When Bob Simon’s Jewishness Nearly Killed Him

Getty Images
Journalist Bob Simon, who died last night in a car accident, had a brush with death almost 25 years earlier.
As a prisoner of the Iraqis, during the first Persian Gulf War, he worried “his Jewishness might cost him his life,” JTA reported in this 1991 article:
CBS News correspondent Bob Simon was worried that his Jewishness might cost him his life during the six weeks he and three colleagues were prisoners of the Iraqis while the Persian Gulf war raged.
“I thought my number was up when they started accusing me of being a member of Mossad,” the Israeli intelligence service, said Simon, who is normally based in Tel Aviv.
He said his captors “kept shouting ‘Yehudi, Yehudi’ at me.
“I was more worried about my Jewishness than my Tel Aviv posting,” the American newsman told reporters at the Humana Wellington Hospital in northwest London, where he was admitted for medical checkups and treatment.
Simon and three members of his television crew were captured by an Iraqi patrol on the Saudi-Kuwaiti border four days after the Gulf war started Jan. 17. They were released Saturday.
Simon said that after their capture, the four men were taken to the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where they were brutally beaten, and then to an army prison camp for eight days, where discipline was severe but some kindness was shown. Afterward they were put in solitary confinement and interrogated for 24 days.
Simon also described his ordeal Sunday night on the CBS television show “60 Minutes”:
“An army guy, a captain — he had two stars, which is a captain in the Iraqi army — he grabbed me by the face, forced my mouth open and said, ‘Yehudi, Yehudi,’ which means Jewish, and then spit at me and slapped me. This sixth instinct that every anti-Semite has ever had — ‘Jew, dirty Jew.’
“I didn’t think he would shoot me. I could have killed him. I would have killed him if I could have. I would have killed him, and I would have had no more remorse than I had every morning when I got up and killed a cockroach in my room.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Books The White House Seder started in a Pennsylvania basement. Its legacy lives on.
-
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
-
Fast Forward Yarden Bibas says ‘I am here because of Trump’ and pleads with him to stop the Gaza war
-
Fast Forward Trump’s plan to enlist Elon Musk began at Lubavitcher Rebbe’s grave
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.