From: sethr@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (seth.r.rosenthal)
Subject: Re: Who bombed the Iraqi Jews?
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 16:32:17 GMT
Keywords: Reply to Andy and Seth

Brendan's article actually supports mine in a strange sort of way.
For those who weren't following this a couple of years ago
on t.p.m.  the claims were made (not by Brendan by the way)
that everyone knows the Zionists bombed the Iraqi synagogue,
and Jews had admitted to it.  I began posting on this only
to show what Brendan ulitimately says, that there is not
conclusive proof, and that the Iraqi authorities had as
much to gain as Israel, in fact more.  Brendan supports
all but the "in fact more" in my argument.

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

Your argument only makes sense if the reason registration was
slow was because there was not enough throughput in the process
to handle the crowds.  If you have read Hillel you know that the
reason was that some Iraqi Jews either didn't want to
leave (but the riots of 1943 and 1948 had greatly diminished
that attitude, not to mention the executions of some prominent
Jews), or didn't trust the motives and tactics behind the government
program.  The Government program wasn't working too well, but Mossad
was continuing to smuggle people out of the country.
Someone, I believe the Iraqi government, wanted to light a fire
under the community.  We both agree that it worked.

By the way, the Mossad was smuggling weapons in mainly for use
in defence.  There had been too many anti-Jewish riots, and
the militants were determined to fight back.  All Iraqi Jewish
authors I have read agree on this.  This was not easy for the
average Jew to take, since centuries of persecution and subservient
position had left them afraid to even strike an Arab with a fist.
A local professor of Iraqi origin I know, who served in the IDF told
me once that the hardest thing for him to learn to do was not
to kill, but to kill an Arab.  His in-bred fear was still too strong.

> 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?
> 

Again you have read Haddad and Hillel.  Do recall the communist
demonstrations in Baghdad?  Do you recall how once the demonstration
got underway the Communist Arabs would get the Jews
away so the police and the crowds wouldn't turn on them?

> 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.
> 

I have asked a number of Iraqis born in Baghdad about this.
They all agree that torture was routine to get political
confessions, but that torture was not routine accept
for Jews for other offenses.
This is anecdotal, but consistent with the other phases
of Iraqi persecution of Jews.
Again I remind you of Haddad's (or Hillel I forget which)
description of both the
entrance quotas into Arab universities, and of his saving
an Arab drowning in the river and winding up on the wrong
side of the river.

> 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.
> 

Stillman has only the British document, but I have seen Iraqi
documents too.  I need to get the proper source out of the library.
I will post them when I can.

> 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).
> 

Sources who count those who departed usually count in the mid 100,000's
range.  Israeli sources who count the number of Jews born in Iraq
living in Israel usually wind up over 200,000 and there are
Iraqi Jews who wound up in the USA, France and England.
I believe this is at least in part due to the large Kurdish-Jewish
population who would just cross the border to either Turkey or
Iran.  This is also a problem with Morroccan Jews, who make up the
second largest Jewish nationality in Israel (until the Russians
finish coming).

> 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'.
> 

Strange since other Arab countries were pushing out their Jews.
Egypt did after the Suez war, and North African Jews were
flooding into Israel at the same time.  I would also like
to remind you that George Bush was just tarred for building
up Saddam, but of course his objective in doing so was
not to encourage an invasion of Kuwait.  The Iraqi policy
probably did result in the strengthening of Israel, but
one can be sure that was not the reason it was undertaken.
It was a combination of finances, and Arab Nationalism.
Iran might be criticized for wanting to build up Israel in
this period, but not Iraq.

This is also inconsistent with the Iraqi paranoia about hanging
"zionist spies".  If they were trying to help Israel or strengthen
israel, would they be hanging "zionist spies" (who often really
weren't of course)?  I would also like to remind you that
one of Saddams' first acts on coming to power more recently
was also to hang a bunch of "zionist spies" (this being a
code-word for 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.
> 

In this I defer to Stillman.  His analysis of the goals of
Arab Nationalism, the motivation for the involvement of the 
Middle Eastern Christians, are all quite telling.

Further, in 1953, the overall belief in the Arab world
was that Israel would fall quickly if they put their full
forces behind it.  Having all the Jews in one place
hardly would have made a difference given the numerical
superiority of Arabs at the time.  The world condemned
large-scale persecutions of Jews in the Arab
countries, but would consider a fair outcome of a war against
a sovereign state, just that.

I will post a source over the next few days from a Tunisian
Jew who discusses the Arab Nationalistic terminology of
"Arabic Jews", and relates it to reality of life in Tunisia
during the 40's and 50's.  It supports the claim that
the rise of Arab nationalism to fill the void of the Ottoman
collapse and the colonial withdrawal made the exodus of
Sephardic Jews unavoidable, as does Stillman.  Arab Nationalists
in fact encouraged and forced this exodus.  It was only
the Western influences of colonial rule that resulted
in so many Algerian, Morroccan, Tunisian and Libyan
Jews ending in France, England and North America instead
of Israel.  Otherwise Israel would have had another 600,000
or so Sephardic Jews.

> 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?
> 

Perhaps, but I recall another case.  I will check my books.

> 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.

You are forgetting that Jews were leaving illegally since 1943.
Again recall Hillel and Haddad
and recall that they are only dealing with the Baghdad Jewish community
fleeing towards Iran.  Parallel efforts were occurring in the Kurdish
regions where the Kurds were always more sympathetic to Jews
as were the Turks.  Those Jews who were trying to at least save
some possessions frequently just went with smugglers to the borders.
The official statistics on emigration and registration both
overlook these exits.

> (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.
> 

I have no doubt that Ben-Gurion wanted them all, I have doubts
that they wanted them all at once or at that time, thats all.
At this time, Israel was also being flooded with European Jews.
The major criticism of Israel in this period was its preference
to the Europeans over the Mizrachim, who were perceived as less
educated and modern.  One reason is that many Sephardim had
been robbed officially on the way out of their homelands, and
kept in camps awaiting evacuation (where many were sick and starving)
while Romanian, German, Russian, Polish Jews were leaving
with most of their valuables (or whatever they had left after
the war) and recovered from the physical effects of the Holocaust.
I think Haddad discusses his anger at the difference in treatment
of Sephardic and Ashkenazic immigrants at this time.

> 
> 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]].

So, a top Mossad member denies it.  No damage here.


> (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]

I think you misunderstand the mood of the Iraqi and in fact all
Sephardic Jews in the Arab world.  They wanted to live in those
countries.  These were their homes, they were pretty successful
there, they even were starting to have normal relations as equals
with Muslim Arabs.  Over the past 1200 years they had learned
how to survive under the degraded status offered them by Islam.
The European influence had brought
very positive change for Jews, and had brought changes
in the Arabic societies that were seen as good by the Jews.
This is what Stillman is all about, and what most Sephardic
authors I have read say.  They were against zionism right up
until the end of WWII.  Anti Jewish atrocities across the Arab
world began to make the zionists from a small group, to a
salvation front.  Rabbis across the Arab world condemned the
establishment of Israel, and Jewish communities in Iraq and
Egypt actually sent funds to support the founding of the Palestinian
resistance movements.  The traditionalists, particularly hated
the zionists because they encouraged secular education of
children, put down traditional religious values, and were
challenging the old hakhams for power among the people.
The bourgeous classes were against the zionists because
they were socialists.  Yet when the Jewish quarter of Baghdad
was attacked twice in 5 years, Tripoli while the Jewish Palestinian
Brigade was stationed there and the British kept them
from stoppin the riot, Cairo, Aden and Yemen, there was only one
group to turn to, and despite the mistrust and hatred
most went.  I would expect lots of such comments in this environment.
At the same time it should come as no suprise that 60% of Sephardics
support hard-line Likud while Labor gets a plurality of Ashkenazis.


> (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]
> 

Yeah, I agree on one level, but this Jew smells a rat
bigger than Godzilla.

		Seth Rosenthal

Disclaimer: All opinions are my own not my employers'.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish