From: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au (Brendan McKay)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Who bombed the Iraqi Jews?
Date: 4 Nov 1992 22:15:37 +1100
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: tyl.anu.edu.au
Keywords: Reply to Andy and Seth


This is a reply to two postings on the matter of a series of violent
acts against Jews in Baghdad in 1950-1, coincident with the emigration
of most of Iraq's Jews.  The first posting,
Andy X:         <2893684@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
                Subject: Bombing in Baghdad
is an example of the ZDI ("Zionists did it") genre.  The second,
Seth Rosenthal: <1992Nov1.033150.24912@cs.brown.edu>
                Subject: Re: The right to vote in israel
is an example of the IDI ("non-Jewish Iraqis did it") genre.

The literature contains many examples of each genre.  After reading a
great deal on the matter, I have concluded that there is very little
substance to either case.  I will illustrate what I mean with the help
of Andy's and Seth's postings.  First, Andy ("A>").

A>      Here is my reference. "A History of the Jews: Ancient and Modern" by
A>Ilan Halevi. Chapter note 12, pg 24:
A>
A> 12.The facts about the Israeli terrorist provocations in Baghdad in 1950,
A>published for the first time in Israel by the weekly "Ha-Olam Hazeh",on 20
A>April and 1 June 1966, are now widely known.

I don't have access to those articles, but I have read several detailed
accounts of them in ZDI writings [Woo, Hir].  In addition, the Black
Panther article you reference below is apparently based on it.  From
these sources, I claim that no hard evidence is presented.  There is
some testimony from Iraqi Jews who believe ZDI, but not from anyone
who claims to have been involved, nor from anyone claiming inside
knowledge.  Basically it is a presentation of the ZDI version from
the point of view of militant Iraqi Jews (more of whom below.)

A>                                          Faced with the unwillingness of
A>Iraqi Jews to enrol on the lists for (legal) immigration to Israel,
A>the Israeli
A>secret service twice launched grenade attacks against Jews. The second
A>attack, on the Shem-Tov synagogue, killed three people and wounded dozens.
A>One of the members of the network, arrested by Iraqi police, led them to some
A>15 caches of weapons from Israel, and impliccated several Israeli figures in
A>the affair.

There are several things confused here.  There is no doubt whatever
that there was a Jewish underground in Baghdad which (amongst other
things) did military training in "small weapons, knives, machine-guns,
clubs, hand-grenades and Molotov cocktails" [Rej, p231].

It had existed since 1942 and was supplied first by the Hagana
and later by Mossad.  HOWEVER, the existence of arms caches does not
by itself implicate the underground in the bombings.

A>           The facts wre reported in detail by Kokhavi Shemesh in the Black
A>Panthers' journal #4, August 1972.

There is an English translation of this article in [DM, pages 126-133].
It contains statements in the ZDI style, but offers NO hard evidence.
One thing that must be made clear is that claims by a few biased
authors (eg. [Pal]) that this article quotes Mossad agent Yehuda
Tajjar as confessing to the bombings are completely false.

A>They were confirmed by the journalist
A>Barukh Nadel in a questionnaire sent to Mordechai Ben Porat through the Tel
A>Aviv high court on 7 November 1977; see the account in the daily"Yedioth
A>Aharonoth", 8 November 1977.

It is a bit remiss of Halevi to not mention that these questions arose
because Ben Porat sued Nadel for defamation when Nadel made claims
like you are making.  Some of Nadel's questions appear in [Woo].
There is supposed to me more in [Jeu] but my library missed that issue.
A few are quite interesting, but the bottom line is that they are
just QUESTIONS.  I have seen none of Ben Porat's answers; in fact
I can't even find out who won the libel action.  [If someone can
look up Israeli legal records, I'd be very interested.]

A>See also the eyewitness account by Wilbur
A>Evaland, an employee of the United States embassy at the time, in "Ropes of
A>Sand,"  quoted by the Sephardic Center for Social Research, Berkeley, 1980"

Eveland's book [Eve] is a very interesting account of US skullduggery
in the Middle-East (he was CIA), but it is almost irrelevant to our topic.
He was NOT in Baghdad at the time of the bombings, but afterwards
(during the trials).  He says things like "the Iraqi police later
provided our embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and
library bombings had been the work of an underground Zionist
organization" (p49) but doesn't say what that evidence was.

===
Now for Seth's posting.  "S>" is Seth, "D>" is Danny Keren.

D> 3) I seem to remember the synagogue was used as a registering place
D>    for Jews who wanted to go to Israel. Wouldn't make a lot of sense
D>    for the Mossad to sabotage it, if that was the case.

S>This is fact, that it was the place where Jews went to sign up
S>to leave Iraq under the Iraqi government sponsored program.
S>See my 4) below.

I posted a denial of this before, but both of us were wrong.  There
were 12 registration places, including the Masuada Shemtov synagogue
(the one bombed).  Final registration had to be done at the Central
synagogue (the Ezra Daoud synagogue(?anyone?)) [Sch, p111].

Now, I wonder if you realise the result of your argument?

  Premise 1: Bombing a registration place would slow down
             registration rather than speed it up.
  Premise 2: Iraq wanted to "to get them out fast, and all at once".
  Conclusion: Iraq didn't do the bombing.

One could go further and add your premise that Israel's interest was
to spread out the emigration, but that would start to get silly.
The worst problem with the argument is that Premise 1 is false.
In the six weeks before the attack, 2300 Jews registered; in the
two weeks after it, 7600 registered. [Shi, p126, quoting British
archives].

D> 4) The Iraqi police and/or other units were very much capable and
D>    willing to carry out such an act of sabotage.

Capable, certainly.  Willing?

S>I have posted on this before.  Let me add some more evidence.

S>1) The weapons used were official Iraqi Army issue.

I expect you are referring to Hillel's report of the trial [Hil, p281].
Specifically, he says that the grenade used at the synagogue was of
some type "known to be solely in the possession of the Iraqi armed
forces".  The English grammar is ambiguous on who made this last
claim (Hillel or the court) and whether "solely" means "solely in the
world" or "solely in Iraq".  Another contemporary source (Iraqi
newspaper quoted in [Woo, p188]) says that the grenade was "of British
manufacture".  Given that (a) Israel captured Iraqi weapons only two
years earlier (in the 1948-9 war), and (b) the weapons most likely to
have been available on the Iraqi black-market were Iraqi Army weapons,
and (c) Hillel's book is obviously partisan (he is defending his own
colleagues), I think this argument is very weak.

S>2) A Jewish cafe' had been sprayed with machine guns and grenades
S>a day earlier, ammunition of the same issue.

Your chronology is wrong.  Also, unless your source is other than
[Hil] this claim came only from an Iraqi prosecutor trying to
establish a connection between the two incidents.

S>3) A Jew was arrested for the crimes, and admitted to it under
S>a week of torture.  Torture of Jews in prison in Iraq was
S>commonplace by the way

Correction: torture of EVERYONE was common, especially political
prisoners.  I agree that the confession is unsafe.

S>4) Iraqi government memos and British diplomatic missives of the
S>time expressed Iraqi concern over the slowness of emigration out
S>of Iraq.

I think you are referring to a single document in [Sti, p529].
Your description is fine otherwise.

S>          One must remember that the Iraqi government was encouraging
S>Jewish emigration for many reasons.

S>        a) All assets of the departing Jews was being confiscated,
S>        houses turned over to Arabs without payment.  This was considerably
S>        increasing the government coffers (260,000 Iraqi Jews roughly at
S>        this time),

At most 160,000 (many sources).

S>        and useful as a way to pay back political allies
S>        i.e. giving them a free house, sometimes in the best parts of
S>        town.  Especially in Basra, but also in Baghdad, there were
S>        some very wealthy Jews.

S>        b) Iraqi policy was stated in their memoranda to encourage
S>        the flow of empoverished Jews to Israel so that the already
S>        pressed economy of Israel (1950-1953) from the 1948 war
S>        would crack under the pressure of hundreds' of thousands
S>        of refugees.  The Iraqi Jews were to be unwitting weapons
S>        of the continuing war against Israel.

What memoranda?  I have never seen such a statement from Iraqi
sources; please give a reference.  Incidentally, when Iraqi premier
al-Said was deposed in 1958, one of the charges he was tried for
was 'strengthening Israel by allowing the emigration of the Jews'.

S>        c) Arab Nationalism had little room in it for Jews, so
S>        the Arab Nationalists were just as happy to get all the
S>        Jews into one place where they would be easier to get
S>        rid of one day.  At this point, they still felt they
S>        could destroy Israel militarily and economically.
S>        Read any of the books by Iraqi Jews, and anyone who wants
S>        to discus these matters should read Norman Stillman's
S>        book about Jews in Arab countries in the 20th century,
S>        or similar books about Jews in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya,
S>        etc.  They were usually victims of Arab nationalism.

Your first sentence is illogical.  It is easier to destroy a
dispersed (thus weak) population than a concentrated one.
There was much practical discrimination against Jews in Iraq
at the time; it doesn't have more than indirect circumstantial
bearing on this case, though.

S>5) Jews executed during the period for "spying for the zionists"
S>were disproportionately the richest Iraqi Jews, who also were
S>not coincidentally the least likely to emigrate or be zionists.
S>One such case occured in Basra just before the synagogue attack.

Maybe you mean Shafiq Adas, hanged 27 Sep 1948?

S>If the claim is that they weren't leaving fast enough
S>for the Mossad, this is contradicted by the fact that more than
S>half the Iraqi Jews had already signed up at the time of the attack.

Less than half.  See [Shi, p126] for numbers.

S>The lines at the synagogue had showed no sign of abating.

I could quote many claims to the contrary.

S>                                                           Mossad
S>had nothing to gain by the attack the Iraqi Government did.
S>It was in Israel's interest to spread the flow of refugees out,
S>it was in the Iraqis interests to get them out fast, and all at
S>once (remember the tents the Israelis had to put them up in?).

This is quite misleading.
(a) You are forgetting that there was a deadline for Jews to register
to leave.  This deadline was approaching rapidly but most Jews had
not registered yet.  Anyone (Zionist or Iraqi) who wanted all the
Jews to leave had a good motive to hurry them up.
(b) Everything I have read about Ben-Gurion suggests that gathering
Jews from around the world had much higher priority than the
temporary living conditions they faced on arrival.  I think that
your judgment of what was good for Israel was not shared by the
Israeli government.

S>All of this indicates that Iraq had more to gain from the bombing
S>than Israel, and it is far more likely (especially given the justice
S>system in Arab countries of the time) that the Iraqi Army staged the
S>attack.

It's possible, but your evidence is as weak as Andy's.

S>Many Iraqi Jews involved in the secret
S>smuggling of Jews out of Iraq such as Hershel Haddad express
S>their opinions that it was the Iraqis and not the Jewish organizations.

This brings me to the last point I wish to make.  Some authors,
such as Hillel [Hil] try hard to paint the ZDI/IDI argument as
one of Arabs versus Jews, or maybe Arab propagandists against
Israel.  Of course Arab propagandists have picked up on the ZDI
theme, but they are not the life-blood of it.  Its sustenance comes
from within the Sephardic community.  It would be interesting to
see an opinion poll on the matter; meanwhile here is some anecdotal
evidence.
(a) A leading member of Mossad LeAliya Bet, Mordecai Ben Porat,
    said, "All those who know me and who know that I was sent
    by Israel to Iraq during this period hold me responsible
    for bombs thrown at this time.  This is an untrue accusation,
    totally without foundation." [Jeu, quoted in [Woo, p198]].
(b) According to an Israeli internal memo, "many of the Iraqi
    Jewish immigrants in Israel...expressed either indifference
    or pleasure at [Salah and Basri, the two Jews hanged for
    the bombing]'s fate.  'This is God's vengeance on the movement
    that brought us here', some said.  Many continued to believe
    that Salah and Basri had thrown the bombs 'in order to
    encourage the immigration from Iraq'." [BM, p92, quoting
    Israeli State Archives]
(c) In 1960, following a change in the Mossad leadership, there
    was an internal enquiry into the matter.  Three Israeli
    agents and nine Iraqi Jews were interviewed.  The report
    noted that "most of the witnesses questioned suggested that
    the bombs had been thrown by Jews".  However, the conclusion
    of the inquiry was that there was "no evidence" for that
    belief. [BM, p93, quoting ISA].
(d) I can't prove it, but I suspect the ZDI idea has been accepted
    by a few authors who won't admit it.  How else to explain
    Schechtman's relegation of the bombings to one sentence out
    of a very extended study [Sch], with no culprit suggested
    (in total contrast to his usual extended diatribes over
    such matters)?  Another long account, this time avoiding
    mention of the bombings altogether, is [Coh].

S>Stillman's book contains lots of documentary evidence about
S>the attack, I suggest anyone interested in the truth should
S>read that book.

I second that suggestion.  In closing, I will quote Stillman's
conclusion, as I agree with it entirely.

   "Both sides in this historical dispute, over which a considerable
   amount of ink [not to mention ASCII] has been spilled, are
   certainly plausible.  Neither side, however, has provided truly
   convincing evidence, and for any detached observer the point
   must remain moot." [Sti, p162]


REFERENCES

[BM]  I. Black & B. Morris, Israel's Secret Wars (Futura, 1992).
[Coh] H. Cohen, Jews of the Middle East, 1860-1972 (Wiley, 1973).
[DM]  Davis & Mezvinsky, Documents from Israel, 1967-1973 (Ithaca, 1975).
[Eve] W. Eveland, Ropes of sand (Norton, 1980).
[Hil] S. Hillel, Operation Babylon (Doubleday, 1987).
[Hir] D. Hirst, The gun and the olive branch (Faber and Faber, 1977).
[Jeu] Jeune Afrique (Paris, France) 22 Feb 1978.
[Pal] M. Palumbo, The Palestinian catastrophy (Faber, 1987).
[Rej] N. Rejwan, The Jews of Iraq (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985).
[Sch] J. Schechtman, On wings of eagles (Yoseloff, 1961).
[Shi] A. Shibak, The lure of Zion (Al Saqi, 1986).
[Sti] N. Stillman, The Jews of Arab lands in modern times
      (Jewish Publication Society, 1991).
[Woo] M. Woolfson, Prophets in Babylon (Faber and Faber, 1980).

Brendan.