Akiva Orr, who is Jewish, was born in Berlin in 1931, served in the Israeli army in 1948. Orr relates the story about speaking at a conference in England in 1970:
"I explained that the conflict between Israel and the Arab world was essentially a conflict over lands and independence between Jewish immigrants and the indigenous Palestinian population. Until 1948 Palestine was populated by an Arab majority which was expropriated, exploited, and partially expelled by the Zionist immigrants from Europe. The immigrant settlers transformed the indigenous majority into a minority discriminated against in its own country, and imposed upon it a discriminatory state apparatus, namely a 'Jewish state'. No wonder the natives were restless. This came as a total revelation to the audience of some 500, who were used to apologetic versions of the Palestine conflict, in which Israel was presented as a small, democratic state created by the Jews who escaped from Auschwitz, a state that made 'the desert bloom', and that was beleaguered by the surrounding Arab states for the sheer fact that it was Jewish.
A lively session of questions from the audience followed. Suddenly someone at the back of the hall stood up and shouted, emotionally: 'Israel expelled the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 as a response to the Jews who were expelled from the Arab states. This amounted to a "population transfer", which had occurred more than once this century and was a legitimate, if cruel, way of settling minority problems.' I replied that in 1948 Jews were not expelled from countries like Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, but induced to leave by Zionist emissaries from Israel who often used dirty tricks like throwing bombs into synagogues to create the impression of anti-Jewish persecution to stampede the Jews to Israel.
This answer outraged my heckler even more, and he shouted in an agitated voice: 'You are a liar, no Jew ever threw a bomb into a Jewish synagogue.' The audience weren't used to seeing someone denounce a speaker as a 'liar'. Being British, they assumed such an accusation was based on solid information capable of withstanding a libel charge. The ball was now in my court, but having encountered this charge many times before I was well prepared. I had copies of the Israeli weekly Ha'olam Hazeh (of 20 April and 1 June 1966) with me, which published details, with photographs, of these events. Some Iraqi Jews who had become disabled as a result of the bombs thrown by Israeli agents into the Mas-uda Shemtov Synagogue in Baghdad had sued the Israeli government for damages, in Israel. The government had preferred to settle out of court and pay damages, but the legal exchanges had reached the Israeli press and had been published by some magazines. When I read out the details of the case from the Israeli magazine all eyes turned back towards my adversary. I demonstrated convincingly that I was not a liar. What would he say now?
There was a moment of silence and then he blurted out: 'You see, unlike the Arab countries Israel is a democratic state. You can publish everything in the press there.' The audience burst into laughter; I didn't." - Akiva Orr, Israel: Politics, Myths and Identity Crises, Pluto Press, London and Boulder Colorado, 1994, pp. 5-6Akiva Orr, Israel: Politics, Myths and Identity Crises, Pluto Press, London and Boulder Colorado, 1994, pp. 5-6
Details about how Zionists terrorized Iraqi Jews into leaving Iraq for Israel and the Israeli weekly Ha'olam Hazeh that Akiva Orr mentioned in his talk with the agitated Zionist:
"The astonishing truth-that the bombs which terrorized the Jewish community had been Zionist bombs-was revealed in the summer of 1950" Zionists victimized Jews in Iraq both emotionally and physically. "It happened outside the Mas'uda Shemtov synagogue, which
served as an assembly point for emigrants. That day in January the synagogue was full of Kurdish Jews from the northern city of Suleimaniyyah. Outside a Jewish boy was distributing sweet meats to curious onlookers. When the bomb went off he was killed instantly and a man standing behind him was badly wounded in the eyes."
The plot was exposed after Yehudah Tajjar, an Israeli member of the Zionist underground group called "The Movement" which carried out the terrorist bombing operations, was recognized by a Palestinian refugee in Baghdad.
"It was Tajjar himself who first broke Jewish silence about this affair. Sentenced by the Baghdad court to life imprisonment, he was released after ten years and found his way to Israel. On 29 May 1966 the campaigning weekly magazine Ha'olam Hazeh published an account of the emigration of Iraqi Jews based on Tajjar's testimony."
The calculated manipulation of fears and the creating of false instances of "anti-semitism" are tactics used cynically by Zionists. The fanatical drive to fill Israel with Jews using anti-Semitic slogans was advocated shamelessly by, "a columnist in Davar, influential voice of the Israel trade union movement", he wrote:
"I shall not be ashamed to confess that if I had the power, as I have the will, I would select a score of efficient young men-intelligent, decent, devoted to our ideal and burning with the desire to help redeem Jews-and I would send them to the countries where Jews are absorbed in sinful self-satisfaction. The task of these young men would be to disguise themselves as non-Jews, and plague Jews with anti-Semitic slogans such as 'Bloody Jew', 'Jews go to Palestine' and similar intimacies. I can vouch that the results in terms of a considerable immigration to Israel from these countries would be ten thousand times larger than the results brought by thousands of emissaries who have been preaching for decades to deaf ears." - David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, Nation Books; 2nd edition 2003 pp. 283-284
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