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Essay
Editorial
Iraqi Jewry
It's now dispersed, but its legacy must be preserved.
S
ome of the Iraqi Jewish treasures discovered
in the cellar of the Baghdad secret-police
headquarters following Saddam Hussein's
overthrow in 2003 are on display at the U.S. National
Archives in Washington. The entire treasure trove
ultimately belongs to the expatriate Iraqi Jewish com-
munities — not the Iraqi government.
Make no mistake about that.
The U.S. State Department argument that the Iraqi
Jewish Archive of religious artifacts and community
documents is Iraqi government property because it
was found in an Iraqi government building is mis-
guided. Iraqi leaders enamored first by the Nazis and
then by Jew-hating Arabs literally stole the precious
items as Iraq's once-thriving Jewish community was
forced to unravel. Germany certainly didn't lay claim
to Jewish property found in Gestapo dun-
geons following World War II.
The Iraqi Jewish Archive, made up
of at least 2,700 books and thousands
of documents, includes ancient Torah
scrolls, a 400-year-old Hebrew Bible and a
200-year-old Talmud.
Department should seek to reverse a 2003 agreement
between the National Archives and the Coalition
Provisional Authority, which oversaw Iraq after the
war. That agreement allowed transfer of the Iraqi
Jewish Archive to the U.S. for preservation and exhibi-
tion provided the contents afterward were sent back to
Iraq — despite Iraqi leadership long ago looting them
and persecuting their rightful owners.
Standing By Principle
We applaud U.S. Sen. Charles
Schumer's call for the State
Department to enlist the support
of American Jewry and the now-
dispersed Iraqi Jews to assure the
historical find remains accessible
Sen. Schumer
to world Jewry rather
than revert to virtually
Jew-free Iraq on Shavuot 2014. Iraqi Jews
have resettled largely in Israel, but also have
resettlement roots in American Sephardi
communities, including the one in Detroit.
At the National Archives exhibit opening
on Nov. 7, Anthony Godfrey, Iraq affairs
Setting The Stage
director for the U.S. State Department,
In 1940, Iraq — a bustling center of
reaffirmed that the 2003 agreement
Robert Sklar
Jewish life and learning and where the
between the National Archives and the
Contri buting
Babylonian Talmud was written — boast-
Coalition Provisional Authority bound the
Edi for
ed 137,000 Jews. They had become lead-
return of the Iraqi Jewish Archive to Iraq.
ers in every profession in the land bibli-
"I have to underscore that without the
cally known as Babylon, Jerusalem Post columnist
commitment and without the preservation of these
Caroline Glick relates in an Oct. 21 post.
documents:' he said, "the materials now known as the
With the Nazis' rise in the 1930s, the good life for
Iraqi Jewish Archive simply would not exist:'
Iraqi Jews dissolved. There was no turning back from
True.
a devastating Shavuot pogrom in 1941.
But hundreds of Torah scrolls as well as non-Jewish
Successive Iraqi regimes seized Jewish property,
Iraqi national archival material still languish in an
whether private or communal, as Iraqi Jews fled on
Iraqi archives basement in deplorable condition. This
their own or were driven into exile. Their sacred
underlines Baghdad's laxness toward historical pres-
ritual objects began accumulating at the lone remain-
ervation while trying to rebuild the country and stave
ing Baghdad synagogue. By 1952, more than 125,000
off Al Qaida.
Jews had left Iraq with little more than clothing. Just
a few thousand remained. By 1985, Saddam Hussein
Moving Forward
had raided the synagogue and moved the stored his-
Godfrey's contention the Iraqi Jewish Archive's return
torical items to the secret-police headquarters as a
would enable more Iraqis to "know the important
psychological means to humiliate the Jewish people
role of Iraqi Jews in Iraq's history" rings hollow. Iraqis
and help restore Arab honor lost in repeated military
are too busy building new lives post-war to muster an
defeats against Israel.
interest in their biblical land's distant Jewish past.
The Zionist Organization of America put it well: "It
Process Of Restoration
would be a crime and a travesty if this priceless col-
The George W. Bush administration worked at
lection, so providentially found and preserved from
the request of Israel government minister Natan
destruction, were now to vanish into the hands of an
Sharansky and with Iraqi opposi-
Iraqi government with no right or title to it"
tion leader Ahmed Chalabi, U.S.
The most compelling new home for the collection
Defense Department Islamic expert
would be Israel's Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center
Harold Rhode and the Weapons of
outside Tel Aviv. It's the only museum devoted to pre-
Mass Destruction search team to
serving the cultural heritage of Iraq's 2,500-year-old
save those remnants of Iraqi Jewish
Jewish history.
history on Shavuot 2003 and ship
This Chanukah, which begins at sundown Nov. 27
them to the U.S.
and commemorates the Jewish struggle for religious
The National Archives graciously
freedom against the Syrian-Greeks, offers the perfect
Harold Rhode
restored the water-soaked items at a backdrop to rally support for keeping the Iraqi Jewish
cost of $3 million.
Archive in the reach of Jews who cherish them, not in
Once the National Archives exhibit of 24 items from
the purview of a government that subjected them to
near-ruin.
the Iraqi Jewish Archive ends Jan. 5, the U.S. State
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58
November 28 • 2013
jpi
Palestinian Rant Is
Fiction And Inciting
0
nce more, the Palestinians have floated a fantasy
against the Jewish people. Once more, they have
saddled the Jews with the death of an iconic
Palestinian leader.
The latest display of deathbed fraud-
ulence, claiming the Jews poisoned
and murdered Palestinian Authority
President Yasser Arafat, is as outra-
geous as the original, that the Jews
poisoned and murdered Islam's Prophet
Muhammad.
Mahmoud
Indoctrinated Palestinians now have
Al-Habbash
another reason to discredit the Jews.
Of course, it's with the Palestinians
that Israel is supposed to negotiate a peace agreement
to end an interminable conflict fueled by Arab hatred
toward Jews.
In a sermon broadcast Nov. 8 on official P.A. TV, Minister
of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash declared: "Be
satisfied, oh mighty one, oh Martyr Arafat, that you were
killed the same [as] Allah's Messenger was killed."
Israel-based Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) exposed
that pipe dream on Nov.12. The next morning, a
Palestinian teenager living illegally in Israel stabbed to
death an 18-year-old Israeli soldier on a bus in Afula.
The terrorist act apparently triggered a reprehensible
response by Israeli settlers, who, in a "price tag" attack,
set on fire a Palestinian house near Ramallah, causing
five residents to suffer smoke inhalation.
Israelis, culturally moral, should know better than to
project revenge on an arbitrary Palestinian home. When
their mosques, schools, news media and music videos are
tainted with anti-Semitic fervor, however, it's no wonder
Palestinians view the Jews as the source of all evildoing.
The Hadith, the sayings and practices attributed to
Muhammad, posits that a Jew in Khaibar, a town Islamic
tradition considers Jewish, served Muhammad poisoned
meat. On his deathbed in Medina in 632, the prophet told
his wife, Aisha, his pain had been caused by the compro-
mised meal served three years earlier.
Al-Habbash preached that Arafat died in 2004 in France
in a similar way, as a shahid, a martyr. "We have no doubt,
and I don't think there is a single one among us who has
the slightest doubt, that Arafat was killed," Al-Habbash
preached. "Deep inside, we all know who killed him."
PMW quoted a Reuters report underscoring that a Swiss
team and a Russian team both tested Arafat's remains;
neither concluded categorically that the Palestine
Liberation Organization founder died at age 75 as a result
of polonium poisoning, as the Palestinian Authority had
championed to turn international opinion against Israel.
PMW has documented a long history of the P.A. accus-
ing Israel of killing Arafat to further marginalize Zionism
in the eyes of the Arab world.
Although it's hard to imagine how, the Palestinians
might yet win statehood given the black hole of political
intrigue. But Palestinian sovereignty wouldn't likely bring
a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians
– a sobering thought this Chanukah as the latest U.S.-
brokered peace talks languish.
The Palestinian people are so ingrained to despise the
Jews that it will take generations to create a Palestinian
climate conducive to truly accepting Israel as a Jewish
state with a right to safe, secure borders.
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