By CAROLINE B. GLICK
Restoring the Iraqi Jewish archive to its Israeli owners would be tantamount to recognizing that the cause of the Arab world’s conflict with Israel is Arab anti-Semitism.
If you happen to be in Washington, DC, between now and January, you can see a piece of Jewish history that was never supposed to see the light of day. The National Archives is now exhibiting restored holy books and communal documents that belonged to the Jewish community of Iraq.
In 1940, the Iraqi Jewish community numbered 137,000 people. Jews made up more than a quarter of the population of Baghdad. A 2,500-year-old community, Iraq had for centuries been a major center of Jewish learning. The Babylonian Talmud was written there.
The yeshivot in Karbala and Baghdad were considered among the greatest in the world.
According to Dhiaa Kasim Kashi, a Shi’ite Muslim interviewed in the 2008 book Iraq’s Last Jews, by the 1930s, the Jews of Iraq had become leaders in every field. “All of Iraq’s famous musicians and composers were Jewish,” he said.
“Jews,” he continued, “were so central to commercial life in Iraq that business across the country used to shut down on Saturdays because it was the Jewish Shabbat. They were the most prominent members of every elite profession – bankers, doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers, etc.”
All of this began to end with the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. Due to rampant Islamic Jew hatred, Arab leaders were drawn to the Nazis. For their part, the Nazis were quick to capitalize on their popularity. The German ambassador to Iraq, Fritz Grobba, cultivated Nazi sympathizers in the Iraqi military and organized a pro-Nazi military coup in April 1941.
On June 1, 1941, as Jews celebrated the festival of Shavuot, the pro-Nazi government carried out a massive pogrom. Estimates place the number of Jews murdered at anywhere between 180 and 900. Nine hundred Jewish homes were destroyed. Hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses were looted and burned.
The pogrom, which came to be known as the Farhud, or “violent dispossession,” marked the beginning of the end of the Iraqi Jewish community.
Iraq was one of the five Arab states that invaded Israel on May 15, 1948.
The immediate victims of Iraq’s unyielding rejection of Jewish national liberation were the Jews of Iraq. In 1950, the exodus began. By the end of 1952, when the government shut the remaining Jews in, 124,000 Jews had fled Iraq, mainly to Israel. Forced to abandon their private and communal property, their possessions became hostage to the regime.
The few thousand Jews left in Iraq lived in utter terror. But even in their reduced state, they tried to protect the property of their phantom community.
In Baghdad, only one synagogue remained in operation. The Jews brought all the communal documents and holy books there for storage.
But as Harold Rhode, a recently retired US Defense Department cultural expert, reported in August at PJM Media, in 1985 Saddam Hussein sent his henchmen to the synagogue with several trucks. They stole the documentary history of the community in broad daylight.
Rhode explained that Saddam ordered the theft of the Jewish community’s property both to humiliate the Jews and Israel and to impress his fellow Arabs. As he put it, from a local cultural perspective, “Humiliation – i.e., shaming another’s personal reputation – is more important and more powerful than physical cruelty.
“By capturing the Jewish archives, Saddam was humiliating the Jewish people. He was showing how powerless the Jews were to stop him.”
From a pan-Arab perspective, Saddam demonstrated that he “was in the vanguard of protecting and regaining Arab honor, and was therefore more worthy of Arab/Muslim leadership than were the others.”
Rhode was deployed to Iraq shortly after the US-led overthrow of Saddam’s regime. By the time he arrived in May 2003, there were only a dozen Jews still living in Iraq.
Rhode was the first American official informed of the existence of the archive. It was stored in the cellar of the headquarters of Saddam’s mukhabarat, or secret police. When Rhode arrived at the building with a small detail of soldiers and New York Times reporter Judith Miller, the building had just been flooded by an unexploded shell that had punctured the water main.
When he realized the dimensions of the archive, now largely underwater, Rhode moved heaven and earth to save it. Due to Rhode’s action, and the support he received from Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi, vice president Dick Cheney and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the archive – which included everything from school records to 500- year-old copies of the Bible – was saved on Shavuot 2003 and sent to the US.
Once the archive was safely in the US, the State Department spent $3 million restoring the 2,700 books and tens of thousands of documents. In the meantime, back in Iraq, there are still hundreds of Torah scrolls languishing in a government cellar, inaccessible to the public, and in a horrible state of disrepair.
The fact that the archive was rescued from Saddam’s vault and is now being shown to the public is a miracle.
But if nothing changes, on Shavuot 2014, the miracle will come to a tragic and scandalous end. In an act of cultural aggression, the US government has promised to return the Jewish communal archive – stolen from the Iraqi Jewish community by the Iraqi government – to the Iraqi government by June 2014.
The State Department insists that the archive is Iraqi government property, since it was found in an Iraqi government building. But if that is true, then all the Jewish property stored in the Gestapo’s dungeons should have remained German government property after World War II. And even the comparison to the Nazis is too facile.
Jews could safely enter Germany, and even live there after the Nazis were defeated. Jews cannot safely enter, let alone live in, Iraq.
The difference between Jewish property stolen by the Nazis and Jewish property stolen by Arab regimes is political. It is politically acceptable to acknowledge that the Nazis were criminals. But the Arabs have never had to pay a price for their persecution and eventual destruction of their Jewish communities. No one wishes to recognize the fact that it is anti-Semitism that drives the Islamic quest to destroy the Jewish state.
The only lawful owners of the Iraqi Jewish archive that is being shown in Washington are the Iraqi Jews and their descendants, who are now overwhelmingly Israelis. The only place the archive should be sent is the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, the only museum in the world dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of the 2,500-year-old Jewish community of Iraq.
Yet for the American foreign policy establishment, besotted by a quasi-religious belief that the establishment of a Jew-free Palestinian state on Israeli land will cure everything from Islamic jihad to the common cold, recognizing this simple truth is a bridge too far. Restoring the Iraqi Jewish archive to its Israeli owners would be tantamount to recognizing that the cause of the Arab world’s conflict with Israel is Arab anti-Semitism.
A petition is now circulating demanding that the US government return the archive to its rightful owners in Israel.
At this point, it would be a great miracle if they would just agree to keep it safe in Washington until an American government comes along that decides to base its Middle East policies on the truth.
caroline@carolineglick.com
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Our-World-A-miracle-and-an-outrage-in-Washington-329351
dweller Said:
Don’t you mean Clarence Darrow? wasn’t Charles the inventor of “monopoly” board game?
dweller Said:
What a buildup, did you write this in front of a mirror? Once again you have out shined everyone, I can hear the sound of your self congratulatory applause.
dweller Said:
No surprise, it obviously wasn’t worth a response, nothing to do with your “discovery”. We come to our conclusions based on what he does do here not on what he may or may not be doing elsewhere or on what we do not know. Its not rocket science, a number of posters have the ability to see past the front. Apparently your oft touted antennae appears to be on the blink.
dweller Said:
Hitler was sincere and so was bin ladin. I will continue to expose libelers and blowhards. I am only malicious to those who deserve it.
bernard ross Said:
dweller Said:
OK, you are consistently predictable. For example I can predict, as I have many times before, that you are governed by your vanity and as long as posters keep feeding your massive ego in reply to your ludicrous comments you will return like a dog brings back a stick. It matters not the narrative or argument your ego is the dog and you are the tail. Yamit kept throwing you the stick and you keep bringing it back with a long thread of blowhard rubbish.
bernard ross Said:
dweller Said:
Polly want a cracker?
dweller Said:
HMMMM????
dweller Said:
dweller Said:
Bernard Ross said:
wait a minute….didn’t you say….?
dweller Said:
a contortionist engaged in gymnastics gets foot in mouth!!!!!! 🙂
@ bernard ross:
Well said.
What’s obvious is that he is sincere
— and that you are malicious.
@ bernard ross:
If my posts make it hard for you to stay awake, perhaps you should skip them.
The word you’re looking for is consistent.
— FIFY; you can go back to sleep now.
That was good for a gale of giggles.
— Everything about your post was ITSELF projection.
@ bernard ross:
@ yamit82:
I certainly do a lot of laughing at this website, but not perpetually.
— You must remember that your posts aren’t the only ones I read on this site. . . .
dweller Said:
Actually that was the soundest of Yamits arguments as it refers to a behavioral pattern which CA has exhibited here repeatedly, on a serial basis. Other posters have noticed and commented on this behavior. Did you not notice this, or are you willfully ignoring this behavior?
dweller Said:
Snore.You are as predictable as CA, you always resort to this tactic when your argument is obviously lame. Its a perfect example of “projection”, you are describing yourself when you are caught in the vise of your vanity.
yamit82 Said:
very well said (I will now be called your ugly step sister) Some things are obvious but not everyone wishes to acknowledge the obvious.
dweller Said:
Perhaps you should thank CA for giving you that “heads up”. What a thoughtful guy, so considerate that you be prepared. What a mentsh that CA! 😛
dweller Said:
You are perpetually laughing your ass off. Must be because you are a MORON.
You asked the same from me in the past and I will give you the same ans. Check the archives or just ask CA for it. I’m sure he will be pleased and most cooperative in supplying. BTW How old is the earth? Of course you don’t know but what do you believe? 6000 yrs? 15 billion? Anything in between?.. The Bible says 6000 are you calling the scriptures lies? Truth? Other?
dweller Here’s a News Flash: the Scopes trial has been over for a long time except in the minds of millions of Morons.
@ yamit82:
And you don’t?
Where words are concerned, I usually recognize the real when I encounter it, printed or spoken.
— When I’m not certain about it, I leave it an open question, till I am.
Never said anything of the sort. I don’t know HOW old the earth is
— and neither do you.
Don’t have to be clever to cover for yourself with a measure of suavity & common care.
— Unless that’s not what’s on your mind in the first place.
You just naturally assume everybody is as guileful and disingenuous as you.
“Because” I defend him?
— I have no power here.
What I do — or decline to do — has no bearing, one way or the other, on whether CA “continues” or doesn’t.
I will; give me the web address.
LMAO.
dweller Said:
Not so sloppy, you didn’t pick up on it but you believe the written word as well and that the world is only 6000 years old and a certain snake is the devil. In other-words you are capable of believing anything.
Never said he is stupid, or at least if I did I didn’t mean it literally. I believe he is exactly what he claims to be a christian cultist missionary who operates a blog for and about Palis Arabs in S. America specifically Chile. He has admitted as well besides seeking to steal Muslim souls he is not adverse to make some big shekels from these now Muslims but potential born agains by selling them real estate and other scams to deprive them of any wealth they may bring along. He believes if he can influence the Joooz to bribe them to leave for Chile he has a potential winfall in souls and cash. Arab Muslims remaining in the Holy Land for him is Bad news,.. he can’t convert them or profit off of them. That’s his motivation and real interest and he won’t deny it if you ask him strait out.
So that makes you the stupid one for ignoring what he has said and what others have caught on at least partially. It’s as you like to remind us frequently, all in the archives of Israpundit…
I don’t think he is stupid not just very clever and since self described geniuses like yourself never caught on even though we have shown time and again his game; he continues because those like you continue to ignore what is obvious and even defend him. Again that makes you the stupid one here not him.
Read his Blog I have. Ask him straight to his face if he denies anything I have said.
Your defense of him is like your defense of yeshu and his so called scripture.. Lot’s of maybes lots of What if’s..? I could have played that game as well but he has on occasion admitted to all I have characterized about him so I don’t need to.
No I don’t, I’m not a compulsive schizoid like you and besides I am right and you wrong so I have no need or compulsion in that regard. Either search the archives or ask him, in both methods you will see I am correct and you not.
@ yamit82:
If all he were doing was covering his ass, this would’ve consituted a lame, sloppy attempt.
Whatever you may think of his character, he isn’t stupid.
Somebody really seeking COVER would’ve taken a lot more care to use all the subtleties needed to deflect attention from the fact. He didn’t.
— Didn’t even try.
All his previous comments where — here? This site is focused on Israel & Jews.
— How do you know he doesn’t do this equivocation two-step on EVERY subject of discourse — not just those related to Jews & Israel?
Strictly an assumption. Might not have done any ‘searching’ at all.
You have archives. Maybe he does too.
There is nothing he OR YoursTruly could say that WOULDN’T do that.
You believe what you believe, Yamit, NOT because you were led to it by an open mind seeking Reality.
You believe what you believe because you NEED to believe it.
dweller Said:
So he said? 🙂
These 2 sentences cover his ass.
His warnings supply his pretended motivation but his purpose was as I have submitted!!!!
I read unlike you CA in context and giving due diligence to all his previous comments. For example the clip and his comments where not made in a vacuum but required a conscience search effort till he found what he believed or hoped would support his long standing effort to place Jews and Judaism in a relativist context. That being the Jews are no better than the Gentiles Arabs or christians… All of the examples and positions he has taken since arriving at this site are made to support if not substantiate that premise.
To cover his ass he usually balances his anti Jewish biases with claims that we are more just or right, But…. or I agree with you but….!!!!! Sometimes it isn’t in the context what he says but how he phrases what he says and sometimes what he leaves out and always his sources are never those whose objectivity is not only suspect but those with a clear anti Israel and Jewish bias if not agenda.
I submit that his contribution: “THE GREAT BOOK ROBBERY”
http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/the-great-book-robbery-video_05bc2bad4.html
Is but one example of hundreds and to use such lies and bile one needed to actively search it out on the net, it certainly is not part of the common discourse or accepted historical record except with those who have an agenda. To find such a clip one must first be motivated to do so with a specific search requirement.
His comment and yours in his defense only solidify my long contentions and opinions on both of you.
2 peas not only from the same pod but in the same cesspool.
@ yamit82:
Almost everything in your post was perfectly sound.
Everything, in fact, except this:
He TOLD you why he mentioned the so-called Great Book Robbery:
— “So you would be prepared.”
I daresay he is MORE mindful of Romans 11:29 than you — or he wouldn’t bother posting here at all, what with the relentless mudslinging he has to endure on this site.
“We”? — some Jews ARE more ethical & more honest. Not you, however.
And PresentCompany — as observed in action — is only too happy to KEEP it that low.
CuriousAmerican Said:
THE GREAT BOOK ROBBERY
A documentary made by Al Jezzerah and featuring such credible academic stalwarts as Professor Ilan Pappe should never be taken at face value or as factual. All physical articles removed from Abandoned ARAB PROPERTY by the military and civilian authorities were held in trust by the State.
Any of the legal owners could have made claim to the property any time during the first 50 years of Israel’s existence.
In 1948 most of the land and almost all of the property owned by wealthy Arabs were owned by Arabs not living in Palestine but as absentee Landlords. I doubt many of those wealthy landlords kept very valuable stashes where they hardly lived. The Arab population in Palestine in 1948 was 95% illiterate.
Here you are comparing hearsay evidence from non credible sources about assets of private Arabs that have been confiscated by the state after being abandoned by enemies in time of war that they started and Jewish community artifacts going back hundreds and thousands of years. There are NO Jews in Iraq to claim their inheritance but there are Arabs in Israel to make a claim and have never done so. Every article confiscated by the state of Israel was indexed and cataloged and therefor traceable, hardly stolen.
Keep digging for anything to equalize Arab and christian perfidy against Jews with either false or high suspect claims hoping to prove the Jews are no better. (Romans 11:28-29) 😛
We are better, more ethical and more honest but then you gentiles have set such a low bar….
I agree that the Jews should get the artifacts; but the Arabs will counter with this:
THE GREAT BOOK ROBBERY
http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/the-great-book-robbery-video_05bc2bad4.html
Why did I mention that?: So you would be prepared, because the other side will bring their complaints too. They will hammer you with this. So if you want the Iraqi stuff back, be prepared for their complaint.
In any event, the artifacts should be restored to Iraqi Jews.
Obama can’t help but stick it to the Jews anyway he can.