What I learned From the Film “Forget Baghdad”

What I learned From the Film “Forget Baghdad”

Professor Ella Shohat’s presentation and discussion about Iraqi Jews living in Israel was an eye-opener for me.  In the film, the views of the four leftists, the former communist Iraqi Jews, were represented in the context of both Iraq’s anti-semitism and Israel’s Zionism.  While the specific experiences of these characters in the film vary, the persecutions they suffered as a group manifest that Israel is not a monolithic, homogenous state, but a nation of diverse subcultures with its fare share of disruptive forces from within. 

While the four characters’ testimonial accounts of the brutality inflicted on them by the Iraqis nationalists are not surprising, Zionists’ social injustices against the Iraqi Jewish who are their own kinsmen, especially the suspected bombing incident, were shocking.  For example, the Iraqi’s expelled Jews whose only choice was to immigrate to Israel,” instead of compassion from their ancestor’s homeland, received a cold, inhumane welcome.  Furthermore, instead of descent housing, food, and other urgent provisions, Israel negligently allowed the Iraqi refugees to virtually starve and sleep cold in the open wilderness.  If Israel’s not providing descent shelters and fair jobs to its Iraqi refugees is a literal enactment of racism against its own kinsmen, stereotypical portrayals of Iraqiness in books, films and other communicative devices further devastate and fragment the already battered Iraqi Jewish community in Israel.  For instance, the children of Iraqi Jews, not only internalize their ethnic stereotypes, become antagonistic toward their own family members and cultures.  Arguably, then, for the Iraqi Jews who were expelled/immigrated to Israel, the worst kind of perpetrators of social injustice were, and still are, the orthodox Jewish neighbors in this so called “a holy land.”

Indeed, the film made me realize that racism is not only manifested among the obviously different races, but that it is a universal phenomenon even among one’s own cultural/religious groups.  Most notably, the stories of these four men in the film informed me and the other audience that because Iraq is Israel’s national enemy, even after many years of Iraqi Jew’s integration and assimilation into Israel’s mainstream culture, the stereotypical prejudice and mentality of the dominant group cannot be eradicated.  Overall, the film converted me into a critique of man-made ideologies, such as Nazism, Communism, and Zionism, which all have negatively affected the lives of the Iraqi Jews.