Rita Katz - Early Life

Early Life

Katz, a fluent Arabic speaker, was born in Basra in Southern Iraq in 1963 to a well-to-do Iraqi Jewish family. After the Six Day War and shortly after Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party seized power in Iraq in 1968, her father was arrested on charges of spying for Israel. The family's property was confiscated by the state, and the rest of the family put under house arrest in a stone hut. The following year, after having been tortured, Katz's father was convicted and executed in a public hanging in the central square of Baghdad to the roaring applause of more than half a million Iraqis; the government offered free transportation to people from the provinces, and belly dancers performed for the crowd. Katz's mother managed to escape on foot with her three small children to Iran, and from there they made their way to Israel.

The family settled in the seaside town of Bat Yam. While in Israel, Katz served in the Israeli Defense Forces and studied politics, history, and Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University. She later married a medical student, and in 1997 came to the United States with her husband, who received a National Institutes of Health fellowship, and their three children.