What would you say if you found out the U.S. government had decided to return archives looted from persecuted Jews in Iraq, and later captured by U.S. soldiers, not to Jews, but back to the new Iraqi government aligned with Iran?
This actually happened.
But first a little more background so you can fully appreciate the cruel and astonishing absurdity of this decision – not by Barack Obama’s State Department, but by Donald Trump’s.
In 2003, U.S. military forces rescued the historical and religious documents from a flooded basement in the Iraqi secret services headquarters. The tens of thousands of documents include everything from sacred texts from as early as the 16th century to Jewish school records, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.
And now, the U.S. State Department says it intends to abide by an agreement it reached in 2014 with the Iraqi government to return the archives to Iraq next year.
Please take a minute to appreciate ironic horror of this decision. These documents were looted from the Iraqi Jewish community by Iraqi regimes notorious for their hatred and persecution of Jews. It would be akin to discovering Jewish historical treasures looted by the Nazi Germans and returning them not to the Jews who survived the Holocaust but to those who stole them.
On top of that, the documents have been restored by the National Archives in Washington at U.S. taxpayer expense.
The Iraqi Jewish communities began with the Babylonian exile 2,600 years ago. Until the 20th century, it represented one of the most accomplished in the world – with important yeshivas and the Babylonian Talmud among the historical and cultural achievements.
In 1948, Jews were the largest minority in Baghdad. Jews comprised a third of the population of Basra.
But these communities were threatened when pro-Nazi generals seized control of the government in 1940. A weeklong pogrom was instituted in which 900 Jews were murdered. Jewish homes and businesses were burned.
Things got worse in the 1960s when the Baathists seized power. The Jewish community was systematically destroyed.
Between 1948 and 1951, 130,000 Iraqi Jews were forced to leave the country with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Most of them made their way to Israel.
When U.S. forces overthrew the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, only a dozen or so remained in the country. Today, with Iran calling the shots in Iraq, there are none.
Caroline Glick wrote eloquently about this issue in the Jerusalem Post: “The Iraqi Jewish archive was not created by the Iraqi government. It is comprised of property looted from persecuted and fleeing Jews. In light of this, it ought to be clear to the State Department that the Iraqi government’s claim to ownership is no stronger than the German government’s claim to ownership of looted Jewish property seized by the Nazis would be.”
No, the property looted from the Jews belongs to the Jewish people. That precedent has been set in the past.
But the U.S. State Departments has turned a tin ear to the requests of Jews in Israel for this material.
When asked how the U.S. could guarantee that the archive would be properly cared for in Iraq, all State Department spokesman Pablo Rodriguez said was, “When the IJA [Iraqi Jewish archive] is returned, the State Department will urge the Iraqi government to take the proper steps necessary to preserve the archive, and make it available to members of the public to enjoy.”
There are no Jews left in Iraq.
The Iraqis left this material in the bottom of a flooded basement in the secret services headquarters.
It easy to understand how decisions like this were made in 2014 under the watch of Barack Obama.
It is not so easy to understand why decisions like this are not being reversed under the watch of Donald Trump.
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