On the Baghdad bombings – Nirit Anderman in Haaretz:

‘On January 4, 1951, a loud explosion devastated the Masouda Shem-Tov synagogue in the heart of Baghdad. "The Synagogue was bombed from a nearby house (…) I managed to escape with the rest of the crowd – some 600-700 people – who fled in panic" Ezra Naim, a Jewish man who had emigrated from Iraq, told a Davar journalist a couple of weeks later. The rumor circulating among Baghdad Jews at the time was that emissaries of Israel had thrown the grenade into the synagogue.
"I had heard as much from policemen and government officials, too," Naim said. "Many Jews from Baghdad and other cities are (now) shut up in their homes, praying a lot and waiting for immigration."’

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‘Though Iraqi authorities arrested three Zionist activists following the attack and executed two of them, the state of Israel has long denied any involvement in this incident as in four other attacks targeting Baghdad's Jewish community between 1950 and 1951.’

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‘More than seven decades after that explosion, the controversy over the identity of the perpetrators is revived in a new documentary film: director Avida Livni's "Baghdad Files," which was screened at the Haifa Film Festival and later broadcast on Kan 11. "Someone threw that grenade, and the fact that to this day it's uncertain who threw it is due to elements preventing us from getting to the truth," says Livni. "Once you're blocked from getting to the truth, you start searching for it, and all you're left with is telling stories and making conjectures. For a director looking to make an interesting documentary with twists and turns, this is an interesting starting point."
The film's dramatic engine is a case of documents that sat for decades in the Yale University archives without anybody noticing. These were the papers of Israeli journalist Baruch Nadel, a former Lehi (pre-state underground militia) member who wrote for Yedioth Ahronoth and Ha'olam Hazeh, among other publications. In the 1950s, Nadel visited Ma'abarot – transit camps for new Iraqi immigrants – and was shocked by their unbearable living conditions.’

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‘Rather than make a film providing a historical survey of events, Livni decided to place Nadel's document case at the center of the film. He says it includes some 117 testimonies collected by the late journalist. Viewers are invited to follow Nadel's journey: his initial inquiry in the 1950s, his return to witnesses in the 1960s, his preparations for trial in the 1970s. The film unfolds through multiple layers of inquiry, each exposing another tier of the affair. Meanwhile, new testimonies by still-living witnesses are interwoven throughout – such as Geula El'ani, who recalls her mother insisting that the Jewish underground threw the grenade – alongside second and third-generation descendants still carrying the pain and unanswered questions.’

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‘In the film, Shenhav-Shahrabani notes that as early as April 1949, a suggestion was made within the Mossad Le'aliyah Bet (an arm of the paramilitary organization Haganah that managed clandestine immigration to Israel in British mandatory Palestine) to throw "some scare grenades into cafés frequented mainly by Jews, along with pamphlets demanding they leave Iraq" in order to speed up emigration. Indeed, in the wake of the 1951 synagogue attack, within just a few months, more than 80,000 Jews asked to renounce their Iraqi citizenship to facilitate their departure for Israel – and the entire community emptied almost overnight.’

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‘The grenade affair, he says, is not just a historical event, but an enduring parable about political and institutional decisions repeatedly made at the expense of individuals. "This happens everywhere – the big math disrupts the lives of people who just want to live," he says, whether by wars, evacuating communities or broken promises. "The establishment always lies because it must protect itself. If it told the truth, there would be hardly any films made, nor books or research written."’

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‘"Baghdad Files" executes Nadel's will for a "future researcher" to take up the affair, proving that Israel's history is written not only in official documents held by the state, but also in the memories and testimonies of citizens – who are much harder to silence.’

Read the article here.

The community emptied almost overnight.

It seems that the Baghdad bombings, whoever was behind it, were just the final straw.

Big math disrupts the lives of people, no further research is needed for that.

But future researchers might discover the truth.