By
Donald H. Harrison
Citing their own bitter experiences in a country where Jews were tortured
and degraded, four Iraqi Jews now living in San Diego express fear for the
health and safety of Americans taken prisoners in the current war in Iraq.
They also told of their concern that the United States, as an occupying force
in Iraq, will become as much the focus of Arab resentment and anger as Israel
is.
Souada Spivack, whose own brother suffered Iraqi imprisonment and torture,
told Heritage emotionally: "I pray for the sake of the Americans,
that they should come back to their families, to the people who love them. ..
I want them to live and I want their loved ones to enjoy them."
Seeing images of the American POWs on television made her shudder:
"I said, 'Please, God, watch over their safety and give them the strength
to endure what is coming. ... Give them the strength to survive, the physique
to live through it, and the strength in the heart that when they come out of
there, they donąt become like animals."
Spivack fled Iraq over the Iranian border in 1970, nearly two decades after
some 100,000 Iraqi Jewish citizens were "permitted" to leave all
their belongings behind and emigrate en masse to Israel.
Amnon Dallal, Lea Mor and Shlomo Levy — today San Diego residents— all
were among that earlier wave of Jews who gave up Iraqi material comforts in
1951 rather than remain the target of oppressive laws and state-sponsored
violence.
As a youth, Dallal was a member of the secret Jewish self-defense Shura forces
trained by Haganah operatives from Israel. He recalled that his uncle, Sasson
Dallal, was hanged in a public square and his body left on display after being
arrested for activities opposing the Iraqi government.
Although Iraqi leaders have changed over the years, Dallal said the widespread
use of torture against opponents has continued unabated since the time his
family members and friends suffered its effects.
"They did every. ...brutal thing that you can imagine that can be done to
the human being,˛ Dallal said. It was not uncommon for people taken prisoners
to be suspended from a ceiling by their thumbs, and left there without food or
water for hours. During this time, he said, prisoners would be whipped
continuously.
Shlomo Levy and Lea Mor, nephew and aunt from a large family, were
respectively 7 and 9 years old when their families emigrated to Israel in
1951. They still remember the atmosphere of fear in which Jewish children
lived amid bullying Arab neighbor children.
"We were afraid of the Arabs," Mor said. She remembered being
blocked from going to her home by Arab boys who would threaten her until her
uncle arrived.
Levy said when he was in school, the students would all sit on steps, and Arab
boys on the step above him would kick him in the back. "You could not
kick them back, because if you did, you were in trouble," Mor
interjected. "You had to just ignore them and go home."
Spivack's family had intended to leave Iraq with the others in 1951, when her
mother was pregnant with her. However, her father, Zaki Jabbaway, received
word from relatives in Israel that all the Iraqi immigrants were being lodged
in tents. Worried that his pregnant wife might
not be able to withstand such conditions, he waved aside her entreaties that
they go anyway, and decided to remain in Iraq. It was a fateful decision for
the family, which would increase to two boys and two girls.
Before her marriage, Spivack was known as Souada Jabbaway, a name that had
been Arabized from Souada Shaul.
After the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel defeated the armies of its
neighbors, anti-Jewish violence increased in Iraq. During one such outbreak,
Spivack's brother Shmuel was arrested.
For nearly eight months, no one in the family knew where Shmuel was, or even
if he were dead or alive.
From their home in Basra, they traveled to Baghdad, becoming sickened by the
brutality in a public square where the bodies of executed Jews were being
beaten with sticks by Arab passersby. Spivack remembers the horror of looking
up at the faces of the dead Jews hanging in the square to see if any of them
were her brother. Spivack was a teenager at the time.
Arriving at a central prison, their mother "begged and kissed the feet of
people and beseeched the people, 'let me know if my son is alive; let me see
him.' As Spivack's mother, Marcelle, made inquiries within, an official took
pity on the teenage girl as she sat with her baby brother, Shaul, in
the sun outside the prison. He told her that there were some Jews being kept
in solitary confinement. He suggested they return in three days, and "we
kept coming for a week, and finally they led us to my brother...
"I cannot describe to you the condition! The cell was maybe 3x3..
... There was defecation, urine, rats and dung beetles everywhere; he had
ticks walking all over him. His body was covered with cuts, and he had been
given nothing except bread and water. Needless to say, my mom was overcome.
She said to me, 'Go out and protect the baby!'"
The older brother, who today has a doctorate from MIT in nuclear physics,
described to his mother how his captors had tortured him, burned his body, cut
him on the back, pierced his eardrums, and broke his teeth— all in an effort
to get him to confess falsely to plotting to blow up bridges and buildings.
Spivack remembers the hatred in the eyes of Arabs who passed her while she was
waiting outside the prison building with her little brother. "You
Jew!" they spat. "You bastard, you Jew!"
Three years later, the family escaped from Iraq with the help of Kurds who hid
them in a hut in the northern part of the country, then led them to the
Iranian border. One Kurd, who had occupied a position of influence in the
government, made secret arrangements for their escape because he appreciated
the fact that the Jabbaway family had helped tutor his son in various school
subjects. Spivack today follows in that tradition, earning money as a tutor in
math and physics.
After her family crossed into Iran, they were surrounded by armed border
guards. Tensions between Iran and Iraq historically were high, and the guards
accused the family of being spies. When they explained that they were Jews
seeking to go to Israel, the Jabbaways were not immediately believed.
Most Jews, after all, had left Iraq 20 years before. But a man who spoke some
Hebrew was summoned, and Spivack's father — who sometimes led his
congregation in prayer as a cantorial soloist — recited enough Jewish
prayers to satisfy the skeptical man. In that time of the Shah of Iran, there
was cooperation between Israel and Iran.
Eventually, they reached Iran's capital city, Teheran, and from there they
were flown to Israel. "Aug. 27, 1970, was the day that I arrived at the
Lod airport,"Spivack recalled. "I will always remember. I got off
and the first thing I did was I kissed the ground, and God rewarded me. My
baby daughter, Tali, who today is 19 years old, was born on an Aug. 27."
In some ways, the Jabbaway family's trip to Israel paralleled Amnon Dallal's
experiences. Having been in the Jewish self-defense group, Dallal grew up
secreting weapons and documents under the tiles of his floor and explosives in
the garden of his parents' house. "They are still there," he
chuckled during an interview with Heritage.
Money to bribe prison guards was hidden inside hollowed-out watermelons and
smuggled to prisoners. With other teens from his neighborhood, Dallal went to
neighborhoods where they were not known to protect Jewish residents against
Arab youth gangs. Meanwhile, Jewish youths from other neighborhoods protected
his.
One of the advantages of such a network was that it provided an early warning
system to members sought by the Iraqi authorities. When Dallal received a note
that he was about to be arrested, he left his parents' home in a truck, drove
to a pre-designated meeting place, and picked up three-dozen other youths.
Then he drove to the Iranian border and set out by
foot through the mountains. They were quite grateful when they were arrested
by the Iranian authorities.
As a member of the Shura, Dallal had been given the code name Amnon, the only
name by which his colleagues knew him— a precaution lest someone be captured
and tortured. After his escape from Iraq and later reunification with his
parents in Israel, he adopted the first name Amnon in place of his given name,
Ezra.
For all four refugees, life in Israel was a world far from that of life in
Iraq. Whereas once they had been financially well off, now they were virtually
penniless, having been permitted to carry only two suitcases of belongings
with them. And those suitcases were searched for money and other
valuables.
"They took our houses, businesses, everything, and they told you only the
last minute before you left," Mor remembered. After the family arrived in
Israel, it lived in tents for years.
Levy remembered that one of the few keepsakes his family brought with them was
a photograph that had been taken of him as a younger child. Worn and crumpled
from age, it is still an important keepsake. Dallal similarly retains a family
photograph from Iraq days.
When the Jabbaway family escaped, necessity forced them to travel light.
Spivack's mother secreted into the clothing of the youngest child a mezuzah
that had been in the family for perhaps 300 years. It had served as a family
talisman, passed from generation to generation to women facing difficult
pregnancies. Today, Spivack cherishes that mezuzah and lends it to her four
children when they feel they are facing tough circumstances.
As immigrants in the United States, these Iraqi Jewish families have fared
well. Dallal had a career setting up computers in hospital laboratories, and
nearly 15 years ago he became the recipient of a heart transplant. His wife,
Dalya, who left Iraq as a child, teaches Israeli and other dances through a
group called Dancing Unlimited.
Levy, who met his American wife, Taube, in New York City, decided to move to
San Diego because this city reminded him of Haifa. He is a longtime employee
of Radio Shack.
Spivack met her husband, Bruce, while both were studying at the Technion in
Israel. Today, their oldest son is a doctor; their younger son is studying to
be a doctor, while their oldest daughter is an attorney, and their youngest
daughter is a college student planning to become a doctor. |