A party of 140 Iraqi Jews are scheduled to fly to Israel soon, Itzhak Raphael, immigration director of the Jewish Agency, announced today. He said that the air evacuation of Iraqi Jews had not been halted.
Mr. Raphael also revealed that negotiations are in progress with various air lines to fly some 4,000 Jews from Iran to Israel in the next three months. When spring weather sets in, however, overland migration will be continued because it is much cheaper, he said.
Iraqi Jews in Israel have decided to observe a week of mourning for Salah Shalom and Joseph Ibrahim Basri, Iraqi Jews executed in a Baghdad public square this week after they had been convicted of charges of terrorism. At a number of mass meetings called to protest the “Judicial murders,” letters were read from Iraqi Jews who described their danger-fraught day-to-day living in the Arab country.
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