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Iraqi Dreyfus: the show trial that shook Iraqi Jewry in '48 | Israel today

2022-11-24T21:02:06.708Z


Seven years after the Farhud riots that claimed the lives of around 180 victims, the Jewish community in Iraq was hit with another shock: one of its greatest sons was convicted of treason and sentenced to death in a show trial. that the Iraqi army joined the war in the young state of Israel • His high status and many connections did not help - and his tragic fate sealed the fate of an entire community


"One day will come, and the Iraqi people will acquit Addas, just as the French people acquitted Dreyfus"


(Mohammed Zaki al-Khatib, Iraqi Muslim lawyer, 1948)

A black-haired woman in the early fifth decade of her life, all agitated, hurriedly makes her way from the southern city of Basra to the king's palace in Baghdad.

Her name is Aliza (Alice) Addas, the wife of Shafik Addas, one of the richest people in Iraq and one of the most respected Jews in the country.

She wants to beg for the life of her husband, who a short time before was sentenced to death for the crime of treason.

Waiting for her inside the palace is Emir Abd al-Ila - the Hashemite prince and head of the Iraqi royal house, who serves as the regent of the royal house until the heir to the throne, Faisal, reaches the appropriate age.

According to the Iraqi constitution, he is the only one who can soften Shafiq's sentence.

She kneels before him, falls to the ground desperately and kisses his feet.

When they had already eaten all the ketsin, and the hanging rope seemed closer than ever to her husband's neck, she tried the last option.

Without her being aware of it at the time, not only her husband's life is at stake, but the fate of the entire Jewish community.

The time is September 1948. Aliza gave birth to Shafik with three sons (Zaki, Victor and Sabah) and three daughters (Dolly, Vicky and Stella).

Of the two, she was the local, the daughter of a wealthy family that traded in tea and sugar.

Her mother Farha, who was a very pious woman, immigrated to Israel in 1946. Her father, Ezra, continued to manage the household business.

Aliza was a woman with broad and strong features, whose posture showed that she was a woman of action.

Even though she was born and raised in Iraq, she spoke Arabic perfectly, but did not know how to write it at all.

English and French, however, she knew about Burien.

Shafik himself was born in Aleppo, Syria, a member of the illustrious Adas family, whose various branches also reached Cairo and Jerusalem, and where the Adas Synagogue is still located today in the Nachalot neighborhood.

He left his homeland following his elder brother Avraham, and came to Iraq to find his fortune in business after the First World War, when Baghdad and Basra fell into the hands of the empire where the sun had never set.

The British occupation opened up a wealth of new business opportunities in Iraq, and the Addas brothers wanted a share of the success.

Within about two decades, they qualified for the top of the Iraqi economy, and were considered one of the richest Jewish families in the country.

Outside the palace there was a big storm.

The Iraqi army, public opinion and a large part of the press sued the head of Ades, who was found guilty in a military court of treason and aiding the "Zionist enemy".

Almost everyone who followed the flash trial, which lasted three days without the defense being given the opportunity to call witnesses, knew that it was a show trial designed to terrorize the Jewish community.

Ades was accused of selling to Israel old military equipment, which was no longer used by the British army in World War II.

Among his other branch businesses, Adas was the exclusive importer of "Ford" engines in Iraq.

He purchased scrap iron from the British and transferred it, according to the prosecution, through Italy and Cyprus to the Israel Defense Forces.

The Iraqi army invaded Israel the day after its establishment, on May 15, 1948, and this is how the Iraqi public thought of the perfect plot: the "treacherous" Jew Adas transferred weapons to Israel to kill Iraqi soldiers.

Emir Abd al-Ila knew Shafik Adas well, who even hosted him in his home when the emir visited the city of Basra.

In fact, everyone in the young Iraqi state knew Shafik.

He had close ties with the most important politician in Iraq in those years, Nouri Said;

He named his son Sabah, like the name of Said's son;

Ministers and businessmen, senior officials and members of parliament met Adas, and some of them were even related to him through trade and work ties.

Despite this, when Adas was put on trial, none of his Muslim accomplices sat beside him on the dock.

Miraculously, only Adas the Jew was prosecuted.

The military court in Basra sentenced Adas to death by hanging, and the sentence was sent, according to the protocol, for the signature of the emir in Baghdad.

Who didn't come to beg for Addas' life in the days that passed until Abdel-Ila made his decision?

There was a delegation of rabbis and the American ambassador, Muslim acquaintances of Addas and former politicians.

And there was also the tragic meeting with Aliza.

It is possible that in another place and time, Abd al-Ila could have saved her husband.

But not this time.

Before signing the sentence, the regent called his advisers together and asked them to consult with them.

The religion of Islam forbids shedding clean blood and executing a righteous person, he told his advisers;

Iraq does fight the Palestinian Jews, but not the Iraqi Jews.

But it was too little too late.

The fur has already fallen.

His advisers warned him: it's either Adas's head - or yours.

the extortion

The whole affair began on a hot summer day at the end of July 1948, when the editor of the newspaper "A-Nas", which was the mouthpiece of the nationalist and anti-Jewish party "Istiklal" in Basra, entered the office of Shafik Adas.

Adas honored the guest with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, as is customary, and asked him what he wanted.

A thousand dinars, the guest replied - and in cash.

A few months ago, the practice of trying to extort Jewish businessmen by demanding that they donate money to the Iraqi army fighting "to save Palestine" became known in Iraq.

Almost everyone paid the fine.

But no one in Hades intended to be blackmailed.

A combination of true Iraqi patriotism, with a belief that turned out to be excessive in his power and position, led him to answer the blackmail attempt with mockery and to ask the guest how he thought the expense should be recorded in the books of accounts - would it be a loan, a gift or maybe just write "extortion"?

He must have thought in his heart that a man like him, cut off from any connection to Jewish politics and Zionism, who entered the royal palace in Baghdad without even knocking on the door, would be immune to aggression.

The editor of the newspaper angrily left the office, and two days later published an article accusing Adas of spying for Zionism and selling weapons "to the Zionist gang fighting the Arab people".

The propaganda campaign against Ades began, and the press in Baghdad demanded his arrest and his head.

Some of his friends warned him that he must leave Iraq immediately, at least until the winds calm down.

Some suggested smuggling him across the border to Persia.

The brother of the Basra police chief even sent him a message, according to which the police and army chiefs in Basra are plotting to arrest him at any moment.

How confident Adas was in his position is evidenced by his reaction to these warnings: on August 5, he got into his car and ordered his personal driver to drive him to the police station.

When he entered, he asked the police officers standing at the entrance to inform their superiors that he wanted to speak with them and clarify matters.

Adas was convinced that Din and Devarit would put the affair behind him, but instead the order came to arrest him immediately.

This was the last time Adas was a free man.

In the first two days he was still given reasonable conditions of detention, but then he was transferred to the central prison in Basra, where the conditions of his detention were greatly aggravated.

the trial

The trial itself was held in only three sessions, on September 11-13, 1948. It was a military court, presided over by Akid (Lieutenant-Colonel) Abdullah Naasni, who was a well-known pro-Nazi nationalist.

The great lawyers in Iraq refused to take on the defense of Adas, despite the copious sums he offered them.

In the end, three defense attorneys were appointed, but all of them resigned on the second day of the trial, when the court refused to allow them to bring witnesses on behalf of the defense.

Ades remained alone before the throne of justice, without receiving any legal remedy and without summoning any witness in his favor.

The indictment that was read on the first day seemed to be taken straight from "The Tales of a Thousand Nights and Nights".

What was not in it: support for communism and Zionism, financing demonstrations against the regime, sowing chaos and anarchy in the country, membership in the Jewish Agency, and purchasing weapons for the Israel Defense Forces.

The Zionists, it is claimed, planted Ades on purpose in Baghdad to undermine the government.

According to the lawsuit, Adas purchased tanks, armored vehicles, trucks, jeeps, ammunition, radios and bombs.

He hid all of these in underground facilities to which only he had access, and eventually transported them by ship through Italy to Israel.

For each of these charges, the prosecution introduced false witnesses, who testified that they saw or were present at Adas' illegal activities.

In the defense speech he gave on the second day, Ades flatly denied what was attributed to him and explained that he had indeed purchased surplus equipment of the British army and sold it to Italy.

Except it was not military equipment, not a weapon or any ammunition that could be used.

In any case, all these actions were authorized by law.

When asked why he regularly transfers money to Israel, Ades admitted that he sends 50 dinars every month to his father-in-law, the mother of his wife who is there.

At the third session of the trial, the unanimous verdict was read before the 400 present in the hall, who responded with applause and cheers.

Ades was sentenced to death by hanging until the end of his life and the payment of compensation in the amount of 5 million dinars.

It was written in the press that "the dangerous defendant accepted the verdict with equanimity."

A community under attack

The trial against Shafik Adas stunned the Iraqi Jews, who had barely recovered from the shock of the Farhud riots that struck them only seven years ago.

Despite the trauma, they found it hard to believe that their country was going to execute an innocent man, one of its leaders, just because he was Jewish.

Until then, most of the community members were not interested in Adas' stories, but his publicized trial and brutal sentence made him the symbol of the entire community.

It was clear to everyone that Addas' fate would also affect their own: from now on their lives would be divided into two separate periods - until Addas' trial, and after.

Some members of the community hoped until the last moment that greed for money is what drives the Iraqi state, and that paying a ransom would save Ades' life.

His wife Aliza offered to redeem his life for no less than 8 million Iraqi dinars, a huge sum in those days, equal to more than a billion shekels in 2022 terms. But as the days passed and the atmosphere of lynching that prevailed in the streets grew stronger, hope gave way to despair.

If a well-to-do and well-connected person like Adas can in a few weeks turn an all-powerful man into a prisoner sentenced to death, whom even the royal house cannot help, there is no other Jew in Iraq whose fate is not decided.

If all the power and money of Adas did not stand up to the waves of anti-Jewish sentiments that washed over Iraq, no Jew is protected anymore.

If Shafik Adas is led to the hanging - the fate of the entire Jewish community is clearly decided.

The Iraqi-born writer Yitzhak Bar-Moshe compared the feeling in the Jewish community to an earthquake.

"When word of the confirmation of the judgment by the Crown Prince was published," he wrote, "the Jews exchanged looks of wonder and wonder among themselves; they felt as if they had lost their way in the Sinai desert again."

The pictures of Adas being led to the court surrounded by policemen with machine guns were published daily in the newspapers.

"The appearance of the thin man, tanned, short, and surrounded by security men carrying machine guns - like him as the appearance of a martyr."

Many Jews did not understand how such absurd charges could be accepted by the court.

Ades was never known as a supporter of Zionism, and demonstrably avoided any political involvement.

He was not considered a representative of the Jewish community, and did not participate in the community's organizations and events.

At one point it was even claimed that he donated several thousand dinars for the benefit of the Iraqi army's struggle in Palestine.

Even in the synagogue no one ever saw him.

His son Sabah said that there were only a few Jewish signs in the house.

No connection to the Jewish community, no political involvement - and yet, a plot of aiding the enemy during war was dealt with precisely on Ades.

The breadwinners of the community in Baghdad thought about what to do.

They carried not only the 2,500 years of the community on their backs - the oldest Jewish community in the world outside the Land of Israel - but also its tremendous achievements in the last hundred years, since the Ottoman Empire granted equal rights to the Jews in the middle of the 19th century.

What have they not done since the independence of Iraq was declared in 1932. They served the country as much as they could, sought to integrate into it and become patriots, declared loyalty, contributed to the economic and cultural development of the young country - and here such a storm is stirring over them.

Some of the leaders of the community met secretly in Baghdad, including the member of parliament Salman Shina, one of six who represented the Jewish community in the House of Representatives, and the senator and philanthropist Ezra Menachem Daniel.

Both considered themselves distinct Iraqi patriots, and Daniel sat on the Baghdad District Council back in the Ottoman period.

Now everything that was preached to him in the past decades is about to collapse before their eyes.

"We are in real danger," said Shina at the meeting, "the enemies are chasing us and trying to trap us in the net of their plots."

In the memoirs he published a few years later, after fleeing to Israel, Shina described the threatening feeling in the community, and even wrote that the Iraqi Prime Minister, along with the Minister of Defense, "jointly planned the destruction of the Israelites in Iraq."

The offense: Zionism

The arrest of Shafik Adas was not an isolated incident, but part of an extensive anti-Jewish campaign in which the government and the public were complicit.

From the beginning of 1948, and even before Iraq declared war on Israel, the Jewish community became a focus of vulnerability and outrage.

In the demonstrations in the streets, the cry "Death to the Jews!" was heard.

The Iraqi secret police began to persecute Jews, and merchants were arrested to extort money from them.

Detectives roamed the streets where Jews lived, waiting to inform on them.

Jewish officials, junior and senior, were fired from government offices.

Every night more and more Jews were arrested, and the leaders of the community turned to everyone they could to intercede for them and save them from the fate that awaited them.

Senator Daniel, soon to be 80 years old, is seen at night wandering the streets of the city, all hunched over, going from one Muslim politician's house to another to ask for help.

According to one of the rumors, the Iraqi Minister of Defense prepared a list of famous Jews in order to prosecute them on various charges.

Jews were banned for the offense of having prayer kits, tzitzit or tefillin in their homes.

Jews found it very difficult to leave Iraq, and mail from Israel was confiscated.

Even a small greeting could cost a Jew from Baghdad three years in prison.

In July 1948, Zionism was officially declared a capital offense.

According to the law, two witnesses were enough to convict a Jew of Zionism.

Every two people who wanted to extort something from a Jew and did not comply, went to the police station, accused him of being a Zionist or a communist, and the Jew was immediately thrown into prison.

During the summer months, hundreds of Jews were put on trial.

Most of them were fined, and others were sentenced to long prison terms.


The Jewish community overseas mobilized in favor of Addas.

The world Jewish press, from Sydney to London, dealt with the trial on the front pages and presented Ades as a kind of Iraqi Dreyfus.

The heads of American Jewry, Abba Hillel Silver and Stephen Wise, sent urgent telegrams to Secretary of State George Marshall to use his influence and save Ades. "The US government will not want to remain indifferent in the face of such a shocking suppression of human rights," wrote Silver to marshal

Jewish organizations in London expressed the fear that the sentence on Addas is the harbinger of widespread pogroms and organized looting of Jewish property, in order to sway Arab public opinion following the military defeat against Israel.

But all this did not help: one evening, the news announcer of Radio Baghdad announced at the end of the usual eight o'clock news broadcast that "His Majesty, the Regent and Crown Prince of Iraq, confirmed the death sentence against the criminal Shafiq Adas."

This will be done to Zionists

Even before dawn, on September 23, 1948, an armored police vehicle entered the large square in front of Addas' house in the prestigious al-Ashar quarter, not far from the Shat al-Arab river.

It was "a spectacularly beautiful and quite large house... and a huge garden around it," described the town's son Asher Shahrabani, who used to pass by the house on his family trips in the 1940s.

It was a little after four in the morning, but the streets were already full of army guards and city residents, many of whom knew Adas and even owed him their livelihood.

Everyone came to the best show in town: the public hanging of Adas in the square in front of his house, to emphasize how much the Iraqi state can humiliate and trample on the dignity of the former gentleman.

There was a great commotion in the city: from all sides the pattering of bare feet was heard making their way to the square.

Buses full of people drove for hours to watch the spectacle.

At the head of one procession stood a boy with the corpse of a dog impaled on a wooden pole.

"This is what will be done to Adas Zionists," he exclaimed.

Jewish houses were stoned.

The man sentenced to death finally got out of the armored car, along with several guards.

The military court chose to carry out the sentence in front of his home: according to reports in the Iraqi press, Ades promised the Zionist enemy to establish a consulate for the newly born state of Israel in his home - a plot for which no support was ever presented.

The Israeli newspaper "Harot" said that his wife Aliza visited Adas' cell for the last time with her children a few hours earlier.

"His family cried," the newspaper described, "and he tried to control himself, kissed everyone and ordered them to respect and listen to their mother's voice, because he himself did not listen to his mother's voice, which told him: 'You have become rich enough, you must take your family and leave Iraq.'" He wrote his will and appointed his brother as the guardian of his children."

Before dawn the chief rabbi of Basra visited him and read him a chapter of Psalms.

Dressed in prisoner's clothes, Ades crossed the square around 4:30 in the morning towards a raised platform that had been prepared in advance and on which was the hanging device.

Beside him also walked the chief rabbi of Basra.

The plaza was filled with about 15,000 people, who had gathered ahead of time to witness the execution.

In all this time, Ades did not utter a single word.

His guards asked him if he had one last request, and he asked for a glass of water.

The mouthpiece of the nationalist "Istiklal" party knew how to tell about an enflamed crowd that read chants condemning Ades and condemning the Jews and the Zionists.

In "Harot" it is written that the crowd crushed Adas with stones.

The British consul, on the other hand, reported that the crowd watched what was happening quietly: "I was a little surprised by the good behavior of the crowd," he wrote to the ambassador in Baghdad.

It was a very tense day.

Radio Baghdad broadcast the execution live, and a carnival atmosphere was felt in the air.

Women sang natza songs and drummed drums.

British diplomats in Basra followed minute by minute what was happening in the square, fearing that the events would get out of control and that the mob would violently attack shops and offices throughout the city.

They demanded ahead of time from the police to protect the diplomats' residential quarter in the city.

The British navy brought a battleship closer to the city for any trouble that might come.

The Jewish community was on high alert against damage to Jewish institutions, and the Zionist underground ordered everyone with a weapon to prepare for the worst.

"The day set for the hanging was the blackest day in the history of Iraqi Jewry," Harot described.

"The Jews fasted, prayed and did not leave the door of their homes."

Ariela Neve, who was 5 years old at the time, remembered the turmoil that gripped her parents and the father's indecision whether to go to work as usual and risk being lynched, or stay at home and be accused of being a collaborator.

In the end, he went.

One of his best friends slapped him in the face, spat on his clothes and contemptuously called him a "dirty Jew".

Ades was put on stage and asked if there was anything last he wanted to say.

He replied in the negative.

He suddenly collapsed and collapsed on the stage, maybe because of the terror and maybe because of the hot wind that was blowing that morning.

Some soldiers picked him back up and put the rope around his neck.

His face, which should have been covered with a black sack, was not covered.

Something went wrong, and so the first time the small wooden floor opened under his feet, Ades was left alive.

Ades was sentenced not only to hanging, but to "hanging until the end of his life", since there was a fateful difference between the two.

If a person is sentenced only to hanging, and remains alive after one hanging attempt, consider him free and let him go;

However, if a person was sentenced to be hanged "until the end of his life", they would not forgive him and hang him again until he died.

And so the executioner was forced to carry out the sentence again, and only the second time did Ades breathe his life.

His body continued to sway for a long time, more than two hours, until the last of the spectators passed by it to prove that their hatred was indeed no longer among the living.

In the "Istiklal" bytown it was written that "his filthy soul came out of his unclean body", and that the tremor of death is now permeating the souls of all the Jews of the Middle East.

The British consul wrote: "There was a general atmosphere of satisfaction with the morning's events."

After the execution, the widow Aliza moved with three of their children from Basra to Baghdad, where she lived in poor conditions, as all their property was confiscated by the government.

Their other three children have already left to study in prestigious schools outside of Iraq.

The family's only source of income was a small allowance given to them by Avraham, Shafik's brother.

Aliza left Iraq only in 1961, first to Britain and then to Canada, where she died in 1989.

Sabah left Iraq a year earlier, studied in London and then was a businessman in the USA. Today he lives in Ramat Aviv. Uncle Avraham was murdered in his home in Baghdad by his servant in 1954, in a case whose true circumstances are still unknown to this day.

Nevertheless, Aliza was able to come full circle: ten years after that meeting in which she asked the curate Abd al-Ila to spare her husband's life, a military coup was carried out in Iraq.

In July 1958, when the coup took place that brought Abdel-Karim Qassem to power, Emir Abdel-Ila and King Faisal were murdered, and their bodies were mutilated by the mob.

An eyewitness later said that on the morning she learned of the emir's death, Aliza went to the market in Baghdad to buy bread.

The baker who knew her story told her: "Mrs. Adas, ten years later today you got to see your revenge: see how Abd al-Ila died, who didn't help your husband."

There is only one way left

Allegedly, there was no Jew who would benefit from Madas to integrate into Iraqi society.

He was a clear example of a whole class of Jews who succeeded in the liberal professions and in the branches of commerce and economics, and who linked their fate in the Iraqi state.

They were more Iraqis than Iraqis: Iraq was their home, and they were an inseparable part of it.

The show trial against Ades was a death blow to their uncompromising attempt to rise up in Iraqi society, and led to the insight that no matter what they do - Jews will always be considered foreigners in Iraq, and will always be exposed to damage to property and soul.

As in Europe, so also in Arab countries: Jews were thrown out and marked as not belonging.

Many of them cited the show trial as a factor that pushed them to immigrate to Israel.

The journalist and writer born in Baghdad, Yitzhak Bar-Moshe, wrote that the hanging of Shafik Ades was a turning point in the history of Iraqi Jewry.

"From now on there is only one way left," he wrote.

"No one will ask why and why Jews are talking about mass immigration. From that day there is no Jew left who thinks otherwise."

Salim Fatal added that the staged trial of Ades was the trial of the entire Jewish community: "Iraq clearly said to all Jews: you do not belong, you no longer have a place among us."

These Jews did not aspire to leave Iraq and did not seek to immigrate to another country.

One of the most prominent of them, the renowned writer Shalom Darvish, was even known for his anti-Zionist position.

In the 1930s he wrote: "We have been in Iraq for two thousand years, and we will continue to be there for another two thousand years."

But the Addas affair shook even him, and after he left Iraq in the grand exit, he wrote that the execution "shocked me severely and undermined my faith in the possibility of life in my homeland... The tower of justice collapsed in the trial of Addas." 

Dr. Adi Shortz researches the history of the Jews in the Arab countries. This article is the first chapter of a book in the Bible about the Jewish community in Iraq and the trial of Shafik Ades

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Source: israelhayom

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