Naeim Giladi

Naeim Giladi (, ; 18 March 1926 – 6 March 2010) was an anti-Zionist Iraqi Jew, and author of an autobiographical article and historical analysis titled "The Jews of Iraq". The article later formed the basis for his originally self-published book Ben-Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews.

Biography

Early life in Iraq Giladi was born Naeim Khalasch on 18 March 1926 to an Iraqi Jewish family and later lived in Israel and the United States. Giladi describes his family as, "a large and important" family named "Haroon" who had settled in Iraq after the Babylonian exile. According to Giladi, his family had owned 50,000 acres (200 km2) devoted to rice, dates and Arabian horses. They were later involved in gold purchase and purification, and were therefore given the name, 'Khalaschi', meaning 'Makers of Pure' by the Ottoman Turks who occupied Iraq at the time. In the U.S., he wrote about an autobiographical account and historical analysis of Zionist actions in Iraq, Palestine, and later Israel in an article titled "The Jews of Iraq" In his article, Giladi notes that this was also the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who outlined that allegation in his book "Ropes of Sand".

Historian Moshe Gat argued that there was little direct connection between the bombings and the exodus of Jewish refugees. Gat questions the guilt of the alleged Jewish bombthrowers who were found guilty in an Iraqi court of having perpetrated one of the bombings. He cites a rumour that a Christian Iraqi army officer "known for his anti-Jewish views", was initially arrested for the crime, but was evidently not charged despite the large number of explosive materials matching those used in an earlier synagogue bombing that were allegedly found in his home. He further cites a long history of anti-Jewish bomb-throwing incidents in Iraq.

Giladi also mentioned Mordechai Ben-Porat, a former Israeli Member of the Knesset, and a Cabinet minister, who was a key figure in the Zionist underground, as having been one of the figures responsible for the bombings according to one of the Iraqi investigators into the bombings, in a book titled Venom of the Zionist Viper. Ben-Porat was one of several Israeli undercover Mossad agents arrested in Baghdad after the explosion; he was able to skip bail and flee to Israel. Ben-Porat has vigorously denied this allegation, which he characterizes as akin to "blood libel", and which prompted him to write his 1998 book, "To Baghdad and Back". In it, Ben-Porat contends that the false charge against him was conceived at Iraq police headquarters.

For his 2006 book Occupied Minds, British journalist Arthur Neslen interviewed Yehuda Tajar, a Mossad agent who spent ten years of a 25-year prison sentence in Iraq, after being convicted for the explosions. Tajar insists that, although his undercover cell was prepared to carry out such acts, they did not in fact do so. The actual explosions, he claims, were the work of the Muslim Brotherhood. After several members of the cell were arrested, however, those still at liberty carried out other grenade attacks, in an attempt to show the innocence of those arrested.

Giladi's article is regularly cited by anti-Zionists, including Jewish anti-Zionists, who claim that Zionism has a negative effect for Jews.

Giladi also maintains a controversial stance regarding the Farhud, alleging that the British government bear the bulk of responsibility for the event as he claimed they instigated it to blacken the image of the Rashid Ali government. The details of a direct ban enacted by either the American or Israeli governments are not supplied by the author or publisher.

In the foreword of the book, Giladi writes that he did not submit a manuscript in Israel for fear of retribution. "Before," he wrote, "one can publish a book in Israel, permission had to be granted by the censors.... When I was contemplating writing and publishing this book, two of my colleagues and well known Israeli journalists (Maxim Gilan and Samuel Mour) were arrested and put in jail for exposing the involvement of the Israeli secret police ... in the kidnapping in Paris of Mehdi Ben Barka ..., charged with crimes against national security and ... locked up for six months. Moreover, the Israeli media were gagged and not even allowed to mention that the two journalists had been arrested. If the authorities had wished, the two men would have been kept in jail for the rest of their lives."

Also in the foreword, Giladi writes that upon emigrating to the United States in 1980, he found several publishers interested in publishing his work. He says he declined to publish because all interested publishers wanted to reserve the right of editorial control over the finished manuscript and he did not want to agree to this. Twelve years after his arrival in the US, he self-published at a cost of $60,000, which he reports was almost all of the proceeds of the sale of his Israeli property.