Eschewing “anything but race” explanations (which tend to privilege ethnic belonging or cultural markers) of Iraqi Jewish discrimination in early state Israel, this paper uses a race analysis to reveal how early immigration sites like the transit camp (settlement sites within the new State of Israel where recently arrived immigrants were housed in harsh conditions), while purportedly meant to acclimate Iraqi Jews and other Mizrahim, actually acted as a crucible for their discrimination. Showing race as constructed via Iraqi Jewish women’s relationship with three kinds of social capital: socio-economic, medical, and educational, reveals the ways in which these women’s racial imaginations (based on their Iraqi upbringing) were not commensurate with the racial logics they came up against in Israel, which were more confining. Such analysis not only proves that it is worthwhile to think in terms of race and not just ethnicity in early state Israel, but also shows why it was so difficult for Jews to simply forget Iraq and belong in their new country. Additionally, what is at stake is the proof that experiences of belonging on the one hand and discrimination on the other were not ephemeral or singular, but systemic and deeply personal. To address Zionist racism against Iraqi Jews intersectionally, the paper uses women authored memoirs, state documents, and oral histories.