Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi Connection

Samir strikes again! In "Babylon 2" he was asking sons and daughters of immigrants about their experiences - he came to Switzerland as a young child, his parents are from Iraq. His father always told him about his Jewish colleagues in the Communist Party of Iraq. Samir wanted to talk to some of them - he didn't find them, but he found other former members of the Iraqi Communist Party, among them Samir Naqqash who still writes literature in Arabic and is viewed by Nagib Mahfuz as one of the best writers of literature in Arabic. He also talked to Sami Michael, beststelling author in Israel, also a Jew from Iraq. Last but not least, he asked Professor Ella Shohat from the City University of NY what it means to be an Oriental Jew in Israel. She wrote a book about the image of Oriental Jews in Israeli films - Samir quotes from Ephraim Kishon's "Sallah Sabati". He juxtaposes other cliches: Paul Newman in "Exodus", evil Jews and Arabs in "Jud Suess" and "True Lies".