Ever heard the reggae song On the rivers of Babylon? It was inspired by a biblical psalm (137:1-4) on the heartbroken Jews taken captive from their kingdom of Judah to Babylon in Mesopotamia (the land between the rivers) in the early 6th century BCE.

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when remembering Zion. There we hung our harps on willows for those who carried us away captive would ask us a song; those who had plundered us were asking us to be joyful, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ But how shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

The painting’s title West of Eden is symbolic of the Jews forced once again into exile, but this time from Babylon. Having lived for over two millennia in Babylon/Baghdad, they were forced to leave the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers in the late 1940s. By 1951, there were hardly any Jews left in Iraq.

On June 1st, 1941, the ancient Jewish community of Baghdad was viciously attacked by a mob of Nazi Arab supporters that swept through the city with impunity and the complicity of the police for two days until the “British” army finally deigned to enter the city to re-establish the rule of law. This infamous event is called the Fahrud which means ‘violent dispossession’ or ‘pogrom’ in Arabic. Jewish homes and businesses were looted and defenceless men and women were attacked with the aim to kill. 128 men and women of all ages were murdered in two days, over 600 wounded and an undetermined number of women raped. In the aftermath, hundreds of Jews fled to Iran, Lebanon or Syria where they had relatives. But most remained in Baghdad, Basra and Iraq’s numerous villages for these Jews had no other homeland than Iraq.

Because of the immense trauma of the Fahrud, even the most well-connected Baghdadi Jews, with ancient family roots that stretched over a thousand if not two thousand years, now looked upon their Arab neighbours with fear and distrust.

In 1951, just three years after the establishment of the State of Israel (May 14th, 1948), 135,000 Iraqi Jews were forced into exile, with no other place to go but Israel. They had to return their Iraqi passport, never to return, sign off all their possessions, and were allowed one suitcase per person. They had lived in Babylon/Baghdad for over a thousand years before the birth of Muhammad and were thrown out of Iraq like vagrants.

The irony is that it was the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II who brought them to Babylon in the first place. He destroyed the First Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and captured most of the elite population from the kingdom of Judah in the early 6th century BCE. He displaced the population in the hope that within a generation or two, the Jews would turn from being a rebellious exception to faithful servants of the empire. This was a normal practice when dealing with bellicose people in great empires. The Babylonian captivity lasted until 538 BCE, when Cyrus the great let them return to their kingdom of Judah and even provided them with enough funds to rebuild their temple. But part of the Jewish population opted to stay in Babylon for it was their home now. They stayed, and thrived. This was the home of the Talmud and all the great sages of old. Some of the greatest books of Hebrew scholarship were produced in Iraq. They witnessed every empire grow and fall, Neo-Babylonians, Achaemenids, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids, Arabs, Ottomans, British rule and actively helped build its independence in 1932.

The 7th century Arab invasion of Iraq and Islamisation of the land had huge consequences on minorities like Jews, Christians, Yezidi, Mandaeans and so many more. They were tolerated and could practice their faith within the boundaries of dhimmitude, e.g. they had to make a show of public deference to Muslims, could not hold public offices, or testify against Muslims in court, and of course paid a hefty tax. Oddly enough the colonial era under British rule was a time of freedom for all these minorities.

The rise of national socialism in Germany and its monstrous ideology was looked upon with delight by certain people in the middle east who either approached the Axis to counteract the power of the British Empire in the middle east or hoped to emulate Hitler’s ideology, tactics and national policy against Jews. Amin_al-Husseini (the great Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1920s until he was demoted) was both, at the forefront of anti-British activity and a pro-nazi. In 1937 he fled to Fascist Italy and then established himself in Berlin for his daily Arab radio programs. He met officially Hitler, Goebbels, had his own Muslim Bosnian militia trained by the Nazis.

On March 1st, 1944, while speaking on Radio Berlin, al-Husseini said: “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.”

Rashid_Ali_al-Gaylani, a pro-nazi and anti-British Iraqi 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 and by the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, leader of the failed (Arab) Palestinian uprising. The pro-nazi coup threatened the British route to India so 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. King Faisal was re-established on the throne but the British did not want to seem to be taking sides in internal politics so the army did not enter Baghdad. Al-Kailani and al-Husayni poisoned the minds of the losing side with tales of the Jews being a fifth column, helping the British to win, all of which led to the horrific pogrom of June 1st and 2nd 1941.

The painting shows a suitcase, because when the Jews were forced to leave, they were only allowed a suitcase per person. The woman in the frame was Renée Dangoor, a beautiful young Jewish Baghdadi crowned Miss Baghdad in 1946. Can anyone imagine such a thing today? The man in the other frame, in full ceremonial dress, is Sir Sasoon Eskell, a famous Jewish statesman who helped set up the modern state of Iraq. Below, a photograph in a book about Jewish scholars, for so much scholarship was produced over 2500 years. Behind all of this, an impression of the Tower of Babel – Etemenanki (in Akkadian), inspired by the reconstruction work of the German scholar Robert_Koldewey who excavated Babylon from 1899 to 1917.

Hiding at the very top, as black as his heart, the Mufti of Jerusalem, the Islamic leader of the future (Arab) Palestinians who imported Nazism into the middle east. His open palm, reminiscent of the prints left on Jewish houses during the fahrud in 1941.

The painting is both a reminder that the Jews were exiled from Judaea in 597 BC (or 586 BCE) to Babylon and 135.000 Iraqi Jews were forced back into exile in the late 1940s. They had lived there for almost 2500 years.