How Few Remain

Baghdad used to be home to a large Jewish community that mostly emigrated to Israel in the late 1940s and early 1950s after the climate for Jews in Arab countries turned frigid. But a small number remained through the decades, and were able to keep at least one synagogue open until Meir Tweg "was closed in 2003, after it became too dangerous to gather openly." Now there's just a handful left, profiled by The New York Times's Stephen Farrell.

Farrell doesn't make a big deal about it, but the upshot of the factoid about the synagogue seems to be that the U.S. invasion actually turned Iraq into a less hospital place for Jews than was Saddam Hussein's rabidly anti-Zionist rapacious dictatorship.