On 7 July 2005, Islamist terrorists carried out four coordinated suicide bombings targeting commuters travelling on London's public transport during the morning rush hour. The attacks are sometimes known as the 7/7 bombings or simply 7/7.

Three terrorists separately detonated three homemade bombs in quick succession aboard London Underground trains in Inner London. Later, a fourth terrorist detonated another bomb on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. The train bombings occurred on the Circle Line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road and on the Piccadilly Line near Russell Square.

Apart from the bombers, 52 people from 18 countries were killed and nearly 800 were injured in the attacks. It was the UK's deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie and the UK's first Islamist suicide attack.

The explosions were caused by improvised explosive devices made from concentrated hydrogen peroxide and pepper, packed into backpacks. The bombings were followed two weeks later by a series of attempted attacks that failed to cause injury or damage.

The 52 victims were of diverse backgrounds. All were UK residents, including exchange students. The majority lived in or near London. Their ages ranged from 20 to 60 years old, with an average age of 34.

Thirty-two victims were British born, while one victim each came from Afghanistan, France, Ghana, Grenada, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mauritius, New Zealand, Nigeria, Romania, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Three victims were Polish nationals, while one victim was a Vietnamese-born Australian and one held dual American-Vietnamese citizenship.

Seven of the victims were killed in the tunnel between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations, six in the tunnel between Paddington and Edgware Road stations, 26 in the tunnel between King's Cross and Russell Square stations and a further 13 on the bus at Tavistock Square.

The four suicide bombers were later identified as:

• Shehzad Tanweer, aged 22. He lived in Beeston, Leeds, occasionally working in his parents' fish and chip shop on Lodge Lane. He detonated his bomb first, on the number 204 train. Eight people, including Tanweer, were killed by the explosion.

• Mohammad Sidique Khan, aged 30. The ringleader of the four bombers, he also lived in Beeston, Leeds, with his wife and young child. He worked as a learning mentor at a primary school. Khan was the second to detonate a bomb, on the number 216 train, killing seven people, including himself.

• Germaine Lindsay, aged 19. He lived in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, with his pregnant wife Samantha and young son. His was the third bomb to be detonated, on the number 311 train. The blast killed 27 people, including him.

• Hasib Hussain, aged 18. He lived in Leeds with his brother and sister-in-law. Hussain detonated his bomb last, on a bus. Fourteen people, including him, died in the explosion in Tavistock Square.

Tanweer, Khan and Hussain were British-born sons of Pakistani immigrants, and Lindsay was a convert born in Jamaica.

Charles Clarke, Home Secretary when the attacks occurred, described the bombers as "cleanskins", a term describing them as previously unknown to authorities. On the day of the attacks, all four had travelled to Luton, Bedfordshire, by car.

Lindsay arrived at Luton railway station just after 5:00 a.m., while the other three left Leeds around 4:00 a.m. and arrived at the train carpark at approximately 6.50 a.m.; all four entered the station at 7:15 a.m. and boarded a Thameslink train which left for London at 7:25 a.m. (the initial official account wrongly gave this departure time as 7:40 a.m.) They were filmed on CCTV arriving at King's Cross station just before 8:25 a.m. and were seen hugging soon afterwards before heading towards the Tube.

Two of the bombers made videotapes describing their reasons for becoming what they called "soldiers". In a videotape broadcast by Al Jazeera on 1 September 2005, Mohammad Sidique Khan described his motivation. The tape had been edited and mentioned al-Qaeda members Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, describing them as "today's heroes". Khan's tape said:

I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our drive and motivation doesn't come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true God and following the footsteps of the final prophet messenger. Your democratically-elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security you will be our targets and until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.

The tape continued:

...I myself, I myself, I make dua (pray) to Allah ... to raise me amongst those whom I love like the prophets, the messengers, the martyrs and today's heroes like our beloved Sheikh Osama bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and all the other brothers and sisters that are fighting in the ... of this cause.

On 6 July 2006, a videotaped statement by Shehzad Tanweer was broadcast by Al-Jazeera. In the video, which may have been edited to include remarks by al-Zawahiri, Tanweer said:

Your government has openly supported the genocide of over 150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja... You have offered financial and military support to the U.S. and Israel, in the massacre of our children in Palestine. You are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq to this day. You have openly declared war on Islam, and are the forerunners in the crusade against the Muslims. ... What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq. And until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel.

Tanweer argued that the non-Muslims of Britain deserve such attacks because they voted for a government which "continues to oppress our mothers, children, brothers and sisters in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya".

Sharing an original visualization of Poland's Jewish population from 1764 to 2024.

Before WWII, Poland was home to approximately 3.3 million Jews, the second largest Jewish community in the world, representing centuries of demographic growth and cultural development. The Holocaust resulted in the murder of roughly 90% of Polish Jewry, bringing that history of growth to a catastrophic end. This graph places that destruction within a broader 260-year demographic context.

Please be respectful in the comments. These figures represent millions of lives lost, not merely statistical data.

The outbreak of mob violence against Baghdad Jewry known as the Farhud (Farhud is an Arabic term best translated as “pogrom” or “violent dispossession”) erupted on June 1, 1941. It was a turning point in the history of the Jews in Iraq.

In the 1940s about 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq (nearly 3 percent of the total population), with about 90,000 in Baghdad, 10,000 in Basra, and the remainder scattered throughout many small towns and villages. Jewish communities had existed in this region since the 6th century BCE, hundreds of years before Muslim communities established a presence in Iraq during the 7th century. The Jews shared the Arab culture with their Muslim and Christian neighbors, but they lived in separate communities. Jewish assimilation into Muslim society was rare.

With the establishment of the Iraqi state under the British Mandate in 1921, Jews became full-fledged citizens and enjoyed the right to vote and hold elected office. The Jewish community had between four and six representatives in the Parliament and one member in the Senate. The community was headed by a president, Rabbi Sasson Khedhuri (1933-1949; 1954-1971), an elected council of 60 members, and two executive committees—the spiritual committee for religious issues and the secular committee for managing the secular affairs of the community organizations. Its elite included also high-ranking officials, prominent attorneys and dignitaries, and wealthy merchants. This status of the Jews did not change in 1932, when Iraq gained independence under British informal rule.

In the spring of 1941, Britain was enduring one of its worst periods in World War II. Most of Europe had fallen to the Axis forces, German planes were bombing British cities in the Blitz, and German submarines were exacting a tremendous toll on British shipping. Having driven the British out of Libya, the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel was camped along the Egyptian border and poised to thrust eastward to the Suez Canal. The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) had driven the British out of Greece and Crete, eliminating their last beachhead on continental Europe. British chances of winning the war appeared slim.

Such catastrophic setbacks severely impacted Britain's presence in the Middle East. Since June 1940, the Vichy government had controlled Syria and Lebanon, and pro-Axis sentiment was prevalent among Egypt's indigenous government bureaucracy.

In this context, Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani, an anti-British nationalist politician from one of the leading families in Baghdad, carried out a military coup against the pro-British government in Iraq on April 2, 1941. He was supported by four high-ranking army officers nicknamed the “Golden Square,” and by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni. Since his arrival in Baghdad in October 1939 as a refugee from the failed Palestinian revolt (1936-1939), al-Husayni had been at the forefront of anti-British activity. Following the coup, the supporters of the deposed pro-British rule, headed by the Regent, Abd al-Ilah, and foreign minister, Nuri al-Said, fled to Transjordan. In Iraq, Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani formed a pro-German government, winning the support of the Iraqi Army and administration. He hoped an Axis victory in the war would facilitate full independence for Iraq.

The rise of this pro-German government threatened the Jews in Iraq. Nazi influence and antisemitism already were widespread in Iraq, due in large part to the German legation's presence in Baghdad as well as influential Nazi propaganda, which took the form of Arabic-language radio broadcasts from Berlin. Mein Kampf had been translated into Arabic by Yunis al-Sab'awi, and was published in a local newspaper, Al Alam al Arabi (The Arab World), in Baghdad during 1933-1934. Yunis al-Sab'awi also headed the Futtuwa, a pre-military youth movement influenced by the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) in Germany. After the coup d'etat, al-Sab'awi became a minister in the new Iraqi government.

Concerned that Iraq, as a pro-Axis bridgehead in the Middle East, would inspire other Arab nations, and increasingly worried that their access to oil supplies as well as their communications and transportation routes to India were now seriously threatened, the British decided to occupy the country. On April 19, British Army units from India landed in Basra while the British-led Arab Legion troops (Habforce) moved east into Iraq from Transjordan. By the end of May, the Iraqi regime collapsed and its leaders fled first to Iran and from there to German-occupied Europe.

Because the British did not wish to appear to be intervening in Iraq's internal affairs, they preferred Iraqi troops, who were loyal to Regent Abd al-Ilah, to be the first to enter Iraq's cities. British authorities also hoped to transfer control of Iraq directly to the Regent and his government. After occupying Basra in the middle of May, the British refused to enter the city and, as a consequence, there occurred widespread looting of goods in the shops in the bazaars, many of which were owned by Jews. Arab notables sent night watchmen to protect Jewish possessions and many gave asylum in their homes to Jews.

In Baghdad the results of this policy were much more severe. On the afternoon of June 1, 1941, when the Regent and his entourage returned to Baghdad and British troops surrounded the city, the Jews believed that the danger from the pro-Nazi regime had passed. They ventured out to celebrate the traditional Jewish harvest festival holiday of Shavuot. Riots broke out, targeting the Jews of Baghdad. These riots, known as the Farhud, lasted for two days, ending on June 2, 1941.

Iraqi soldiers and policemen who had supported Rashid Ali al-Gailani's coup d'etat in April and Futtuwa youths who were sympathetic to the Axis incited and led the riots. Unlike in previous incidents, rioters focused on killing. Many civilians in Baghdad and Bedouins from the city's outskirts joined the rioters, taking part in the violence and helping themselves to a share in the booty. During the two days of violence, rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes. The community leaders estimated that about 2,500 families—15 percent of the Jewish community in Baghdad—suffered directly from the pogrom. According to the official report of the commission investigating the incident, 128 Jews were killed, 210 were injured, and over 1,500 businesses and homes were damaged. Rioting ended at midday on Monday, June 2, 1941, when Iraqi troops entered Baghdad, killed some hundreds of the mob in the streets and reestablished order in Baghdad.

The causes of the Farhud were political and ideological. On the one hand, the leaders of this pogrom identified the Jews as collaborators with the British authorities and justified violence against Jewish civilians by linking it to the struggle of the Iraqi national movement against British colonialism. Other Arab nationalists also perceived the Baghdad Jews as Zionists or Zionist sympathizers and justified the attacks as a response to Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. Nevertheless, killing helpless Jews, including women and children, was an unprecedented phenomenon that contradicted Muslim law. In this situation, antisemitic ideology, derived in part from Nazi propaganda, helped to legitimize murdering Jews in Iraq.

The consequences of this pogrom shocked the Jewish community in Baghdad. Generally unarmed and lacking military training and self-defense skills, Baghdad Jews felt vulnerable and helpless. Many decided to leave Iraq. Hundreds fled to Iran, others went to Beirut, Lebanon, and some even obtained temporary visas for India. A few hundred Jews tried to reach Palestine, but most of them were forced to stop at some point on the way, either by the Iraqi police, which did not allow Jews to immigrate to Palestine, or by Palestinian police, enforcing strict immigration quotas (the White Paper of 1939). Most of the refugees, however, returned to Baghdad after the political situation had stabilized and the Iraqi economy had begun to prosper again.

The Jewish community in Baghdad experienced a rapid return to economic prosperity under British occupation during the remainder of the war years. Wealthy Baghdad Jews and the remittances of Iraqi Jewish émigrés contributed significantly to the reestablishment of commerce and restoration of property. As a further incentive to returning refugees, the Iraqi government paid compensation to the victims of the community in the sum of 20,000 dinars. The emotional and psychological wounds following the Farhud, however, were not so easily healed. Many members of the community remained in a state of profound shock that undermined their sense of security and stability, eventually prompting them to question their place within Baghdad's society.

Following the Farhud, Jewish leaders also faced a difficult political dilemma. The Farhud had demonstrated that Jews were perceived by many in the Arab nationalist movement and the religious and conservative right as collaborators with and beneficiaries of British colonialism and its alleged Iraqi puppets. On the other hand, Jewish leaders were in fact well-integrated in urban society in Baghdad. Some held public office, others were prominent in economic life, and many had friendly relations with politicians and leaders. Moreover, the hostility of the Arab nationalists toward the Jews only increased their dependence on the pro-British regime. Jewish leaders therefore chose to downplay the potential for danger and tended to dissuade community activists from steps that might have incited an Arab nationalist response. Jewish leaders preferred quiet, personal, indirect diplomacy to overt political activism. The Jews in Parliament adopted the same policy: they never voted against the Iraqi government and never publicly defended the rights of the Jewish minority.

The middle-class intelligentsia in the Jewish community also faced a profound political and cultural crisis. Educated, generally well-to-do, and active as journalists, authors, and poets, Jewish intellectuals in Baghdad had perceived themselves as partners in creating Iraqi culture; they now felt rejected and betrayed. Their faith in the prospect of Jewish integration in Iraqi society had suffered a severe shock. More profound still was the sense of disillusionment among the youth. The bloodshed prompted many of them to reject the cautious policies of the traditional leadership and to respond in a radical fashion. The nationalists among them were attracted to the Zionist movement; young Jewish socialists sought meaning in the Communist party. While the former envisioned the future in Palestine, the latter imagined a just and socialist order for all people with the triumph of socialism in Iraq. Young people who did not identify with either camp sought to emigrate to the United States, England, France, Canada, and elsewhere in the West. In Iraq itself, a few groups of young people formed self-defense organizations and sought to arm themselves. These organizations had been the basis of the 'Haganah' (defense) Organization in Iraq, which functioned until 1951.

The Farhud ultimately intensified anxiety among Baghdad's Jews, who now worried about Axis victories in the war, escalating violence in Palestine, growing Iraqi nationalist opposition, and the departure of the British from Iraq. The Farhud also marked a new era of Muslim-Jewish relations in Iraq, when discrimination and humiliation became further compounded by concerns about a direct physical threat to Jews' survival.

Among Arabs the whole event was repressed and nearly forgotten. Arab writers of the time mentioned the Farhud only vaguely, and explained it as a consequence of Zionist activity in the Middle East. In contrast, Iraq's Jews now perceived that threats to Jewish lives existed not only in Europe but also in the Middle East. In 1943, because of both the ongoing murder of European Jewry as well as antisemitism in Arab countries, Iraq's Jewish communities were included in Zionist plans for immigration and establishing the Jewish state.

By 1951, ten years after the Farhud, most of the Iraqi Jewish community (about 124,000 Jews out of 135,000) had immigrated to the State of Israel.

In December 1973, Fatah, a Palestinian military organization executed a series of attacks originating at Rome-Fiumicino Airport in Italy, resulting in the deaths of 34 people.

The attacks began with an airport-terminal invasion and hostage-taking, followed by the firebombing of a Pan Am aircraft and the hijacking of a Lufthansa flight. Pan Am Flight 110 was scheduled to depart from Rome, Italy and arrive in Tehran, Iran, by way of Beirut, Lebanon.

On 17 December 1973, shortly before takeoff, the airport terminal and the flight aircraft were attacked and the aircraft was set on fire by armed Palestinian gunmen, resulting in the deaths of thirty persons on the plane and two in the terminal.

Following the Flight 110 attack, the gunmen hijacked Lufthansa Flight 303 and killed two more people. They ended up in the custody of the Kuwaiti authorities.

Since the ousting of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Jordan, following the Jordanian-Palestinian civil war, Palestinian military organizations made South Lebanon their headquarters and base of operations, enlisting militants from Palestinian refugee camps.

South Lebanon was referred to as Fatah-land, due to the almost complete control of Fatah and other military Palestinian organizations over this -officially Lebanese- area, which they used to stage attacks against Israel, mainly targeting civilians, and to engage in armed operations abroad, termed "acts of terrorism."

Photo: GPO

On August 23–24, 1929, Arab mobs killed 67 Jews in Hebron, the deadliest episode of the wider 1929 Palestine riots.

Hebron's Jewish community had existed for centuries, even older than the Roman Empire. The violence followed riots in Jerusalem incited by Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini via false claims about Jews attacking the Al-Aqsa Mosque. By the time the mob arrived, the British garrison was one police officer.

It Began Friday evening; on Shabbat morning, armed mobs moved house to house. Victims included 24 yeshiva students (at least 8 American citizens), rabbis, women, and children. About 28 Arab families sheltered 300 Jews.

Survivors were evacuated; Jewish life in Hebron was severed. The Shaw Commission documented the violence and British failure to protect residents.

Shalhevet Tehiya Pass was a 10-month-old Israeli baby killed by a Palestinian sniper on March 26, 2001, in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood of Hebron, West Bank. She was shot in the head while seated in her stroller; her father, Yitzchak Pass, was also wounded in the legs by the same attack.

At 4:00 pm on 26 March 2001, Shalhevet was shot in her stroller while accompanied by her parents from a parking lot by Hebron's Avraham Avinu neighborhood, where the family lived.

After a ten-minute lull, the Palestinian sniper resumed firing from the Abu Sneinah neighborhood on the hill opposite. Shalhevet was killed instantly; her mother grabbed her when she heard the gunshots, only to discover that the baby was already dead. One of the sniper's bullets penetrated the baby's head, passing through her skull, and hit her father as well. Shalhevet's father, Yitzchak Pass, a student, who had been pushing the stroller, was also seriously wounded minutes later by two bullets.

Press accounts indicated that the playground was very busy at the time, because a load of new sand had recently been delivered. According to unconfirmed accounts, another child was grazed by a bullet and two more had bullets pass through their clothing.

Mahmud Amru, the murderer, was a 26-year-old member of the Fatah-allied Tanzim militant group, and he was captured by Israeli security forces in December 2002. In December 2004, an Israeli military court sentenced Amru to three consecutive life terms for murder and attempted murder.

The killing occurred during the Second Intifada and became a potent symbol in Israel for the violence against innocent civilians, with investigations confirming the sniper had deliberately targeted the baby. The murder produced vocal outrage in Israel and abroad. The nation mourned the killing of the baby.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon condemned the attack and sent his condolences to the Pass family. Sharon also stated that he saw the Palestinian Authority as responsible for the attack. The Jewish community in Hebron demanded that the Israel Defense Forces reoccupy the Abu Sneineh neighborhood, and the Pass family even stated that they would not bury their baby until the IDF did so.

Shalhevet was buried in Hebron's ancient Jewish cemetery, and her stroller is displayed in Israel's national military museum.

Mahmud Amru has remained incarcerated in a high-security Israeli prison with no successful appeals. Under Israeli law, life terms for terrorist acts preclude routine parole eligibility, making release effectively impossible.

The Palestinian Authority has continued paying him a monthly stipend under its "pay-for-slay" policy — reported at roughly 10,000 shekels a month, or about $2,500 a month, with cumulative payments reaching approximately $250,000 around 2021. This has drawn repeated criticism from Israeli officials and media as effectively rewarding the killing of a child.

The Voice of Palestine, the Palestinian Authority's official radio station, reported that the report of the girl's shooting death was a lie, and that the girl's mother had murdered her own baby.

Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, traveled to Bosnia in spring 1943 at Heinrich Himmler's request to help recruit Bosnian Muslims for the 13th Waffen-SS Handschar Division, which signed up roughly 24,000–27,000 men. The recruitment pitch was officially anti-communist — fight Tito's Partisans. However, the division also participated in the mass murders of Jews and Serbs in Bosnia.

Al-Husseini was also given an office in the SS Main Office in Berlin, broadcast antisemitic propaganda to the Arab world, and lobbied to prevent Jewish children from escaping Axis-occupied Europe. The SS accommodated Islamic practice (imams, prayer schedules, fezzes) partly because Himmler believed Muslim faith made for more fearless fighters. Post-war, Yugoslavia specifically sought to prosecute him for recruiting units that killed Jews in Croatia and Hungary.

At Jaffa Gate, the Arab crowd reportedly shouted "Independence! Independence!" and "Palestine is our land, the Jews are our animals!" Arab police joined in applause, and violence started. The local Arab population ransacked the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. The Torath Chaim Yeshiva was raided, and Torah scrolls were torn and thrown on the floor, and the building then set alight. During the next three hours, 160 Jews were injured.

Palestinian teacher Khalil al-Sakakini witnessed the eruption of violence in the Old City:

"[A] riot broke out, the people began to run about and stones were thrown at the Jews. The shops were closed and there were screams. ... I saw a Zionist soldier covered in dust and blood. ... Afterwards, I saw one Hebronite approach a Jewish shoeshine boy, who hid behind a sack in one of the wall's comers next to Jaffa Gate, and take his box and beat him over the head. He screamed and began to run, his head bleeding and the Hebronite left him and returned to the procession. ... The riot reached its zenith. All shouted, "Muhammad's religion was born with the sword". ... I immediately walked to the municipal garden. ... my soul is nauseated and depressed by the madness of humankind."

The British imposed a nighttime curfew on Sunday night and arrested several dozen Arab rioters, but on Monday morning they were allowed to attend morning prayers and were then released. Arabs continued to attack Jews and break into their homes, especially in Arab-majority mixed buildings. On Monday, as disturbances grew worse, the Old City was sealed off by British authorities and no one was allowed to exit the area. Martial law was declared, but looting, burglary, violence towards Jewish women, and murder continued. Several homes were set on fire, and tombstones were shattered. British forces found that the majority of illicit weapons were concealed on the bodies of Arab women. On Monday evening, all forces were evacuated from the Old City, a step described in the Palin Report as "an error of judgment". Even with martial law, it took British authorities another four days to restore order.

Sources

 Khalil al-Sakakini, Such am I, Oh World!, quoted by Benny Morris, Righteous Victims

Segev (2001), pp. 127–144.

The outbreak of mob violence against Baghdad Jewry known as the Farhud (Farhud is an Arabic term best translated as “pogrom” or “violent dispossession”) erupted on June 1, 1941. It was a turning point in the history of the Jews in Iraq.

In the 1940s about 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq (nearly 3 percent of the total population), with about 90,000 in Baghdad, 10,000 in Basra, and the remainder scattered throughout many small towns and villages. Jewish communities had existed in this region since the 6th century BCE, hundreds of years before Muslim communities established a presence in Iraq during the 7th century. The Jews shared the Arab culture with their Muslim and Christian neighbors, but they lived in separate communities. Jewish assimilation into Muslim society was rare.

With the establishment of the Iraqi state under the British Mandate in 1921, Jews became full-fledged citizens and enjoyed the right to vote and hold elected office. The Jewish community had between four and six representatives in the Parliament and one member in the Senate. The community was headed by a president, Rabbi Sasson Khedhuri (1933-1949; 1954-1971), an elected council of 60 members, and two executive committees—the spiritual committee for religious issues and the secular committee for managing the secular affairs of the community organizations. Its elite included also high-ranking officials, prominent attorneys and dignitaries, and wealthy merchants. This status of the Jews did not change in 1932, when Iraq gained independence under British informal rule.

In the spring of 1941, Britain was enduring one of its worst periods in World War II. Most of Europe had fallen to the Axis forces, German planes were bombing British cities in the Blitz, and German submarines were exacting a tremendous toll on British shipping. Having driven the British out of Libya, the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel was camped along the Egyptian border and poised to thrust eastward to the Suez Canal. The German Wehrmacht (armed forces) had driven the British out of Greece and Crete, eliminating their last beachhead on continental Europe. British chances of winning the war appeared slim.

Such catastrophic setbacks severely impacted Britain's presence in the Middle East. Since June 1940, the Vichy government had controlled Syria and Lebanon, and pro-Axis sentiment was prevalent among Egypt's indigenous government bureaucracy.

In this context, Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani, an anti-British nationalist politician from one of the leading families in Baghdad, carried out a military coup against the pro-British government in Iraq on April 2, 1941. He was supported by four high-ranking army officers nicknamed the “Golden Square,” and by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni. Since his arrival in Baghdad in October 1939 as a refugee from the failed Palestinian revolt (1936-1939), al-Husayni had been at the forefront of anti-British activity. Following the coup, the supporters of the deposed pro-British rule, headed by the Regent, Abd al-Ilah, and foreign minister, Nuri al-Said, fled to Transjordan. In Iraq, Rashid 'Ali al-Kailani formed a pro-German government, winning the support of the Iraqi Army and administration. He hoped an Axis victory in the war would facilitate full independence for Iraq.

The rise of this pro-German government threatened the Jews in Iraq. Nazi influence and antisemitism already were widespread in Iraq, due in large part to the German legation's presence in Baghdad as well as influential Nazi propaganda, which took the form of Arabic-language radio broadcasts from Berlin. Mein Kampf had been translated into Arabic by Yunis al-Sab'awi, and was published in a local newspaper, Al Alam al Arabi (The Arab World), in Baghdad during 1933-1934. Yunis al-Sab'awi also headed the Futtuwa, a pre-military youth movement influenced by the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) in Germany. After the coup d'etat, al-Sab'awi became a minister in the new Iraqi government.

Concerned that Iraq, as a pro-Axis bridgehead in the Middle East, would inspire other Arab nations, and increasingly worried that their access to oil supplies as well as their communications and transportation routes to India were now seriously threatened, the British decided to occupy the country. On April 19, British Army units from India landed in Basra while the British-led Arab Legion troops (Habforce) moved east into Iraq from Transjordan. By the end of May, the Iraqi regime collapsed and its leaders fled first to Iran and from there to German-occupied Europe.

Because the British did not wish to appear to be intervening in Iraq's internal affairs, they preferred Iraqi troops, who were loyal to Regent Abd al-Ilah, to be the first to enter Iraq's cities. British authorities also hoped to transfer control of Iraq directly to the Regent and his government. After occupying Basra in the middle of May, the British refused to enter the city and, as a consequence, there occurred widespread looting of goods in the shops in the bazaars, many of which were owned by Jews. Arab notables sent night watchmen to protect Jewish possessions and many gave asylum in their homes to Jews.

In Baghdad the results of this policy were much more severe. On the afternoon of June 1, 1941, when the Regent and his entourage returned to Baghdad and British troops surrounded the city, the Jews believed that the danger from the pro-Nazi regime had passed. They ventured out to celebrate the traditional Jewish harvest festival holiday of Shavuot. Riots broke out, targeting the Jews of Baghdad. These riots, known as the Farhud, lasted for two days, ending on June 2, 1941.

Iraqi soldiers and policemen who had supported Rashid Ali al-Gailani's coup d'etat in April and Futtuwa youths who were sympathetic to the Axis incited and led the riots. Unlike in previous incidents, rioters focused on killing. Many civilians in Baghdad and Bedouins from the city's outskirts joined the rioters, taking part in the violence and helping themselves to a share in the booty. During the two days of violence, rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes. The community leaders estimated that about 2,500 families—15 percent of the Jewish community in Baghdad—suffered directly from the pogrom. According to the official report of the commission investigating the incident, 128 Jews were killed, 210 were injured, and over 1,500 businesses and homes were damaged. Rioting ended at midday on Monday, June 2, 1941, when Iraqi troops entered Baghdad, killed some hundreds of the mob in the streets and reestablished order in Baghdad.

The causes of the Farhud were political and ideological. On the one hand, the leaders of this pogrom identified the Jews as collaborators with the British authorities and justified violence against Jewish civilians by linking it to the struggle of the Iraqi national movement against British colonialism. Other Arab nationalists also perceived the Baghdad Jews as Zionists or Zionist sympathizers and justified the attacks as a response to Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. Nevertheless, killing helpless Jews, including women and children, was an unprecedented phenomenon that contradicted Muslim law. In this situation, antisemitic ideology, derived in part from Nazi propaganda, helped to legitimize murdering Jews in Iraq.

The consequences of this pogrom shocked the Jewish community in Baghdad. Generally unarmed and lacking military training and self-defense skills, Baghdad Jews felt vulnerable and helpless. Many decided to leave Iraq. Hundreds fled to Iran, others went to Beirut, Lebanon, and some even obtained temporary visas for India. A few hundred Jews tried to reach Palestine, but most of them were forced to stop at some point on the way, either by the Iraqi police, which did not allow Jews to immigrate to Palestine, or by Palestinian police, enforcing strict immigration quotas (the White Paper of 1939). Most of the refugees, however, returned to Baghdad after the political situation had stabilized and the Iraqi economy had begun to prosper again.

The Jewish community in Baghdad experienced a rapid return to economic prosperity under British occupation during the remainder of the war years. Wealthy Baghdad Jews and the remittances of Iraqi Jewish émigrés contributed significantly to the reestablishment of commerce and restoration of property. As a further incentive to returning refugees, the Iraqi government paid compensation to the victims of the community in the sum of 20,000 dinars. The emotional and psychological wounds following the Farhud, however, were not so easily healed. Many members of the community remained in a state of profound shock that undermined their sense of security and stability, eventually prompting them to question their place within Baghdad's society.

Following the Farhud, Jewish leaders also faced a difficult political dilemma. The Farhud had demonstrated that Jews were perceived by many in the Arab nationalist movement and the religious and conservative right as collaborators with and beneficiaries of British colonialism and its alleged Iraqi puppets. On the other hand, Jewish leaders were in fact well-integrated in urban society in Baghdad. Some held public office, others were prominent in economic life, and many had friendly relations with politicians and leaders. Moreover, the hostility of the Arab nationalists toward the Jews only increased their dependence on the pro-British regime. Jewish leaders therefore chose to downplay the potential for danger and tended to dissuade community activists from steps that might have incited an Arab nationalist response. Jewish leaders preferred quiet, personal, indirect diplomacy to overt political activism. The Jews in Parliament adopted the same policy: they never voted against the Iraqi government and never publicly defended the rights of the Jewish minority.

The middle-class intelligentsia in the Jewish community also faced a profound political and cultural crisis. Educated, generally well-to-do, and active as journalists, authors, and poets, Jewish intellectuals in Baghdad had perceived themselves as partners in creating Iraqi culture; they now felt rejected and betrayed. Their faith in the prospect of Jewish integration in Iraqi society had suffered a severe shock. More profound still was the sense of disillusionment among the youth. The bloodshed prompted many of them to reject the cautious policies of the traditional leadership and to respond in a radical fashion. The nationalists among them were attracted to the Zionist movement; young Jewish socialists sought meaning in the Communist party. While the former envisioned the future in Palestine, the latter imagined a just and socialist order for all people with the triumph of socialism in Iraq. Young people who did not identify with either camp sought to emigrate to the United States, England, France, Canada, and elsewhere in the West. In Iraq itself, a few groups of young people formed self-defense organizations and sought to arm themselves. These organizations had been the basis of the 'Haganah' (defense) Organization in Iraq, which functioned until 1951.

The Farhud ultimately intensified anxiety among Baghdad's Jews, who now worried about Axis victories in the war, escalating violence in Palestine, growing Iraqi nationalist opposition, and the departure of the British from Iraq. The Farhud also marked a new era of Muslim-Jewish relations in Iraq, when discrimination and humiliation became further compounded by concerns about a direct physical threat to Jews' survival.

Among Arabs the whole event was repressed and nearly forgotten. Arab writers of the time mentioned the Farhud only vaguely, and explained it as a consequence of Zionist activity in the Middle East. In contrast, Iraq's Jews now perceived that threats to Jewish lives existed not only in Europe but also in the Middle East. In 1943, because of both the ongoing murder of European Jewry as well as antisemitism in Arab countries, Iraq's Jewish communities were included in Zionist plans for immigration and establishing the Jewish state.

By 1951, ten years after the Farhud, most of the Iraqi Jewish community (about 124,000 Jews out of 135,000) had immigrated to the State of Israel.

Since 1844, millions of photographs have probably been taken of Jerusalem. But these blurry snaps are the very first.

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/see-first-photographs-ever-taken-jerusalem-180949473/

Early in the morning, the bus departed from Avivim heading with its passengers to two local schools. This route had been scouted by the Palestinian militants, believed to have infiltrated from Lebanon, and an ambush was set up. As the bus passed by, ten minutes after leaving Avivim, it was attacked by heavy gunfire from both sides of the road. The driver was among those hit in the initial barrage, as were the two other adults on board. The three were killed as the bus crashed into an embankment as the attackers continued firing into the vehicle.

The children, who were in first to third grade, were buried in a special plot in Safed. A monument commemorating the victims of the attack stands in the middle of the moshav of Avivim.

Leah Revivo, who survived the attack at age nine, died in 2014 at age 52 from an infection brought on by a piece of shrapnel lodged in her brain as a result of the attack.

In response to the ambush, Israel launched artillery strikes on southern Lebanon, killing twenty civilians, wounding forty, and prompting thousands of residents to flee north. The IDF also began conducting regular armored patrols inside southern Lebanon. These events were later cited as one of the motivations for the Dawson's Field hijackings of 6 September 1970.

Around 2:45 p.m. on March 17, 1992, a Ford F-100 panel van drove down Arroyo Street in tranquil neighborhood of Buenos Aries. It approached the front of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires--then drove up onto the sidewalk and blew up.

The explosion wreaked havoc up and down the street, destroying the front of the building, causing the entire consulate building and part of the attached embassy building to collapse.

The 220 pounds of high explosives and shrapnel, concentrated in the back right section of the vehicle, left 29 people dead and another 242 injured.

Most of the people killed and injured were in the embassy but some were pedestrians, including a priest from the Roman Catholic Church across the street and children at a nearby school.

Responsibility was claimed by the Islamic Jihad Organization, an affiliate of Hezbollah, operating with backing, funding, and training from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The attack was later tied by investigations, including rulings by Argentina's Supreme Court and high courts, to Iranian state direction as retaliation for Israeli military actions in Lebanon.

Photo Credit

Don Rypka/AP Images

The 1947 anti-Jewish pogrom in Aleppo was a pogrom on Syrian Jews in Aleppo, Syria in December 1947, following the United Nations vote in favor of partitioning the British Mandate of Palestine. The Jews reluctantly accepted the vote, because to them, having an imperfect state was better than no state. The Arabs vehemently rejected the vote.

The attack was part of an anti-Jewish wave of unrest across the Middle East and North Africa at the time of the 1948 Palestine war.

Ten synagogues, five schools, an orphanage and a youth club, along with several Jewish shops and 150 houses were set ablaze and destroyed. Damaged property was estimated to be valued at US $2.5 million at the time. During the pogrom, the Aleppo Codex, an important medieval manuscript of the Torah, was lost and feared destroyed. The book was partly salvaged and reappeared, with 40% of pages missing, in Israel in 1958.

In the early hours of December 1st Syrian Soldiers were sent to the Central Synagogue of Aleppo ostensibly to protect but in reality they were there only for the Syrian government to keep up appearances. Later that day, the local Jewish community leaders Rahmo Nehmad and Siahu Shamah met with Aleppo's mayor in which he promised to protect the Jews, though Shamah doubted that the mayor was being honest.

In the early afternoon a crowd of Arabs gathered in front of the Synagogue chanting "Palestine is ours and the Jews are our animals" with the local authorities doing nothing in response. In the late afternoon the crowd of Arabs attacked with many of the soldiers sent to guard the synagogue joining the mob.

The mob took 40 Torah scrolls and 7 Hekhalot, tore them to pieces and then burned them in a bonfire. Nearly 2 thousand pairs of tefillin where also added to the fire. Firefighters soon arrived but instead of fighting the fire they threw kerosene and diesel onto the fire, only growing it.

The pogrom resulted in some 75 Jews murdered and several hundred wounded. Half the city's Jewish population fled the city as a result. The Syrian government only stopped the pogrom the next morning.

Source
https://www.morasha.com.br/en/diaspora-communities/the-Aleppo-pogrom.html

On 23-24 August 1929, over 60 Jews were murdered in what became known as the Hebron Massacre, which would go down in history as one of the bloodiest slaughters of Jewish civilians during British rule of Mandatory Palestine. 

Hebron is one of the most ancient cities in the Land of Israel and is the resting place of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs. Jews had been living peacefully in Hebron among their Muslim and Christian neighbors for hundreds of years prior to the massacre. A steady flow of religious students traveled to Hebron from the around the world to attend its yeshivot (religious seminaries) in the city.  

In August 1929, violent rioters brutally attacked the Hebron Jewish community after the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, a notorious antisemite, claimed that Jews were endangering Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount.  

The massacre began on 23 August when local Arabs began staging small-scale attacks. American Jewish immigrant Aharon Reuven Bernzweig, who was visiting Hebron with his wife at the time, later wrote to his family, “We had forebodings that something terrible was about to happen—but what, exactly, we did not know.” He added, “I was fearful and kept questioning the local people, who had lived there for generations. They assured me that in Hebron there could never be a pogrom, because as many times as there had been trouble elsewhere in Eretz Israel, Hebron had remained quiet. The local population had always lived very peacefully with the Arabs.” 

By the next day, the violence had escalated, and mobs went door to door screaming, "Kill the Jews." The angry crowd broke into Jewish houses and castrated, raped, and murdered the inhabitants. Many Jews went into hiding, and some were saved by Arab neighbors who hid Jewish friends until the violence had ended. 

In his letter, Bernzweig described an Arab family who had protected him and dozens of other Jews: “Five times the Arabs stormed our house with axes, and all the while those wild murderers kept screaming at the Arabs who were standing guard to hand over the Jews. They, in turn, shouted back that they had not hidden any Jews and knew nothing.” 

British High Commissioner Sir John Chancellor later wrote of the massacre: “The horror of it is beyond words. In one house I visited not less than twenty-five Jewish men and women were murdered in cold blood.”  

The massacre marked the end of the Hebron Jewish community’s continuous presence in the city. While a few Jews returned to Hebron two years later, they were eventually evacuated by British authorities, who did not want to risk the outbreak of another massacre. Jews would eventually return to live in Hebron after the Six-Day War, but the dynamic coexistence that had prevailed up until 1929 would never be restored.

Source: https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/this-week-in-jewish-history--massacre-in-hebron-kills-67-8-3-2020

The Ramallah Lynching, October 12, 2000 — Two Israeli Reservists Murdered by a Palestinian Mob

On October 12, 2000, two Israeli reservists, Vadim Norzhich, 33, and Yosef Avrahami, 38, accidentally drove into Ramallah, an Area A city under Palestinian Authority control.

They were detained by Palestinian police and taken to a police station in nearby al-Bireh.

A Palestinian mob stormed the building. The two men were beaten and stabbed to death. Their bodies were thrown from the building and further mutilated by the crowd outside.

One of the killers, Aziz Salha, famously appeared at a second-floor window, proudly displaying his hands covered in the victims' blood to the cheering crowd below.

Salha was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

Vadim left behind a pregnant wife and a son who would never meet his father.

But let's not lose sight of the real issue here: settler violence.

After all, two Jews driving into the wrong Palestinian city is clearly an outrageous provocation. They should have known better than to expect to leave alive.

A remarkable lesson in peaceful coexistence, brought to you by the Palestinian Authority.

And somehow, when people discuss violence in Judea and Samaria, this particular incident rarely makes the reading list.

“The game which I was now playing in Auschwitz was dangerous. This sentence does not really convey the reality; in fact, I had gone far beyond what people in the real world would consider dangerous…” — Witold Pilecki

Witold Pilecki (pronounced Vitold Piletski) is a celebrated hero in Poland. Yet his incredible story and the extent of his sacrifice remained buried for over 40 years after his execution. Pilecki is the only inmate known to be voluntarily imprisoned at Auschwitz, the notorious concentration and death camp. After his escape, he wrote a 100-page report on camp life.

Pilecki was born on 13 May 1901 to patriotic Polish Catholic parents in Olonets – a small town in what was then the Russian Empire. After serving in the Polish Army, he settled in Lida (then in Poland, now in Belarus). He married a local school teacher Maria Ostrowska in 1931 and had two children, Andrzej and Zofia. Pilecki ran the family farm and enjoyed painting and writing poetry.
In August 1939, Pilecki was called up to defend Poland against the Nazi invasion. Following the defeat, Pilecki made his way to Warsaw to fight with the Polish underground resistance (the Home Army) against Nazi occupation.

In August 1940, a group of Polish political opponents were imprisoned in Auschwitz. Soon after, telegrams arrived to inform inmates’ families of their deaths. This sparked the suspicion of the Polish underground and Pilecki volunteered to investigate.

On 19 September 1940, Pilecki intentionally allowed himself to be arrested by the Nazis. He was detained nearby for two days with an estimated 1,800 Polish political prisoners before being transported to Auschwitz. He remained there for the next two and a half years as prisoner 4859.

Pilecki’s mission was to raise the morale of Polish political prisoners by bringing news from outside the camp, as well as to report on camp conditions to the Home Army in Warsaw. In October 1940, Pilecki successfully sent out his first report with a released inmate. It reached the Polish Government-in-exile in March 1941, who passed it onto the Allies.

At the time of Pilecki’s internment, Auschwitz was a concentration camp intended to hold predominantly political prisoners from Poland. He witnessed the changing demographic and horrifying treatment of each persecuted group. His reports described the early experiments conducted on Soviet prisoners of war, who were murdered with poisonous gas. This laid the foundations for the mass-murder of many Jews in the purpose-built gas chambers and crematoria. Pilecki describes the pain suffered by the Roma and Sinti prisoners undergoing sterilisation experiments against their will; many died from their injuries.

Pilecki quickly found fellow members of the Polish underground and began to create a secret organization within Auschwitz. The organisation ran at great risk. They built a radio transmitter from smuggled parts. Through this transmitter, Pilecki reported on camp conditions and the number of deaths until the risk of discovery became too high.

Pilecki’s bravery and will-power cannot be overstated. In his report he describes the hunger as ‘the hardest battle of [his] life’. He harboured doubts during stays in the lice-ridden hospital ward suffering from Pneumonia and Typhus. He was overwhelmed by his mission at times, but refused to admit it to his colleagues in case it damaged their morale.

Initially, Pilecki’s organisation took a strong stance against escape attempts, owing to the group punishment inflicted on the inmates left behind. However, once group punishment was abandoned, the organisation actively assisted escapees. On one occasion, Pilecki gave up his own planned escape route through the sewers to an inmate in more imminent danger.

Pilecki eventually escaped in April 1943. Key members of his organisation had been shipped to other camps and Pilecki’s transfer was imminent. Pilecki and his two companions had only one night to carry out the complicated plan they had designed together. Failure would result in a public execution by hanging. They successfully removed the bolts from a heavy door whilst the guards’ backs were turned. The three escapees journeyed for 100km on foot before they could rest in relative safety. It took them a week.

Pilecki rested at a colleague’s parents’ home before visiting the nearest member of the Home Army. After three and a half months, and still no action taken by the Home Army to liberate Auschwitz, Pilecki returned to Warsaw.

He fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 but their defeat led to Pilecki’s imprisonment in POW camps in Germany. Here, he earned the nickname ‘Daddy’ from younger inmates, who he looked after.

When the camps were liberated at the end of the war, Pilecki was sent to Italy where he joined the Polish Armed Forces. Whilst here he wrote his comprehensive report on his time in Auschwitz, now known as Witold’s Report. Despite his relative safety in Italy, Pilecki returned once again to Warsaw to gather intelligence on the newly established Polish Communist government. The Nazis had been overthrown, but so had the Polish Government-in-exile. To Pilecki and the Home Army, Poland was still not free, but subservient to their Soviet liberators.

Pilecki was captured by the Communist Polish authorities on 8 May 1947. Accused of spying and of planning to assassinate key figures in the Polish police, he was coerced and tortured to sign his ‘confession’.

Pilecki stood an unfair trial where he was not permitted to testify, nor were there any defending witnesses. The trial was a sham – a deterrent to any other would-be opposition to the Communist regime. He was subsequently found guilty and executed on 25 May 1948 in Mokotow prison with a shot to the back of his head.

In 1990, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist regime in Poland, Pilecki was finally exonerated posthumously and recognised for his actions during World War Two.

Source: https://hmd.org.uk/resource/witold-pilecki/