The eight Jews remaining in Iraq should flee for their lives, a representative of the community has told the Jerusalem Post. Andrew White, a Church of England clergyman who tends to religious minorities in Baghdad, claims that the Baghdad Jews face dangerous sectarian violence and the fact they live outside the protected Green Zone. Adrew White himself has fled due to the violence.

“The time has come for them to flee,” White said.

Asked if the threat against them came from Shi’ite or Sunni groups, he said “everyone” was out to get them.

“I asked [the US] Congress about the Jews in Baghdad because their situation was so desperate,” White said, referring to his July 25 appearance before the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, where he stressed the growing threat to Baghdad’s minorities, including Jews. “In their passports it says Yihud [Jew in Arabic] under religion, and that only adds to the danger. They need to get out.”

According to White, an unspecified few have expressed their desire to leave. But despite efforts by Jewish organizations abroad and some Knesset members to bring them to Israel, the eight rejected the idea of the Jewish state as a possible point of refuge. The problem, White said, was that due to the umbrella of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiments they have lived under in Iraq, they are fearful of Israel and what it represents.

“They have been fed anti-Israel propaganda all their lives,” he said. “They do not trust Israel to be a good place. If some of them do want to go to Israel, they are scared of what the repercussions might be for the ones that stay.”