 179 names of those killed on that day. Yet there were many more killed and buried in a mass grave in Baghdad. Many more murdered and thrown into the Tigris River. Speak to any older Iraqi Jew and they will tell you horrific stories. Maybe the worst part of it for them was they were attacked by people they knew.
I will tell you one here, told to me by a dear Iraqi woman from my Iraqi group I attend. She tells of how her family of girls lived next to a boy in Baghdad, a very handsome boy whom the girls were all in love with. His mother was murdered in the Farhud and he was found as a baby, alive, suckling at her breast.
(I have the video of this woman telling the story. But she is an Iraqi woman and doesn’t want her video shared. There are many testimonies by women which I can only orally share. This is the Middle Eastern modest way.)
Why do I tell you this story. Because it is still real and alive in the memories of Iraqi Jews. It has been silent for many years. October 7 has made these Iraqis relive their memories and traumatic experiences of the Farhud. But the most important parts of the Farhud I am still trying to understand.
As two old Iraqi women shared with me —
For every Jew killed, raped and maimed, there were Iraqis who saved Jews.
On that eventful day, Sunday, 1 June 1941, on the day of the Feast, Moslem citizens had been inflamed by fiery orators and were armed with vicious tools such as axes, knives, and all manner of sticks and clubs. They invaded our neighbourhood, El-Nassa in El-Adhamiya city, as they did in other various Jewish quarters. Their strident voices and calls on Allah to sanction their murder of Jews – “Allahhou Akbar!” (God the Almighty!), “Idhbah Al Yahud!”(Murder the Jews!) and “Mal el Yahud – Halal!” (Sanction to rob the Jews!) could be heard so clearly.
I watched as our “good” Moslem neighbours, living on the opposite side of the street, those whom mother would offer occasional savoury dishes from her kitchen, participated in the general madness. Neighbourly goodwill had vanished: They guided the raving attackers to our front door. I also spied the wife of Colonel Taher Mohamed Aref. Either he was not at home, or on his specific instructions before he left she decided to help us. Armed with a gun and a hand grenade she stood facing the menacing crowd: She threatened with her weapons if they invaded our home.”
I was blessed to meet Mordechai Ben Porat a couple of months before he passed away. Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, November, 2021...
This Iraqi woman was not silent. She fought for humanity. For her Jews were her neighbors. Humans. On October 7 where Israeli Bedouins like Masad Armilat, a Bedouin who saved many wounded in Sderot, Abu Dabes a medic, minibus driver Yousef Ziadna who rescued 30 young people from the Nova party, and Hamid Abu Ar’a, whose wife was killed next to him, as well as coworker, baby injured, and yet ran out of hiding place with his baby to warn IDF soldiers of a planned Hamas ambush, saving 45 lives. Arabs who risked their lives to save Jews. Some losing their lives like Omar Abu Sabeelah who, despite being injured, saved two little girls hiding in a car in Sderot, their father and mother shot dead. Sadly Omar succumbed to his wounds. Why did they do it?
Ismail Alkrenawi, an Israeli Bedouin who with his family saved 30-40 people from Nova said, “We saw people in mortal danger. Our conscience did not allow us to leave them there under fire,” Alkrenawi said. “Before heading to rescue our cousin, we helped a lot of people who were at the music festival.”
The next question I have is — if so many people are good why does evil triumph? Why do atrocities like the Farhud and October 7 happen at all?
Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel said, "Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
In the Farhud the victorious British soldiers stood across the bridges on the outskirts of Baghdad. They allowed the mob to happen. How many British soldiers heard the blood curdling screams of Jewish women and girls being defiled and restrained themselves from breaking the official British order — do not help the Jews.
The Arab intelligentsia in Iraq did not speak about the massacre of the Jews. Like it never happened.
Like it never happened…
Silence.
But it happened. And so much continues to happen that requires us to step away from the comfort of our silent suppers. To have a voice is also a blessing. To break the silence is the call for every human today who cares about living in a world that is free from terror, and safe for all minorities.
But we are all so small. Each of us just wanting this confusing and uncertain time to pass. I myself find it hard to speak out. To write about what I see happening, which I believe is a writer’s duty. Really, I want to write about the alternative reality, which is just as real, the pomegranates that have so quietly grown into green clusters by my front entrance, a promise of crimson fruit for the Jewish New Year in September. A future.
Perhaps two young, beautiful Jews killed to “Free Palestine” on the streets of Washington DC is okay…
IT IS NOT OKAY.
Neither is firebombing Jews in Boulder, Colorado to “Free Palestine”.
Silence is a dangerous indulgence which imagines peace. I cannot remain silent as the same slogans are shouted on the free streets of New York, Paris, London, Sydney as they were in Baghdad - in the Farhud and afterwards leading to the mass expulsion of the majority of Iraqi Jews in 1950-52, including my family.
Be brave. Question Jew-hatred.
I often wonder what the average Iraqi could go back and relive the 1940’s again, would they make the same choice again?
Would they remain silent as their Jewish neighbors are branded and persecuted as Zionists, and driven from their homes?
Would they watch once more as an entire ancient community was forced to flee for their lives?"
Once, in 1917, a third of Baghdad was Jewish. Today 3 Jews live in Iraq.
What is Iraq today without its Jews?
What will the free world be without their Jews?
Choose your silence carefully.
Sarah
I am curious about all your responses do please comment, and for more information about topics discussed in this post read the articles below.
Article about the Firebombing in Boulder, Colorado, 1 June, 2025 - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/victims-of-boulder-firebombing-attack-honored-with-vigil-as-suspects-family-fights-deportation
For more about me and my writing visit my website www.sarahsassoon.comTo support my work please consider buying my children’s books, the award winning Shoham’s Bangle, and my latest This is Not a Cholent. My mission is to spread and educate about Jewish Middle Eastern culture.
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Thank you for this.
As a Christian. :-) I’m glad I found you.