Palestine in Month Magazine

Edition (23)

Mossad secret operations for forced displacement of the Jews of Iraq

When Cohen spoke

By: Doaa El Shereef

Researcher Specializing in Israeli Affairs
_____________________________________________________________________

The image is the work of the artist Doron Ofer, the following is written on it in
reference to the struggle of the Sephardic Jews against their state policies:
"Conflicts under repression. Endless conflict from the Valley of Cross passing by
the black leopards, until the eastern democratic bow"

Terrorism and violence constitute the basis of the Zionist project. Zionist terrorism is
always there, while its spread depends on the balance of power so that terrorism
peaked in 1947 and 1948 when Zionism which is complicit with British colonialism
realized that the victory was close. Hence, terrorism accelerated and so did the rape of
Palestinian land, thus forcing the Palestinians to leave their country.

Zionist terrorism has many malignant aspects and does not stop at the Arabs, but there
is also another form of Zionist terrorism against those who support the Jews in their
plans for the occupation of the land of Palestine, and we mean here the British in

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particular. There is also another terrorism; the Zionist terrorism against the Jews
themselves.

Zionist terrorism in the face of the Arabs

Operations of organized violence and Zionist terrorism against the Arabs are not
based on the Talmudic Biblical intellectual system, or the theorists of the first Zionist
movement only, but the intellectual and political theories continued with the new
generation of Zionist leaders. This can be seen clearly in the speech of "Menachem
Begin", the former Prime Minister of Israel, directed to "Zionist", which stated:

"Your hearts - Jews - should not suffer while you kill your enemy, and you
should not pity them".

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This is emphasized by the Zionist writer "B. Michael" in an article published in the
newspaper "HaOlam Hazeh" on 19/5/1976:

"The massacre of Deir Yassin was deliberate and orchestrated to intimidate the
Arabs and force them to leave their villages".

The Zionist writer "Arthur Koestler" says:

"The bloodbaths that were orchestrated and carried out in Deir Yassin were not
a unique case, as other bloodbaths were carried out in Haifa, on April 23, 1948,
where thousands of Palestinian Arabs were killed in a single day".

Zionist terrorism against Jews

Zionist has sought in collaboration with some "international powers" to put the Jews
in some countries of the world in terrorist conditions: living and psychological by
arousing the scarecrow of (anti-Semitism), to force them to leave their countries of
origin and immigrate to Palestine.

Anti-Semitism was the method that was widely used by Zionists to stir up fears of the
Jews resident in their countries of origin in order to force them to immigrate to
Palestine in several ways including:

First: The use of some officials and citizens (non-Jews) directly or indirectly to do
persecutory campaigns for the Jews living among them in order to force them to
immigrate to Palestine. Thus, the Zionist writer (Jacob Klatzkin) said defending this
method of Anti-Semitism:

DL Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany, Louisiana, p139, fn 68; citing

Israelitisches Familienblatt June 3, 1920.

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"Instead of establishing societies for defense against the anti-Semites who want
to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends
who desire to defend our rights".

Perhaps the best example of this is the Zionist movement's exploitation of the Nazi's
persecution of the Jews, where Zionism exploited this persecution widely in order to
force the Jews everywhere to immigrate to Palestine.

This was expressed by the German author "Emil Ludwig" (original name Emil Cohn),
where he said:

M. Steinglass, "Emil Ludwig before the Judge", American Jewish Times, (April,
1936), p. 35; as quoted in: L. Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators,
Chapter 6, Croom Helm, London, L. Hill, Westport, Connecticut, (1983), p. 59.

Second: Forcing some Jews to sacrifice some of their fellow Jews in order to generate
the sympathy of the world on the tragic fate of the Jews, to facilitate the Jews
displacement to Palestine, for example:

 In 1939, Zionist gangs blew up the Danube Ship killing 1160.

 On November 25, 1940, the Zionist gang "Haganah" blew up the French ship
"Patria" when it arrived at the port of Haifa carrying nearly 1800 illegal
Jewish immigrants. The Zionist movement decided to blow up a side of the
ship to force the British side to enter illegal immigrants. 280 Jews were killed
in the operation.

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‫אוניית המעפילים פאטריה שוקעת בנמל חיפה‬

Immigrants ship "Patria" that was blown up in the port of Haifa

 Salvador Ship in 1940 near the coast of Turkey. The number of dead was
230.

 In February 1942, the Zionist gangs blew up the ship "Struma" near the
Turkish coast, while it was carrying 770 illegal Jewish immigrants who
drowned all. "Sharett" and "Ben Gurion" admitted that they carried out
the massacre after 18 years. "Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice some
people to save the rest". They said.

"Rabbi Schonfeld" supported these statements as he said: "the right to survive

goes to the Jews on the "land" of Israel only. If this is impossible, it is better
for him to die and sacrifice for the sake of establishing the future state".

The narrative here is quoted from the Jewish writer "Arie Bober", in his book
"The Other Israel".

* A ship was drowned near the coast of Istanbul (1944) and the number of
dead was 430.

Third: Using some Jews to spread unrest in the Jews' countries of origin to
turn the people of these countries against the Jews, thus forcing them to
migrate to Palestine and put pressure on the world public opinion. Rabbi
Klausner said in a report presented to the "American Jewish Conference" held
in 1948:

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Guide to the Abraham Klausner Papers,1942-2002

"It is possible to invent an incident so that the Jewish community is forced to

reconsider its policy and create the proposed changes, and at the same time,
increasing the suffering of the Jewish people, and the wave of anti-Semitism, and
increasing the struggle for the desired goal".
Perhaps the best example of this is the displacement of the majority of Iraqi Jews to
occupied Palestine in 1951. In 1950-1951 five bombs were blown up in Baghdad to
activate the immigration of Iraqi Jews to Palestine. The Jewish defendants confessed
after their arrest, which assures us how anti-Semitism was invested in the
displacement of Jews through this terrible weapon, and putting pressure to force them
to migrate to Palestine, which had fruitful results. The incidents of destruction and
issuing publications against Muslims resulted in a state of chaos and panic that led to
the migration of most of the Jewish community (150 thousand) to Palestine. This
operation had been given a secret name "Ali Baba", and it will be the focus of the
cause of this issue of "Palestine in a month", with the testimony and confessions of
the Jewish terrorists who carried out this operation and others, based on Hebrew and
foreign sources.

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1942 - 1945 ‫חלוצית בעיראק‬-‫מרדכי ביבי המחתרת הציונית‬

Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services

This is the first comprehensive and documented history of the three Israeli
intelligence agencies from their beginning in 1930, and passing through the five
Israeli wars, and until the present time.

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By the year 1949, despite their follow-up and prosecution by the Iraqi authorities a
few years ago, the Zionist gangs continued smuggling of Iraqi Jews to Palestine
secretly, often through Iran, at a rate of a thousand Jews per month, in addition to
carrying out terrorist acts in the ranks of the Jewish community itself. The security
authorities in Iraq during that year arrested the Iraqi Jew Sa'eed Khilla Sobhi, after
watching his sabotaging activities within the Jewish community in Baghdad, Sa'eed
confessed that he was one of the Zionist agents in Iraq, and that he and a group of
those agents (including Mordechai Ben-Porat, nicknamed between Iraqi Jews as
"Murad Abu Al-Qanabel" (or Murad, of the bombs), supervised a campaign that was
highly propagated among Iraqi Jews, whose number reached almost 150 thousand in
that period, in order to urge them to leave Iraq and join the State of "Israel". The Iraqi
authorities had also found quantities of weapons that were hidden in the houses of a
number of Jews and their synagogues in Baghdad.

During the months of September 1949, the secret intelligence services in "Israel"
commissioned one of the secret Zionist activists, named Mordechai Ben-Porat, to
travel secretly to Iraq, to carry out terrorist acts against the Iraq Jews in order to
encourage them to leave the country and emigrate to Israel, and wage a propaganda
war against the Iraqis, and in the world against Iraq. After the Iraqi Jews in "Israel"
discovered the truth years after, they named Mordechai "Murad Abul-Qanabel",
where "Murad" is the Arabic version of "Mordechai". During the same month of
September, one of the Iraqi Jews of the Zionist activists who were sentenced to death
by hanging by a military court in 1947, i.e. "Naim Khalaschi Giladi" was able to
arrange for his escape to Iran, and then to Palestine, where he arrived in May 1950.
(Giladi then turned against Israel and the Zionist movement later, and published
articles and books in this regard).

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Naim Giladi

The Iraqi Jew Naim Giladi reveals information about the bombings and displacement
in Palestine and Iraq.

Naim Giladi in 1947

Naim Giladi, an Arab Iraqi Jew born in the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad in
(14/3/1929). A former member of the Zionist underground. He left Iraq heading
to Israel in May 1950. He participated in the 1967 war. He voluntarily
abandoned the Israeli citizenship later, and chose to live in New York City and
get the US citizenship.

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He issued a book at his own expense, at a cost of $60 thousand entitled "Ben Gurion's
Scandals", on how the Mossad and Haganah deported the Jews. In this book, Giladi
reveals countless secrets, facts, and details, as the fact that in the forties, during the
British occupation of Iraq, the British commanders were behind the riots against the
Jews in their neighborhoods, so as to give a pretext for entering the capital and
overthrow the government of Kilani at the time.

Giladi says while his Iraqi wife Rachel was cooking delicious Iraqi meal, that he
wrote the 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.

He adds.

"I am not summarizing what I am reading or telling what I am hearing, but I

rather tell reliable information on what I experienced".

Giladi, who was arrested by the Iraqi authorities and experienced all form of torture at
Abu Gharib prison for two years says:

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. And I began to find out about
the barbaric methods used to rid the fledgling state of as many Palestinians as
possible. 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. The world recoils today at the thought of bacteriological
warfare, but Israel was probably the first to actually use it in the Middle East."

Giladi says that the reason to write this book:

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.

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This is Naim Giladi's testimony on the secret displacement of the Jews of Iraq
and the bombings that took place in 1950-1951.

In September 1949, Israel sent the spy Mordechai Ben-Porat, to Iraq.

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.

 The exact date was 19th March 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. 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 lived. No one was hurt, but

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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.

Giladi stresses that 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.

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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.

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 In the 14th of March 1951, a bomb exploded in front of the American

Information Center near "Souq Al-Safafir" in Rashid Street in Baghdad, a
center and market visited by the Jews in large numbers, causing the injury of
a number of them but no deaths.
 On June 26, the Iraqi government announced the discovery of a spy network
in Baghdad run by "two foreigners" who were arrested; one of them is an
"Israeli" officer, and the other is British named "Rodney", who soon became
clear that he was an "Israeli" Mossad officer. Most of the assistant of these
two men were arrested, who were responsible for the series of bombings that
targeted a number of buildings, institutions, and synagogues, and even the
Jews themselves, and which started since the beginning of the previous year
1950. The Iraqi authorities announced they had discovered explosives, files,
typewriters, machines for printing publications, and the names of members
of secret organizations, which were all hidden in some synagogues, or buried
underground in homes. All of these materials were confiscated in the
presence of the judge in charge of this case, the director of the Baghdad
police, and a number of notable Jews of Baghdad.
 On November 5, fifteen out of twenty-one were convicted in the Zionist
terrorist acts committed by the Zionist Jews in Iraq against other Iraqi Jew
during the previous year and a half. Jewish traders were sentenced to life
imprisonment with hard labor, while Shalomo Saleh Shalom and Youssef
Basri were sentenced to death.

‫יוסף בצרי‬

Yousef Basri

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The other defendants were sentenced to imprisonment for a period ranging between
five months and fifteen years. Jewish traders confessed later (in 1966) in an interview
with the Black Panther, edited and published by Sephardic Jews in "Israel", that he
and his fellow defendants were behind all these terrorist attacks against the Jews of
Iraq.

During January 1952, Youssef Ibrahim Basri and Shalom Saleh Shalom were hanged,
while a third Jew named Youssef Khabaza was sentenced to a long period in prison
after he was convicted of involvement in terrorist operations and being an agent for
Zionist organizations. The number of Jews who remained in Iraq during January 1952
was estimated by 6000 people only, after the immigration of almost 140 thousands of
them during the period between 1947 and 1951.

 During 1956, the Israeli Defense Minister alluded that the Zionist terrorist
operations committed against the Jews of Iraq between April 1950 and June
1951 were perpetrated by Zionist secret agencies, in his comment on the
Lavon Affairs in Egypt against western interests in 1954, in which the Israeli
secret intelligence officers (Mossad officers) launched a series of bomb attacks
on American and British property in Egypt. "This method in carrying out
the operations was not invented to be applied only in Egypt, as it was
tried for the first time in Iraq". He said.

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The book "Ropes of Sand"

Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), whom Giladi had the opportunity to meet in New York in 1988. In his book,
Ropes of Sand, 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.

Gilad asserts in his book that 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.

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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 Khabaza, carried out the attacks.

It should be referred here to Yosef Meir's book "Road in the Desert", in which he
refers to the messages threatening the Iraq officer Abdel-Rahman El-Samaray, who
discovered the terrorist Zionist organization in Iraq, and executed some of its
members, as well as threatening Abdel-Jabbar Fahmi the Police-Chief at the time, and
the judge Salman EL-Biyyat, and the Attorney Shaker El-Ani after the verdict.

Also the book "To Baghdad and Back" by Mordechai Ben-Porat, in which he
confirms that the aircraft tours organized on a daily basis for the transfer of Jews from
Iraq to Palestine through Arab airports.

The Israeli political activist "Sadiq Sadiq", an Iraqi Jew admitted in an interview with
"The Israeli Scene": "I was born in Iraq, and immigrated to Israel in 1951. I did not
immigrate alone, but the number of Iraqis who came to Israel in that year amounted to
nearly 130 thousand Iraqis". "We came to Israel through a plot and deal implemented
in 1949 in Switzerland between the [Iraqi Prime Minister] Nuri Said and David Ben-
Gurion [Israeli Prime Minister]. This transaction sold the Iraqi Jews through leaving
their country and coming to Israel". He said. "One of the methods that was used to
force Iraqi Jews to leave their homeland was when the Zionist movement, through its
agents, carried out the bombings of the Jewish synagogues, in order to be said that the
Arabs blow up synagogues in order to expel the Jews. But Jews were arrested as they
were involved in the bombings of Jewish synagogues in Baghdad." He said in the
interview. We conclude that the Arabs did not expel Jews from their countries, but it
was the Zionist movement and the Mossad who were responsible for their
immigration, as it was not possible to build a Jewish state without the displacement
and gathering of Jews from around the world in Palestine. All means were used to
achieve this end, including Zionist organized terrorism.

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Shlomo Hillel and "The Eastern Wind"

‫ בשליחות מחתרתית לארצות ערב שלמה הלל‬:‫רוח קדים‬

In his book "The Eastern Wind", Israeli Mossad officer Shlomo Hillel explains
how he secretly traveled to Iraq and worked with an intelligence team to plant
bombs in synagogues and communities to force Jews to immigrate, and that the
Iraqis are innocent of this scandal. Shlomo became one of the senior leaders of
Israel and took over sensitive positions in the supreme authority.

"The Eastern Wind" is a biography of the author and a very important historical
document, as it was the first of its kind, which includes testimonies on illegal
immigration from the east. The book narrates dramatic description of the underground
activities that took place in that period, and the operations that took place to displace
the Jews from the author's viewpoint, as well as the analysis of the historical and
political background of the events in this period.

Shlomo Hillel belonged to a Baghdadi Jewish family, he has left his family in
Baghdad and left Iraq since the mid-forties, when he was a young man, to join the

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Zionist movement in Palestine, where he was recruited by the Zionist intelligence

service "Mossad", to carry out special operations for the benefit of Zionism and
"Israel" inside Iraq. Since then, the Mossad was sending Hillel to Iraq secretly several
times in exploratory and preparatory secret visits to Iraq from Palestine, under the
pretext of participating in facilitating the process of deporting Iraqi Jews wishing to
leave Iraq for good to Palestine, under the law of dropping the Iraqi citizenship from
those who wish to leave Iraq for good voluntarily which was just issued, while in fact
he was arranging for illegal immigration of Iraqi Jews to Palestine, while his family
remained in Baghdad during that period.

He was exposed more than once, by the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and he was arrested
by Iraqi authorities on charges of carrying out Zionist activities, then he was released.
When the law of dropping Iraqi citizenship was issued in early March, for the Jews
who wish to leave Iraq for good, Mossad sent Hillel to Baghdad for arranging the
travel of Iraqi Jews to Palestine, who wished to take advantage of this law. Hillel's
official title was "Representative of the Near East Air Transport Company Limited", a
US transportation company, which was in fact owned by the Jewish Agency in
Palestine, and it was previously used to transfer the Yemenite Jews to "Israel".

Hillel offered the Iraqi government his company's services. After negotiations which
lasted for a full month, the two parties officially agreed that the plane carrying Iraqi
Jews who left Iraq for good to Palestine, should land first in a country that has normal
diplomatic relations with Iraq (the Island of Cyprus in this case), and the operation
was carried out in collaboration with the British, American, and Israeli governments.

Operation "Michael Berg" or "Operation Wing" ‫מבצע מייקלברג‬

In the beginning, the documents discuss Mossad illegal immigration, the Israeli
Foreign Ministry, the British Foreign Ministry, during the period 1946-1951, when
the author was working underground in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Egypt. The
author, Shlomo Hillel, was a public figure known for many years, but the book mainly
deals with the early period of his life, when he was 23 years old, he was a "Mossad"
agent for the displacement of the Jews, as he was sent on a secret mission to Iraq to
work underground in the land where he was born and lived for the first ten years of
his life, with a false identity and worked there for almost a year. He created a secret
organization and was the leader of that organization. Later, in the summer of 1947, he
was responsible for leading an operation known as "Michael Berg" or ‫מבצע מייקלברג‬.

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‫מטוס קרטיס קומנדו‬C-46 ‫ הזהה לזה שהעלה את העולים מעיראק‬,‫בשירות חיל האוויר האמריקני‬
"‫במסגרת "מבצע מייקלברג‬

An aircraft "Curtis C-46" served in the US Air Force and was used in Operation
Michael Berg

Operation Michael Berg (or Operation Wing) is a secret operation of illegal

immigration by air. The members of the so-called "LeAliyah Bet" which later formed
the nucleus of the Mossad purchased the plane and contracted with the pilot "Leo
Sanberg", who made two trips to Iraq in August and September of 1947 to carry out
the secret operation.

The operation was started by the Mossad in August and September 1947. During the
operation which took place in coordination with the Zionist organizations in Iraq, and
was carried out by two planes of the US aircraft Curtis C-46, a hundred of illegal Iraqi
immigrants were illegally brought despite the objection of the British Mandate.

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‫ שירדו מהמטוס בשדות‬,‫שלמה הלל עם העולים הראשונים מעיראק שהיו חלק ממבצע מיקלברג‬
1947 ,‫ אוגוסט‬:‫ תאריך‬.‫יבניאל‬
Shlomo Hillel with the first immigrants from Iraq in the illegal immigration, as
part of the Operation Michael Berg. The photo shows the immigrants landing in
"Epenal" airport in August 1947

This operation was the mission of the Mossad agent Shlomo Hillel (‫)שלמה הלל‬,
Yerahmiel Assa (‫)ירחמיאל אסא‬, and David Nameri (‫)דוד נמרי‬.

Yerahmiel Assa ‫ירחמיאל אסא‬

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David Nameri ‫דוד נמרי‬

.‫וסנברג‬-‫ מייקל ו‬:‫המבצע נקרא על שמם של שני הטייסים האמריקאים שהטיסו את המטוס‬

The operation was named after the pilots who carried it out i.e. Michael and Leo
Sanberg.

With the outbreak of the 1948 war, the Israeli authorities started talking about ways to
increase illegal immigration to Israel and to force the Jews to travel to Israel,
especially in the Arab countries. Here, Hillel suggested the idea of penetrating the
east, Iraq, and Iran, hoping to present people to Israel.

Hillel traveled to Tehran with a false passport under the name Maurice Perez
(‫ )מוריספרז‬and worked for more than a year as a coordinator of the smuggling
operation. Through perseverance and resourcefulness, he managed to get the approval
to put his idea into effect. Thus, the number of illegal immigrants from Iraq increased.

The Iraqi authorities failed in their attempts to stop the flow of illegal immigration,
and at the end, they allowed the departure of the Jews from the legal aspect, provided
that they drop their nationality.

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Operation Ezra and Nehemiah ‫( מבצע "עזרא ונחמיה‬18/5/1950)

The forged Turkish Visa of Shlomo Hillel as "Richard Armstrong" in 1950

Shlomo Hillel returned to Baghdad in 1950 with a new forged alias "Richard
Armstrong" (‫)ריצ'ארד ארמסטרונג‬, one of the executives of the American Aviation
company "Near East Air Transport Company" (‫איסט איר טרנספורט‬-‫)ניר‬, to negotiate
with the Iraqi government and its Prime Minister Tawfiq Al-Suwaidi, to carry out the
operation "Ezra and Nehemiah", aiming to displace the Jews of Iraq, which was
considered "the largest airlift in history" by New York Times.

The operation details come in the book of the Mossad agent Shlomo Hillel "The
Eastern Wind", in which he explained his main role in the criminal operations named
"Ezra and Nehemiah", the code name derived from the Torah. He says that he was
moving between Palestine and Iraq, sometimes by plane, and sometimes wearing the
Arab costume to travel by road between Palestine, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, to carry out
his criminal operations assigned to him by the Zionist Mossad, while a Mossad
intelligence station had been established in Baghdad carrying three code names
(Dekel), (Oren), and (Berman).

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In Tehran, the larger and more important station was established, and also carrying
three code names; (Koldman), (Nuri), and (Alon). These names were used in the
wireless code between Baghdad, Tehran, and Tel Aviv, where the Zionist cells
transferred the Jews from "Abadan", "Desfol", and "Kermanshah" to Tehran first, and
then by land to Turkey, then to Palestine. Sometimes the direct air route was used
from Tehran to Palestine. The Zionist agent Shlomo Hillel had worked in Baghdad
during the years 1947, 1948, and 1950, and in Tehran in 1949, where he worked on
the organization of the deportation of Jews in coordination with some agents in
southern, central, and northern Iraq, especially the Barzani groups, who have been
agents for the Zionists since the foundation of the Zionist entity and until the present
day.

1950 ,‫מחנה העולים "שער העלייה" בחיפה‬

The camp of the migrants in Haifa in 1950

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"‫ המודיע על כינוס הודיה עם סיום מבצע "עזרא ונחמיה‬,"‫כרוז מטעם "הסתדרות הפועל המזרחי‬
Announcing the end of "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah"

‫שלמה הלל והחברים חוגגים בטהרן את הצלחת המבצע של הברחת יהודים מעיראק לאירן ומשם‬
1949 :‫תאריך‬. ‫לארץ‬

Shlomo Hillel and his friends in Tehran while celebrating the success of the
operation of smuggling the Jews from Iraq to Iran and then to Israel. Date: 1949

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,‫רכב המוסד לעליה ב' בטהרן בכניסה לבית הקברות היהודי במסגרת המבצע להברחת יהודים לארץ‬
1949 :‫ תאריך‬.‫בהנהלת שלמה הלל‬

A car in Tehran at the entrance to the Jewish cemetery during the operation of
smuggling the Jews to Israel, managed by Shlomo Hillel. Date: 1949

.‫שלמה הלל והבורחים מעיראק לאירן בדרכם לארץ בשלג בבית הקברות היהודי הישן בטהרן‬
1949 ,‫ פברואר‬:‫תאריך‬

Shlomo Hillel and the people who escaped from Iraq to Iran on their way to
Israel in the snow in the old Jewish cemetery in Tehran. Date: 1949

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1951 :‫תעודת זהות פרסית של שלמה הלל בשם אחמד איסמעיל תאריך‬

The false Persian identity card of Shlomo Hillel as Ahmed Ismail. Date: 1951

1951 :‫ תאריך‬.‫כריכה של תעודת זהות פרסית של שלמה הלל‬

Shlomo Hillel's Persian personal card. Date: 1951

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.‫שלמה הלל וחבריו בבגדד בשליחות מטעם המוסד לעליה ב' להביאת יהודי עיראק לארץ‬
1946 :‫תאריך‬
Shlomo Hillel, Mordechai Ben-Porat and their friends were the leaders of young
adventurers responsible for the implementation of the operation Ezra and
Nehemia, the forced displacement of the Jews of Iraq, and Baghdad's bombings

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1947 :‫ תאריך‬.‫ בבצרה‬,‫שלמה הלל עם חברים מהתנועה הציונית בעיראק‬

Shlomo Hillel with members of the Zionist movement in Basra, Iraq. Date: 1947

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.‫שלמה הלל וחבריו בחולום שאהר מחכים למשלוח מכשיר הקשר שהגיע בהברחה מבגדד לאירן‬
1948 ,‫ דצמבר‬:‫תאריך‬
Shlomo Hill with his friends waiting for a shipment that arrived from Baghdad
to Iran. Date: November 1948

In the framework of the Operation Ezra and Nehemia (1950-1952), one hundred and
five thousand Jews immigrated to Israel after dropping their Iraqi nationality.

The number of Jews who remained in Iraq reached twelve thousand people. While
"Meir Basri", one of the elders of the community who was their chief during the
period between 1971 and 1974 estimated the number of Jews who remained in Iraq
after the mass exodus by ten thousand people. The majority of the remaining people
were senior government officials, property owners, big traders, business owners and
entrepreneurs who had Muslim and Christian partners.

Mass grave of the Farhud program of 1941 Photo from the book ‘Iraq’,
published by the Ministry of Education and the Ben-Zvi, Jerusalem, (2002)

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