On January 4, 1951, a loud explosion devastated the Masouda Shem-Tov synagogue in the heart of Baghdad. “The Synagogue was bombed from a nearby house (…) I managed to escape with the rest of the crowd – some 600-700 people – who fled in panic” Ezra Naim, a Jewish man who had emigrated from Iraq, told a Davar journalist a couple of weeks later. The rumor circulating among Baghdad Jews at the time was that emissaries of Israel had thrown the grenade into the synagogue.
