title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The Persian people were now again to make their influence felt in the history of the world. Ardashir I destroyed the rule of the Arsacids in the winter of 226, and founded the illustrious dynasty of the Sassanids. Different from the Parthian rulers, who were northern Iranians following Mithraism and Zoroastrianism and speaking Pahlavi dialect, the Sassanids intensified nationalism and established a state-sponsored Zoroastrian church which often suppressed dissident factions and heterodox views. Under the Sassanids, Babylonia became the province of Asuristan, with its main city, Ctesiphon, becoming the capital of the Sassanid Empire.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Shapur I (Shvor Malka, which is the Aramaic form of the name) was a friend to the Jews. His friendship with Shmuel gained many advantages for the Jewish community.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Shapur II's mother was Jewish, and this gave the Jewish community a relative freedom of religion and many advantages. Shapur was also the friend of a Babylonian rabbi in the Talmud called Raba, and Raba's friendship with Shapur II enabled him to secure a relaxation of the oppressive laws enacted against the Jews in the Persian Empire. In addition, Raba sometimes referred to his top student Abaye with the term Shvur Malka meaning "Shapur [the] King" because of his bright and quick intellect.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Christians, Manicheans, Buddhists and Jews at first seemed at a disadvantage, especially under Sassanian high-priest Kartir; but the Jews, dwelling in more compact masses in cities like Isfahan, were not exposed to such general discrimination as broke out against the more isolated Christians.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The first legal expression of Islam toward the Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians after the conquests of the 630s were the poll-tax ("jizyah"), the tax upon real estate ("kharaj") was instituted. The first caliph, Abu Bakr, sent the famous warrior Khalid bin Al-Waleed against Iraq; and a Jew, by name Ka'ab al-Aḥbar, is said to have fortified the general with prophecies of success.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The Jews may have favored the advance of the Arabs, from whom they could expect mild treatment. Some such services it must have been that secured for the exilarch Bostanai the favor of Umar I, who awarded to him for a wife the daughter of the conquered Sassanid Chosroes II as Theophanes and Abraham Zacuto narrate. Jewish records, as, for instance, "Seder ha-Dorot," contain a Bostanai legend which has many features in common with the account of the hero Mar Zutra II, already mentioned. The account, at all events, reveals that Bostanai, the founder of the succeeding exilarch dynasty, was a man of prominence, who received from the victorious Arab general certain high privileges, such as the right to wear a signet ring, a privilege otherwise limited to Muslims.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Omar and Othman were followed by Ali (656), with whom the Jews of Babylonia sided as against his rival Mu'awiyah. A Jewish preacher, Abdallah ibn Saba, of southern Arabia, who had embraced Islam, held forth in support of his new religion, expounded Mohammed's appearance in a Jewish sense. Ali made Kufa, in Iraq, his capital, and it was there that Jews expelled from the Arabian Peninsula went (about 641). It is perhaps owing to these immigrants that the Arabic language so rapidly gained ground among the Jews of Babylonia, although a greater portion of the population of Iraq were of Arab descent. The capture by Ali of Firuz Shabur, where 90,000 Jews are said to have dwelt, is mentioned by the Jewish chroniclers. Mar Isaac, chief of the Academy of Sura, paid homage to the caliph, and received privileges from him.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The proximity of the court lent to the Jews of Babylonia a species of central position, as compared with the whole caliphate; so that Babylonia still continued to be the focus of Jewish life. The time-honored institutions of the exilarchate and the gaonate—the heads of the academies attained great influence—constituted a kind of higher authority, voluntarily recognized by the whole Jewish diaspora. But unfortunately exilarchs and geonim only too soon began to rival each other. A certain Mar Yanḳa, closely allied to the exilarch, persecuted the rabbis of Pumbedita so bitterly that several of them were compelled to flee to Sura, not to return until after their persecutor's death (about 730). "The exilarchate was for sale in the Arab period" (Ibn Daud); and centuries later, Sherira boasts that he was not descended from Bostanai. In Arabic legend, the resh galuta (ras al-galut) remained a highly important personage; one of them could see spirits; another is said to have been put to death under the last Umayyad caliph, Merwan ibn Mohammed (745–750).


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The Umayyad caliph, Umar II. (717–720), persecuted the Jews. He issued orders to his governors: "Tear down no church, synagogue, or fire-temple; but permit no new ones to be built". Isaac Iskawi II (about 800) received from Harun al-Rashid (786–809) confirmation of the right to carry a seal of office. At the court of the mighty Harun appeared an embassy from the emperor Charlemagne, in which a Jew, Isaac, took part. Charles (possibly Charles the Bald) is said to have asked the "king of Babel" to send him a man of royal lineage; and in response the calif dispatched Rabbi Machir to him; this was the first step toward establishing communication between the Jews of Babylonia and European communities. Although it is said that the law requiring Jews to wear a yellow badge upon their clothing originated with Harun, and although the laws of Islam were stringently enforced by him to the detriment of the Jews, the magnificent development which Arabian culture underwent in his time must have benefited the Jews also; so that a scientific tendency began to make itself noticeable among the Babylonian Jews under Harun and his successors, especially under Al-Ma'mun (813–833).


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Like the Arabs, the Jews were zealous promoters of knowledge, and by translating Greek and Latin authors, mainly at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, contributed essentially to their preservation. They took up religio-philosophical studies (the "kalam"), siding generally with the Mutazilites and maintaining the freedom of the human will ("chadr"). The government meanwhile accomplished all it could toward the complete humiliation of the Jews. All non-believers—Magi, Jews, and Christians—were compelled by Al-Mutawakkil to wear a badge; their places of worship were confiscated and turned into mosques; they were excluded from public offices, and compelled to pay to the caliph a tax of one-tenth of the value of their houses. The caliph Al-Mu'tadhel (892–902) ranked the Jews as "state servants."


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In the 7th century, the new Muslim rulers institute the kharaj land tax, which led to mass migration of Babylonian Jews from the countryside to cities like Baghdad. This in turn led to greater wealth and international influence, as well as a more cosmopolitan outlook from Jewish thinkers such as Saadiah Gaon, who now deeply engaged with Western philosophy for the first time. When the Abbasid Caliphate and the city of Baghdad declined in the 10th century, many Babylonian Jews migrated to the Mediterranean region, contributing to the spread of Babylonian Jewish customs throughout the Jewish world.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The Caliphate hastened to its end before the rising power of the Mongol Empire. As Bar Hebræus remarks, these Mongol tribes knew no distinction between heathens, Jews, and Christians; and their Great Khan Kublai Khan showed himself just toward the Jews who served in his army, as reported by Marco Polo.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Hulagu (a Buddhist), the destroyer of the Caliphate (1258) and the conqueror of Palestine (1260), was tolerant toward Muslims, Jews and Christians; but there can be no doubt that in those days of terrible warfare the Jews must have suffered much with others. Under the Mongolian rulers, the priests of all religions were exempt from the poll-tax. Hulagu's second son, Aḥmed, embraced Islam, but his successor, Arghun (1284–91), hated the Muslims and was friendly to Jews and Christians; his chief counselor was a Jew, Sa'ad al-Dawla, a physician of Baghdad.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: It proved a false dawn. The power of Sa’ad al-Dawla was so vexatious to the Muslim population the churchman Bar Hebraeus wrote so “were the Muslims reduced to having a Jew in the place of honor.” This was exacerbated by Sa’d al-Dawla, who ordered no Muslim be employed by the official bureaucracy. He was also known as a fearsome tax collection and rumours swirled he was planning to create a new religion of which Arghun was supposed to be the prophet. Sa’d al-Dawla was murdered two days before the death of his Arghun, then stricken by illness, by his enemies in court.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: After the death of the great khan and the murder of his Jewish favorite, the Muslims fell upon the Jews, and Baghdad witnessed a regular battle between them. Gaykhatu also had a Jewish minister of finance, Reshid al-Dawla. The khan Ghazan also became a Muslim, and made the Jews second class citizens. The Egyptian sultan Naṣr, who also ruled over Iraq, reestablished the same law in 1330, and saddled it with new limitations. During this period attacks on Jews greatly increased. The situation grew dire for the Jewish community as Muslim chronicler Abbas al-’Azzawi recorded:


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: “These events which befell the Jews after they had attained a high standing in the state caused them to lower their voices. [Since then] we have not heard from them anything worthy of recording because they were prevented from participation in its government and politics. They were neglected and their voice was only heard [again] after a long time.”


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Baghdad, reduced in importance, ravaged by wars and invasions, was eclipsed as the commercial and political centre of the Arab world. The Jewish community, shuttered out of political life, were reduced too and the status of the Exilarch and the Rabbis of the city diminished. Great numbers of Jews began to depart, seeking tranquility elsewhere in the Middle East beyond a now troubled frontier.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Mongolian fury once again devastated the localities inhabited by Jews, when, in 1393, Timur captured Baghdad, Wasit, Hilla, Basra, and Tikrit, after obstinate resistance. Many Jews who had fled to Baghdad were slaughtered. Others escaped the city to Kurdistan and Syria. Many were not so fortunate, with one report mentioning 10,000 Jews killed in Mosul, Basra, and Husun Kifa.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The ruins of Baghdad after Timur's conquests was described in 1437 by the Muslim chronicler Al-Maqrizi: “Baghdad is in ruins. It has no mosque, no congregation of believers, no call to prayer and no markets. Most of the date palms have withered. Most of the irrigation canals are blocked. It cannot be called a city.”


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: After the death of Timur, the region fell into the hands of marauding Turkmen tribesmen who were unable to establish a government of any kind. Ravaged by conquest, Iraq fell into lawlessness and became close to uninhabitable. Roads became dangerous and irrigation systems collapsed, seeing precious farmland in the delta region sink below water. Rapacious Bedouin filled the vacuum, rendering the caravan trade all but impossible. Denied authority of any kind and severed from its historic trading ties with the Middle East and the Far East, the ancient city of Baghdad had become a minor town.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The cumulative effect of the Mongol rampage and the social collapse that followed was that of the pre-existing Jewish community of Baghdad either died or fled. Jewish life entered a Dark Age. According to historian Zvi Yehuda, the fifteenth century sees no reports on Jews in Baghdad or in its surroundings, in Basra, Hilla, Kifil, ‘Ana, Kurdistan, even in Persia and the Persian Gulf. The organized Jewish community of Iraq appears to have disappeared in this period for more than four generations. This is behind the discontinuity between the present traditions of Iraqi Jewry and the Babylonian traditions of Talmudic or Geonic times. It remains the case that most Jewish Iraqis are of indigenous Middle Eastern ancestry rather than migrants from Spain, as in the case of parts of North Africa and the Levant.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: After various changes of fortune, Mesopotamia and Iraq came into the hands of the Ottoman Turks, when Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1534 took Tabriz and Baghdad from the Persians, leading to an improvement in the life of the Jews. The Persian reconquest in 1623 during the Ottoman–Safavid War (1623–39) led to a much worse situation, so that the re-conquest of Iraq by the Turks in 1638 included an army with a large population of Jews. Some sources say they made up 10% of the army. The day of the reconquest was even given a holiday, "Yom Nes" (day of miracle).


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: This period of Mameluk rule in Iraq, under the aegis of the Ottoman Empire, united most of the future territory of Iraq into a single unit for the first time. As it ceased to be a warring frontier, opportunities for trade increased, especially due to the growing European presence on the ocean routes to India. Following this uptick in trade and security, Jewish communities began to be reestablished in Baghdad and Basra.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: This was not the revival of a community so much as the establishment of a new one. According to the historian Zvi Yehuda, an analysis of the tens of thousands of Iraqi Jewish family trees stored at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center have indicate that families of Baghdadi Jews do not possess family trees tracing their lineage prior to the end of the 17th century. They were migrants from smaller Mesopotamian communities and from across the Middle East. Yehuda calls the Jewish community that reestablished itself in Baghdad, Basra and other cities the “new Babylonian Diaspora.”


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In 1743, there was a plague in which many of the Jews of Baghdad, including all the rabbis, died. The remaining Baghdad community asked the community of Aleppo to send them a new Chief Rabbi, leading to the appointment of Rabbi Sadka Bekhor Hussein. Culturally, it would prove a decisive moment when Chief Rabbi Shmuel Laniyado of Aleppo picked his protege for Baghdad. It is said he was accompanied by fifty Sephardic Jewish families from Aleppo. Many of them were Rabbis who were to sit on the Beth Din of Baghdad and Basra.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: This led to an assimilation of Iraqi Judaism to the general Sephardic mode of observance. Jewish culture revived, with communal leaders as Solomon Ma’tuk being renown for his work as an astronomer, library and piyyutim. This brought the leading Jewish families of Baghdad, and with it, their Jewish practice into the network of Sephardic scribes and later printing presses established in Aleppo, Livorno and Salonica. Surviving records of the contents of the library of Solomon Ma’tuk shows a great number of books purchased from Sephardic scribes and some even originally from Spain.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Further driving this process was the high esteem in which Rabbi Sadka Bekhor Hussein was held as a halakhic authority. This saw him accepted as a halakhic authority by the Jews of Persia, Kurdistan and the fledgling Baghdadi trading outposts being established in India. Sephardic Rabbis and their rulings and practices were held in higher esteem. The historian Zvi Yehuda says the period saw the wheels turn in the relationship between the Babylonian Jewish communities and those of Iraq and Persia: “Before the 18th century, the Baghdadi Community needed the support of those communities; now the Baghdadi Community influenced them.”


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The 18th century saw the Jewish community of Aleppo exert a significant influence over the Jewish communities of Baghdad and Basra not only culturally but economically. Syrian Jewish families establishing themselves in Iraq were often formerly Spanish Sephardic families from Aleppo. These were typically high-class families such as the Belilios family who were frustrated with the dimming prospects of Aleppo and attracted to Baghdad and Basra's booming trade with India. This process saw the leading Jewish families of Baghdad, Basra and Aleppo grow to be heavily interlinked through marriages, religious life, partnership and trade in the 18th century.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: As this process of cultural assimilation saw the Jews of Baghdad come to more closely resemble the Jews of Aleppo, economic decline in Syria, Kurdistan and Persia worsened. The 18th century saw a growing number of Jews leave from there to Baghdad, Basra or the Baghdadi-led outposts being established in the Far East. The still small and reemerging Jewish community of Baghdad became a migration destination with Jewish families settling in Baghdad from Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, Ana and Basra. A key driver of this was decline of the old caravan route running between these cities. There was also migration from the communities of Palestine, the villages of Kurdistan, and it is said that a handful of Jews settled in Baghdad from Germany.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: By the early 19th century, Baghdad had been reestablished as a leading Jewish center in the Middle East. There were over 6,000 Jews in city, two synagogues and strong community institutions. This was not a golden age, however. Over time, the centralized Ottoman control over the region deteriorated and the situation of the Jews worsened, but the population continued to grow very rapidly. An example of this deterioration is the persecution of Dawud Pasha, which began in 1814 and lasted until 1831. Many leaders of the Jewish community, such as Solomon Ma’tuk, were forced to flee. One of the foremost leaders of the community, David Sassoon, was forced to flee first to Busher and then to India.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: By the early 19th century, trade between Baghdad and India was said to be entirely in the hands of the Jewish community. Though Jewish traders from the Middle East had been crossing the Indian Ocean since antiquity, the deteriorating situation in the Ottoman Empire and the rise of commercial opportunities in British India saw many Jews from Iraq establish themselves permanently in India, at first in Surat, then especially in Calcutta and Bombay.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: This was the beginning of primarily Iraqi Jewish diaspora in Asia known as the Baghdadi Jews, to which David Sassoon and many of the other leading Jewish families in Baghdad fled the persecution of Dawud Pasha. These Judeo-Arabic speaking communities, following mostly Iraqi Jewish customs, would be formed along the so-called opium route between India and China, including in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. These were all led by leading Iraqi Jewish families such as the Sassoons, Ezras, Eliases, Gubbays and Judahs. These families were active sponsors of religious life and charity back in Iraq.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Israel Joseph Benjamin, the Ashkenazi Jewish traveller and scholar from Moldova, who conducted extensive journeys to visit even the most furthest flung Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities of Asia between 1845 and 1859, wrote of Baghdad that “in no other place in the east have I found my Israelitish brothers in such perfectly happy circumstances.” One distinguishing feature of the communities of Baghdad and Basra remarked upon by Ashkenazi travelers was the extreme young age of marriage: between eight and twelve years old for girls to men usually eighteen to twenty. Another was the traditional face veils and long flowing garments wore by Jewish women who were not expected to show their face in public like their Muslim neighbors.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: During the 19th century, the influence of the Jewish families of Aleppo of the previous century faded as Baghdad emerged as a strong Jewish and economic center in its own right. The Jewish population has grown so rapidly that by 1884, there were 30,000 Jews in Baghdad and by 1900, 50,000, comprising over a quarter of the city's total population. Large-scale Jewish immigration from Kurdistan to Baghdad continued throughout this period. By the mid-19th century, the religious infrastructure of Baghdad grew to include a large yeshiva which trained up to sixty rabbis at time. Religious scholarship flourished in Baghdad, which produced great rabbis, such as Joseph Hayyim ben Eliahu Mazal-Tov, known as the Ben Ish Chai (1834–1909) or Rabbi Abdallah Somekh (1813-1889).


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Early Labor Zionism mostly concentrated on the Jews of Europe, skipping Iraqi Jews because of their lack of interest in agriculture. The result was that "Until World War II, Zionism made little headway because few Iraqi Jews were interested in the socialist ideal of manual labor in Palestine."


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: During the British Mandate, beginning in 1920, and in the early days after independence in 1932, well-educated Jews played an important role in civic life. Iraq's first minister of finance, Sir Sassoon Eskell, was a Jew, and Jews were important in developing the judicial and postal systems. Records from the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce show that 10 out of its 19 members in 1947 were Jews and the first musical band formed for Baghdad's nascent radio in the 1930s consisted mainly of Jews. Jews were represented in the Iraqi parliament, and many Jews held significant positions in the bureaucracy. Between 1924-1928, some Jews fled persecution in Russia, arriving in Iraq as refugees.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Organized Zionist activity began in Iraq in the 1920s. The Jewish population was generally sympathetic toward the movement, although not at that time as a solution for Iraqi Jews. The Zionist organization in Baghdad was initially granted a permit by the British, in March 1921, but in the following year, under the government of King Faisal I, was unable to renew it. Nevertheless, its activities were tolerated until 1929. In that year, after conflict and bloodshed in Palestine during anti-Zionist demonstrations, Zionist activities were banned and teachers from Palestine, who had taught Hebrew and Jewish history, were forced to leave.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In the 1930s, the situation of the Jews in Iraq deteriorated. Previously, the growing Iraqi Arab nationalist sentiment included Iraqi Jews as fellow Arabs, but these views changed with the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian Mandate and the introduction of Nazi propaganda. Despite protestations of their loyalty to Iraq, Iraqi Jews were increasingly subject to discrimination and anti-Jewish actions. In September 1934, following the appointment of Arshad al-Umari as the new minister of economics and communications, tens of Jews were dismissed from their posts in that ministry; and, subsequently, there were unofficial quotas of Jews that could be appointed in the civil service or admitted to secondary schools and colleges. Zionist activity had continued covertly even after 1929, but in 1935 the last two Palestinian Jewish teachers were deported, and the president of the Zionist organization was put on trial and ultimately required to leave the country.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Following the collapse of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani's pro-Axis coup d'état in 1941, the "Farhud" ("violent dispossession") pogrom broke out in Baghdad on June 1, in which approximately 200 Iraqi Jews were murdered (some sources put the number higher), and up to 2,000 injured- damages to Jewish-owned property were estimated at $3 million (US$ million in 2022). There were also instances of looting of Jewish properties in many other cities at around the same time, with the pogrom lasting for two days until June 2. Afterwards, Jewish emissaries from Palestine were sent to teach Iraqi Jews self-defense, which they were eager to learn. The newly restored pro-Allied monarchist regime quickly implemented measures to prevent the outbreak of similar anti-Jewish violence and established a committee of enquiry on 7 June "to examine the facts and find who was culpable."


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Before the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine vote, Iraq's prime minister Nuri al-Said told British diplomats that if the United Nations solution was not "satisfactory", "severe measures should [would?] be taken against all Jews in Arab countries". In a speech at the General Assembly Hall at Flushing Meadow, New York, on Friday, 28 November 1947, Iraq's Foreign Minister, Fadel Jamall, included the following statement: Partition imposed against the will of the majority of the people will jeopardize peace and harmony in the Middle East. Not only the uprising of the Arabs of Palestine is to be expected, but the masses in the Arab world cannot be restrained. The Arab-Jewish relationship in the Arab world will greatly deteriorate. There are more Jews in the Arab world outside of Palestine than there are in Palestine. In Iraq alone, we have about one hundred and fifty thousand Jews who share with Moslems and Christians all the advantages of political and economic rights. Harmony prevails among Moslems, Christians and Jews. But any injustice imposed upon the Arabs of Palestine will disturb the harmony among Jews and non-Jews in Iraq; it will breed inter-religious prejudice and hatred.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In the months leading up to the November 1947 Partition vote, violence against Iraqi Jews increased. In May 1947, a Jewish man in Baghdad was lynched by an angry mob after being accused of giving poisoned candy to Arab children. Rioters ransacked homes in the Jewish Quarter of Fallujah, and the Jewish population there fled to Baghdad. Large Jewish "donations" for the Palestinian Arab cause were regularly extorted, with the names of "donors" read out on the radio to encourage more. In spite of this, Iraqi Jews still mostly continued to view themselves as loyal Iraqis and believed that the hardship would pass. The Jewish Agency's emissary to Iraq reported that "No attention is paid [by the Jews] to the frightful manifestations of hostility around them, which place all Jews on the verge of a volcano about to erupt."


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In 1948, the year of Israel's independence, there were about 150,000 Jews in Iraq. Persecution of Jews greatly increased that year:


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: "With very few exceptions, only Jews wore watches. On spotting one that looked expensive, a policeman had approached the owner as if to ask the hour. Once assured the man was Jewish, he relieved him of the timepiece and took him into custody. The watch, he told the judge, contained tiny wireless; he'd caught the Jew, he claimed, sending military secrets to the Zionists in Palestine. Without examining the "evidence" or asking any questions, the judge pronounced his sentence. The "traitor" went to prison, the watch to the policeman as a reward."


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Following the Israeli Declaration of Independence and Iraq's subsequent participation in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Iraq was placed under martial law. Courts martial were used to intimidate wealthy Jews, Jews were again dismissed from civil service, quotas were placed on university positions, and Jewish businesses were boycotted. In sweeps throughout urban areas, the Iraqi authorities searched thousands of Jewish homes for secret caches of money they were presumed to be sending to Israel. Walls were frequently demolished in these searches. Hundreds of Jews were arrested on suspicion of Zionist activity, tortured into confessing, and subjected to heavy fines and lengthy prison sentences. In one case, a Jewish man was sentenced to five years' hard labor for possessing a Biblical Hebrew inscription which was presumed to be a coded Zionist message.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The greatest shock to the Jewish community came with the arrest and execution of businessman Shafiq Ades, a Jewish automobile importer who was the single wealthiest Jew in the country. Ades, who had displayed no interest in Zionism, was arrested on charges of sending military equipment to Israel and convicted by a military tribunal. He was fined $20 million and sentenced to death. His entire estate was liquidated and he was publicly hanged in Basra in September 1948. The Jewish community's general sentiment was that if an assimilated and non-Zionist Jew as powerful and well-connected as Ades could be eliminated, other Jews would not be protected any longer. Additionally, like most Arab League states, Iraq forbade any legal emigration of its Jews on the grounds that they might go to Israel and could strengthen that state. At the same time, increasing government oppression of the Jews fueled by anti-Israeli sentiment together with public expressions of antisemitism created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The Iraqi Jewish community gradually became impoverished because of persecution. Jewish businesses were forced to close in the face of boycotts and arrests of Jewish businessmen. After Jews were prohibited from working in the civil service, skilled and formerly well-paid Jewish civil service employees were driven into poverty and forced to become street peddlers to avoid being arrested for vagrancy. Jewish home values dropped by 80%.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: On 19 February 1949, Nuri al-Said acknowledged the bad treatment that the Jews had been victims of in Iraq during the recent months. He warned that unless Israel behaved itself, events might take place concerning the Iraqi Jews.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: With Iraqi Jews enduring oppression and being driven into destitution, the Iraqi Zionist underground began smuggling Jews out of Iraq to Israel starting in November 1948. Jews were smuggled into Iran and from there proceeded to Israel. By 1949, the Iraqi Zionist underground had become well-established (despite many arrests), and they were smuggling Iraqi Jews out of the country illegally at a rate of 1,000 a month. The fleeing Jews took money and some possessions with them, and this capital flight harmed the Iraqi economy. Hoping to stem the flow of assets from the country, in March 1950 Iraq passed a law of one year duration allowing Jews to emigrate on condition of relinquishing their Iraqi citizenship. They were motivated, according to Ian Black, by "economic considerations, chief of which was that almost all the property of departing Jews reverted to the state treasury" and also that "Jews were seen as a restive and potentially troublesome minority that the country was best rid of." Iraqi politicians candidly admitted that they wanted to expel their Jewish population for reasons of their own. Israel was initially reluctant to absorb so many immigrants, but mounted an airlift in March 1951 called "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah" to bring as many of the Iraqi Jews as possible to Israel, and sent agents to Iraq to urge the Jews to register for immigration as soon as possible. Iraqi Jews mainly left Iraq for Cyprus and Iran, from where they were airlifted to Israel, though for a time direct flights between Israel and Baghdad were allowed.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: From the start of the emigration law in March 1950 until the end of the year, 60,000 Jews registered to leave Iraq. In addition to continuing arrests and the dismissal of Jews from their jobs, this exodus was encouraged by a series of bombings starting in April 1950 that resulted in a number of injuries and a few deaths. Two months before the expiration of the law, by which time about 85,000 Jews had registered, another bomb at the Masuda Shemtov synagogue killed 3 or 5 Jews and injured many others. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said was determined to drive the Jews out of his country as quickly as possible, and on August 21, 1950 he threatened to revoke the license of the company transporting the Jewish exodus if it did not fulfill its daily quota of 500 Jews. The available planes initially did not match the demand, and as a result many Jews had to wait for extended periods of time in Iraq while awaiting transport to Israel. These Jews, having already been denaturalized and renounced all property, were now stateless and destitute, and many were now homeless and sleeping on the streets. The Iraqi government announced that if the Jews were not removed more swiftly, they would be placed in concentration camps. As a result, more airlines were chartered to speed up the exodus. On September 18, 1950, Nuri al-Said summoned a representative of the Jewish community and claimed Israel was behind the emigration delay, threatening to "take them to the borders" and forcibly expel the Jews. The law expired in March 1951 but was later extended after the Iraqi government froze the assets of departing Jews, including those who had already left. During the next few months, all but a few thousand of the remaining Jews registered for emigration, spurred on by a sequence of further bombings that caused few casualties but had great psychological impact.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Israel's fragile infrastructure, which already had to accommodate a mass influx of Jewish immigration from war-ravaged Europe and other Arab and Muslim countries, was heavily strained, and the Israeli government was not certain that it had enough permanent housing units and tents to accommodate the Iraqi Jews. When Israel attempted to negotiate a more gradual influx of Iraqi Jews, Said realized that the Jews could be turned into a demographic weapon against Israel. He hoped that a rapid influx of totally penniless Jews would collapse Israel's infrastructure. In March 1951, he engineered a law which would permanently freeze all assets of denaturalized Jews. Officially, the assets were merely frozen and not confiscated; under international law assets can theoretically remain frozen for perpetuity, making it impossible for them to ever be reclaimed. The law was prepared in secret, as it was being ratified, Baghdad's telephone network suspended operations to prevent Jews from learning of it and attempt to transfer or withdraw their money. Iraq's Banks were closed for three days to ensure that Jews could not access their funds. With Iraq's Jews effectively stripped of their assets permanently, Said demanded Israel accept 10,000 Iraqi Jewish refugees per month. He threatened to prohibit Jewish emigration from May 31, 1951 and to set up concentration camps for stateless Jews still in Iraq. Israel attempted to negotiate a compromise to enable the Iraqi Jews to leave gradually in a way that did not put as much pressure on Israel's absorptive capacity, but Said was adamant that the Jews had to leave as fast as possible. As a result, Israel increased the flights.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In Baghdad, the daily spectacle of Jews carrying nothing but their clothes and a bag of their remaining possessions being loaded onto trucks for transport to the airport caused public jubilation. Jews were mocked every step of the way during their departure and crowds stoned the trucks taking Jews to the airport. Jews were allowed to bring out a maximum of five pounds weight in property, which was to consist of personal effects only, as well as a small amount of cash. At the airport, Iraqi officials body searched every emigrant for cash or jewelry, and they also beat and spat on the departing Jews.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Overall, between 1948 and 1951, 121,633 Iraqi Jews were airlifted, bused, or smuggled out of the country, including 119,788 between January 1950 and December 1951. About 15,000 Jews remained in Iraq. In 1952, emigration to Israel was again banned, and the Iraqi government publicly hanged two Jews who had been falsely charged with throwing a bomb at the Baghdad office of the U.S. Information Agency.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: According to Palestinian politician Aref al-Aref, Said had attempted to justify allowing the exodus by explaining to him that: ”The Jews have always been a source of evil and harm to Iraq. They are spies. They have sold their property in Iraq, they have no land among us that they can cultivate. How therefore can they live? What will they do if they stay in Iraq? No, no my friend, it is better for us to be rid of them as long as we are able to do so."


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Iraqi Jews left behind them extensive property, often located in the heart of Iraq's major cities. A relatively high number found themselves in refugee camps in Israel known as Ma'abarot before being given permanent housing.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The true identity and objective of the masterminds behind the bombings has been the subject of controversy. A secret Israeli inquiry in 1960 found no evidence that they were ordered by Israel or any motive that would have explained the attack, though it did find out that most of the witnesses believed that Jews had been responsible for the bombings. The issue remains unresolved: Iraqi activists still regularly charge that Israel used violence to engineer the exodus, while Israeli officials of the time vehemently deny it. Historian Moshe Gat reports that "the belief that the bombs had been thrown by Zionist agents was shared by those Iraqi Jews who had just reached Israel". Sociologist Phillip Mendes backs Gat's claims, and further attributes the allegations to have been influenced and distorted by feelings of discrimination.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The affair has also been the subject of a libel lawsuit by Mordechai Ben Porat, which was settled in an out-of-court compromise with an apology of the journalist who described the charges as true.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Iraqi authorities eventually charged three members of the Zionist underground with perpetrating some of the explosions. Two of those charged, Shalom Salah Shalom and Yosef Ibrahim Basri, were subsequently found guilty and executed, whilst the third was sentenced to a lengthy jail term. Salah Shalom claimed in his trial that he was tortured into confessing, and Yosef Basri maintained his innocence throughout.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Gat reports that much of the previous literature "reflects the universal conviction that the bombings had a tremendous impact on the large-scale exodus of the Jews... To be more precise it is suggested that the Zionist emissaries committed these brutal acts in order to uproot the prosperous Iraqi Jewish community and bring it to Israel". However, Gat argues that both claims are contrary to the evidence. As summarized by Mendes:


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Historian Moshe Gat argues that there was little direct connection between the bombings and exodus. He demonstrates that the frantic and massive Jewish registration for denaturalisation and departure was driven by knowledge that the denaturalisation law was due to expire in March 1951. He also notes the influence of further pressures including the property-freezing law, and continued anti-Jewish disturbances which raised the fear of large-scale pogroms. In addition, it is highly unlikely the Israelis would have taken such measures to accelerate the Jewish evacuation given that they were already struggling to cope with the existing level of Jewish immigration. Gat also raises serious doubts about the guilt of the alleged Jewish bombthrowers. Firstly, a Christian officer in the Iraqi army known for his anti-Jewish views, was arrested, but apparently not charged, with the offences. A number of explosive devices similar to those used in the attack on the Jewish synagogue were found in his home. In addition, there was a long history of anti-Jewish bomb-throwing incidents in Iraq. Secondly, the prosecution was not able to produce even one eyewitness who had seen the bombs thrown. Thirdly, the Jewish defendant Shalom Salah indicated in court that he had been severely tortured in order to procure a confession. It therefore remains an open question as to who was responsible for the bombings, although Gat argues that the most likely perpetrators were members of the anti-Jewish Istiqlal Party. Certainly memories and interpretations of the events have further been influenced and distorted by the unfortunate discrimination which many Iraqi Jews experienced on their arrival in Israel.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Many years later, the widow of the Zionist emissary Yehuda Tager stated that while the main bombings were carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood, later smaller attacks were staged by Yosef Beit-Halahmi, on his own initiative, in an attempt to make it seem as if the activists on trial were not the perpetrators.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Most of the 15,000 Jews remaining after Operation Ezra and Nehemiah stayed through the Abdul Karim Qassim era when conditions improved and began to return to normal, but anti-Semitism increased during the rule of the Arif brothers (Abdul Salam Arif and Abdul Rahman Arif).


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: With the rise of the Ba'ath Party to power in 1963, restrictions were placed on the remaining Iraqi Jews. Sale of property was banned, and Jews had to carry yellow identity cards.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: After the 1967 Six-Day War, Jewish property was expropriated, bank accounts were frozen, Jews were dismissed from public posts, their businesses were closed, trading permits owned by Jews were cancelled, they were not allowed to use telephones, they were placed under house arrest for extended periods of time, and were under constant surveillance and restricted to the cities. In late 1968, scores of Jews were jailed on charges of spying for Israel, culminating in the 1969 public hanging of 14 men, 9 of them Jews, who were accused of spying for Israel. Other suspected spies for Israel died under torture. After Baghdad Radio invited Iraqi citizens to "come and enjoy the feast", half a million people paraded and danced past the scaffolds where the men were hanged, which resulted in international criticism. An Iraqi Jew who later left wrote that the stress of persecution caused ulcers, heart attacks, and breakdowns to become increasingly prevalent in the Jewish community. A further 18 Jews were hanged in secret from 1970 to 1972, and in April 1973 five members of a single Jewish family were killed on the orders of the head of the Iraqi secret police in retaliation for an Israeli assassination of a Palestinian leader. As a result, Jews escaped the country by traveling to Iraqi Kurdistan and then slipping into Iran with the help of Kurdish smugglers. From there many emigrated to Israel while some also moved to other countries such as the UK and Australia. In the early 1970s, bowing to international pressure and having concluded that its emigration ban was useless, the Iraqi government allowed Jewish emigration and most of the remaining Jews left. The majority of those who stayed behind were elderly, and the community was subsequently pressured by the government to turn over $200 million worth of Jewish community property without compensation. In 1974, about 400 Jews still lived in Iraq.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: The last Jewish wedding in Iraq took place in 1978 and the last brit milah took place in 1984. In 1985, one synagogue in Iraq continued to function, the Meir Taweig Synagogue, located in the Al-Bataween neighborhood, which had once been Baghdad's main Jewish neighborhood. Jews were allowed to freely practice their religion but were prohibited from holding jobs in state enterprises or joining the army.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Immediately prior to the Gulf War, the U.S. State Department noted that there was no recent evidence of overt persecution of Jews, but travel, particularly to Israel, was restricted, as was contact with Jewish groups abroad. In 1997, the "Jerusalem Post" reported that in the previous five years, some 75 Jews had fled Iraq, of whom about 20 moved to Israel and the rest mostly went to the United Kingdom and Netherlands. The community's only ordained rabbi died in 1996 and the last shochet, or kosher slaughterer, left in 2002. In 2003, one community member, Emad Levy, became the community's leader, functioning as its sole rabbi, kosher slaughterer, and advisor on all Judaism-related issues to those in the community. The last active synagogue closed in 2003, a few weeks before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, the Jewish Agency launched an effort to track down all of the remaining Iraqi Jews to present them with an opportunity to emigrate to Israel, and found a total of 34 Jews in Baghdad, half of whom were over the age of 70. While the community was largely elderly and poor, some were middle class including two doctors. Six chose to emigrate, among them Ezra Levy, the father of Emad Levy.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: After the defeat of the Ba'ath regime, the process of establishing a new democratic government began. Among the subjects for debate over the Iraqi constitution was whether Jews should be considered a minority group, or left out of the constitution altogether.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In October 2006, Rabbi Emad Levy announced that he was leaving for Israel and compared his life to "living in a prison". He reported that most Iraqi Jews stay in their homes "out of fear of kidnapping or execution" due to sectarian violence. However, Levy remained in Iraq for four more years. He emigrated to Israel in 2010 after receiving death threats, where he subsequently married and started a family, becoming the last Iraqi Jew to emigrate. Levy remained in touch with the small Jewish community left in the country. In a 2018 interview, he said that there were five Jews still in Iraq, with one woman serving as the community director.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: There are numerous estimates for the number of Jews living in Baghdad. They include thirty-four (2003) (of whom six went to Israel), eight (2007), seven (2008), ten (2008), five (2013), eight (2016), five (2018), or ten (2018). In 2020-2021, the Jewish population in Iraq was reported to be four. Among the American forces stationed in Iraq, there were only three Jewish chaplains.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In 2011, a leaked US embassy cable named 8 Jews left in Baghdad; one of whom, Emhad Levy, immigrated to Israel. Andrew White, who was Vicar of St George's Church, Baghdad, urged the remaining Jews to immigrate. White also pleaded for help in saving remaining Torah scrolls in Iraq.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: Over Jewish protests, the Iraqi Jewish Archive is to be given by the U.S. government to the Iraqi government, instead of being returned to the Iraqi Jewish community; however, the archive can be seen online. In Al-Qosh, the Jewish prophet Nahum's tomb was being restored in 2020 thanks to a $1-million grant from the U.S., local authorities, and private donations. In 2020, the synagogue beside Ezekiel's Tomb was converted into a mosque.


title: History of the Jews in Iraq

text: In 2021 the Jewish Population in Iraq number is fewer than five.The number of living Jews in Iraq is 3 (2022)


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: Don't Look Back is the second studio album by American rock band Boston, released in 1978 by Epic Records. The album reached No. 1 in both the US and Canada, and No. 9 in the UK. The title track helped with the album's success, reaching No. 4 in 1978 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 and remains one of the band's biggest hits. The album sold over one million copies in the ten days following its release and was certified 7× platinum by the RIAA in the US on April 11, 1996.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: This album also marked the beginning of the band's legal fight with its record label, Epic. Guitarist, producer and primary songwriter Tom Scholz claimed that Epic executives pushed him and the band into releasing the album before they felt it was ready. He also said that the album "was ridiculously short. It needed another song.” Their next album, "Third Stage", was not released for another eight years, by which time the band and record label had parted ways and were fighting a courtroom battle that Boston ultimately won.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Don't Look Back"'s two-year gap from the band's debut album marks the shortest between two Boston albums to date.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Don't Look Back" was recorded during 1977 and 1978 at Scholz's Hideaway Studio, except for the piano on "A Man I'll Never Be", which was recorded by engineer Dave Butler at Northern Studio in Maynard, Massachusetts.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Don't Look Back" was originally to be titled "Arrival", but Boston members discovered that Swedish pop group ABBA released an album by that name two years prior, so "Don't Look Back" was chosen. The album was listed erroneously as "Arrival" in the cassette inserts of some other CBS releases at the time promoting albums available from the record company and its associated labels.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Billboard" described the album as "an equally superior effort [as their debut album] that further refines this group's ability to play hard rock underlined by a sweet, melodic base". Ken Emerson of "Rolling Stone" said that the album consolidated the sound of the band's debut album but was less pretentious than Bruce Springsteen's 1978 album "Darkness on the Edge of Town". Emerson noted a theme of Scholz expressing his anxieties, particularly with making this album, as evidenced by lines about being unsure about measuring up as man in "A Man I'll Never Be", and the line "I've been used/But I'm taking it like a man" in "Used to Bad News"(a song written by Brad Delp). Emerson also pointed out contradictions between the lyrics of certain songs, such as the line that "I'm much too strong not to compromise" in "Don't Look Back" versus the line in "A Man I'll Never Be" that "I can't get any stronger", or the line "Emotions can't be satisfied" in "A Man I'll Never Be" versus the title itself of "Feelin' Satisfied". Brad Chadderton of "The Ottawa Journal" praised the album for its heavy, innovative and melodic guitar lines; for Brad Delp's vocals; and for lyrics that contain philosophical meaning, calling "Don't Look Back" an improvement over the debut album.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Don't Look Back", "A Man I'll Never Be" and "Feelin' Satisfied" were all released as singles, reaching No. 4, 31 and 46 respectively on the "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "The Journey" is a short instrumental track that links the opening title track and the third track, "It's Easy". In 1987, Scholz cited it as his favorite song on any of Boston's first three albums, but wished that it were longer. He described it as, "I'm floating through space, cruising in an airplane over the clouds". "Billboard" writer Paul Grein cited "The Journey" as an example of science fiction-like music on "Don't Look Back" that is consistent with the guitar-spaceship cover art of the album (and single). Grein referred to it as having an "almost religious" tone, anticipating that some listeners would find it "pretentious" but stating that he found it an effective interlude between the harder rocking songs "Don't Look Back" and "It's Easy". Emerson said that the organ sounds church-like and that the guitars sound "ghostly", making the track sound "eerie and alienated". He compared "The Journey" to David Bowie's work during the late 1970s. According to Scholz, the song had been lying around for years before he found "the right theme to match the music". It took him just three days to record. The song was the only one on the album without a drum track, and so it was the only song on which drummer Sib Hashian did not appear. Barry Goudreau, who played rhythm guitar, was the only musician on the track besides Scholz. "The Journey" was released as the B-side of the "Don't Look Back" single.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: Grein described the transition from "The Journey" to "It's Easy" as "appropriately jarring" due to the latter song's fast boogie guitar introduction. "It's Easy" contains the line "I believe what we achieve will soon be left behind", which Emerson points out appears to be sung to a girl with whom the singer is having a one-night stand, but may also be a self-reference to Boston's own music, similar to the band's approach on their earlier hit "More Than a Feeling". Emerson also noted a similar theme of nostalgia between "More Than a Feeling" and "It's Easy". Writer Derek Oliver included the song as one of several on the album that retained Boston's "signature sound" of "pristine production, humongous orchestral guitars and stupendous vocals" from the debut album. AllMusic critic Tim Sendra found this song "more reflective" than any of the material on Boston's debut.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Party" was co-written by Delp and Scholz. It begins with a short, slow introduction before a surprising change of pace to the fast, harder sound that persists throughout the rest of the song, in much the same way as "Something About You" from the debut. The dual themes of "Party" are loud parties and teenage sex. Grein compared the "raucous bar band climax" ending of the song to Aerosmith. Sendra found the song to be a "storming rocker" in the mold of "Smokin'" from the debut. "Party" is another song cited by Oliver as retaining the band's signature sound. "Billboard" rated "Party" to be one of the best songs on the album. It is one of four songs from the album that were included on Boston's "Greatest Hits" album, along with the three singles.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Used to Bad News" was written by Delp, making it the only song on the album on which Scholz did not receive a writing credit. Emerson described "Used to Bad News" as "a charming, rather Beatles-like song". Greil Marcus rated it as one of the three "masterpieces" on the album, along with the title track and "A Man I'll Never Be". As with "It's Easy", Sendra considered the song to be more reflective than anything on the debut. "Used to Bad News" is the only song on the album on which Goudreau is the sole lead guitarist. Scholz played all the other instruments except drums. It was released as the B-side of the "Feelin' Satisfied" single.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Don't Be Afraid" closes the album. The song had an earlier genesis than other songs on the album, as it was originally one of the demos Scholz worked on before getting a record contract. Grein stated that it "comes to a crashing, concert-like crescendo", specifically citing Hashian's drumming. It was also released as the B-side of the "A Man I'll Never Be" single.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: "Don't Look Back" was among the first commercially produced compact discs when the format was introduced in 1983, but because of ongoing legal issues between Scholz and CBS Records, the title was pulled after a small production run and did not reappear on CD until three years later. Inserts for the original CD pressings contained the "spaceship blueprints" from the original album dust jacket; those illustrations were not included in the 1986 reissue.


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: This album and the group's first album were remastered and re-released on June 13, 2006. The reissues were digitally remastered personally by Scholz after he heard indirectly that the remastering project was to be handled by Sony's team, which he felt was unacceptable. He took it on himself after negotiations with Legacy Recordings, saying, "I've always wanted to make those albums sound good on CD, and the chance arrived".


title: Don't Look Back (Boston album)

text: A small number of the Sony-remastered versions briefly went on sale in Canada on April 4, 2006, before being removed from sale. Those discs also included a live version of "Shattered Images" (mistitled "Help Me" on the packaging), an unreleased Boston original recorded at a 1976 concert in Philadelphia.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: Leslie Ann Phillips (born June 28, 1962), better known by her stage name Sam Phillips, is an American singer and songwriter. Her albums include the critically acclaimed "Martinis & Bikinis" in 1994 and "Fan Dance" in 2001. She has also composed scores for the television shows "Gilmore Girls", "Bunheads", and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel".


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: Phillips was born in Glendale, California to parents William and Peggy Phillips. She is the second of three children and has a brother and a sister. She was given the nickname Sam, which would later become her stage name.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: Phillips started singing at a young age, along with dancing, painting, and playing the piano. Phillips also started studying philosophy and fundamentalism at the age of 14. Phillips began writing songs as a teenager to cope with her parents' divorce.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: Phillips began her musical career in the early 1980s in the contemporary Christian music industry, where she sang background vocals for Christian artists Mark Heard and Randy Stonehill.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: Phillips was signed as a solo artist with Myrrh Records under her given name and recorded four Christian pop albums: "Beyond Saturday Night", "Dancing with Danger", "Black and White in a Grey World" and, "The Turning". "The Turning" teamed her with producer T Bone Burnett, who had worked with artists Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, and Roy Orbison. The two would later get married.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: Several of Phillips' songs became Top 10 singles on Christian radio and Myrrh records promoted her as "the Christian Cyndi Lauper". Phillips was never comfortable with this image, and it was a bone of contention between her and her label. She began using the name "Sam" professionally in 1988 when she left Myrrh Records and signed with Virgin Records in order to distance herself from her prior persona.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: With "The Indescribable Wow", Philips moved into mainstream music. The album featured the orchestrations of Van Dyke Parks and took influence from 1960's pop. "Cruel Inventions" was released in 1991, and included a guest performance by Elvis Costello. 1994's "Martinis and Bikinis" was widely praised by music critics and was nominated for a Grammy Award, her second nomination (the first was as Leslie Phillips).


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: In 1995, Phillips made her film acting debut as the mute terrorist Katya in the Bruce Willis blockbuster "Die Hard with a Vengeance". In 1996, Phillips released "Omnipop (It's Only a Flesh Wound Lambchop)", which featured a song co-written by R.E.M. Phillips made a cameo appearance in the 1997 Wim Wenders film "The End of Violence", singing part of the song "Animals on Wheels" from "Omnipop". After releasing a contractually obligated "best of" album in 1999, Virgin Records dropped Phillips from its roster.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: In 2001, Phillips signed with Nonesuch Records, evolving her musical style to a stripped-down, acoustically based sound on her album called "Fan Dance", as well as guest appearances from musical partners Gillian Welch on vocals and David Rawlings on piano, for whom T Bone Burnett had produced several years earlier. Phillips also began writing music for and scoring the television series "Gilmore Girls", and appeared in the final episode of season six, performing "Taking Pictures" from her "Fan Dance" album. In 2004, she released "A Boot and a Shoe", another collection of acoustically based songs, similar in style to "Fan Dance". In 2006 she was ranked at No. 94 on "Paste" magazine's list of the top 100 living songwriters.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: After the release of "A Boot and a Shoe", Phillips and T Bone Burnett, who had been her longtime producer, divorced, although they continued to work together to finish her album. Her album "Don't Do Anything" was self-produced and released in 2008.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: In October 2009, Phillips launched "The Long Play", a music subscription service offering digital releases without a record label. The first subscription only EP, "Hypnotists in Paris", was recorded with the Section Quartet and a Christmas collection "Cold Dark Night", "Magic for Everyone", "Old Tin Pan", and "Days of the One Night Stands" followed, with the full-length album Cameras in the Sky being released in early 2010. In Spring of 2011 she issued "Solid State", a public CD release comprising 13 of the best songs from her subscription service.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: In 2012, it was announced that she would be reunited with "Gilmore Girls" creator Amy Sherman-Palladino by scoring music for the short-lived American TV show "Bunheads".


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: Phillips described her next album, "Pretty Time Bomb" (later renamed "Push Any Button"), as being "a nostalgic sort of dream of being a pop star in the 60s and early 70s. It's a sweet kind of album and I don't know where it came from. I don't know what compelled me to make it. It's probably a bad idea, but every time I listen to what I've done, it makes me really happy. So I figure, that must mean something and I should go ahead and put it out there."


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: "Push Any Button" was released on August 13, 2013. Phillips has described "Push Any Button" in as 'an impressionistic version of the AM pop radio playing inside her head'—a way of 'looking at the future through the past. For the vinyl release through her website, Phillips created a limited run of unique handmade collages on repurposed vintage LP sleeves sourced from flea markets. In 2015, a suite of these collage artworks were exhibited at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, Australia in an exhibition called "Lost and Profound" curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: In 2013, Phillips' first live concert album, "Sam Phillips: Live @ Largo at The Coronet", was made available digitally through her website, and is also the title of a 2019 documentary directed by Dave Rygalski, who filmed the 2013 performances.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: On November 21, 2016, Phillips released an eight-track downloadable EP "Human Contact is Never Easy", which included four new tracks off her next album "World on Sticks".


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: Phillips reunited with Amy Sherman-Palladino as composer for "", a revival of the television series, which was released on Netflix on November 25, 2016.


title: Sam Phillips (musician)

text: In 1989, Phillips married producer and musician T-Bone Burnett. They have a daughter, Simone, born in 1997. Phillips and Burnett divorced in 2004, and both have since remarried.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The Strait of Messina Bridge is a long-planned suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina, that connects the cities of Messina’s Torre Faro and the port city of Villa San Giovanni in Calabria.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: While the bridge has been proposed since ancient times, a detailed plan was made in the 1990s for a suspension bridge.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: However, on 6 March 2009, as part of a massive new public works programme, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government announced that construction of the Messina Bridge would indeed go ahead, pledging €1.3 billion as a contribution to the bridge's total cost, estimated at €6.1 billion.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The project was cancelled again on 26 February 2013, by Prime Minister Mario Monti's government due to budget constraints.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The bridge would have been the longest suspension bridge in the world, 60% more than the main span of the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge in Turkey, the world's current longest span.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The bridge would have been part of the Berlin–Palermo railway axis (Line 1) of the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The Strait of Messina is a funnel-shaped arm of sea that connects the Ionian Sea in the south to the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north. The width of the strait varies from a maximum of approximately (between Capo d'Alì in Sicily and Punta Pellaro in Calabria) to a minimum of approximately between Capo Peloro in Sicily and Torre Cavallo in Calabria. A similar distance separates Pezzo and Ganzirri; at that point, the strait is only deep, while in other places it can reach deep. It is also characterised by strong currents and the region has strong seismicity.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The idea of a bridge crossing the strait is an old one. The Romans considered building a bridge joining Calabria and Sicily made of boats and barrels. Charlemagne considered joining the two sides with a series of bridges. This idea was revived by the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard in the 11th century and by Roger II of Sicily in the 12th century. In 1876, Giuseppe Zanardelli was convinced that the strait could be linked by either a bridge or a tunnel. In 1866, public works minister Stefano Jacini gave Alfredo Cottrau, an internationally recognised engineer, the task of drawing up plans for a bridge between Calabria and Sicily. Later, in 1870, Navone proposed building a tunnel based on Napoleon's idea of a tunnel under the English Channel. This tunnel was to start at Contesse and was to pass below Messina and Ganzirri at a depth of 150 m, crossing the Strait to Punta Pezzo and resurfacing at Torre Cavallo.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: A geologic study of the area of the Strait of Messina was published in 1909 (historical Arch. Sicilian year XXXIV f.1,2) and in 1921, a study of an undersea tunnel was released to the Geographic Conference of Florence. A group of railway civil engineers studied the possibility of a suspension bridge but nothing came of it. The idea was revived in 1953 by master bridge builder David B. Steinman with a plan to build a bridge that crossed the Strait using two towers sunk in deep waters. The proposed span would have represented a world record, eclipsing the then-longest centre span of the Golden Gate Bridge and beating the Mackinac Straits Bridge (then in planning) with a total length of . The proposed structure would have cleared the sea by to allow shipping passage, and to have had two decks, the lower to carry two rail lines, and above, a road deck wide. The main cables would have been in diameter. The bridge would have required 12,000 workers and cost hundreds of billions of lire.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The 2006 plan called for a single-span suspension bridge with a central span of . This would have made the span more than 60% longer than the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge in Turkey—the longest suspension bridge in the world at .


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: Plans called for four traffic lanes (two driving lanes and one emergency lane in each direction), two railway tracks and two pedestrian lanes. In order to provide a minimum vertical clearance for navigation of , the height of the two towers was to be . This would have been taller than the Millau Viaduct in France (currently the tallest bridge in the world at ). The bridge's suspension system would have relied on two pairs of steel cables, each with a diameter of and a total length, between the anchor blocks, of .


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The design included of road links and of railway links to the bridge. On the mainland, the bridge was to connect to the new stretch of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway (A3) and to the planned Naples-Reggio Calabria High-Speed railway line; on the Sicilian side, to the Messina-Catania (A18) and Messina-Palermo (A20) motorways as well as the new Messina railway station (to be built by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana).


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The bridge was planned to connect Reggio Calabria to Messina, the two cities that face each other on either side of the strait, in order to form a single city. This ambitious urban project was called "Area Metropolitana integrata dello Stretto (Integrated Metropolitan Area of the Strait)" or simply "Città dello Stretto (City of the Strait)". Among the controversies surrounding the building of the bridge was strong opposition to the formation of the new city by various Sicilian nationalist groups.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: On 12 October 2006, the Italian Parliament voted 272 to 232 in favour of abandoning the plan due to the bridge's "doubtful usefulness and viability", as well as the inability of the already burdened Italian treasury to bear its share of the cost. Additionally, transport minister Alessandro Bianchi pointed out that the road and rail links leading to the location of the proposed bridge are not capable of supporting enough traffic to make the bridge profitable. Other reasons for abandoning the plan were earthquake risk and fears that the bridge would enrich the networks of Italy's organised crime organisations such as Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: A construction consortium led by Impregilo was chosen in 2005, with actual construction set to begin in the second half of 2006. The bridge was designed by Danish architects at Dissing+Weitling in close collaboration with the Danish engineering firm COWI.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: On 27 March 2006, Impregilo and Stretto di Messina announced that they had signed a contract assigning final project planning to a General Contractor. Impregilo S.p.A., the lead partner had a 45% share. Other participants were Spain’s Sacyr (18.70%), the Italian companies Società Italiana per Condotte D’Acqua S.p.A. (15%) and Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti-C.M.C. of Ravenna (13%), Japan’s IHI Corporation (6.30%), and Consorzio Stabile A.C.I. S.c.p.a (2%). The General Contractor would also be assisted by the Danish and Canadian companies COWI A/S, Sund & Baelt A/S and Buckland & Taylor Ltd., who would handle project engineering. Completion was projected to take six years, at a projected cost of €3.9 billion. The first task of the General Contractor was to draw up the final project.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: Supporters see the bridge as a huge job-creation scheme and a boost for tourism. However, opponents question the priority of the bridge, claiming that if the government concentrated instead on making Sicily's roads more efficient, drivers would be able to reach the coast more quickly at a fraction of the bridge's cost.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: Others believe that the bridge is quite unnecessary, since the local economy is already providing for the conversion of the local former NATO airport in Comiso into a commercial terminal to export vegetables to Northern Europe. Alternatively, a much cheaper revamping of the current structures is claimed to be sufficient (for instance, the ferry lines on the Calabria side are now accessible by trucks only by driving through very narrow streets, which are a tight bottleneck for transport). Another argument against the bridge is the poor state of the transport infrastructure in Sicily, particularly the railroad and the A20 autostrada linking Messina to Palermo, and the poor state of the A2 autostrada on the mainland linking Reggio Calabria to Naples.


title: Strait of Messina Bridge

text: The greatest structural design problem of the bridge itself is the aerodynamic stability of its deck under wind and seismic activity.


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong are mostly eight-digit. Fixed land line numbers start with 2 or 3, mobile (cellular) phone numbers with 5, 6, 7 or 9, pager numbers with 7 and forwarding service with 8. Since the end of 1989, there have been no area codes within Hong Kong.


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: The telephone number for emergency services – Police, Fire Service and Ambulance – is 999 for all telephone lines. These numbers can also be used for mobile and other users:


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: Some special numbers are three- to five-digit. Some premium rate services, for example for games and adult contents, are 11-digit. Numbers beginning with '1' are usually reserved for carrier/operator services. These services are provided by the individual telephone carrier. In general, these numbers can be used across all carriers:


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: The international call prefix varies depending on IDD provider, however 001 works on all phone lines and uses the IDD service provided by the same carrier as the telephone line that 001 call is dialed from. During the years of telephone monopoly, the International call prefix was 106 (through 1980s) and then 001. Calls to Macau and mainland China are international. Calls from Hong Kong to other parts of China include that regions separate country code:


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: The present structure and format of telephone numbers in Hong Kong according to the Hong Kong Telecom Service Numbering Scheme, is as follows (the first digits of the telephone number is used as follows):


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: There was no standard trunk prefix like '0' – only the area code and phone number were dialed when calling from one area code to another. Thus the Kowloon number xxx-xxx would have been dialed as follows:


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: In the mid-1980s, 6-digit numbers starting with '0' became 7-digit numbers starting with '71', making way for subsequent change of the New Territories prefix from '12' to '0'.


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: Fixed-line phone numbers were either six- or seven-digit in the 1980s. Area codes were assigned with the following patterns.


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: On 30 December 1989, area codes were abolished. Six-digit numbers in the New Territories were changed to replace the initial 8 with 46, followed by five digits; area codes for six-digit numbers in the other areas became part of subscriber's numbers. Area codes for seven-digit numbers were simply removed. Some six-digit numbers had the first digit changed to two digits to make a seven-digit number.


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: On January 1, 1995, a '2' was prefixed to all fixed line (land line) numbers which are now eight-digit. A '7' was prefixed to existing pager service numbers.


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: Before the introduction of portable fixed line numbers, numbers were assigned in a pattern akin to districts. For example, in addition to the existing 3, 5 and 0 prefixes, a 4 prefix was used for Tuen Mun and Yuen Long, 6 for Tai Po and Sha Tin, and 8 for Hong Kong Island.


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: Numbers starting with '3' were introduced when '2' for fixed lines started running out. Cell phone numbers remain eight-digit. The number '6' started to be used when numbers started with '9' were running out. In May 2008, cellular phone numbers with '5' as the beginning were also introduced.


title: Telephone numbers in Hong Kong

text: Due to numerous phone scams spoofing local telephone numbers, calls started from outside Hong Kong using a local number now show the Hong Kong prefix +852 before the phone numbers in Caller ID.


title: Kenneth Taylor (footballer, born 2002)

text: Kenneth Ina Dorothea Taylor (born 16 May 2002) is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for Eredivisie club Ajax and the Netherlands national team.


title: Kenneth Taylor (footballer, born 2002)

text: Taylor made his Eerste Divisie debut for Jong Ajax on 15 October 2018 in a game against Jong PSV as a 70th-minute substitute for Jasper ter Heide.


title: Kenneth Taylor (footballer, born 2002)

text: Taylor made his Eredivisie debut for AFC Ajax on 12 December 2020 in a game against PEC Zwolle as a 64th-minute substitute for Perr Schuurs. In a match against Heracles Almelo on 6 February 2022 Taylor scored his first Eredivisie goal in the match's 65th minute. He had come on in the 63rd minute to relieve Steven Berghuis and was shortly thereafter found on a ball from Sébastien Haller for what was his first league goal.


title: Kenneth Taylor (footballer, born 2002)

text: On 22 September 2022, Taylor made his debut for the Netherlands in a 2022–23 UEFA Nations League match against Poland.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: Cortaderia selloana is a species of flowering plant in the Poaceae family. It is referred to by the common name pampas grass, and is native to southern South America, including the Pampas region after which it is named.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: "Cortaderia" is derived from the Argentine Spanish name ‘cortadera’, meaning ‘cutter’, in reference to its razor sharp leaf margins.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: "Selloana" is named for Friedrich Sellow (1789-1831), a German botanist and naturalist from Potsdam who worked as a plant collector in Brazil. He studied the flora of South America, especially that of Brazil. The specific epithet "selloana" was given by Josef August and Julius Hermann Schultes in 1827.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: Several cultivars are available, of which the following have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:-.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: "Cortaderia" has become invasive in mild-winter areas of North America. It has also been banned in Hawaii and New Zealand because of its ability to outgrow and displace native plants. In Europe, it was first introduced in the United Kingdom, later spreading to other countries in the continent like Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: Pampas grass is fast-growing and can form large masses along the roads, cliffs, riverbanks, and open areas that have been disturbed by human activities or natural disturbances. Pampas grass can displace native plants and destroy their habitats, reducing biodiversity. The blade-like leaves may cause physical harm to the birds who feed off of it.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: The plant also competes with other native plants by monopolizing resources like shade, sunlight, and ground nutrients. Because of the large surface area, the leaves pose a significant fire hazard if placed near flammable substances.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: Pampas grass can be controlled through herbicide treatment. To accomplish this, the grass is cut down near the base. Next, a 2% glyphosate chemical solution is combined with a silicone-based surfactant and applied to enhance the penetration potential. This method works best in the fall because there is overall better control compared to other seasons. Another control method is to cut and bag inflorescences to prevent seeds from spreading or pulling seedlings.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: Soil disturbance that creates bare ground can promote invasion, so it is essential to minimize disturbance or provide competition to seedlings. In order to control disturbance, applying mulch to exposed bare ground to smother seeds and prevent germination can be done. Also, planting or seeding desirable, non-invasive plants can provide competition to reduce germination and seedling establishment.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: Author Li Hengrui (), whose work "Kite Capriccio" () describes life as a child in 1950s Fengtai County, Anhui mentions the use of the long stem of the "Puwei" (, Chinese for "Cortaderia selloana") in the construction of kites.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: Several media outlets reported that it was planted by some couples who practise swinging in the United Kingdom as a way to indicate to other swingers that they enjoy that lifestyle.


title: Cortaderia selloana

text: The reports caused a plunge in already declining sales, but the odd association has been dismissed by enthusiasts and gardening experts as "silly".


title: Georgy Girl

text: Georgy Girl is a 1966 British romantic comedy-drama, starring Lynn Redgrave in the titular role, with Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates, and James Mason. Directed by Silvio Narizzano, the film was based on the 1965 novel by Margaret Forster.


title: Georgy Girl

text: The plot follows the story of a virginal young woman in 1960s Swinging London who is faced with a dilemma when she is pursued by her father's older employer and the young lover of her promiscuous, pregnant flatmate.


title: Georgy Girl

text: The opening credits show the title character walking through the streets of London and being tempted into a hairdressers where she has her hair set in a far more contemporary style. She immediately changes her mind, and runs through the streets until she reaches a public lavatory. Once there, she submerges her hair in a sink-full of water, happy to return to her previously unkempt hairstyle.


title: Georgy Girl

text: Georgina ("Georgy") Parkin (Lynn Redgrave) is a 22-year-old Londoner who has considerable musical talent, is well-educated, and has an engaging, unpretentious character. At the same time, she believes herself to be plain and slightly overweight, she dresses haphazardly, and she is incredibly naïve on the subjects of love and flirtation. She has never had a boyfriend. She has an inventive imagination and loves children.


title: Georgy Girl

text: Her parents are live-in employees of successful businessman James Leamington (James Mason), who runs a children's home. Leamington is 49 and has a loveless, childless marriage with Ellen (Rachel Kempson). He watched Georgy grew up and treated her as if he were her second father. He provided for her private education at a Swiss finishing school and for a studio in his home, where she teaches dance to children. Leamington thinks Georgy "owes him" for all he has done.


title: Georgy Girl

text: As Georgy has become a young woman, his feelings for her have become more than fatherly: James offers Georgy a legal contract, proposing to supply her with the luxuries of life in return for her becoming his mistress. Georgy sidesteps his proposal by never giving him a direct response; Leamington's business-like language and manner (and awkward inability to express any affection for her) leave her cold.


title: Georgy Girl

text: Georgy's flatmate is the beautiful Meredith (Charlotte Rampling), who is a violinist in an orchestra, but is otherwise a shallow woman who lives for her own pleasures. She treats the meekly compliant Georgy like an unpaid servant. Georgy has a crush on Meredith's boyfriend Jos Jones (Alan Bates) and is happy to accommodate Meredith in order to spend time with Jos. She cooks for him and they play Scrabble together.


title: Georgy Girl

text: When Meredith discovers that she is pregnant by Jos, they get married. She tells him bluntly that she has aborted two of his children, but she wants to marry because she is "bored." Jos moves in with the two young women. He becomes disillusioned with Meredith and begins to find himself attracted to Georgy, who convinces Leamington to buy several expensive items for the baby's care.


title: Georgy Girl

text: While in the midst of an argument with Meredith over her cavalier attitude to her pregnancy, Jos suddenly kisses Georgy and tells her that he loves her. Georgy flees the apartment onto the streets of London, where Jos follows her, screaming over and over again that he loves her as he pursues her.


title: Georgy Girl

text: The two return to the flat, where they have sex, after which there is a knock at the door by Peggy, a friend of Meredith, who tells Jos that Meredith has gone to the hospital to give birth. Jos and Georgy go to the hospital, where Georgy tries to comfort Meredith while she is in labour. Jos and Georgy's secret love affair continues.


title: Georgy Girl

text: Meredith gives birth to a daughter they name Sara. Because she has no interest in the baby and has tired of Jos, she announces that she plans to put the child up for adoption and divorce him.


title: Georgy Girl

text: Georgy and Jos set up home together in the flat, caring for baby Sara and living as a common-law married couple. It becomes clear that Georgy cares more for the baby than for having an adult relationship with Jos. Their relationship ends when Jos tires of a father's responsibilities; he abandons her and his baby. Now that Georgy is the sole caregiver of a baby to whom she has no blood ties, Social Services wishes to remove baby Sara from her care.


title: Georgy Girl

text: In the recent past, Mr Leamington's wife suddenly died. Leamington, who was unable to express his true feelings for Georgy while his wife was alive, now finds himself free to express his love for her, so he proposes marriage. Georgy accepts because this will allow her to keep Sara. The two marry despite the difference in their backgrounds and ages. They officially adopt Sara, making Georgy a mother. As the newlyweds are chauffeured away from their wedding, Georgy ignores her new husband, devoting all her attention to baby Sara.


title: Georgy Girl

text: Several scenes were filmed in north London, in Belsize Park and Little Venice, notably outside a canalside house on Maida Avenue.


title: Georgy Girl

text: The title song "Georgy Girl", written by Tom Springfield and Jim Dale, was recorded by Australian band The Seekers. A single release of the song (with somewhat different lyrics) topped the singles chart in Australia, and was a top 10 hit in both the UK and the U.S. (#2 for two weeks). It was the 56th biggest British hit of 1967, and the 57th biggest American hit of 1967. It became a gold record and was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Song from a Motion Picture category.


title: Georgy Girl

text: The film was successful at the box office. By 1967, it had earned an estimated $7 million in the United States and $6 million in other countries. By the end of 1967, it had earned $7,330,000 in rentals in North America according to rentals accruing to the distributors.


title: Emblems of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

text: The emblems of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, under the Geneva Conventions, are to be placed on humanitarian and medical vehicles and buildings, and to be worn by medical personnel and others carrying out humanitarian work, to protect them from military attack on the battlefield. There are four such emblems, three of which are in use: the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and the Red Crystal. The Red Lion and Sun is also a recognized emblem, but is no longer in use.


text: There were also prior disputes concerning the use of a Red Star of David by Magen David Adom (MDA), the Israeli first-aid society; the Red Crystal was created in response to these disputes, thus enabling the admission of MDA to the movement.


text: In popular culture, the red cross symbol came to be a recognizable generic emblem for medicine, commonly associated with first aid, medical services, products, or professionals; it has been unlawfully used in toys, movies, and video games, outside its defined context. After objections from the movement, derivatives and alternatives have come to be used instead. Additionally, Johnson & Johnson has registered the symbol for their medicinal products. The appropriation of the symbol has led to further irritation due to the practice of hospitals, first aid teams, and ski patrols in the United States reversing the symbol to a white cross on a red background – so undoing the original idea of the Red Cross emblem, namely reversing the Swiss flag – thus inappropriately suggesting an affiliation with Switzerland.


text: The symbols described below have two distinctively different meanings. On one hand, the visual symbols of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, the Red Lion with Sun and the Red Crystal serve as protection markings in armed conflicts, a denotation which is derived from and defined in the Geneva Conventions. This is called the "protective use" of the symbols. On the other hand, these symbols are used as distinctive logos by those organizations which are part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. This is the "indicative use" of the emblems, a meaning which is defined in the statutes of the International Movement and partly in the third Additional Protocol.


text: As a protection symbol, they are used in armed conflicts to mark persons and objects (buildings, vehicles, etc.) which are working in compliance with the rules of the Geneva Conventions. In this function, they can also be used by organizations and objects which are not part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, for example the medical services of the armed forces, civilian hospitals, and civil defense units. As protection symbols, these emblems should be used without any additional specification (textual or otherwise) and in a prominent manner which makes them as visible and observable as possible, for example by using large white flags bearing the symbol. Four of these symbols, namely the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, the Red Lion with Sun and the Red Crystal, are defined in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols as symbols for protective use.


text: When used as an organizational logo, these symbols only indicate that persons, vehicles, buildings, etc. which bear the symbols belong to a specific organization which is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (like the ICRC, the International Federation or the national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies). In this case, they should be used with an additional specification (for example "American Red Cross") and not be displayed as prominently as when used as protection symbols. Three of these symbols, namely the Red Cross, the Red Crescent and the Red Crystal, can be used for indicative purposes by national societies for use in their home country or abroad. In addition to that, the Red Shield of David can be used by the Israel society Magen David Adom for indicative purposes within Israel, and, pending the approval of the respective host country, in combination with the Red Crystal when working abroad.


text: The Red Cross on white background was the original protection symbol declared at the 1864 Geneva Convention. The ideas to introduce a uniform and neutral protection symbol as well as its specific design originally came from Dr. Louis Appia, a Swiss surgeon, and Swiss General Henri Dufour, founding members of the International Committee.


text: The red cross symbolizes as an identifier for medical personnel during wartime. The Red Cross is defined as a protection symbol in Article 7 of the 1864 Geneva Convention, Chapter VII ("The distinctive emblem") and Article 38 of the 1949 Geneva Convention ("For the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field"). There is an unofficial agreement within the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement that the shape of the cross should be a cross composed of five squares. However, regardless of the shape, any Red Cross on white background should be valid and must be recognized as a protection symbol in conflict. Of the 190 National Societies which are currently recognized by the ICRC, 154 are using the Red Cross as their official organization emblem.


text: According to the ICRC, the emblem adopted was formed by reversing the colours of the flag of Switzerland. This was officially recorded in the 1906 revision of the Convention. However, according to jurist and Red Cross historian Pierre Boissier, no clear evidence of this origin has been found; the concept that the design was chosen to complement the country in which the convention at which it was adopted was held, was also promoted later to counter the objections of Turkey that the flag was a Christian symbol.


text: During the Russo-Turkish War from 1876 to 1878, the Ottoman Empire used a Red Crescent instead of the Red Cross because its government believed that the cross would alienate its Muslim soldiers. When asked by the ICRC in 1877, Russia committed to fully respect the sanctity of all persons and facilities bearing the Red Crescent symbol, followed by a similar commitment from the Ottoman government to respect the Red Cross. After this de facto assessment of equal validity to both symbols, the ICRC declared in 1878 that it should be possible in principle to adopt an additional official protection symbol for non-Christian countries. The Red Crescent was formally recognized in 1929 when the Geneva Conventions were amended (Article 19). After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Red Crescent was first used by its successor nation Turkey, followed by Egypt. From its official recognition to today, the Red Crescent became the organizational emblem of nearly every national society in countries with majority Muslim populations except Indonesia, The national societies of some countries such as Pakistan (1974), Malaysia (1975), or Bangladesh (1989) have officially changed their name and emblem from the Red Cross to the Red Crescent. The Red Crescent is used by 33 of the 190 recognized societies worldwide.


text: The introduction of an additional neutral protection symbol had been under discussion for a number of years, with the Red Crystal (previously referred to as the Red Lozenge or Red Diamond) being the most popular proposal. However, amending the Geneva Conventions to add a new protection symbol requires a diplomatic conference of all 192 signatory states to the Conventions. The Swiss government organized such a conference to take place on December 5–6, 2005, to adopt a third additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions introducing the Red Crystal as an additional symbol with equal status to the Red Cross or Red Crescent. Following an unplanned extension of the conference until December 7, the protocol was adopted after a vote successfully achieved the required two-thirds majority. From the countries which attended the conference, 98 voted in favour and 27 against the protocol, while 10 countries abstained from voting.


text: In the third Protocol the new symbol is referred to as "the third Protocol emblem". The rules for the use of this symbol, based on the third additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions, are the following:


text: On 22 June 2006, the ICRC announced that the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement adopted the Red Crystal as an additional emblem for use by the national societies. The ICRC also announced the recognition of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and the Israeli National Society, Magen David Adom (MDA). On 14 January 2007, the third additional protocol entered into force.


text: From 1924 to 1980, Iran used a Red Lion with Sun symbol for its national society, the Red Lion and Sun Society, based on the flag and emblem of Iran. The Red Lion with Sun was formally recognized as a protection symbol in 1929, together with the Red Crescent. The symbol was introduced at Geneva in 1964. Despite the country's shift to the Red Crescent in 1980, Iran explicitly maintains the right to use the symbol.


text: Magen David Adom, the national society of Israel, has used the Red Shield of David as its organization emblem since its foundation. The Red Shield of David was initially proposed as an addition to the Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Red Lion with Sun in 1931. The proposal was rejected by the ICRC, like the "Mehrab-e-Ahmar" (Red Archway) symbol of the national aid society of Afghanistan four years later, as well as a wide range of other proposals, due to concerns about symbol proliferation. Israel again tried to establish the emblem as a third protection symbol in the context of the Geneva Conventions, but a respective proposal was narrowly defeated when the Geneva Conventions were adopted by governments in 1949. As the Red Shield of David is not a recognized protection symbol under the Geneva Conventions, Magen David Adom's recognition as a national society by the ICRC was long delayed.


text: It was not until 2006 that the ICRC officially recognized Magen David Adom. The adoption of the third protocol emblem paved the way for the recognition and admission of Magen David Adom as a full member of the International Federation, as the rules of the third protocol allow it to continue using the Red Shield of David when operating within Israel and provide a solution for its missions abroad. Though the organization only recently gained official recognition, it took part in many international activities, in cooperation with both the ICRC and the Federation, prior to its official recognition.


text: Various other countries have also lobbied for alternative symbols, which have been rejected because of concerns of territorialism.


text: In 1922, a Red Swastika Society was formed in China during the Warlord era. The swastika is used in the Indian subcontinent, East, and Southeast Asia as a symbol to represent Dharma or Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism in general. While the organization has organized philanthropic relief projects (both domestic and international), as a sectarian religious body it is ineligible for recognition from the International Committee. Its headquarters are now in Taiwan.