VISIT TO THE UK BY YONA SABAR

That this House welcomes the visit to this country of Yona Sabar, Professor of Hebrew at UCLA, who was born in Iraqi Kurdistan and who will share memories of growing up in a Jewish family in Kurdistan in the 1940s, an evening organised by the charity Gulan at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 28 June 2012; notes that his son, journalist Ariel Sabar, will talk about his new book, Paradise Lost and Found, which details how a Jewish boy from Los Angeles travelled to war torn Iraq in search of roots, identity, his father's improbable life story and reconciliation; further notes that the Jews of Zakho dwelt peacefully among Muslims and Christians for hundreds of years, speaking Aramaic, the language of Jesus; and deeply regrets that they were uprooted in the exodus of the 1940s, but notes that Iraqi Kurdistan remains a tolerant society in its attitudes towards ethnic and religious minorities.