I devote a whole chapter to the subject of the exodus, the reasons for it, and the role of the five bombs on Jewish targets in 1950 and 1951 in particular. Since I was a boy, all my relatives and all the Iraqis I knew were convinced that this was a conspiracy to uproot them, and a prelude to the very poor treatment and reception that they received [under Zionism].

[Zionism’s neocolony] has always denied any involvement in the five bombs; there were two commissions of inquiry, which totally exonerated them from any involvement. A hand grenade was thrown in a Jewish café by a right-wing Arab nationalist, a member of the Istiqlal (Independence) Party, to hasten the departure of the Jews. The most famous bomb was a hand grenade thrown into the courtyard of the Masʻuda Shemtob Synagogue, which killed four Jews—the only case in which Jews actually died. This bombing was also not carried out by the Zionist Underground. [Ed. note: Shlaim’s book cites testimony that attributes this attack to Sali al-Haidari, a Sunni Muslim of Syrian origins, for criminal rather than political reasons.]

But I have found undeniable evidence that the Zionist Underground was responsible for the three other bombs.

In 2017, I interviewed a friend of my mother’s in Ramat Gan, an elderly Iraqi Jew, who was a Zionist and a Likud supporter by the name of Yaacov Karkoukli. He was in the Zionist Underground. He told me about their activities in organizing the legal and then the illegal transport to [the neocolony], the forging of documents and passports, the payment of bribes to [neocolonial] and Iraqi officials.

He told me about his colleague named Yusef Basri, a 20-year-old Jewish lawyer and ardent Zionist who had gone to [the neocolony] in 1949, but then was sent back to Baghdad as [a neocolonial] agent. According to Karkoukli, Basri was responsible for three of the bombs; his handler, Max Binnet, was [a neocolonial] intelligence officer based in Tehran. (In those days, the Shah’s Iran had covert relations with [Zionism].)

Karkoukli later produced a one-page Baghdad police report as proof, which named Basri and talked about his interrogation and trial, where he was accused of involvement in three of the bombings. He was condemned to death and hanged, and apparently his last words were “Long live the State of Israel.”

I wouldn’t call the document a smoking gun: It’s in Arabic on a plain piece of paper with no date, no official letterhead, no names. Later on, however, I made contact with an Iraqi journalist named Shamil Abdul Qadir who had written a book in Arabic that was never translated to English called History of the Zionist Movement in Iraq and its Role in the Emigration of the Jews in 1950–1951.

I sent him my one-page report, and he confirmed that it’s a part of the Baghdad police report on the bombs. He has a copy of the file, which is 258 pages. The document was not a single page taken from the file, but rather a collection of details taken from different parts of the file. Still it most definitely is genuine and authentic. I can therefore say without any doubt that the Zionist Underground, with [neocolonial] involvement, was responsible for three of the bombs.

I don’t claim that the bombs were the main factor behind the exodus, but I think it was one of many factors that need to be taken into account.

[…]

People think that in this conflict, there’s [Jews] on one side and all the Arabs on the other, and that the antagonism is inevitable and inescapable. This is why I’m so focused on the notion of the Arab Jew. The history that I describe in this book shows that there was a time when Jews and Muslims and Christians could live happily together in harmony. Given [neo]colonialism and apartheid in the West Bank, it’s very difficult to think of a peaceful solution to this conflict, but thinking about the past enables me to think of a better future for the region.

Today, I’ve come to the conclusion that a two-state solution to the conflict is dead, and the solution is one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of religion and ethnicity. This noble vision of a new Middle East is very much grounded in the history of my family and my community in Iraq.