- Excerpts from his book: The Gun and the Olive Branch,
1977, Futura Publications
-
- It was the last day of Passover, April 1950. In Baghdad,
the Jews had spent it strolling along the banks of the Tigris in celebration
of the Sea Song. This was an old custom of the oldest Jewish community
in the world; the 130,000 Jews of Iraq attributed their origins to Nebuchadnezzar,
the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile. A good 50,000
of them thronged the esplanade. By nine o'clock in the evening the crowds
were thinning out. But on Abu Nawwas street young Jewish intellectuals
were still gathered in the Dar al-Beida coffee-shop.
-
- Suddenly, the convivial atmosphere was shattered by an
explosion. A small bomb, hurled from a passing car, had gone off on the
pavement just outside. By chance no one was hurt. But the incident shook
the Jewish community, They were convinced that Iraqi extremists wanted
to kill them. The fainter-hearted began to murmur 'it is better to go to
Israel'. The next day there was a rush to the offices where Jews wishing
to renounce their Iraqi citizenship had to present themselves for registration.
Their right to emigrate had been officially acknowledged by the government
on the foot of Purim a month before. Its object was to prevent emigration
by illegal means. As the newspapers had explained, 'the encounters between
the police and the emigrant groups showed that some Iraqi Jews do not want
to live in this country. Through their fleeing they give a bad name to
Iraq. Those who do not wish to live among us have no place here. Let them
go.'30 There had been little response. Police officers had appeared at
synagogues and explained that all Jews had to do in order to leave Iraq
peacefully was to sign the necessary form. But the Jews were afraid that
this was a trap to unmask the Zionists among them; and Zionism, under Iraqi
law, "was a grievous offence.
-
- In all, about 10,000 Jews signed up to leave after the
bomb; the big Ezra Daud synagogue had to be set aside as a registration
office; police officers and volunteer clerks worked day and night to complete
the task. A special kitchen was set up to feed them. Most of the would-be
emigrants were poor, with little to lose. The panic did not last very long,
however, and registration tapered off. Moreover, they were to leave by
air, but only one aeroplane came to take 120 of them, via Cyprus, to Israel.
-
- Then there was another explosion. This time it was at
the US Information Centre, where many young Jews used to come and read.
Again the theory was that an extremist Iraqi organization had planted the
bomb, which only by chance failed to hurt anyone. Once again, therefore,
there was a rush on the Ezra Daud synagogue; only this time the panic--and
the number of would-be emigrants--was less than before. The year ended,
and March 1951, the time-limit set for the renunciation of citizenship,
was approaching.
-
- The third time there were victims. It happened outside
the Mas'uda Shemtov synagogue, which served as an assembly point for emigrants.
That day in January the synagogue was full of Kurdish Jews from the northern
city of Suleimaniyyah. Outside a Jewish boy was distributing sweet meats
to curious onlookers. When the bomb went off he was killed instantly and
a man standing behind him was badly wounded in the eyes.
-
- And this time there was no longer any doubt in Jews"
minds: an anti-Jewish organization was plotting against them. Better to
leave Iraq while there was still time. The queues lengthened outside the
Ezra Daud synagogue, and on the night before the time-limit expired some
were paying as much as 200 pounds to ensure that their names were on the
list. A few days later the Iraqi parliament passed a law confiscating the
property of all Jews who renounced their citizenship. No one was allowed
to take more than 70 ponds out of the country. The planes started arriving
at a rate of three or four a day. At first the emigrants were flown to
Nicosia accompanied by an Iraqi police officer. But after a while even
that make-believe was dropped and they went directly to Israel's Lydda
airport-the police officer returning alone in the empty plane. Before long
all that was left of the 130,000 abandoning home, property and an ancient
heritage was a mere 5,ooo souls.
-
- It was not long before a bombshell of a different kind
hit the pathetic remnants of Iraqi Jewry. They learned that the three explosions
were the work not of Arab extremists, but of the very people who sought
to rescue them; of a clandestine organization called 'The Movement', whose
leader, 'commander of the Jewish ghettoes in Iraq', had received this letter
from Yigal Allon, chief of the Palmach commandos, and subsequently Foreign
Minister of Israel:
-
-
- Ramadan my brother.... I was very satisfied in learning
that you have succeeded in starting a group and that we were able to transfer
at least some of the weapons intended for you. It is depressing to think
that Jews may once again be slaughtered, our girls raped, that our nation's
honour may again be smirched ... should disturbances break out, you will
be able to enlarge the choice of defenders and co-opt Jews who have as
yet not been organized as members of the Underground. But be warned lest
you do this prematurely, thereby endangering the security of your units
which are, in fact, the only defence against a terrible pogrom.31
-
- The astonishing truth-that the bombs which terrorized
the Jewish community had been Zionist bombs-was revealed when, in the summer
of 1950, an elegantly dressed man entered Uruzdi Beg, the largest general
store in Baghdad. One of the salesmen, a Palestinian refugee, turned white
when he saw him. He left the counter and ran out into the street, where
he told two policemen:'I recognize the face of an Israeli.' He had been
a coffee-boy in Acre, and he knew Yehudah Tajjar from there. Arrested,
Tajjar confessed that he was indeed an Israeli, but explained that he had
come to Baghdad to marry an Iraqi Jewish girl. His revelations led to more
arrests, some fifteen in all. Shalom Salih, a youngster in charge of Haganah
arms caches, broke down during interrogation and took the police from synagogue
to synagogue, showing them where the weapons, smuggled in since World War
II, were hidden. During the trial, the prosecution charged that the accused
were members of the Zionist underground. Their primary aim-to which the
throwing of the three bombs had so devastatingly contributed-was to frighten
the Jews into emigrating as soon as possible. Two were sentenced to death,
the rest to long prison terms.
-
-
- It was Tajjar himself who first brohe Jewish silence
about this affair. Sentenced by the Baghdad court to life imprisonment,
he was released after ten years and found his way to Israel. On 29 May
1966 the campaigning weekly magazine Ha'olam Hazeh published an account
of the emigration of Iraqi Jews based on Tajjar's testimony. Then on 9
November 1972, the Black Panther magazine, militant voice of Israel's Oriental
Jews, published the full story. The Black Panther account includes the
testimony of two Israeli citizens who were in Baghdad at the time. The
first, Kaduri Salim
-
- is 49 but looks 60. He is thin, almost hunch-backed,
creased-face and with glass-eye: he lost his right eye at the door of the
Mas'uda Shemtov synagogue. He recounts: 'I was standing there beside the
synagogue door. I had already waived my Iraqi citizenship, and wanted to
know what was new. Suddenly, I heard a sound like a gun report. Then a
terrible noise. I felt a blow, as if a wall had fallen on me. Everything
went black around me'I felt something cold running down my check, I touched
it-it was blood. The right eye. I closed my left eye and didn't see a thing.
The doctor told me: 'It's better to take it out.'
-
- He remained in Iraq for three months after leaving the
hospital. Then his turn to leave for Israel arrived. The ex-clerk was sent
to an immigration camp. Since then, all his efforts to receive compensations
have been in vain. He claimed: 'I was hurt by the bomb. The Court of Law
established that the bomb was thrown by "The Movement". The Israel
Government has to give me compensations.' But the Israel Government does
not recognize its responsibility for the Baghdad bombs and, anyhow, cannot
recognize him as hurt in action. 'I am ready to be a victim for the State,'
he said, 'but when the situation at home is bad, when my wife wants money
and there isn't any, what is the self-sacrifice and goodwill worth?'
-
- The second witness was an Iraqi lawyer, living in Tel
Aviv. He told the Black Panther that
-
- After the first bomb was thrown at the Dar al-Bayda coffee-house,
many rumours started running around about the responsible being communists.
But the day after the explosion, at 4:00 am, leaflets were already being
distributed amongst the first worshippers at the synagogue. The leaflets
warned of the dangers revealed by the throwing of the bomb and recommended
the people to come to Israel.
-
- Someone who saw in it something strange was Salman al-Bayyati,
Investigating judge for South Baghdad. He declared that the distribution
of the leaflet at such in early hour showed prior knowledge of the bombing.
He therefore instructed the police to investigate in this direction, determining
at the same time that those who threw the bomb were Jews trying to quicken
the emigration. Indeed, two youngsters were arrested.
-
- Unexpectedly, the Ministry of Justice intervened. The
two boys were set free. The case passed over to the hands of the Investigating
Judge Kamal Shahin, from North Baghdad. In other words, at this stage,
there was still a willingness not to see. For the whole emigration movement
came as results of a willingness not to see-or perhaps even of a more active
agreement between the Government, the Court and the Zionist representatives.
-
- But after two more bombs and after the arrest of the
Israeli envoy-it was too much. The police started acting, and it was impossible
to stop the wheels. There is only one more thing to add: in the objective
conditions of the issue, the trial was made according to international
law. The evidence was just such that it wasn't difficult at all to pronounce
such sentences.[32]
-
- When Bengurion made his impassioned pleas for immigrants
to people the new-born State of Israel he was addressing 'European'Jews
(from both the New and the Old Worlds) in particular. Not only had European
jewry fathered Zionism, it was the main source of that high-quality manpower,
armed with the technical skills, the social and cultural attitudes which
Israel needed. But with the Holocaust over, the source was tending to dry
up. So the Zionists decided that 'Oriental' Jewry must be 'ingathered'
as well. It is often forgotten that the 'safeguard' clause of the Balfour
Declaration-'it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which
may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by
Jews in any other country'-was de-signed to cover Diaspora Jews as well
as native Arabs. But the uprooting of a million 'Oriental' Jews showed
that, for the Zionists, it was a clause to be ignored in both its parts.
Every-where they applied the same essential techniques, but nowhere, perhaps,
with such thoroughness as they did in Iraq. 'Cruel Zionism', someone called
it.33
-
- If Zionism, as a historical phenomenon, was a reaction
to anti-Semitism, it follows that, in certain circumstances, the Zionists
had an interest in provoking the very disease which, ultimately, they hoped
to cure. Herzl himself was the first to note the usefulness of anti-Semitism
as an incentive to Jewish immigration. 'Anti-Semitism has grown and continues
to grow-and so do I.'34 There were dedicated Zionists who considered that
it was the duty of the Rabbinate, Jewish nationalists and community leaders
to keep the prejudice alive.35 In the early fifties the need for immigrants
was such that a columnist in Davar, influential voice of the Israel trade
union movement, wrote:
-
- I shall not be ashamed to confess that if I had the power,
as I have the will, I would select a score of efficient young men-intelligent,
decent, devoted to our ideal and burning with the desire to help redeem
Jews-and I would send them to the countries where Jews are absorbed in
sinful self-satisfaction. The task of these young men would be to disguise
themselves as non-Jews, and plague Jews with anti-Semitic slogans such
as 'Bloody Jew', 'Jews go to Palestine' and similar intimacies. I can vouch
that the results in terms of a considerable immigration to Israel from
these countries would be ten thousand times larger than the results brought
by thousands of emissaries who have been preaching for decades to deaf
ears.36
-
- Zionism had much less appeal to Oriental than it did
to European Jews. In the pre-State period only 10.4 per cent of Jewish
immigrants came from 'Africa and Asia'.37 In their vast majority, the Oriental
Jews were actually Arab Jews, and the reason for their indifference was
simply that, historically, they had not suffered anything like the persecution
and discrimination of their brethren in European Christendom. Prejudice
did exist, but their lives were on the whole comfortable, and their roots
were deep. They were nowhere more at home than in Iraq, and a government
official conceded --tongue in cheek-- that their Mesopotamian pedigree
was much superior to that of the Moslem majority:
-
- Many of us consider the Jews to be the original inhabitants
of this country. We believe, according to the Koran, they are descendants
of Abraham and that goes back nearly 4,000 years, Compared to them, therefore,
we Muslims are interlopers because we have been here only about 1,500 years.[38]
-
- At one time, Baghdad numbered more Jewish than Arab residents.
In this century, as an already prosperous, educated community, they were
particularly well placed to benefit from the rapid development and modernization
of the country. They controlled many national institutions, most of the
banks and big shops. The poorest Jews were better off than the average
Iraqi.39 Under the constitution, the Jews enjoyed equality with other citizens.
They were represented in parliament, worked in the civil service, and from
1920 to 1925 a Jew was Minister of Finance.
-
- On the rare occasions in Arab history when Moslems --or
Christians, for that matter-- turned against the Jews in their midst, it
was not anti-Semitism, in its traditional European sense, that drove them,
but fanaticism bred of a not unjustified resentment. For, like other minorities,
the Jews had a tendency to associate themselves with, indeed to profit
from, what the majority, regarded as an alien and oppressive rule. In recent
times, this meant that from Iraq to Morocco the local Jewish communities
found varying degrees of special favour with the French or British masters
of the Arab world. If Arab Jews must themselves take some of the blame
for the prejudice which this behaviour generated against them, they deserve
much less blame for that other cause of Arab hostility-Zionism-which was
ultimately to prove infinitely more disruptive of their lives.
-
- Zionist activities in Iraq and other Arab countries date
from the beginning of the century. They were barely noticed at first. There
was actually a time, in the early twenties, when the Iraqi government granted
the local Zionist society an official licence, and even when the licence
was not renewed, it continued to function, unofficially, for several years.
At first it was the British, rather than local Jews, who bore the brunt
of Arab animosity. In 1928, there were riots when the British Zionist Sir
Alfred Mond visited Baghdad. The following year demonstrations in mosques
and streets, a two-minute silence in Parliament, black-edged newspapers
and telegrams to London marked 'Iraqi disapproval of the pro-Jewish policy
of Great Britain'.40 It Was not until the mid-thirties, when the troubles
of Palestine were reverberating round the world, that Arab Jews began to
excite suspicion and resentment. In Iraq these emotions came to a head
in 1941 when, in a two-day rampage, the mob killed some 170 to 180 Jews
and injured several hundred more.41 It was terrible. But it was the first
pogrom in Iraqi history. Moreover, it occurred at a time of political chaos;
the short-lived pro-Nazi revolt of Rashid Ali Kailani was collapsing, and
most members of his administration had taken flight as a British expeditionary
force arrived at the gates of the city.
-
- There was no more such violence. On account of this,
and their economic prosperity, the Jews felt a renewed sense of security."
Nevertheless, the Zionists were still active in their midst. In the mid-forties,
they disseminated booklets entitled 'Don't Buy from the Moslems'. However,
they did not have the field to themselves. Left-wing Jews, who considered
themselves 'Jewish and Arab at the same time', set up the League for Combating
Zionism.43
-
- By the end of Israel's 'War of Independence', there were
still 130,000 Jews in Iraq. The Movement organized the 'Persian underground
railway' to smuggle Jews to Israel via Iran. There were occasional clashes
between the police and the caravan guides. It was these which prompted
the government to legalize Jewish emigration. But, whether by legal or
illegal means, very few actually left. As the Chief Rabbi of Iraq, Sassoon
Khedduri explained a few years later:
-
- The Jews --and the Muslims-- in Iraq just took it for
granted that Judaism is a religion and Iraqi Jews are Iraqis. The Palestine
problem was remote and there was no question about the Jews of Iraq following
the Arab position ... 44
-
- But Bengurion and the Zionists would not give in so easily.
Israel desperately needed manpower. Iraqi Jews must be 'in-gathered'. As
Khedduri recalled:
-
-
- BY mid-1949 the big propaganda guns were already going
off in the United States. American dollars were going to save the Iraqi
Jews-whether Iraqi Jews needed saving or not. There were daily 'pogroms'--in
the New York Times and under datelines which few noticed were from Tel
Aviv. Why didn't someone come to see us instead of negotiating with Israel
to take in Iraqi Jews? Why didn't someone point out that the solid, responsible
leadership of Iraqi Jews believed this to be their country --in good times
and bad-- and we were convinced the trouble would pass.45
-
- But it did not. Neither the Iraqi Jews themselves, nor
the government of what, by Western standards, was still a backward country,
could cope with the kind of pressures the Zionists brought to bear:
-
- Zionist agents began to appear in Iraq-among the youth
playing on a general uneasiness and indicating that American Jews were
putting up large amounts of money to take them to Israel, where everything
would be in applepie order. The emigration of children began to tear at
the loyalties of families and as the adults in a family reluctantly decided
to follow their children, the stress and strain of loyalties spread to
brothers and sisters.
-
- Then a new technique was developed:
-
- Instead of the quiet individualized emigration, there
began to appear public demands to legalize the emigration of Jews-en masse
... in the United States the 'pogroms' were already underway and the Iraqi
government was being accused of holding the Jews against their will ...
campaigning among Jews increased.. . The government was whip-sawed ...
accused of pogroms and violent action against Jews... But if the government
attempted to suppress Zionist agitation attempting to stampede the Iraqui
Jews, it was again accused of discriminations.46
-
-
- Finally there came the bombs.
-
- 'Ingathered' for what? The Iraqi Jews soon learned; those
of them, that is, who actually went to Israel, or, having gone, remained
there. For by no means all of uprooted Oriental Jewry did so. A great many
of them --particularly the ones with money, connections, education and
initiative-- succeeded in making their way to Europe or America. But what
the irretrievably 'ingathered' learned was the cruellest and most enduring
irony of all: Oriental Jewry was no more than despised cannon-fodder for
the European creed of Zionism.
-
-
- What did you do, Bengurion?
- You smuggled in all of us!
- Because of the past, we waived our citizenship
- And came to Israel.
- Would that we had come riding on a donkey and we
- Hadn't arrived here yet!
- Woe, what a black hour it was!
- To hell with the plane that brought us here!47
-
- This was the song which the Iraqi Jews used to sing.
Nothing the rulers of Israel could do quelled the bitterness which the
newcomers nurtured against them. They were lectured, in their transit camps,
by teams of Zionist educators. But, long after they left the camps, they
continued to sing that song, even at weddings and festive occasions. It
remained popular throughout the fifties. Then it eventually disappeared,
but it can hardly be said that nostalgia for the 'old country' disappeared
with it. For the contrast between what they once were, 'in exile', and
what they became, and remain, in the Promised Land is too great. One of
the 'most splendid and rich communities was destroyed, its members reduced
to indigents'; a community that 'ruled over most of the resources of Iraq
... was turned into a ruled group, discriminated against and oppressed
in every aspect'. A community that prided itself on its scholarship subsequently
produced fewer academics, in Israeli universities, than it brought with
it from Iraq. A community sure of its own moral values and cultural integrity
became in Israel a breeding ground 'for delinquents of all kinds'. A community
which 'used to produce splendid sons could raise only "handicapped"
sons in Israel'.48
-
- NOTES
-
- 30. Black Panther (Hebrew journal), 9 November 1972,
see Documents from Israel,
- Ithaca Press, London, 1975, P- 127.
- 31. Allon, Yigal, The Making of Israel's Army, Valentine,
Mitchell and Co.,
- London, 1970, PP. 233-4-
- 32. Black Panther, op. cit., PP. 130-2
- 33. Ibid., P. 131.
- 34. Herzi, The Complete Diaries, op. cit., Vol. 1, P.
7.
- 35. Lilienthal, Alfred, The Other Side of the Coin, Devin-Adair-,
New York,
- p. 184.
- 36. Ibid., P. 47.
- 37. Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract
of Israel, No. 16,
- p. 96.
- 38. Berger, Elmer, Who Knows Better Must Say So, Institute
for Palestine
- Studies, Beirut, P. 34.
- 39. Black Panther, op. cit., P. 132.
- 40. Longrigg, Stephen Helmsley, Iraq, 1900 to 1950, Oxford
University Press,
- London, 1953, PP. 19-23.
- 41. Cohen, Hayyim, J., The Jews of the Middle East 1860-1972,
John Wiley
- and Sons, New York and Toronto, 1973, P. 30.
- 42. Ibid., P. 30.
- 43. 'The League for Combating Zionism in Iraq', Palestine
Affairs, (Arabic,
- monthly), Beirut, November 1972, P. 162.
- 44. Berger, op. cit., P. 30.
- 45. Ibid., p. 30.
- 46. Ibid., pp. 32-3.
- 47. Black Panther, op. cit., p. 132.
- 48. Ibid., p. 133.
-
- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1560254831/002-1951824-4126424?v=glance
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