Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 00:12:36 EDT
From: andy <2893684@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Who bombed the Iraqi Jews?

In article <1d8bcpINNper@tyl.anu.edu.au>, bdm@cs.anu.edu.au (Brendan McKay)
says:
>
>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.

Brendan, an excellent synthasis of the arguments and a cojent analysis, well
done. Unfortunately, the source I cite is my sole reference so I'm really
not able to respond to your comments, I do accept that there is a great deal
of ambiguity in the evidence.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish