Passage from Iraq

[Phx_Dem]

Fifty-five years after she was abducted from her family's home in Baghdad by her Muslim neighbor and forced to renounce her Judaism, Hannah Menashe managed to flee Iraq and find her way to one of Israel’s European embassies. Her long, exhausting journey is finally coming to an end these days, as she will soon be reunited with he family in Israel, who thought her murdered all these years.

Hannah’s fascinating story begins in the 1950s, when her Baghdad-native family – parents and seven siblings – decided to immigrate to Israel. Hannah, already married to a Jewish Iraqi, was also planning to make aliyah, when fate struck: A Muslim neighbor, who was aware of the family’s plans to immigrate, kidnapped the striking Hannah to keep her by his side. Her siblings only have a vague recollection of that horrible day. They went looking for Hannah, they say, but the earth had swallowed her.

Decades passed, the siblings made aliyah and the family expanded, all the while keeping their bitter secret to themselves. Shortly after arriving in Israel, Hannah’s mother died at 37, her heart broken by losing her child.

Six months ago, out of the blue, the family received a surprising phone call. The woman on the other side of the line was Ravit Topol from the Ministry of Interior, with an extraordinary story she was looking to verify.

It turns out Hannah had been forced to become a Muslim and had raised her neighbor’s children for 50 years. No one in the Baghdad neighborhood knew about her secret or her Jewish roots, and she was afraid her husband would kill her if she tried to contact her siblings.

More at:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3554723,00.html

[notfullofit]

1. What an amazing and heartbreaking story! Thank you. nt

[Vegasaurus]

2. No one cares about the plight of Jews, forced from Arab countries like Iraq

or even stories like this, of a woman forced to convert to Islam, and kept from her family.

No one cares about the theft of Jewish land and possessions by Arabs in these countries.

Why is that?

[Violet_Crumble]

4. If no-one cared, her story wouldn't have been told n/t

[LeftishBrit]

7. self-delete (dupe)

[LeftishBrit]

8. It's not that people don't care...

but that they are ignorant about this subject. Many people outside the Middle East seem to think that *all* Jews are of Europaean origin, and that Middle Eastern Jews simply don't exist.

[LeftishBrit]

3. A frightening story...

I'm glad she escaped in the end - and was reunited with her family! But imagine 55 years of it!

[Violet_Crumble]

5. And I thought I had the neighbour from hell..

Putting up with a yappy little dog that barks all night is nothing compared to that neighbour...

I'm a bit confused by some of the article. What was her husband's role in what happened? The article said he was Jewish but that she was scared he'd kill her if she tried to contact her family, and that she finally got out of Iraq after he died. So was it a neighbour from hell or a husband from hell who didn't want to move to Israel and didn't want his wife going either?

[LeftishBrit]

6. According to the way I read it...

this wasn't her Jewish husband, but another man who decided that he wanted her, and kept her from her family. The abuser from hell, I suppose.

[Violet_Crumble]

9. I read it that way too until towards the end of the article...

That's where it said that she'd been too scared to contact her family in case her husband killed her for doing it. So it sounds like he was complicit in it, but to what extent I couldn't work out...