'Shadow in Baghdad' reaches Iraqi viewers

With thanks: Niran

Who knew?  This report (Arabic - sorry, no English subtitles) on a London screening of the film 'Shadow in Baghdad' appeared on Iraqi TV. The screening was organised by the Meir Basri Forum. Some 80 people attended - mainly Iraqi Muslims and Christians. The Meir Basri Forum was founded by an Iraqi Jew and a Shi'a Muslim in 2010.

The film tells the story of Linda Menuhin Abdul-Aziz, whose lawyer father disappeared in Baghdad in 1972, presumed murdered by the regime. An Iraqi Muslim journalist offers to help Linda trace her father's last movements. Linda achieves closure of sorts, and her faith in humanity is reaffirmed.

 The TV channel Al-Hurra has also been interviewing Linda Menuhin and Duki Dror, the film's director, an Israeli of Iraqi origin.




Images of the terrible hangings of nine Jews on 27 January 1969 fill the screen.

 What is interesting is that the Arab media is engaging with Iraqi Jews who now live in Israel and carry Israeli passports.

 Linda's story may elicit sympathy from an Arab audience, but have they really come to terms with the fact that Iraqi Jews have moved on? These Jews do not yearn to return to the Iraqi motherland, but are now citizens of the West and of Israel. Their children may still speak some Arabic and enjoy the music and the food, but they are firmly established in their new countries.

At last, the story of the oppression and flight of the Iraqi Jews is reaching a mainstream Arab audience - surely, a miraculous development.

'Shadow in Baghdad' reviewed