This book was conceived during a conversation I had in 1984 with the late Shlomo Hillel z”l, then Speaker of the Knesset, who suggested that I write a book about the Prisoners of Zion in Iraq. After reviewing source materials found in archives in Israel, Britain, France and the United States, and publications and newspapers in Hebrew, Arabic, English, and French, I realized that it would not be possible to write the book without information located in the archives of the Iraqi secret service regarding Iraq’s prosecutions of members of both the Israeli espionage ring and the underground HeHalutz Movement (HaTenua) in Iraq. That information is critical for this book because of the need to answer the mystery of the bomb-throwers in Baghdad in 1950 and 1951. Tragically, Yosef Basri (Abras) and Shalom Salih Shalom, members of HaTenua, were accused of being the bomb-throwers and were tried and executed, despite the lack of evidence against them. But one couldn’t definitively establish who it was that threw the bombs without access to the internal Iraqi records from the Iraqi archives.
In the period between 1985 and 1997, books were published by Shlomo Hillel (Operation Babylon, 1985), Moshe Gat (A Jewish Community in Crisis, 1989), Mordechai Ben-Porat (To Baghdad and Back, 1996), and Zvi Yehuda (Israeli Espionage Net in Iraq, 1951–1952, 1997). Two investigative commissions were also formed by the Israeli Government. They all reached well-founded conclusions that Jews were not among those who threw the bombs in Baghdad. Nevertheless, the matter continued to be a topic of public discussion, both in and outside Israel. Furthermore, various individuals, including leading activists in HaTenua in Iraq, expressed suspicion that Jews, even members of HaTenua, could have taken part in the terrorist acts against their fellow Jews in Baghdad. To conclusively address these accusations, I felt that it was necessary to examine the interrogation files of the secret service in Baghdad, which was not then an option. Amid the anarchy that prevailed in Iraq following the American invasion in 2003, an opportunity arose to purchase a copy of the needed documents, but it was not taken.
Only in 2013 did many of the interrogation records become public in The History of the Zionist Movement in Iraq – a book written by the Iraqi journalist, Shamel Abd al-Qader. The book included the confession made by members of the nationalist al-Istiqlal party, in which they admitted to throwing two bombs at large gatherings of Jews in Baghdad. After obtaining a copy of that book, I was able to begin writing the research that appears in this book. I learned just how far Nuri al-Said, while serving as Prime Minister of Iraq, and the al-Istiqlal party had managed to go in their campaign to mislead Israeli and Western public opinion. They devised a sophisticated plot that entailed throwing bombs at large gatherings of Jews and at Jewish and American institutions, and then used the press to blame the bombings on emissaries of the State of Israel and the Zionist movement in Iraq, instead of on members of the al-Istiqlal party who were the perpetrators of the bombings.
The Iraqi governments carried out successive persecutions, with support and goading from the al-Istiqlal party, assisted by carefully placed incitement in the press and the organization of demonstrations against the Jews to force their expulsion from Iraq. The acts in question are described at length in this book, which reviews the web of discrimination, torture, and expulsion that Iraqi Jews endured from 1932 to 1952.
Numerous members of the Iraqi Jewish community who are no longer with us played a part in this book, whether by allowing me to interview and record them, by answering the questions that I raised, or by their interest in my work. Because the entire list is much too long, I mention here only those who were with me through all the years of writing the book: the late Mordechai Ben-Porat, the President of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, with whom I have had ties for many years, Shlomo Hillel z”l, who sadly passed away without living to see this publication, his wife, Temima Hillel z”l, who was my research assistant for many years, and Attorney Samy Moria z”l, who assiduously provided me with all the relevant information that he was able to locate. I wish to express my gratitude to all of them.
I would like to thank Prof. Efraim Sadka, the Chairman of the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center, Mrs. Aliza Dayan-Hamama, the Managing Director of the Center, and Dr. Limor Kattan from the Babylonian Jewry Research Institute, for their interest and assistance. I would like to particularly thank Mrs. Marian Scheuer Sofaer, for her hard work and caring in translating this English version, Professor Norman A. Stillman for his expert assistance on the English translation and for my daughter Dr. Einav Yehuda-Shnaidman, for her dedication in ensuring the publication of this book. Some of the writing of the Hebrew version was condensed or reorganized for the English translation.
Zvi Yehuda