Here’s what it’s like to grow up as a Jew in Iraq
Ceen Gabbai was born and raised as a Jew in Iraq, and received asylum in the United States in 2015. She now lives in Brooklyn. (Courtesy of Gabbai)
NEW YORK (JTA) — When Ceen Gabbai argued with her first-grade teacher about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, she didn’t realize how big of a risk she was taking.
The year was 2000 and students across the world held strong opinions about the Second Intifada, an outbreak of violence that claimed thousands of lives and began in September of that year. But Gabbai’s situation was different: She was one of the few Jewish students in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Standing up for Israel in a Baghdad elementary school was not an advisable move.
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