Six of Iraq's last remaining Jews are airlifted to Israel direct from Baghdad By Amiram Barkat Ha'aretz Six elderly Jews from Iraq, from among the last remaining Jews in the country, landed Friday evening in Israel on a direct flight from Baghdad. The six were flown to Israel as part of a joint operation of the Jewish Agency and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a Jewish-American organization that deals with humanitarian aid to Jews throughout the world. Iraq once had a thriving community of some 130,000 Jews; between 1949 and 1952, around 120,000 made their way to Israel, with smaller numbers of Jews leaving the country in subsequent years. Among the six is a 99-year-old woman and her 70-year-old daughter, another 70 year-old woman who was the last remaining Jew in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, and a blind 90-year-old former Baghdad resident. The names of the six were not released, and the Jewish Agency kept the mission under wraps until they landed in Israel. An HIAS spokesman said that the Iraqi Jews had arrived in Israel on a direct flight chartered by the Jewish Agency. The plane took off from Baghdad at 5 P.M. Israel time and landed a few minutes before the start of the Sabbath, after a planned stopover in Jordan was canceled. The six are elderly and the effort to bring them out of Iraq was considered a humanitarian mission, said Giora Rom, director-general of the Jewish Agency, the organization responsible for bringing Jews to Israel. Before Friday's mission, only 34 Jews were found in Iraq by a Jewish Agency envoy who visited the country after the U.S.-led defeat of Saddam Hussein's government, Rom said. The other 28 Iraqi Jews did not want to come to Israel, said Rom, speaking on Israel's Channel Two. He added that the agency had provided those who had stayed behind with religious articles.