The Denationalization of Iraqi Jews: The Legal and Rhetorical Production of Otherness

Abstract This article examines the ways Iraqi Jews have been portrayed as foreigners who do not belong to the national realm, whether in the past or the present, through a discussion of articles in ultranationalist newspapers between 1948 and 1970, and laws of denaturalization from 1950 to 2006. In Iraq, the process of articulating Arab solidarity in support of Palestine entailed the disarticulation of an Arab/Iraqi Jewish identity. As Jewishness was dissociated from Arabness, it was linked to Zionism in that being a Jew was translated as being loyal to the Zionist project of nation-building in Israel and as being disloyal citizens who were intent on the destruction of Arab countries. While denaturalization laws constituted a legal process of denationalization, the anti-Jewish rhetoric in the ultranationalist press entailed the de-Arabization and deindigenization of Iraqi Jews, namely the denial of cultural and political belonging and their rootedness in Iraq. This article discusses the anti-Jewish rhetoric in ultranationalist presses in order to show how denaturalization laws codified, and lent legitimacy, to these Othering discourses. Even though the views embraced by ultranationalist writers did not represent the majority of Iraqi society, their narrative was embraced and reproduced by Iraqi officials when they enacted denaturalization legislation.