Baghdad Files

Overview

Even though more than seventy years have passed, the state refuses to open the files of the investigative committees that conducted the question that haunts many: Who threw the grenade at the Shem Tov synagogue? The grenade, thrown in 1951, killed five, wounded about twenty, and is considered the major attack that led to the rapid immigration of most of Iraq's Jews in Operation "Ezra and Nehemiah." For years, a large portion of immigrants believed that the State of Israel was behind the affair, because it wanted to induce the affluent class of Jews to immigrate. But recently, a box of documents and testimonies was found at a university in the United States, intended for the "future researcher of the material," and deals with the question "Who threw the grenade?"