Yesterday’s New York Times ran a piece about the plight of Iraq’s Jews. Stephen Farrell writes:

Just over half a century ago, Iraq’s Jews numbered more than 130,000. But now, in the city that was once the community’s heart, they cannot muster even a minyan, the 10 Jewish men required to perform some of the most important rituals of their faith.

Farrell runs down the “decades of trauma” that have delivered Iraq’s Jews into the present day:

the 1941 Farhud pogrom in which more than 130 Jews were killed during the Feast of Shavuot, World War II, the Holocaust, the anti-Zionism of Saddam Hussein and the post-2003 rise of Islamic militants.

“Anti-Zionism,” huh? Is that what was behind Saddam’s observation that Hitler was “too mild”?

What’s most astounding here is the even weight Farrell places on, say, World War II, the Holocaust, and post-2003 Iraq. It’s as if each fact further displaced an equal number of Jews. In reality, the Ba’athist persecution of Jews (including public hangings) had caused that 130,000 to dwindle to scarcely more than a minyan before the Iraq War. If the new line on the war is that the U.S. has disturbed a hidden Jewish sanctuary in Mesopotamia, it’s safe to say things are going even better than we’ve been told.

UPDATE: Yglesias swallows it whole and notes Saddam was “rabidly anti-Zionist”.