Last Letter

Born in Baghdad, Sasson Shalom Dallal was a member of the League for the Struggle against Zionism, an organization concerned with thwarting Zionist efforts to form a two-state system—Jewish and Arab—in Mandatory Palestine. From their perspective on the far left, Dallal and like-minded Iraqis were convinced that such a political system would serve the interests only of colonialists and the Jewish bourgeoisie. The background of such concerns was the continuing effort of Great Britain to maintain its imperial sway in the Middle East and the Iraqi government’s hostility toward communism. For about four months in 1949, Dallal was head of the Iraqi Communist Party, but in the end, like some of his leftist comrades before him, the twenty-year-old was hanged by the state.