Jews, Labour and the Left, 1918-48 Book

This book provides an extraordinary look, through a strong collection of primary texts, into the impacts of the creation of the state of Israel and the Zionist movement on the Iraqi Jewish community, one of the most integrated and historic Arab Jewish communities. The author provides a much needed look at the ways in which the US and Britain played a role in the displacement of Arab Jewish communities, which allowed for the dispossession of Palestinians. Here are some of the most interesting and important excerpts from the book:

""The AZL (antizionist league, a group of Iraqi Jews in the 40's) saw the lack of democracy in Arab countries as providing fertile ground for Zionism; the organization stressed the need to involve the Arab masses, and popular and democratic institutions, in the fight against British colonialism, which was held responsible for the 'founding of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine'.

The AZL foresaw the harm Zionism could do to the Jewish communities in the Arab and Muslim worlds. In a pamphlet issued in November 1945, the founding committee of the AZL warned that, in issuing the Balfour Deceleration, Britain and the Zionist movement had sought to 'divert the Arab struggle against the colonialists to one against the Jews and to create a rift that would enable them to go on exploiting the Arab people'."

Written by a US ambassador in the late 1940's: "The desire of the Jewish community to emigrate will be in great part induced or limited by the amount of aggressiveness which Israel may display in the future. To the degree that stability in Palestine and the Middle East is disturbed by israels pursuance of a policy of expansionism, the Iraqi Jews will suffer more disabilities: the community as a whole might eventually come to welcome the possibility of emigration. If Israel, however, pursued a policy of moderation, and agreed to a peace settlement considered not too unreasonable by the arabs, not more than a small portion of Iraqs Jewish community would want to emigrate to Palestine."