Zionism and the Jews of Iraq: A Personal Perspective
Professor Avi Shlaim gives the George Antonius Memorial Lecture 2023, examining the Jewish exodus from Iraq in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and arguing the Zionist movement played an active part in the uprooting of Iraqi Jews.
This annual lecture is also a launch for Avi Shlaim’s new book, ‘Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew’ which will be published by Oneworld on 8 June. The three worlds of the title are Baghdad to the age of 5, Ramat Gan, Israel, 10 to 15, and school in London, 15 to 18. The book uses a family history to tell the bigger story of the Jewish community in Iraq, its rich culture, its integration into Iraqi society, and its contribution to nation-building at various levels. The lecture revolves round the central concept of the Arab-Jew. It examines the circumstances surrounding the Jewish exodus from Iraq in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It challenges the Zionist narrative which claims that antisemitism was the main driver of the exodus. It argues that the Zionist movement played an active part in the uprooting of Iraqi Jews, and it presents new evidence to support this argument.
Avi Shlaim is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. His books include Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (1988); War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995); The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000, updated edition 2014); Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (2007); and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009).
Speakers:
Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim, FBA (University of Oxford)
Chair: Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College)
good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Eugene Rogan and as director of the middle e Center it is my tremendous pleasure to welcome you to the wait for it 45th George Antonius lorian election since the first Antonius given in 1976 by the great Islamic historian George mey this lecture has served as the culmination event for the Middle East centers Academic Year an opportunity to gather the broader Middle East Center family I’m delighted to see so many of our current students here and so many of their predecessors are alumni Veterans of many past antonious lectures we’re honored to have so many of the center’s amazing Advisory board members who were here for a a meeting before today’s lecture we are so grateful to you for the support and the vote of confidence that you show us it’s great to welcome colleagues from across St Anthony’s College not just from the Middle East C and across the Great University of Oxford wonderful to welcome so many colleagues who contribute to our Collective work in promoting knowledge and understanding of the MDS in the university and welcome to the community of the city of Oxford and to those of you who will have come from further field from London and from its suburbs which as far as I can tell extend as far as Paris over the years we have heard from some of the greatest Scholars thinkers and creative artists from across our region and from across the world and mm manawi ibraim ab and Edward S Anthony Parsons andan Z and Remi no chsky and Robert Fisk there’s 45 names to go through I’ll stop them we have with us tonight several past antoniio speakers I’m so glad to welcome Marilyn booth and Joseph sass who gave their lectures in 2009 for Maryland and 2013 for Joseph we’ve had some illustrious cancellations over the years Jeremy Bo was called away in 2011 to cover that region wide configration better known as the Arab Uprising and we lost uh the opportunity here from whose 2020 lecture was overtaken by the co pmic tonight’s Antonius is particularly special for it’s being given by one of the America’s fellows of the middle e there is a long tradition of CER fellows coming back to give the Antonia started by our founding fellow Albert hon who was actually the second Antonia lecturer he spoken 1977 a couple years before he retired mus gave my firstent when I was a new faculty member here in 1992 since then we have seen Roger Owen return from Harvard to give the 1998 lecture and Derek Hopwood the 20 than one Antonius but it’s been over two decades since we’ve had the honor of welcoming one of the center’s own to the podium to give the antonious of all my colleagues past and present I particularly like sharing aish I’m never entirely in control of the proceedings and I’m never sure quite what will happen next I hope you’re catching the fre abay moved to Oxford from reing to take up the alist buck leadership in 1987 when he was on the cusp of gaining Global recognition as one of a handful of Israeli new historians following the publication of his Monumental study collusion across the Jordan it would be no exaggeration to say that collusion propelled Professor schlain from relative obscurity I’d like a show hands for those of you who might have read his earlier work such as the eec for those of you too young to remember that’s the European economic Community the eec and the Mediterranean countries in 1976 British foreign secretaries since 1945 or the United States and the Berlin blockade which came out in 1978 well you can say even at that point with a book a year it was already prolific but propelled from relative obscurity to become one of the most prominent British public intellectuals at work on Israel and the Arab Israel conflict since the publication of collusion Professor SCH has published a string of influential books ranging from works of synthesis like his 1995 war in peace in the Middle East edited works like the war for Palestine rewriting the history of 1948 and the 1967 Arab Israeli War and the research-based works that had truly established his enduring contribution the Iron Wall Israel in the Arab world first issued in 2000 and later expanded and reissued in 2014 and the lion of Jordan King Hussein’s life in War and Peace which came out in 2007 tonight we celebrate the publication of a new book by ABI SCH part out of biography part family history part essay on the contested identity of the Arab Jew as it says on the front cover three worlds is the best book that I’ve read all year and like you I am impatient to hear from Professor schlain fellow of the British Academy to tell us more his title tonight Zionism and the Jews of Iraq a personal perspective would you please join me give a great George Anton welcome [Applause] to thank you Professor Rogan for this very courteous introduction the last time I spoke at en Center and you introduced me you’re are much more Cur you said the speaker today is Professor schay so put on your seat belts and prepare for the [Laughter] run today you are not going to need any seat bels now today is a very special occasion for two reasons one is already mentioned by Eugene it’s the annual and prestigious Georgia anous lecture and it’s a great honor and a privilege to be invited by the fellows of the mid Center to give this year’s Geor Anton lecture I’m a great admirer of George Anton his 1938 book the Arab Awakening generated an ongoing debate over the origins of Arab nationalism the significance of the Arab Revol of 1916 and the British machinations during and after World War I for me the book was an eyeopener about Britain’s record as the holder of the Mandate for Palestine all my own archival research only confirm and reinforce George Anton’s critique of British policy inan my work could be read as footnotes to the Arab waiting for me the history of the British mandate in Palestine is the history of how Britain stole Palestine from the Palestinians and gave it to the Zion maybe you do need your seat there anyway I’m grateful for the uh the opportunity to pay homage to a great champion of just jce for the Palestinians secondly this is a family occasion my own immediate family and the broader m center family my wife Gwen who is sitting in the front row is both my harshest critic and the most constructive and supportive of fers she helped me in countless ways during the four five years that it took me to complete this modest [Music] memo I’m also grateful to our daughter Tamar who is a publisher by profession for her thoughtful suggestions for her practical help for the long conversations we had during the writing of this book it was her idea to produce a podcast that helped both of us to understand better Iraqi Jewish Israeli British identity as I writing the book my father after we moved to Israel was completely silent amar’s father never stopped talking our story to borrow a pretentious phrase from my friend El Shan the cultural CRI is the story of quote changing linguistic Landscapes and the emotional cartography of displacement changing linguistic Landscapes and the emotional craphy of displacement an episode involving Tamal illustrates the changing linguistic translates of ourin one day I went to collect from kindergarten and I over heard her say to a little girl is Once Upon a Time in Arabic and the little girl said to her that’s fascinating second there is the bler midle East Center family and first and foremost is Eugene Rogan my benign boss my colleague and my friend we started reading and commenting on each other’s work when he was writing um the Arabs the history which has since then become a classic and I was working on my biography of King husin Eugene and I share birthday the 31st of October we are both Halloween babies I am 15 years older than Eugene but he is much wiser than I am and he has given me a lot of really good advice along the years not least in connection with this particular book then there are others in the m center there is the m center librarian Maria Louisa Lela a very remarkable woman she’s Italian she knows Hebrew and Arabic and she wrote a PhD thesis in French on the literature of Iraqi Jews she and the other librarian ha jaari my fellow Iraqi dealt with my many requests promptly efficiently and with good cheer so did Caroline Davis and so did De AER the the alist professor Neil kley professor of politics at the m center design the MS my deep appreciation go goes to the whole of the team in one world an excellent publishing house and to the to um noine BR D and Juliet maybe the dynamic duo own and run with excellent publishing but my very special thanks go to my editor S car um and um is R here she is some C the editor and his assistant withas the Ed the manuscript from start to finish not once not twice but three times and they improved me immeasurably in content and style but they had different priorities St was only interested in the central character and he wanted a short concise text and he said that any episode which isn’t relevant directly to the central character should be left out and if it I followed his advice the book will be about a quarter of its present and vaita was not very interested in the central character but she was most interested and well informed about the political backr so she was always asking me to elaborate on obscure things like the Iraqi communist I’m very happy to you’ll be Rel to know that this is the end this concludes what I like to call the end of a jumble sale a speech of the end of a jumble sale this is when the Headmaster thanks all those involving organizing the jungles I now want to say a few words about the book itself the three words of the title are Baghdad where I lived up to the age of five Ramadan in Israel where I lived from the age where I went to school from the age of 5 to 15 and London where I went to school from the age of 15 to [Music] 18 the book only goes up to the age of 18 that an EP and green who read the manuscript chapter by chapter as I was writing it told me one day when she read chapter 5 I’m on chapter 5 and you haven’t been born [Laughter] yet I hesitated before embarking on this project I was didn’t know how to write about myself it was easy to write about other people about kingin for example but one day I read wonderful book by Aid bashin an Israeli historian at Chicago the book is called New Babylonian the history of the Jews in modern Iraq it’s a very informative book and a very empathetic book to the Jews of Ira and that gave me the idea of not just telling my story but putting my story in The Wider context of family history and putting the family history in The Wider context of um the Jewish community in Iraq and going even further a field to reflect about Iraqi history and British colonialism in Ira after the first World War another source of inspiration was El Shad an Iraqi Israeli who was now an eminent Professor NYU she published a book a collection of essays under the title of the Arab Jew Palestine and Arab and other [Music] displacements uh the book is about the pivotal concept of the Arab Jew she also draws parallels between the experience of the Palestinians of displacement from Palestine and the displacement of the Jews from Iraq the notion of an Arab Jew is very controversial in Israel um Israelis don’t like the term you can be French Jew and Italian Jew a Romanian Jew any kind of Jew you can even be a German Jew despite the iation with the Holocaust but if you say I’m an Arab Jew people immediately react against it they say that’s a contradiction in terms that’s an impossibility it’s an ontological impossibility either you are Jewish in which case you cannot be an Arab or you’re an Arab in which case you cannot be a Jew uh but I beg to differ I know of no better description of my initial identity than that of an AR je this brings me to the notion of identity my academic discipline in this University is international relations and international relations doesn’t deal with individual identity um and I very naively used to think we are given one identity and off we go and that’s all the to it but when I started writing this book I realized that identity is much more complex and fluid phenomenon and moreover we don’t determine on our own our identity other forces outside in society shape our identity and in my case and are not necessarily benign in my case it was Zionism which tried to erase my Arab identity and Provence and imposed on me a new identity as a new Israeli with which I never ever felt comfortable I used to be ashamed of being an Iraqi in fact I had an inferiority complex which um defin in my entire relationship with Israeli society today I’m very proud to be an Iraqi I’m very proud of my Iraqi and Arab Origins as a student of the Arab Israeli conf I also see the advantage of having lived in an Arab Society in an Arab country this enabled me to transcend National stereotypes it enabl me to see Arabs not just as the enemy but as a people as a sensitive as sensitive and proud people for my family Muslim Jewish coexistence was not an abstract idea we experienced it we touched it my mother M for is the main source of information for our life in IRA and the hero of the M over the four or five years that I took to write this book I kept interviewing her relentlessly and taking detailed notes and I Incorporated a lot of things that she told me into the narrative she used to Rel lycal about the wonderful Muslim friends that we had in bdan and one day I said to her did we have any Zionist friends and she looked at me as if it was a very strange question and she said to me no Zionism is an askanazi thing it’s nothing to do with us the whole point of this book is to use my family history to illustrate a much bigger story the story of the Jewish community in Baghdad in the first half of the 20th century The Exodus or rather the uprooting of this community after the 1948 War individual experience Over The Exodus varied but for the community as a whole the experience was like that of a tree being pulled up by the roots the book seeks to recover to animate a vibrant Jewish civilization of the near East a civilization that was blown away by in the 20th century by the cold Winds of [Music] nationalism I tried to achieve this by telling a family story rather than by through academic research we were an upper middle class family my father youf was a very successful Merchant with the high social status my mother s went to the Alon School Alon Israel univers um up to the age of 17 when she was forced to marry my father who was a lot older than her she received a very good education um the teaching language the the medium of teaching was French but they also taught them English Arabic and he and my mother who died two years ago age 96 in Ramadan if anyone dared suggest that she was dementing she would declaim arimed this law in French she remembered a visit by King Fel II to her school accompanied by the chief Rabbi FIS the first embraced the Jews in his efforts to build a new nation one Iraqi nation and the Jews made a contribution major contribution at every level in the building of B Ira both of my parents had de roots in Iraq and they led the country we were well integrated into Iraqi Society of all the Jewish communities in the Middle East the Iraq one was the most prosperous the most successful and the best integrated into the local Society the book revolves around the contented life that we live in [Music] bad um alongside Muslims and Christians the anguish and pain of displacement the problems of adjusting to a new life in the promised land my full performance at school in Israel and my parents decision to send me to school in England in the three mostly unhappy years that I spent in school in London which for me was a second Exile and a changing linguistic landscape in Baghdad we were Arab Jews we spoke Arabic and only Arabic at home our social customs and lifestyle were Arab our Cuisine was exquisitly Middle Eastern my parents music was a very attractive blend of Jewish and Arabic music we were Iraqis whose religion happened to be Judaism we were a minority one minority among many one minority like the aidis like the calan Catholics Assyrians Armenians cians tur and so on Iraq was a land of pluralism of religious tolerance and coexistence bad was known as the city of Peace it was also sometimes called the Jewish City during the first world war a third of the population of Iraq was Jewish and during the Jewish High holidays the shops of the Markus Clos we had much more in common linguistically and culturally with Iraqi compatriots then we had with our European coreligionists we did not feel the slightest Affinity with Zionism or Israel our migration to Zion was one of necessity not one of choice or ideological reference we were forcibly conscripted into the zist project alah is a term that is used for migration to Israel and it means Ascent in our case it was not Al move to Israel in which is [Music] this not only did we lose uh wealth property uh possessions but also a strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews along the journey to the margins of Israeli societ both of my grandmothers came with us to Israel for them it was deeply traumatic in me and they spoke with great Nostalgia about the old country to spoke about Iraq is J the Garden of Eden Psalm 137 talks about the Jewish Exile in Babylon 2 and a half Millennia ago and he goes by the Rivers of Babylon there we start and there we went is we remembered Z for my grandmothers it was the other way around by the riverse of Zion there we sat and there we were when we remember babon my family story is th a corrective to the zist master Narrative of the history of the M this narrative posits emic and pervasive Muslim in Arab anti-Semitism migration to Israel is attributed to the persecution and Prejudice that the Jews are said to have encountered in their country of origin one example of this Zionist narrative is Martin Gilbert the Jewish British historian Ander of church his last book was called in the house of in ishmael’s house the history of the Jews in Muslim lands the book is ambitious it covers 1400 years from the r rise of Islam to the present and until he he finished the but it is little more than a catalog of Muslim hatred hostility and violence against je the lens of the book Is purly Us cental anti-Semitism is said to be the fundamental underlying force that shap Muslim Jewish relations by piling one horror story after another gilber painted a completely misleading picture he was psychologically hardwired to see um anti-Semitism everywhere the result is a distorted is a distortion of the history of Muslim Jewish relations to serve a political agenda to recap the zist USS Arabs and Jews is genitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent Discord and confli Zionism is based entirely on the experience of the Jews of Europe it’s a movement by European Jews for European Jews its Outlook is completely entc in Europe the Jews the other the other and therefore Europe had a Jewish question in inverted Commerce anti-Semitism was a European malody and from there it spread to the Middle East interestingly there was no anti-semitic literature in Arabic so anti-semitic literature had to be translated from European languages to Arab including Hitler’s mind Camp Iran did not have a Jewish question in Iraq the Jews did not leaving ghettos not did they experience the violent repression persecution and genocide that L European his people it was not without reason that Mark mazal called his his history of Europe in the 20th Century Dark Continent it took Europe much longer than the Arab world to accept the Jews as equal citizens in Iraq to be sure the Str and strs but the overall picture was one of cosmopolitanism e coexistence and fruitful interaction the American Jewish historian son Baron coined the phrase the Laos version of Jewish history this is Jewish history is a NeverEnding cycle of hatred hostility persecution culminating in the Poli I’m prepared for argument’s sake to accept that the lacrim version of Jewish history applies to Europe but I um strongly deny that this version of Jewish history applies or is relevant to the history of the Arab world of Arab Jews there is one episode which is always quoted um in support of the Zionist narrative in support of the claim of pervasive Arab antism and that is the the program against the Jews in RA in the first and 2 of f June 1941 when 165 Jews were killed um there were attacks on Jewish houses Jewish women were raped there was a lot of floating of Jewish shops this was horrendous H but it wasn’t representative typical it was a oneoff poam because of very special circumstances and I believe that the person largely responsible for the F were not antii but it was the British Ambassador sir Kahan corn and I give the reasons for this VI in the book um and my parents hated sir Kahan K this but they couldn’t pronounce his name so they just called him [Laughter] Al month before the Rashid Ali LED Rashid Ali gani led the Nationalist Revol against the British and and expelled the British from the country and he was prime minister for for a month during that period during that month there was no anti-Semitism there was no persecution of the Jews yesterday there was a book launch for this book in London in and I met a very old um Jew David suum who said to me he was in the far and he said there was no persecution of the Jews and that Rashid Ali was anti- British she wasn’t Pro Nazi and my mother confirmed this she was 16 years old and she took she and her brothers took refuge in the American Embassy because the British Embassy was not safe and she had a very leisurely month in the British in the American Embassy uh but later on in Israel she was defined as a holocaust survival this was reading back from the Holocaust to this POG and this pgam was Creet the p as part of the um Nazi plan for the final solution so my mother who was very pragmatic used to receive 6,000 shekos a year it’s about 1,000 and she had a discount of 70% on her counil TS and uh Jewish custom has it that you don’t sell the house of the dead for 11 months and when after after my mother died my sisters and I had to pay the full wack 100% the council tax because we were not H for my mother told me stories and and I relate them because most of the accounts are by men and it was so good to have a female gender female account of the and one of the stories was that about a very poor peasant Iraqi peasant um who came for the lot and he stole from ay store a big radio and he took it to his Shack where there was no electricity and he banged on the radio and it didn’t sing so he banged hard on it and he said come on sing you sing for the Jews why don’t you sing for us uh my family did not leave Iraq because of a clash of cultures or religious intolerance the driver of our displacement was political not religious or cultural we caught in the crossfire between two secular National movements Arab nationalism and Jewish nationalism or Zionism there is a difference between nationalism and patriotism for nationalism need an eny nationalism is a divisive Force as Marine Monroe wrote in her SCP gr the trouble with with the trouble with nationalism is that it stops US thinking we also suffer the consequences of the systematic zist takeover of Palestine and the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948 the Iraqi Army participated in the war for pistan after the Arab de defeat there was a b against the Jews throughout the [Music] leads Zionism was one of the main reasons for this backl Zionism gave the Jews a territorial base for the first time in 2 and a half [Music] Millennia it may be possible for the enemies of the Jews to identify them with their hated Zionist enemy and to call for the expansion what have been the pillar of Ira Society was increasingly treated as a fifth [Music] column historically the zist movement was not interested in the Dos of the East they regarded as inferior human material but the Holocaust changed it by removing the main reservoir of people for the future Jewish state after the birth of Israel alah became the top priority the population was only 600,000 Jews 6 600,000 Jews 6,000 Jews had been killed in the war it’s 1% of the issue with the Jewish population for the first time the Jews of the East became a vital element in the Zionist project for building the Jewish in pism was the second most successful PR success story of the 20th century after the Beats Zionism was a diplomatically sophisticated movement but truthless and expansionist at the same time its ultimate aim was an independent Jewish state over as much of the territory of Palestine as possible with as few Arabs as possible inside its W the IH working definition of anti-semitism says that it is anti-Semitic to describe the state of Israel as a racist project I don’t know how else to describe the state of Israel Zionism moved in stages to realize its ultimate a stage one was the FP cleansing of the Palestinians 1948 and stage two was wiing Jews from all four corners of the Earth take their place in including the inferior Jews of the this brings me to chapter seven of my book Baghdad B this is the most explosive chapter in the book and the one that is likely to draw most criticism and push back from Zionist quarters the background is popular hostility to the Jews and official persecution in the aftermath of the war for pistan as a result of persecution there was a trickle of illegal Jewish um that was illegal Migration by Jews across the border to Iran and from there to Israel in March 1950 the Iraqi government passed the law the denaturalization law it said any Jew who wants to leave the country is a year to register then they can leave a year later another second law was passed by the government of and he said any Jew who had relinquish his Iraqi um citizenship forfeited all his rights as a Citizens and all the property of the Jews and bank accounts who have Frozen in 1950 there were around 130,000 Jews in Europe by the end of 1952 only about 10,000 remain all the rest ended up in isra five bomes on Jewish sides help to precipitate the mass Exodus there are persistent rumors among irais my family and relatives and all the Iraqis in Israel that Israel had a hand in this Bond and that fuels their resentment of the state ofra I was very interested in this story I wanted to get to the bottom of me in 1981 82 I spent um sotic year in Jerusalem and I spent the whole year in the Israel State archives and uh one day I ordered the two fils that said Iraq 1950 and I was told the clothes this was 1982 and Israel has a 30 year rule copied from Britain so I said to the alist um it’s fine to release these fars so he said out Che when he uh came back to and he said they can be released because there are some mad documents in the files and I thought ah and I said well why don’t you remove the Mad documents and leave the foreign Ministry documents I said I’ll check the next day he came back to me and he said no we can’t open these files at all so I’m not conspiracy theories I couldn’t say that they were hiding something and I’m a historian so I had to find evidence hard evidence and many many years later I came across this evidence I was visiting my mother in Ramadan and I met a very elderly Drew called yob kuki who had been in the Zionist underground and he told me about the things that they got after through the forging of documents the paying of prives and also he told me that one of his colleagues young um y basre um was responsible for three of the bombs three out of the five and he told me that his controller was a mad officer called Max B who was based in tan these were the days of the sh there was a close covert relationship between Iran in Israel so the controller gave K gave Bas the maps the information the instructions most importantly the TNT bastri was tried convicted and hang his last words were long live the stage of Israel I said toly everything you tell me fits with what I know but I need evidence So eventually produced one page police report about the interrogation about the activities of the zist underground which name B but it was a plain piece of paper with no letter head with no date with no name so I couldn’t call it a Smoking Gun but I took the investig ation a bit further there is a Iraqi journalist called sham Abdul he wrote a book in Arabic which hasn’t been translated on the Zionist underground in Iran and the immigration of the Jews to Israel 19551 and by a very lucky coincidence hia jji the librarian happened to be friends with ABD and she mediated between us and he confirm that my police report is genuine and that it’s part of a much larger larger fire 28 Pages file on the interrogation of the Zionist undergrounds activities and Wrongs in in so I no longer have any doubt Israel was involved in the bombing of Jewish SS in bdan which precipitated The Exodus it is not part of my argument that this was the main reason for The Exodus but it’s one factor that needs to be taken into account I was going to go on and say this is not a one of thing but it’s a p of false flag operations and another one was the laon affair in 1954 inro when the same mad officer Max V was was the in charge of the spiring it was rounded up and he committed suicide in prison I now come to the epilogue of the book The epilog rols is mostly about my kind in the idea between 1964 and 66 uh which was the high point of my identification with the Z Pro I served loyally and proudly in the idea because in my time it was true to its name it was the Israel Defense Force but after I left a year after I left uh to become history student of K everything changed and it’s not because I had left the idea but because of the June 1967 World the IDF my little army was transformed into the brutal police force of the brutal Colonial and that’s the beginning of of my disenchantment with the state of Israel my memo is a revisionist track in alternative history a challenge to the Zionist narrative about the Jews of the Arab lands it also suggests that the history of Muslim Jewish relations in Iran has been distorted at the service of Zionist propaganda my experience that of my family that of the whole Jewish community in Iran suggest that there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab Jewish antagonism the old world of Iraq the J Allah with my [Music] grandmothers build but remembering the past can help us and Visage a better [Music] future sism has all but destroyed the identity of the Arab je but is it has left enough of a remant to Warrant a little optimism about the future one thing is certain without Reviving or reimagining the kind of religious tolerance and civilized dialogue between Jews and Arabs that prevailed in Iraq before the emergence of the state of [Music] Israel will not go will not be able to go past the present and past thank you for listening [Applause] Abby you have shared with us not just insights into a new book but you’ve taken this opportunity to share insights into your own personal life and identity questions which made this lecture tonight a more intimate portrait of you then we your colleagues your students your friends have really had the chance to hear before and it’s hard for us to imagine the younger you that was completely silent that was not meant to be a punchline the Younger You struggling with these conflicting identities having to deal with multiple uprooting at the same time that you’re dealing with all the challenges of adolescence as it were that in a sense each world as you were uprooted to move to the next you you’d always be remembered uh as the identity you left behind that in Israel you were an Iraqi that in Britain you are an Israeli that in some way fitting in was something that was just Out Of Reach in each of the worlds that you found yourself going to it’s very hard for us to imagine the failing school boy you were as you went through those difficult transitions I understand why that one would have a hard time adapting to many different school curriculums but the school boy that your Israeli Masters were about to give up on saying that you had no academic or intellectual potential is so far from the image we have of you as the Au Professor the brilliant author and the leading public intellectual written so there are things that we learn in reading your book which just don’t fit with the friend and Mentor that we have known in you and in that you are opening us up to a part of yourself which is not easy it is deal with in great honesty I don’t feel that there’s any whitewashing that goes on here and in the process you tell us things about the history and Society of the 20th century in Iraq in Israel and in Britain that really helped to inform our understanding and discussion I I think your book very rightly takes its place alongside those that inspired You by or bashkin and by OT this is a book that will make a lasting contribution to the discussion around the reappropriation of identity as being Jewish and Arab and so in that there is a lasting contribution here that I think will affect millions of readers and you know things that well would surprise all of us as you look through the books you’ve got to see what a dish Obby was I mean the picture of you with your grandmother in uniform would make anyone sleep let alone the Young baghdaddy Prince age what 2 three sitting there dressed in a bow tie and his finery to just melt any grandmother’s heart so there was definitely there aspects of you there in the most positive sense that I wouldn’t have recognized either of you what a dish now I think think that I probably raised your expectations on JY you will have found that in our exchanges toight that Professor SCH and I have not shown any particular fireworks that’s because those usually take place in the question and answer perod and I could tell you stories about Abby chairing me where he found the questions were far more to his liking and began to answer on my behalf until I found myself asking the audience if there are any further questions for professor and other such Tai jins that are not to be part of tonight’s celebration because as is the tradition with the Antonius rather than open the floor to your questions to we will all break from here to go and share a drink together and Corner our speaker to try and put the questions directly to him face to face over a glass of something bu before we do so there will be a few of you who managed to secure a copy of the book before they all sold out so what I’d like to ask of you is I’m going to just quickly show Abby to the table outside the lecture theater if you’d stay in your seats for just one second so I can get him safely and sconed there and then let you m them from the other side of the table Abby I’ll bring you a glass of sparkling wine to see you through the ordeal of signing all these books but before I take ABI sh away I just think you will agree with me that he has set an ungodly challenge for our 46 Antonia lecturer please give the warmest thanks [Applause]