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1950–1951 Baghdad bombings

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1950-1951 Baghdad bombings refers to the bombing of Jewish targets in Baghdad, Iraq, between April 1950 and June 1951. Iraqi authorities arrested three Zionist activists on charges of planting the bombs to encourage Iraqi Jews to immigrate to Israel. Shalom Salah Shalom and Yosef Ibrahim Basri were sentenced to death and Yehuda Tajar to ten years in prison. In the wake of rumors that agents of Mossad LeAliyah Bet had organized the attacks to frighten Jews and encourage them to move to Israel, a claim supported by several Mizrahi scholars and activists, the Israeli government conducted an official inquiry in 1960 that "did not find any factual proof that the bombs were hurled by any Jewish organization or individual." In his book The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, historian Moshe Gat writes that the bombings were the work of Arab extremists. He says attempts to attribute the exodus of Iraqi Jewry to violence by a Jewish underground is tendentious and based on ignorance and distortion.

Background

See also: History of the Jews in Iraq

Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities. By 1936, there was an increased sense of insecurity among the Jews of Iraq. The rise of pan-Arab nationalism coincided with the second King Faisal's admiration of Nazism. In 1941 after the government of pro-Nazi Rashid Ali was defeated, his soldiers and policemen, aided by the Arab mob, started the Farhud ("violent dispossession"), in which 180 Jews were killed in two days of anti-Jewish riots.

In the summer of 1948, the Iraqi government declared Zionism a capital offense and fired Jews in government positions. In his autobiography, Sasson Somekh, a Baghdadi Jew, wrote: "Emigration until 1946 or 1947 was infrequent, despite the growing feeling among Iraqi Jews that their days in the Land of the Two Rivers were numbered. By the time war broke out in Palestine in 1948, many civil servants had been dismissed from their governmental jobs. Commerce had declined considerably, and the memory of the Farhud, which had meanwhile faded, returned." At this time, he writes, "hundreds of Jews...were sentenced by military courts to long prison sentences for Zionist and Communist activity, both real and imagined. Some of the Baghdadi Jews who supported the Zionist movement began to steal across the border to Iran, from where they were flown to Israel."

Elie Kedourie writes that after the 1948 show trial of Shafiq Ades, a respected Jewish businessman, who was publicly hanged in Basra, Iraq Jews realized they were no longer under the protection of the law and there was little difference between the mob and Iraqi court justice.

By 1949, the Iraqi Zionist underground was smuggling Iraqi Jews out of the country at the rate of 1,000 a month. In March 1950, Iraq passed a law stripping Jews who emigrated of their Iraqi citizenship. The law was motivated by economic considerations (the property of departing Jews reverted to the state treasury) and a sense that Jews were a potentially troublesome minority that the country would be better off without. (p. 91) Israel was initially reluctant to absorb so many immigrants, (Hillel, 1987) but in March 1951 organized Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, an airlift to Israel, and sent in emissaries to encourage Jews to leave.

Bombing incidents

  • On March 19, 1950, a bomb exploded in the American Cultural Center and Library used by Iraqi Jews.
  • On April 8, 1950 a bomb was thrown into El-Dar El-Bida Café where Jews were observing Passover. Four Jews were injured in the blast. Leaflets appeared demanding that Jews emigrate from Iraq as soon as possible.
  • On May 10, 1950, a grenade was thrown at Beit-Lawi Automobile company building, a company with Jewish ownership.
  • On June 3, 1950, a grenade exploded in El-Batawin, then a Jewish area of Baghdad, with no casualties.
  • On June 5, 1950, there was another attack on El Rasjid Street. Nobody was injured.
  • On January 14, 1951, a grenade damaged a high-voltage cable outside Masouda Shem-Tov Synagogue. Three Jews were killed, including a 12-year old boy, and ten were wounded.

Alleged Mossad involvement

In April 1950, an activist of Mossad LeAliyah Bet, Shlomo Hillel, using the alias Richard Armstrong, flew from Amsterdam to Baghdad as a representative of the American charter company Near East Air Transport, to organize an airlift of Iraq Jews to Cyprus. In fact, Near East Air Transport was owned by the Jewish Agency and the Jews were taken to Israel, not Cyprus. Earlier, Hillel had trained Zionist militants in Baghdad using the alias Fuad Salah. According to Adam Shatz, the Mossad had been promoting Jewish emigration since 1941 and used stories of Jewish mistreatment to encourage the Jews to leave.Mordechai Ben Porat, founder and chair of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, who was coordinating Jewish emigration at the time, was accused of orchestrating a bombing campaign to speed up the Jewish exodus from Iraq. Porat sued the journalist for libel, ending in an out-of-court compromise and an apology by the journalist. In his 1996 book "To Baghdad and Back," Ben-Porat published the full report of a 1960 investigation committee appointed by David Ben Gurion, which found no proof that Jews were involved in the bombing. Yehuda Tajar, who spent ten years in Iraqi prison for his alleged involvement in the bombings said they were carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood. According to Tajar, one of the Jewish activists, Yosef Beit-Halahmi, organized attacks after his colleagues were arrested to prove that those on trial were not the perpetrators.

Effects on Iraqi Jewish emigration

In March 1950 the government of Iraq passed the Denaturalisation Act that allowed Jews to emigrate if they renounced their Iraqi citizenship. Iraqi prime minster Tawfiq al-Suwaidi expected that 7,000-10,000 Jews out of the Iraqi Jewish population of 125,000 would leave. A few thousand Jews registered for the offer before the first bombing occurred. The first bombing occurred on the last day of Passover, 8 April 1950. Panic in the Jewish community ensued and many more Jews registered to leave Iraq. The law expired in March 1951 but was extended after the Iraqi government froze the assets of departing Jews, including those who had already left. Between the first and last bombing almost the entire Jewish community bar a few thousand had registered to leave the country. The emigration of Jews was also due to the deteriorating status of Jews in Iraq since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as they were suspected of being disloyal to Iraq. They were treated with threats, suspicion and physical assaults and were portrayed as a fifth column in the media. By 1953, nearly all Jews had left the country. In his memoir of Jewish life in Baghdad, Sasson Somekh writes: "The pace of registration for the citizenship waiver was slow in the beginning, but it increased as tensions rose between Jews and their neighbors and after acts of terror were perpetrated against Jewish businesses and institutions - especially the Mas'uda Shem-Tov Synagogue...This was the place to which emigrating citizens were required to report with their luggage before leaving for Israel."

Responsibility for the bombings

Israeli historian Moshe Gat believes that the attacks were the work of Arab extremists and sees little connection between the bombings and exodus. Gat wrote that frantic Jewish registration for denaturalisation and departure was driven by knowledge that the denaturalisation law was due to expire in March 1951. He also noted the influence of further pressures including the property-freezing law and continued anti-Jewish disturbances which raised the fear of large-scale pogroms. According to Gat it was highly unlikely the Israelis would have taken such measures to accelerate the Jewish evacuation given that they were already struggling to cope with the existing level of Jewish immigration.

In a study of mass immigration to Israel in the 1950s, Immigrants in Turmoil, Dvora Haochen describes the dilemma faced by Israeli absorption agencies, already pushed to the limit coping with mass immigration from Rumania: "Both the government and the Jewish Agency were inclined to give priority to immigration from Iraq on the assumption that those who remained in Iraq were in greater danger."

Gat also raised serious doubts about the guilt of the alleged Jewish bomb throwers. An Iraqi army officer known for his anti-Jewish views was originally arrested for the offenses and but never charged, after explosive devices similar to those used in the attack on the Jewish synagogue were found in his home. The 1950-1951 bombings followed a long history of anti-Jewish incidents in Iraq and the prosecution was not able to produce a single eyewitness. Shalom Salah told the court that he had confessed after being severely tortured. Gat believes the perpetrators were members of the anti-Jewish Istiqlal Party.

Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi-born self-published author who worked in Queens, New York as a security guard claimed that the bombings were "perpetrated by Zionist agents in order to cause fear amongst the Jews, and so promote their exodus to Israel" Giladi notes that this was also the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in his book "Ropes of Sand." According to Eveland, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in the synagogues. Leaflets appeared urging Jews to flee to Israel. The Iraqi police later provided the embassy with evidence that the bombings and leaflet campaigns had been the work of an underground Zionist organization. The British Embassy in Baghdad blamed the bombings on Zionist activists trying to highlight the danger to Iraqi Jews if they stayed. Author Abbas Shiblak in his book The Lure of Zion: The Case of the Iraqi Jews states "information about the bombs in Baghdad confirms the responsibility of the Zionist movement."

See also

References

  1. Hirst, David (2003-08-25). The gun and the olive branch: the roots of violence in the Middle East. Nation Books. p. 400. ISBN 1560254831. Retrieved 2010-04-05.
  2. ^ Segev, Tom (2006-06-04). "Now it can be told". Haaretz. Retrieved 2010-04-05.
  3. ^ Gat, Moshe (1997-05-01). The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951. Routledge. p. 224. ISBN 978-0714646893. Retrieved 2010-04-05.
  4. The terror behind Iraq's Jewish exodus Julia Magnet (The Telegraph, April 16, 2003)
  5. ^ Shatz, Adam (2008-11-06), "Leaving Paradise", London Review of Books, 30 (21), retrieved 2010-04-05
  6. Baghdad, Yesterday:The Making of an Arab Jew, Sasson Somekh, Ibis, 2003, p. 150
  7. Baghdad, Yesterday:The Making of an Arab Jew, Sasson Somekh, Ibis, 2003, p. 152
  8. Baghdad, Yesterday:The Making of an Arab Jew, Sasson Somekh, Ibis, 2003, p. 152
  9. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1427687/The-terror-behind-Iraqs-Jewish-exodus.html The terror behind Iraq's Jewish exodus Julia Magnet (The Telegraph, April 16, 2003)
  10. R. S. Simon, S. Reguer, M. Laskier, The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times (Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 365
  11. ^ Pogonowki, Iwo Cyprian. "Jews killed Jews to create the state of Israel". Retrieved 2010-04-05.
  12. Fischbach, Michael R. (Fall 2008). "Claiming Jewish Communal Property in Iraq". Middle East Report. Retrieved 2010-04-05.
  13. To Baghdad and Back
  14. ^ Al-Shawaf, Rayyan (2006 (Winter)) , "Review: Iraqi Jews: A History of Mass Exodus", Democratiya, Winter 2006 (7): 187, retrieved 2010-04-05 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  15. Baghdad, Yesterday:The Making of an Arab Jew, Sasson Somekh, Ibis, 2003, p. 153
  16. Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and its Repercussions in the 1950s and After Dvora Hacohen, Syracuse University Press, New York, 2003, p. 82-84
  17. Queens Chronicle community newsletter
  18. Giladi, Naeim (April–May 1998), The Jews of Iraq (PDF), Americans for Middle East Understanding, retrieved 2010-04-05{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
  19. Shiblak, Abbas (1986-07). The Lure of Zion: The Case of the Iraqi Jews. Al Saqi. p. 196. ISBN 978-0863560330. Retrieved 2010-04-05. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
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