Remembering the Jews of Dhi Qar in City’s Architecture

Recently this has been a new cause for consternation in Dhi Qar. Iraqi Jews have petitioned both the Iraqi and the Israeli governments for their property to be returned or for compensation.

“At the time the political trend was to confiscate property belonging to Iraqi Jews as a way of protesting the Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land,” explains Alaa Jassim Mohammed, director of the department for property registration in the Saoub al-Jazeera district. “This policy continued with successive governments right up until Saddam Hussein’s regime ended in 2003.”

Iraqi Jews were prevented from taking much of their property with them and were also deprived of their citizenship.

“The government confiscated most of the Jewish property in Nasiriyah except for that in the Shatra district, which was sold by Iraqi Jews after they emigrated. They were able to do this because they said they were Christians,” Mohammed notes.

This century Mohammed says there is no official mention of Jewish property in the files: “The selling and buying that did take place tended to be concluded on a personal basis, between local residents, who didn’t register the transactions officially. This was also because official boundaries of the different districts were not yet marked.”

The issue of Jewish property remains controversial. “The Jews of Iraq know very well they won’t be getting any compensation for what they have lost,” one of Jacob Cohen’s descendants, Emil Cohen, told the Asharq Al Awsat newspaper. “This is just a political issue – nothing more, nothing less.”