Zionist carried False flag terrorism in IRAQ

The Jews of Iraq

Article by Naeim Giladi

An Iraqi Jew tells his story of Zionist activities that Jews from Islamic lands did not
emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to
buy
time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace
initiatives from their Arab neighbors.

I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and
especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to
Israel;
that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever
more
Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab
neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called "cruel
Zionism." I
write about it because I was part of it.

My Story

Of course I thought I knew it all back then. I was young, idealistic, and more than
willing to
put my life at risk for my convictions. It was 1947 and I wasn't quite 18 when the Iraqi
authorities caught me for smuggling young Iraqi Jews like myself out of Iraq, into Iran,
and
then on to the Promised Land of the soon-to-be established Israel.

I was an Iraqi Jew in the Zionist underground. My Iraqi jailers did everything they could
to
extract the names of my co-conspirators. Fifty years later, pain still throbs in my right
toe-a
reminder of the day my captors used pliers to remove my toenails. On another occasion,
they
hauled me to the flat roof of the prison, stripped me bare on a frigid January day, then
threw
a bucket of cold water over me. I was left there, chained to the railing, for hours. But I
never once considered giving them the information they wanted. I was a true believer.

My preoccupation during what I refer to as my "two years in hell" was with
survival and escape.
I had no interest then in the broad sweep of Jewish history in Iraq even though my family
had
been part of it right from the beginning. We were originally Haroons, a large and
important
family of the "Babylonian Diaspora." My ancestors had settled in Iraq more than
2,600 years
ago-600 years before Christianity, and 1,200 years before Islam. I am descended from Jews
who
built the tomb of Yehezkel, a Jewish prophet of pre-biblical times. My town, where I was
born
in 1929, is Hillah, not far from the ancient site of Babylon.

The original Jews found Babylon, with its nourishing Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to be
truly a
land of milk, honey, abundance-and opportunity. Although Jews, like other minorities in
what
became Iraq, experienced periods of oppression and discrimination depending on the rulers
of
the period, their general trajectory over two and one-half millennia was upward. Under the
late
Ottoman rule, for example, Jewish social and religious institutions, schools, and medical
facilities flourished without outside interference, and Jews were prominent in government
and
business.

As I sat there in my cell, unaware that a death sentence soon would be handed down against
me,
I could not have recounted any personal grievances that my family members would have
lodged
against the government or the Muslim majority. Our family had been treated well and had
prospered, first as farmers with some 50,000 acres devoted to rice, dates and Arab horses.
Then, with the Ottomans, we bought and purified gold that was shipped to Istanbul and
turned
into coinage. The Turks were responsible in fact for changing our name to reflect our
occupation-we became Khalaschi, meaning "Makers of Pure."

I did not volunteer the information to my father that I had joined the Zionist
underground. He
found out several months before I was arrested when he saw me writing Hebrew and using
words
and expressions unfamiliar to him. He was even more surprised to learn that, yes, I had
decided
I would soon move to Israel myself. He was scornful. "You'll come back with your tail
between
your legs," he predicted.

About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late 1940s and into 1952, most because they
had
been lied to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were Zionist bombs. But my
mother and
father were among the 6,000 who did not go to Israel. Although physically I never did
return to
Iraq-that bridge had been burned in any event-my heart has made the journey there many,
many
times. My father had it right.

I was imprisoned at the military camp of Abu-Greib, about 7 miles from Baghdad. When the
military court handed down my sentence of death by hanging, I had nothing to lose by
attempting
the escape I had been planning for many months.

It was a strange recipe for an escape: a dab of butter, an orange peel, and some army
clothing
that I had asked a friend to buy for me at a flea market. I deliberately ate as much bread
as I
could to put on fat in anticipation of the day I became 18, when they could formally
charge me
with a crime and attach the 50-pound ball and chain that was standard prisoner issue.

Later, after my leg had been shackled, I went on a starvation diet that often left me
weak-kneed. The pat of butter was to lubricate my leg in preparation for extricating it
from
the metal band. The orange peel I surreptitiously stuck into the lock on the night of my
planned escape, having studied how it could be placed in such a way as to keep the lock
from
closing.

As the jailers turned to go after locking up, I put on the old army issue that was
indistinguishable from what they were wearing-a long, green coat and a stocking cap that I
pulled down over much of my face (it was winter). Then I just quietly opened the door and
joined the departing group of soldiers as they strode down the hall and outside, and I
offered
a "good night" to the shift guard as I left. A friend with a car was waiting to
speed me away.

Later I made my way to the new state of Israel, arriving in May, 1950. My passport had my
name
in Arabic and English, but the English couldn't capture the "kh" sound, so it
was rendered
simply as Klaski. At the border, the immigration people applied the English version, which
had
an Eastern European, Ashkenazi ring to it. In one way, this "mistake" was my key
to discovering
very soon just how the Israeli caste system worked.

They asked me where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I was the son of a farmer; I
knew
all the problems of the farm, so I volunteered to go to Dafnah, a farming kibbutz in the
high
Galilee. I only lasted a few weeks. The new immigrants were given the worst of everything.
The
food was the same, but that was the only thing that everyone had in common. For the
immigrants,
bad cigarettes, even bad toothpaste. Everything. I left.

Then, through the Jewish Agency, I was advised to go to al-Majdal (later renamed
Ashkelon), an
Arab town about 9 miles from Gaza, very close to the Mediterranean. The Israeli government
planned to turn it into a farmers' city, so my farm background would be an asset there.

When I reported to the Labor Office in al-Majdal, they saw that I could read and write
Arabic
and Hebrew and they said that I could find a good-paying job with the Military Governor's
office. The Arabs were under the authority of these Israeli Military Governors. A clerk
handed
me a bunch of forms in Arabic and Hebrew. Now it dawned on me. Before Israel could
establish
its farmers' city, it had to rid al-Majdal of its indigenous Palestinians. The forms were
petitions to the United Nations Inspectors asking for transfer out of Israel to Gaza,
which was
under Egyptian control.

I read over the petition. In signing, the Palestinian would be saying that he was of sound
mind
and body and was making the request for transfer free of pressure or duress. Of course,
there
was no way that they would leave without being pressured to do so. These families had been
there hundreds of years, as farmers, primitive artisans, weavers. The Military Governor
prohibited them from pursuing their livelihoods, just penned them up until they lost hope
of
resuming their normal lives. That's when they signed to leave.

I was there and heard their grief. "Our hearts are in pain when we look at the orange
trees
that we planted with our own hands. Please let us go, let us give water to those trees.
God
will not be pleased with us if we leave His trees untended." I asked the Military
Governor to
give them relief, but he said, "No, we want them to leave."

I could no longer be part of this oppression and I left. Those Palestinians who didn't
sign up
for transfers were taken by force-just put in trucks and dumped in Gaza. About four
thousand
people were driven from al-Majdal in one way or another. The few who remained were
collaborators with the Israeli authorities.

Subsequently, I wrote letters trying to get a government job elsewhere and I got many
immediate
responses asking me to come for an interview. Then they would discover that my face didn't
match my Polish/Ashkenazi name. They would ask if I spoke Yiddish or Polish, and when I
said I
didn't, they would ask where I came by a Polish name. Desperate for a good job, I would
usually
say that I thought my great-grandfather was from Poland. I was advised time and again that
"we'll give you a call."

Eventually, three to four years after coming to Israel, I changed my name to Giladi, which
is
close to the code name, Gilad, that I had in the Zionist underground. Klaski wasn't doing
me
any good anyway, and my Eastern friends were always chiding me about the name they knew
didn't
go with my origins as an Iraqi Jew.

I was disillusioned at what I found in the Promised Land, disillusioned personally,
disillusioned at the institutionalized racism, disillusioned at what I was beginning to
learn
about Zionism's cruelties. The principal interest Israel had in Jews from Islamic
countries was
as a supply of cheap labor, especially for the farm work that was beneath the urbanized
Eastern
European Jews. Ben Gurion needed the "Oriental" Jews to farm the thousands of
acres of land
left by Palestinians who were driven out by Israeli forces in 1948.

And I began to find out about the barbaric methods used to rid the fledgling state of as
many
Palestinians as possible. The world recoils today at the thought of bacteriological
warfare,
but Israel was probably the first to actually use it in the Middle East. In the 1948 war,
Jewish forces would empty Arab villages of their populations, often by threats, sometimes
by
just gunning down a half-dozen unarmed Arabs as examples to the rest. To make sure the
Arabs
couldn't return to make a fresh life for themselves in these villages, the Israelis put
typhus
and dysentery bacteria into the water wells.

Uri Mileshtin, an official historian for the Israeli Defense Force, has written and spoken
about the use of bacteriological agents. According to Mileshtin, Moshe Dayan, a division
commander at the time, gave orders in 1948 to remove Arabs from their villages, bulldoze
their
homes, and render water wells unusable with typhus and dysentery bacteria.

Acre was so situated that it could practically defend itself with one big gun, so the
Haganah
put bacteria into the spring that fed the town. The spring was called Capri and it ran
from the
north near a kibbutz. The Haganah put typhus bacteria into the water going to Acre, the
people
got sick, and the Jewish forces occupied Acre. This worked so well that they sent a
Haganah
division dressed as Arabs into Gaza, where there were Egyptian forces, and the Egyptians
caught
them putting two cans of bacteria, typhus and dysentery, into the water supply in wanton
disregard of the civilian population. "In war, there is no sentiment," one of
the captured
Haganah men was quoted as saying.

My activism in Israel began shortly after I received a letter from the Socialist/Zionist
Party
asking me to help with their Arabic newspaper. When I showed up at their offices at
Central
House in Tel Aviv, I asked around to see just where I should report. I showed the letter
to a
couple of people there and, without even looking at it, they would motion me away with the
words, "Room No. 8." When I saw that they weren't even reading the letter, I
inquired of
several others. But the response was the same, "Room No. 8," with not a glance
at the paper I
put in front of them.

So I went to Room 8 and saw that it was the Department of Jews from Islamic Countries. I
was
disgusted and angry. Either I am a member of the party or I'm not. Do I have a different
ideology or different politics because I am an Arab Jew? It's segregation, I thought, just
like
a Negroes' Department. I turned around and walked out. That was the start of my open
protests.
That same year I organized a demonstration in Ashkelon against Ben Gurion's racist
policies and
10,000 people turned out.

There wasn't much opportunity for those of us who were second class citizens to do much
about
it when Israel was on a war footing with outside enemies. After the 1967 war, I was in the
Army
myself and served in the Sinai when there was continued fighting along the Suez Canal. But
the
cease-fire with Egypt in 1970 gave us our opening. We took to the streets and organized
politically to demand equal rights. If it's our country, if we were expected to risk our
lives
in a border war, then we expected equal treatment.

We mounted the struggle so tenaciously and received so much publicity that the Israeli
government tried to discredit our movement by calling us "Israel's Black
Panthers." They were
thinking in racist terms, really, in assuming the Israeli public would reject an
organization
whose ideology was being compared to that of radical blacks in the United States. But we
saw
that what we were doing was no different than what blacks in the United States were
fighting
against-segregation, discrimination, unequal treatment. Rather than reject the label, we
adopted it proudly. I had posters of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and
other
civil rights activists plastered all over my office.

With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Israeli-condoned Sabra and Shatilla
massacres, I
had had enough of Israel. I became a United States citizen and made certain to revoke my
Israeli citizenship. I could never have written and published my book in Israel, not with
the
censorship they would impose.

Even in America, I had great difficulty finding a publisher because many are subject to
pressures of one kind or another from Israel and its friends. I ended up paying $60,000
from my
own pocket to publish Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated
Jews,
virtually the entire proceeds from having sold my house in Israel.

I still was afraid that the printer would back out or that legal proceedings would be
initiated
to stop its publication, like the Israeli government did in an attempt to prevent former
Mossad
case officer Victor Ostrovsky from publishing his first book. Ben Gurion's Scandals had to
be
translated into English from two languages. I wrote in Hebrew when I was in Israel and
hoped to
publish the book there, and I wrote in Arabic when I was completing the book after coming
to
the U.S. But I was so worried that something would stop publication that I told the
printer not
to wait for the translations to be thoroughly checked and proofread. Now I realize that
the
publicity of a lawsuit would just have created a controversial interest in the book.

I am using bank vault storage for the valuable documents that back up what I have written.
These documents, including some that I illegally copied from the archives at Yad Vashem,
confirm what I saw myself, what I was told by other witnesses, and what reputable
historians
and others have written concerning the Zionist bombings in Iraq, Arab peace overtures that
were
rebuffed, and incidents of violence and death inflicted by Jews on Jews in the cause of
creating Israel.

The Riots of 1941

If, as I have said, my family in Iraq was not persecuted personally and I knew no
deprivation
as a member of the Jewish minority, what led me to the steps of the gallows as a member of
the
Zionist underground? To answer that question, it is necessary to establish the context of
the
massacre that occurred in Baghdad on June 1, 1941, when several hundred Iraqi Jews were
killed
in riots involving junior officers of the Iraqi army. I was 12 years of age and many of
those
killed were my friends. I was angry, and very confused.

What I didn't know at the time was that the riots most likely were stirred up by the
British,
in collusion with a pro-British Iraqi leadership.

With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following WW I, Iraq came under British
"tutelage." Amir
Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein who had led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman sultan, was
brought in from Mecca by the British to become King of Iraq in 1921. Many Jews were
appointed
to key administrative posts, including that of economics minister. Britain retained final
authority over domestic and external affairs. Britain's pro-Zionist attitude in Palestine,
however, triggered a growing anti-Zionist backlash in Iraq, as it did in all Arab
countries.
Writing at the end of 1934, Sir Francis Humphreys, Britain's Ambassador in Baghdad, noted
that,
while before WW I Iraqi Jews had enjoyed a more favorable position than any other minority
in
the country, since then "Zionism has sown dissension between Jews and Arabs, and a
bitterness
has grown up between the two peoples which did not previously exist."

King Faisal died in 1933. He was succeeded by his son Ghazi, who died in a motor car
accident
in 1939. The crown then passed to Ghazi's 4-year-old son, Faisal II, whose uncle, Abd
al-Ilah,
was named regent. Abd al-Ilah selected Nouri el-Said as prime minister. El-Said supported
the
British and, as hatred of the British grew, he was forced from office in March 1940 by
four
senior army officers who advocated Iraq's independence from Britain. Calling themselves
the
Golden Square, the officers compelled the regent to name as prime minister Rashid Ali
al-Kilani, leader of the National Brotherhood party.

The time was 1940 and Britain was reeling from a strong German offensive. Al-Kilani and
the
Golden Square saw this as their opportunity to rid themselves of the British once and for
all.
Cautiously they began to negotiate for German support, which led the pro-British regent
Abd
al-Ilah to dismiss al-Kilani in January 1941. By April, however, the Golden Square
officers had
reinstated the prime minister.

This provoked the British to send a military force into Basra on April 12, 1941. Basra,
Iraq's
second largest city, had a Jewish population of 30,000. Most of these Jews made their
livings
from import/export, money changing, retailing, as workers in the airports, railways, and
ports,
or as senior government employees.

On the same day, April 12, supporters of the pro-British regent notified the Jewish
leaders
that the regent wanted to meet with them. As was their custom, the leaders brought flowers
for
the regent. Contrary to custom, however, the cars that drove them to the meeting place
dropped
them off at the site where the British soldiers were concentrated.

Photographs of the Jews appeared in the following day's newspapers with the banner
"Basra Jews
Receive British Troops with Flowers." That same day, April 13, groups of angry Arab
youths set
about to take revenge against the Jews. Several Muslim notables in Basra heard of the plan
and
calmed things down. Later, it was learned that the regent was not in Basra at all and that
the
matter was a provocation by his pro-British supporters to bring about an ethnic war in
order to
give the British army a pretext to intervene.

The British continued to land more forces in and around Basra. On May 7, 1941, their
Gurkha
unit, composed of Indian soldiers from that ethnic group, occupied Basra's el-Oshar
quarter, a
neighborhood with a large Jewish population. The soldiers, led by British officers, began
looting. Many shops in the commercial district were plundered. Private homes were broken
into.
Cases of attempted rape were reported. Local residents, Jews and Muslims, responded with
pistols and old rifles, but their bullets were no match for the soldiers' Tommy Guns.

Afterwards, it was learned that the soldiers acted with the acquiescence, if not the
blessing,
of their British commanders. (It should be remembered that the Indian soldiers, especially
those of the Gurkha unit, were known for their discipline, and it is highly unlikely they
would
have acted so riotously without orders.) The British goal clearly was to create chaos and
to
blacken the image of the pro-nationalist regime in Baghdad, thereby giving the British
forces
reason to proceed to the capital and to overthrow the al-Kilani government.

Baghdad fell on May 30. Al-Kilani fled to Iran, along with the Golden Square officers.
Radio
stations run by the British reported that Regent Abd al-Ilah would be returning to the
city and
that thousands of Jews and others were planning to welcome him. What inflamed young Iraqis
against the Jews most, however, was the radio announcer Yunas Bahri on the German station
"Berlin," who reported in Arabic that Jews from Palestine were fighting
alongside the British
against Iraqi soldiers near the city of Faluja. The report was false.

On Sunday, June 1, unarmed fighting broke out in Baghdad between Jews who were still
celebrating their Shabuoth holiday and young Iraqis who thought the Jews were celebrating
the
return of the pro-British regent. That evening, a group of Iraqis stopped a bus, removed
the
Jewish passengers, murdered one and fatally wounded a second.

About 8:30 the following morning, some 30 individuals in military and police uniforms
opened
fire along el-Amin street, a small downtown street whose jewelry, tailor and grocery shops
were
Jewish-owned. By 11 a.m., mobs of Iraqis with knives, switchblades and clubs were
attacking
Jewish homes in the area.

The riots continued throughout Monday, June 2. During this time, many Muslims rose to
defend
their Jewish neighbors, while some Jews successfully defended themselves. There were 124
killed
and 400 injured, according to a report written by a Jewish Agency messenger who was in
Iraq at
the time. Other estimates, possibly less reliable, put the death toll higher, as many as
500,
with from 650 to 2,000 injured. From 500 to 1,300 stores and more than 1,000 homes and
apartments were looted.

Who was behind the rioting in the Jewish quarter?

Yosef Meir, one of the most prominent activists in the Zionist underground movement in
Iraq,
known then as Yehoshafat, claims it was the British. Meir, who now works for the Israeli
Defense Ministry, argues that, in order to make it appear that the regent was returning as
the
savior who would reestablish law and order, the British stirred up the riots against the
most
vulnerable and visible segment in the city, the Jews. And, not surprisingly, the riots
ended as
soon as the regent's loyal soldiers entered the capital.

My own investigations as a journalist lead me to believe Meir is correct. Furthermore, I
think
his claims should be seen as based on documents in the archives of the Israeli Defense
Ministry, the agency that published his book. Yet, even before his book came out, I had
independent confirmation from a man I met in Iran in the late Forties.

His name was Michael Timosian, an Iraqi Armenian. When I met him he was working as a male
nurse
at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Abadan in the south of Iran. On June 2, 1941, however,
he
was working at the Baghdad hospital where many of the riot victims were brought. Most of
these
victims were Jews.

Timosian said he was particularly interested in two patients whose conduct did not follow
local
custom. One had been hit by a bullet in his shoulder, the other by a bullet in his right
knee.
After the doctor removed the bullets, the staff tried to change their blood-soaked cloths.
But
the two men fought off their efforts, pretending to be speechless, although tests showed
they
could hear. To pacify them, the doctor injected them with anesthetics and, as they were
sleeping, Timosian changed their cloths. He discovered that one of them had around his
neck an
identification tag of the type used by British troops, while the other had tattoos with
Indian
script on his right arm along with the familiar sword of the Gurkha.

The next day when Timosian showed up for work, he was told that a British officer, his
sergeant
and two Indian Gurkha soldiers had come to the hospital early that morning. Staff members
overheard the Gurkha soldiers talking with the wounded patients, who were not as dumb as
they
had pretended. The patients saluted the visitors, covered themselves with sheets and,
without
signing the required release forms, left the hospital with their visitors.

Today there is no doubt in my mind that the anti-Jewish riots of 1941 were orchestrated by
the
British for geopolitical ends. David Kimche is certainly a man who was in a position to
know
the truth, and he has spoken publicly about British culpability. Kimche had been with
British
Intelligence during WW II and with the Mossad after the war. Later he became Director
General
of Israel's Foreign Ministry, the position he held in 1982 when he addressed a forum at
the
British Institute for International Affairs in London.

In responding to hostile questions about Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the refugee camp
massacres in Beirut, Kimche went on the attack, reminding the audience that there was
scant
concern in the British Foreign Office when British Gurkha units participated in the murder
of
500 Jews in the streets of Baghdad in 1941.

The Bombings of 1950-1951

The anti-Jewish riots of 1941 did more than create a pretext for the British to enter
Baghdad
to reinstate the pro-British regent and his pro-British prime minister, Nouri el-Said.
They
also gave the Zionists in Palestine a pretext to set up a Zionist underground in Iraq,
first in
Baghdad, then in other cities such as Basra, Amara, Hillah, Diwaneia, Abril and Karkouk.

Following WW II, a succession of governments held brief power in Iraq. Zionist conquests
in
Palestine, particularly the massacre of Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin,
emboldened
the anti-British movement in Iraq. When the Iraqi government signed a new treaty of
friendship
with London in January 1948, riots broke out all over the country. The treaty was quickly
abandoned and Baghdad demanded removal of the British military mission that had run Iraq's
army
for 27 years.

Later in 1948, Baghdad sent an army detachment to Palestine to fight the Zionists, and
when
Israel declared independence in May, Iraq closed the pipeline that fed its oil to Haifa's
refinery. Abd al-Ilah, however, was still regent and the British quisling, Nouri el-Said,
was
back as prime minister. I was in the Abu-Greib prison in 1948, where I would remain until
my
escape to Iran in September 1949.

Six months later-the exact date was March 19, 1950-a bomb went off at the American
Cultural
Center and Library in Baghdad, causing property damage and injuring a number of people.
The
center was a favorite meeting place for young Jews.

The first bomb thrown directly at Jews occurred on April 8, 1950, at 9:15 p.m. A car with
three
young passengers hurled the grenade at Baghdad's El-Dar El-Bida Café, where Jews
were
celebrating Passover. Four people were seriously injured. That night leaflets were
distributed
calling on Jews to leave Iraq immediately.

The next day, many Jews, most of them poor with nothing to lose, jammed emigration offices
to
renounce their citizenship and to apply for permission to leave for Israel. So many
applied, in
fact, that the police had to open registration offices in Jewish schools and synagogues.

On May 10, at 3 a.m., a grenade was tossed in the direction of the display window of the
Jewish-owned Beit-Lawi Automobile Company, destroying part of the building. No casualties
were
reported.

On June 3, 1950, another grenade was tossed from a speeding car in the El-Batawin area of
Baghdad where most rich Jews and middle class Iraqis lived. No one was hurt, but following
the
explosion Zionist activists sent telegrams to Israel requesting that the quota for
immigration
from Iraq be increased.

On June 5, at 2:30 a.m., a bomb exploded next to the Jewish-owned Stanley Shashua building
on
El-Rashid street, resulting in property damage but no casualties.

On January 14, 1951, at 7 p.m., a grenade was thrown at a group of Jews outside the
Masouda
Shem-Tov Synagogue. The explosive struck a high-voltage cable, electrocuting three Jews,
one a
young boy, Itzhak Elmacher, and wounding over 30 others. Following the attack, the exodus
of
Jews jumped to between 600-700 per day.

Zionist propagandists still maintain that the bombs in Iraq were set off by anti-Jewish
Iraqis
who wanted Jews out of their country. The terrible truth is that the grenades that killed
and
maimed Iraqi Jews and damaged their property were thrown by Zionist Jews.

Among the most important documents in my book, I believe, are copies of two leaflets
published
by the Zionist underground calling on Jews to leave Iraq. One is dated March 16, 1950, the
other April 8, 1950.

The difference between these two is critical. Both indicate the date of publication, but
only
the April 8th leaflet notes the time of day: 4 p.m. Why the time of day? Such a
specification
was unprecedented. Even the investigating judge, Salaman El-Beit, found it suspicious. Did
the
4 p.m. writers want an alibi for a bombing they knew would occur five hours later? If so,
how
did they know about the bombing? The judge concluded they knew because a connection
existed
between the Zionist underground and the bomb throwers.

This, too, was the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the
Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), whom I had the opportunity to meet in New York in 1988. In his
book,
Ropes of Sand, whose publication the CIA opposed, Eveland writes:

In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists
planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in synagogues. Soon leaflets
began to
appear urging Jews to flee to Israel. . . . Although the Iraqi police later provided our
embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and library bombings, as well as the
anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of an underground
Zionist
organization, most of the world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the
flight
of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had "rescued" really just in order to
increase Israel's
Jewish population."

Eveland doesn't detail the evidence linking the Zionists to the attacks, but in my book I
do.
In 1955, for example, I organized in Israel a panel of Jewish attorneys of Iraqi origin to
handle claims of Iraqi Jews who still had property in Iraq. One well known attorney, who
asked
that I not give his name, confided in me that the laboratory tests in Iraq had confirmed
that
the anti-American leaflets found at the American Cultural Center bombing were typed on the
same
typewriter and duplicated on the same stenciling machine as the leaflets distributed by
the
Zionist movement just before the April 8th bombing.

Tests also showed that the type of explosive used in the Beit-Lawi attack matched traces
of
explosives found in the suitcase of an Iraqi Jew by the name of Yosef Basri. Basri, a
lawyer,
together with Shalom Salih, a shoemaker, would be put on trial for the attacks in December
1951
and executed the following month. Both men were members of Hashura, the military arm of
the
Zionist underground. Salih ultimately confessed that he, Basri and a third man, Yosef
Habaza,
carried out the attacks.

By the time of the executions in January 1952, all but 6,000 of an estimated 125,000 Iraqi
Jews
had fled to Israel. Moreover, the pro-British, pro-Zionist puppet el-Said saw to it that
all of
their possessions were frozen, including their cash assets. (There were ways of getting
Iraqi
dinars out, but when the immigrants went to exchange them in Israel they found that the
Israeli
government kept 50 percent of the value.) Even those Iraqi Jews who had not registered to
emigrate, but who happened to be abroad, faced loss of their nationality if they didn't
return
within a specified time. An ancient, cultured, prosperous community had been uprooted and
its
people transplanted to a land dominated by East European Jews, whose culture was not only
foreign but entirely hateful to them.

The Ultimate Criminals

Zionist Leaders.

From the start they knew that in order to establish a Jewish state they had to expel the
indigenous Palestinian population to the neighboring Islamic states and import Jews from
these
same states.

* Theodor Herzl, the architect of Zionism, thought it could be done by social engineering.
In
his diary entry for 12 June 1885, he wrote that Zionist settlers would have to
"spirit the
penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit
countries,
while denying it any employment in our own country."

* Vladimir Jabotinsky, Prime Minister Netanyahu's ideological progenitor, frankly admitted
that
such a transfer of populations could only be brought about by force.

* David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, told a Zionist Conference in 1937 that
any
proposed Jewish state would have to "transfer Arab populations out of the area, if
possible of
their own free will, if not by coercion." After 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted
and their
lands confiscated in 1948-49, Ben Gurion had to look to the Islamic countries for Jews who
could fill the resultant cheap labor market. "Emissaries" were smuggled into
these countries to
"convince" Jews to leave either by trickery or fear.

In the case of Iraq, both methods were used: uneducated Jews were told of a Messianic
Israel in
which the blind see, the lame walk, and onions grow as big as melons; educated Jews had
bombs
thrown at them.

A few years after the bombings, in the early 1950s, a book was published in Iraq, in
Arabic,
titled Venom of the Zionist Viper. The author was one of the Iraqi investigators of the
1950-51
bombings and, in his book, he implicates the Israelis, specifically one of the emissaries
sent
by Israel, Mordechai Ben-Porat. As soon as the book came out, all copies just disappeared,
even
from libraries. The word was that agents of the Israeli Mossad, working through the U.S.
Embassy, bought up all the books and destroyed them. I tried on three different occasions
to
have one sent to me in Israel, but each time Israeli censors in the post office
intercepted it..

British Leaders.

Britain always acted in its best colonial interests. For that reason Foreign Minister
Arthur
Balfour sent his famous 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild in exchange for Zionist support in
WW I.
During WW II the British were primarily concerned with keeping their client states in the
Western camp, while Zionists were most concerned with the immigration of European Jews to
Palestine, even if this meant cooperating with the Nazis. (In my book I document numerous
instances of such dealings by Ben Gurion and the Zionist leadership.)

After WW II the international chessboard pitted communists against capitalists. In many
countries, including the United States and Iraq, Jews represented a large part of the
Communist
party. In Iraq, hundreds of Jews of the working intelligentsia occupied key positions in
the
hierarchy of the Communist and Socialist parties. To keep their client countries in the
capitalist camp, Britain had to make sure these governments had pro-British leaders. And
if, as
in Iraq, these leaders were overthrown, then an anti-Jewish riot or two could prove a
useful
pretext to invade the capital and reinstate the "right" leaders.

Moreover, if the possibility existed of removing the communist influence from Iraq by
transferring the whole Jewish community to Israel, well then, why not? Particularly if the
leaders of Israel and Iraq conspired in the deed.

The Iraqi Leaders.

Both the regent Abd al-Ilah and his prime minister Nouri el- Said took directions from
London.
Toward the end of 1948, el-Said, who had already met with Israel's Prime Minister Ben
Gurion in
Vienna, began discussing with his Iraqi and British associates the need for an exchange of
populations. Iraq would send the Jews in military trucks to Israel via Jordan, and Iraq
would
take in some of the Palestinians Israel had been evicting. His proposal included mutual
confiscation of property. London nixed the idea as too radical.

El-Said then went to his back-up plan and began to create the conditions that would make
the
lives of Iraqi Jews so miserable they would leave for Israel. Jewish government employees
were
fired from their jobs; Jewish merchants were denied import/export licenses; police began
to
arrest Jews for trivial reasons. Still the Jews did not leave in any great numbers.

In September 1949, Israel sent the spy Mordechai Ben-Porat, the one mentioned in Venom of
the
Zionist Viper, to Iraq. One of the first things Ben-Porat did was to approach el-Said and
promise him financial incentives to have a law enacted that would lift the citizenship of
Iraqi
Jews.

Soon after, Zionist and Iraqi representatives began formulating a rough draft of the bill,
according to the model dictated by Israel through its agents in Baghdad. The bill was
passed by
the Iraqi parliament in March 1950. It empowered the government to issue one-time exit
visas to
Jews wishing to leave the country. In March, the bombings began.

Sixteen years later, the Israeli magazine Haolam Hazeh, published by Uri Avnery, then a
Knesset
member, accused Ben-Porat of the Baghdad bombings. Ben-Porat, who would become a Knesset
member
himself, denied the charge, but never sued the magazine for libel. And Iraqi Jews in
Israel
still call him Morad Abu al-Knabel, Mordechai of the Bombs.

As I said, all this went well beyond the comprehension of a teenager. I knew Jews were
being
killed and an organization existed that could lead us to the Promised Land. So I helped in
the
exodus to Israel. Later, on occasions, I would bump into some of these Iraqi Jews in
Israel.
Not infrequently they'd express the sentiment that they could kill me for what I had done.

Opportunities for Peace

After the Israeli attack on the Jordanian village of Qibya in October, 1953, Ben Gurion
went
into voluntary exile at the Sedeh Boker kibbutz in the Negev. The Labor party then used to
organize many buses for people to go visit him there, where they would see the former
prime
minister working with sheep. But that was only for show. Really he was writing his diary
and
continuing to be active behind the scenes. I went on such a tour.

Ben Gurion's Scandals
Ben Gurion's Scandals

by N.Giladi
How the Haganah and Mossad eliminated Jews.
Available in our Bookstore

We were told not to try to speak to Ben Gurion, but when I saw him, I asked why, since
Israel
is a democracy with a parliament, does it not have a constitution? Ben Gurion said,
"Look,
boy"-I was 24 at the time-"if we have a constitution, we have to write in it the
border of our
country. And this is not our border, my dear." I asked, "Then where is the
border?" He said,
"Wherever the Sahal will come, this is the border." Sahal is the Israeli army.

Ben Gurion told the world that Israel accepted the partition and the Arabs rejected it.
Then
Israel took half of the land that was promised to the Arab state. And still he was saying
it
was not enough. Israel needed more land. How can a country make peace with its neighbors
if it
wants to take their land? How can a country demand to be secure if it won't say what
borders it
will be satisfied with? For such a country, peace would be an inconvenience.

I know now that from the beginning many Arab leaders wanted to make peace with Israel, but
Israel always refused. Ben Gurion covered this up with propaganda. He said that the Arabs
wanted to drive Israel into the sea and he called Gamal Abdel Nasser the Hitler of the
Middle
East whose foremost intent was to destroy Israel. He wanted America and Great Britain to
treat
Nasser like a pariah.

In 1954, it seemed that America was getting less critical of Nasser. Then during a
three-week
period in July, several terrorist bombs were set off: at the United States Information
Agency
offices in Cairo and Alexandria, a British-owned theater, and the central post office in
Cairo.
An attempt to firebomb a cinema in Alexandria failed when the bomb went off in the pocket
of
one of the perpetrators. That led to the discovery that the terrorists were not
anti-Western
Egyptians, but were instead Israeli spies bent on souring the warming relationship between
Egypt and the United States in what came to be known as the Lavon Affair.

Ben Gurion was still living on his kibbutz. Moshe Sharett as prime minister was in contact
with
Abdel Nasser through the offices of Lord Maurice Orbach of Great Britain. Sharett asked
Nasser
to be lenient with the captured spies, and Nasser did all that was in his power to prevent
a
deterioration of the situation between the two countries.

Then Ben Gurion returned as Defense Minister in February, 1955. Later that month Israeli
troops
attacked Egyptian military camps and Palestinian refugees in Gaza, killing 54 and injuring
many
more. The very night of the attack, Lord Orbach was on his way to deliver a message to
Nasser,
but was unable to get through because of the military action. When Orbach telephoned,
Nasser's
secretary told him that the attack proved that Israel did not want peace and that he was
wasting his time as a mediator.

In November, Ben Gurion announced in the Knesset that he was willing to meet with Abdel
Nasser
anywhere and at any time for the sake of peace and understanding. The next morning the
Israeli
military attacked an Egyptian military camp in the Sabaha region.

Although Nasser felt pessimistic about achieving peace with Israel, he continued to send
other
mediators to try. One was through the American Friends Service Committee; another via the
Prime
Minister of Malta, Dom Minthoff; and still another through Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia.

One that looked particularly promising was through Dennis Hamilton, editor of The London
Times.
Nasser told Hamilton that if only he could sit and talk with Ben Gurion for two or three
hours,
they would be able to settle the conflict and end the state of war between the two
countries.
When word of this reached Ben Gurion, he arranged to meet with Hamilton. They decided to
pursue
the matter with the Israeli ambassador in London, Arthur Luria, as liaison. On Hamilton's
third
trip to Egypt, Nasser met him with the text of a Ben Gurion speech stating that Israel
would
not give up an inch of land and would not take back a single refugee. Hamilton knew that
Ben
Gurion with his mouth had undermined a peace mission and missed an opportunity to settle
the
Israeli-Arab conflict.

Nasser even sent his friend Ibrahim Izat of the Ruz El Yusuf weekly paper to meet with
Israeli
leaders in order to explore the political atmosphere and find out why the attacks were
taking
place if Israel really wanted peace. One of the men Izat met with was Yigal Yadin, a
former
Chief of Staff of the army who wrote this letter to me on 14 January 1982:

Dear Mr. Giladi:

Your letter reminded me of an event which I nearly forgot and of which I remember only a
few
details.

Ibrahim Izat came to me if I am not mistaken under the request of the Foreign Ministry or
one
of its branches; he stayed in my house and we spoke for many hours. I do not remember him
saying that he came on a mission from Nasser, but I have no doubt that he let it be
understood
that this was with his knowledge or acquiescence....

When Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez Canal in spite of opposition from the British
and
the French, Radio Cairo announced in Hebrew:

If the Israeli government is not influenced by the British and the French imperialists, it
will
eventually result in greater understanding between the two states, and Egypt will
reconsider
Israel's request to have access to the Suez Canal.

Israel responded that it had no designs on Egypt, but at that very moment Israeli
representatives were in France planning the three-way attack that was to take place in
October,
1956.

All the while, Ben Gurion continued to talk about the Hitler of the Middle East. This
brainwashing went on until late September, 1970, when Gamal Abdel Nasser passed away.
Then,
miracle of miracles, David Ben Gurion told the press:

A week before he died I received an envoy from Abdel Nasser who asked to meet with me
urgently
in order to solve the problems between Israel and the Arab world.

The public was surprised because they didn't know that Abdel Nasser had wanted this all
along,
but Israel sabotaged it.

Nasser was not the only Arab leader who wanted to make peace with Israel. There were many
others. Brigadier General Abdel Karim Qasem, before he seized power in Iraq in July, 1958,
headed an underground organization that sent a delegation to Israel to make a secret
agreement.
Ben Gurion refused even to see him. I learned about this when I was a journalist in
Israel. But
whenever I tried to publish even a small part of it, the censor would stamp it "Not
Allowed."

Now, in Netanyahu, we are witnessing another attempt by an Israeli prime minister to fake
an
interest in making peace. Netanyahu and the Likud are setting Arafat up by demanding that
he
institute more and more repressive measures in the interest of Israeli
"security." Sooner or
later I suspect the Palestinians will have had enough of Arafat's strong-arm methods as
Israel's quisling-and he'll be killed. Then the Israeli government will say, "See, we
were
ready to give him everything. You can't trust those Arabs-they kill each other. Now
there's no
one to even talk to about peace."

Conclusion

Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie
than
a complex truth. Certainly it has been easier for the world to accept the Zionist lie that
Jews
were evicted from Muslim lands because of anti-Semitism, and that Israelis, never the
Arabs,
were the pursuers of peace. The truth is far more discerning: bigger players on the world
stage
were pulling the strings.

These players, I believe, should be held accountable for their crimes, particularly when
they
willfully terrorized, dispossessed and killed innocent people on the altar of some
ideological
imperative.

I believe, too, that the descendants of these leaders have a moral responsibility to
compensate
the victims and their descendants, and to do so not just with reparations, but by setting
the
historical record straight.

That is why I established a panel of inquiry in Israel to seek reparations for Iraqi Jews
who
had been forced to leave behind their property and possessions in Iraq. That is why I
joined
the Black Panthers in confronting the Israeli government with the grievances of the Jews
in
Israel who came from Islamic lands. And that is why I have written my book and this
article: to
set the historical record straight.

We Jews from Islamic lands did not leave our ancestral homes because of any natural enmity
between Jews and Muslims. And we Arabs-I say Arab because that is the language my wife and
I
still speak at home-we Arabs on numerous occasions have sought peace with the State of the
Jews. And finally, as a U.S. citizen and taxpayer, let me say that we Americans need to
stop
supporting racial discrimination in Israel and the cruel expropriation of lands in the
West
Bank, Gaza, South Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
END NOTES
Mileshtin was quoted by the Israeli daily, Hadashot, in an article published August 13,
1993.
The writer, Sarah Laybobis-Dar, interviewed a number of Israelis who had knowledge of the
use
of bacteriological weapons in the 1948 war. Mileshtin said bacteria was used to poison the
wells of every village emptied of its Arab inhabitants.

On Sept. 12, 1990, the New York State Supreme Court issued a restraining order at the
request
of the Israeli government to prevent publication of Ostrovsky's book, "By Way of
Deception: The
Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer." The New York State Appeals Court lifted the
ban the
next day.

Marion Woolfson, "Prophets in Babylon: Jews in the Arab World," p. 129

Yosef Meir, "Road in the Desert," Israeli Defense Ministry, p. 36.

See my book, "Ben Gurion's Scandals," p. 105.

Wilbur Crane Eveland, "Ropes of Sand: America's Failure in the Middle East," NY;
Norton, 1980,
pp. 48-49.

T. Herzl, "The Complete Diaries," NY: Herzl Press & Thomas Yoncloff, 1960,
vol. 1, p. 88.

Report of the Congress of the World Council of Paole Zion, Zurich, July 29-August 7, 1937,
pp.
73-74.

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