Salmān Shīna(1899–1978) was an Iraqi lawyer, member of parliament, and journalist. Educated at the Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Baghdad (established 1864), Shīna served as a translator for the Ottoman forces during World War I. He was captured by the British in 1917 and spent over a year in India as a prisoner of war. Years later, in the independent Iraqi state and in Israel, Shīna, unlike many Arab nationalists of the time, would recall the positive role the Ottoman Empire had played with respect to Middle Eastern Jewry.

In Iraq, Shīna became the secretary of a pro-Zion…