March 29, 2024

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Iraqis may be softening towards Israel

http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2017/10/iraqis-may-be-softening-towards-israel.html
Here is more evidence that Iraqis are becoming less hostile to Israel. Palestinian involvement in bombings and support for Saddam Hussein, Kurdish sympathy for Israel and the Iranian threat, are all factors. Report in al-Monitor:

Waving the Kurdish and Israeli flags (Ala al-Marjani/Reuters)

BAGHDAD — Some Iraqis are calling for closer relations with Israel, feeling a common bond of past persecution and a desire for peace and stability. Many people might find two factors cited in this change quite surprising: Iraqis’ guilt, and some resentment of Palestinians.

“There is a dramatic shift that has changed [Iraqi] public opinion [toward Israel] as a result of the Palestinians’ involvement in supporting the [late Iraqi] dictator Saddam Hussein and thus getting involved in terrorist operations,” writer and political analyst Ali Mared al-Asadi told Al-Monitor recently by phone.
“Most Shiites in Iraq have a sense of guilt because they did not support the peaceful Jewish community with whom they lived for hundreds of years in peace and harmony in one homeland, but who were persecuted and displaced during the monarchy [1958-1963] and the Baathist regime [1968-2003] eras.”

Much of the fanaticism and hostility toward Israel appears to have declined in central and southern Baghdad, where the majority of people are Shiite.
On Sept. 9, Asadi wrote, “It is not in the interest of Shiites to antagonize Israel. Shiites and Jews ought to reach understandings based on common humanitarian grounds that guarantee peaceful coexistence in the Middle East.”

Asadi told Al-Monitor by phone, “If we put the influence of Iran and the remnants of the Baathist culture aside, Iraq would have no excuse to keep officially antagonizing Israel, especially since the majority of the Arab states, [even] the Palestinian state itself, hold relations with Tel Aviv.” Asadi apparently was referring to Arab states having contacts or other ties with Tel Aviv, because most Arab states do not formally recognize Israel..

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