oints of view >> Send letters to: letters@thejewishnews.com 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 ❑ 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. ❑