Syria, Iraq Mark Kristallnacht: Sadly, They Have No Jews To Oppress Anymore

Kristallnacht-like events in the Arab world occurred at various scales over the course of the centuries, most infamously the 1941 Farhud.

Damascus, November 9 – The 84th anniversary of a pogrom across the Third Reich that destroyed synagogues, destroyed Jewish enterprises, killed dozens, and saw the deportation to concentration camps of hundreds of Jews passed in the Middle East with the somber realization that unlike in the 1930’s or 40s, many Arab countries have either zero or only a handful of Jews remaining, and have been forced to find other populations to trod upon, persecute, and deny the few privileges that other citizens of those regimes do enjoy.

Officials in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya, among others, marked Kristallnacht – the Nazi-run 1938 “Night of Broken Glass” in Germany and Austria – with the mournful observation that, having dispossessed and expelled the vast majority of their Jews following Israel’s establishment in 1948 and its success in 1967, those countries cannot exercise direct oppression and abuse of Jewish residents as they once did.

“The pivotal role that Jews played in our society for thousands of years has been left with inadequate replacement,” lamented Libyan Minister of Genocidal Rage Biashlo Kadarka. “Other religious minorities, even Christians, are fun to persecute, sure, but it doesn’t carry the same existential thrill. Not even when we mass-rape migrants from sub-Sahara. It might have been short-sighted to get rid of our Jews. With a little more long-term planning we could be celebrating Kristallnacht for real, not just observing its anniversary.”

Anidd Sadmi of the Yemeni Ministry of Internal Dissension noted the political dimension. “The safety valve of having the Jews to kick around was always important for stability,” he explained. “But we got somewhat carried away here in the Arab and Muslim world, amid the shame of losing big in 1948 against what we thought was a weak, cowardly enemy, and even bigger in 1967, and many of our countries just got rid of all of our Jews in a fit of pique. It felt right at the time. But now we’re paying for it – we have to resort to persecuting other, less exciting, religious or ethnic minorities while insisting Israel is the abusive terrorist entity.”

Kristallnacht-like events in the Arab world occurred at various scales over the course of the centuries, most infamously the 1941 Farhud massacre of Baghdad’s Jewish community; to begin with, Jews, as a rule, were an underclass in that society, banned from owning weapons, building tall synagogues, and suffering legal discrimination in civil and criminal proceedings, among other indignities such as orphans automatically seized and raised as Muslims.

Then countries such as Syria harbored actual Nazi war criminals, bringing the historical poetry closer to completion.

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