Impossible Exodus: Iraqi Jews in Israel

Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures

by Orit Bashkin

“An exceptional exposé of the sufferings of the Iraqi and Mizrahi Jews in Israel during the 1950s.” —Övg Ülgen, ShofarBetween 1949 and 1951, 123,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to the newly established Israeli state. Lacking the resources to absorb them all, the Israeli government resettled them in maabarot, or transit camps, relegating them to poverty. In the tents and shacks of the camps, their living conditions were squalid and unsanitary. Basic necessities like water were in short supply, when they were available at all. Rather than returning to a homeland as native sons, Iraqi Jews were newcomers in a foreign place.Impossible Exodus tells the story of these Iraqi Jews’ first decades in Israel. Faced with ill treatment and discrimination from state officials, Iraqi Jews they joined Israeli political parties, demonstrated in the streets, and fought for the education of their children, leading a civil rights struggle whose legacy continues to influence contemporary debates in Israel. Orit Bashkin sheds light on their everyday lives and their determination in a new country, uncovering their long, painful transformation from Iraqi to Israeli. In doing so, she shares the resilience and humanity of a community whose story has yet to be told.Praise for Impossible Exodus“Orit Bashkin sheds light on a case of historical injustice. Impossible Exodus will greatly enhance our understanding of the pain, discrimination, and struggle to survive in a different culture that those immigrants had to endure.” —Abbas Shiblak, University of Oxford“A marvelously clear-eyed and compassionate recovery of the experience of Iraqi Jews forced to seek a new life in Israeli transit camps. Orit Bashkin gives these people voice, agency, and sympathetic understanding in their complex struggles against discrimination and cultural loss.” —Roger Owen, Harvard University“What is distinctive about Bashkin’s book on Iraqi Jews is the many stories she recovers that describe not only the difficulties encountered by immigrants but also the humiliations imposed by thoughtless and prejudiced officials put in charge of people whose culture they neither understood nor respected.” —Donna Robinson Divine, Middle East Journal

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Judaism, Israel, Religion, Middle East, Politics

321 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 8, 2017

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

i think Orit Bashkin is one of my favorite historians currently working. her work is so detailed and so well argued. I don't think this is quite as good as New Babylonians and but it's definitely enlightening.