Outrage: US to return Iraqi Jewish artifacts to Iraq and not to Jews
The National Archives in Washington is opening an exhibit of Iraqi Jewish artifacts on October 11. The artifacts were rescued from the headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Saddam Hussein's intelligence service, in 2003, during the Second Gulf War. Incredibly, the United States of Obama has agreed to
return the artifacts to Iraq, rather than to their lawful owners, by June 2014.
After American forces entered Baghdad in May 2003, the head of the
Jewish and Israel section of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat (intelligence
agency) came to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), offering information
about Saddam’s intelligence operations against Israel and Jews. He did
this in order to curry favor. Former Iraqi officials frequently came to
opposition groups to tell their stories, in return for which they would
get “safe passage” documents stating that since they were cooperating
with post-Saddam authorities, they should not be harmed.
The tipster visited the INC to talk about the rumored Jewish archives
hidden in the basement of the Mukhabarat headquarters. After his visit,
INC chairman Ahmed Chalabi called Judy Miller, the former New York Times
reporter then embedded with a mobile unit looking for WMD, and me. I
was an Arabic/Hebrew speaking policy analyst with the Office of Net
Assessments in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, then assigned to
the Coalition Provisional Authority, at the time.
We rushed over to talk with Chalabi, who told us that a former
Mukhabarat employee reported that a huge treasure trove of Iraqi Jewish
and Israeli material was amassed in the Mukhabarat building, and that he
was prepared to show us where it was located. He also said there was an
ancient copy of the Talmud written on leather or parchment.
Miller and I then went off to the Mukhabarat building with the former Saddam officer and an INC contingent.
The tipster indicated from outside the building where in the basement
the Jewish and Israel sections were located. Then — he promptly
disappeared. Despite the bombed-out structure’s instability, looters
were overrunning the building. Danger was everywhere.
We were, in fact, standing beside a large metal device which had
lodged itself halfway into the ground. We later learned that this live,
undetonated bomb had penetrated through three or four stories of the
building and destroyed the building’s water system. It had pierced the
wall almost at ground level. We saw, through the hole it made, that the
Jewish and Israel sections were flooded.
We went around to the building’s main entrance and descended only
halfway down a basement staircase, blocked by water which had risen
about halfway up. Several WMD team members waded into the water and
entered the Israel section. They found pictures of the Dome of the Rock,
a Soviet map of Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, and a sign in Arabic
which read: “Who will be the one to send the 40th missile to Israel?”
(This referred to the fact that during the Kuwait war, Iraq had sent 39
missiles toward Israel.)
The WMD team then proceeded down the hall, found the Jewish section, and carried out religious books and a tiq (the wooden/metal box which holds Torahs). These items proved to be only a tiny example of what we were to find later.
Many Iraqis with whom we spoke about the discovery told us to get the
material out of the country as soon as possible before it became public
knowledge. That way, Iraqi Jewry could have its patrimony, and no Iraqi
politician could be held responsible for having let the Jews take the
material.
...
The materials were then flown to Texas where they were
vacuum-freeze-dried, and in Fall 2003 they were brought to the National
Archives. In 2011, the State Department kicked in over $3 million for
stabilizing, digitizing, and packing the material. Again, none of that
would have been possible without the interventions of the people I have
referenced.
Among the items we found in the intelligence headquarters basement: a
400-year-old Hebrew Bible; a 200-year-old Talmud from Vienna; a copy of
the book of Numbers in Hebrew published in Jerusalem in 1972; a Megillat Esther of uncertain date; a Haggadah published in Baghdad and edited by the chief rabbi of Baghdad; the Writings of Ketuvim containing books like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Lamentations, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles published in Venice in 1568; a copy of Pirkei Avot, or Ethics of the Fathers, published in Livorno, Italy in 1928 with commentary written with Hebrew letters but in Baghdadi-Judeo Arabic; a luach
(a calendar with lists of duties and prayers for each holy day printed
in Baghdad in 1972); a printed collection of sermons by a rabbi made in
Germany in 1692; thousands of books printed in Vienna, Livorno,
Jerusalem, Izmir, and Vilna; miscellaneous communal records from
1920-1953; lists of male Jewish residents, school records, financial
records, applications for university admissions.
All of this illustrated the history of Baghdadi Jewish community life, a community which is no more.
After Israel became a state in 1948, martial law was declared in Iraq
and many Jews left in the mass exodus in 1950-51. Almost all of those
who remained behind left by the 1970s. They were not allowed to take
much with them.
In 1950-51, they were allowed one suitcase with clothing — sometimes
not even their personal documents — and nothing more. They were forced
to leave everything else behind, including their communal property. For
many years, Jews were not permitted to leave Iraq at all and were
persecuted. With time, the few Jews who remained in Baghdad transferred
what communal holy books and religious articles they had to the one
remaining synagogue which functioned. This was in Batawin, a section of
Baghdad which in the late 1940s was the neighborhood to which upwardly
mobile Jews moved. The remaining Jews stored this property in the
synagogue’s balcony, where the women sat during prayer.
The Jews did not freely relinquish this material. They did it under duress, having no other option.
In 1984, Saddam sent henchmen with trucks to that synagogue. Those
scrolls, records, and books were carted off to a place unknown. Local
Jews who were at the synagogue at that time witnessed this thievery, and
described to me personally how the material was carted off against
their will.
Why did Saddam even care about this material, and why did he keep it
in his intelligence headquarters? Did he think he might gain some
insights into the Jewish mind by doing so? Did he think doing so would
help him defeat the Israelis?
From a Middle Eastern cultural perspective, capturing the archive
makes perfect sense. Humiliation — i.e., shaming another’s personal
reputation — is more important and more powerful than physical
cruelty. From this cultural perspective, by capturing the Jewish
archives, Saddam was humiliating the Jewish people. He was showing how
powerless the Jews were to stop him. By keeping that archive and the
Israel section in the basement of his intelligence headquarters, Saddam
further humiliated the Jews and Israel. And by doing so, Saddam – again,
in Middle Eastern eyes — was also regaining a portion of the honor the
Arabs lost through their constant military defeats at the hands of the
(Jewish) Israelis.
...
It would be as if Germany demanded material looted from German Jewish
communities under the Nazis in German government hands. But even in
this case, the Germans today admit their Nazi crimes against the Jews,
and they have done much to compensate the Jews for German actions.
Moreover, can Iraq even care for this archive?
Iraq now — today — has a basement room of its archives filled with
Torahs. The conditions in which they are kept are deplorable. Moreover,
no one is allowed access to this material. To be sure, the Iraqis have
great difficulty taking care of their own historical and
archival material, so this does not mean that the current Iraqi
government discriminates particularly against the Jewish material in its
possession. The point is they have shown no capability for preserving
such material.
The most logical final resting place for the material is the
Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center outside of Tel Aviv. It is the only
museum in the world dedicated to the history of Iraqi Jewry.
(Sign the petition to stop the transfer here.)
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Iraqi Jews, Jewish, Jewish property rights, Jewish refugees, Nazis, Saddam Hussein, Torah scroll
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Monday, October 10.
1) Is Iraq the model?
Jackson Diehl asks Is Iraq the model for the Mideast after all? It turns out that the end of autocracy in the Arab Middle East, unlike in Central Europe or Asia, will not happen peacefully. People power isn’t working. Dictators such as Assad, Moammar Gaddafi and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, backed by mountains of weapons and armies bound to them by tribe or sect, prefer to fight to the death rather than quietly yield. Despite seeing Hosni Mubarak in his courtroom cage — or maybe because of it — they don’t shrink from crimes against humanity. The carnage might be seen as regrettable but acceptable if the bad guys were losing. But with the notable exception of Gaddafi, they are not. Assad has been written off by most of the West’s intelligence services, but his tanks and artillery are proving more than a match for the ragtag groups of army defectors in towns such as Homs and Rastan. Saleh was nearly killed by a bomb, but on his return after three months in a Saudi hospital, forces commanded by his son still held the presidential palace in Sanaa.
Diehl, a few paragraphs later argues that, imperfect as it is, the current state of Iraq must be the envy of revolutionaries in Syria and Yemen. Diehl doesn't discuss with the problem of Iraq seemingly moving into the orbit of Iran.
2) Is there any place for Jews and Christians in the new Middle East? Barry Rubin observed yesterday: Christians are fleeing the Middle East and Western Christians are indifferent. More than half of Iraqi Christians, threatened with death and terrorism are out of that country, though many are in neighboring Syria. Virtually all Christians have fled the Islamist Gaza Strip and Syrian Christians generally (though not all) support the regime there, fearing an Islamist takeover. But Egypt is home to millions of Christians that dwarf these numbers. In fact, the number of Christians in Egypt exceeds the populations of Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia. Copts have emigrated in the past, but they have been so rooted in Egypt as to tend to remain there. Now the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organizations reports that 95,000 Christians have emigrated since March 2011. If Egypt continues to look as if it is going down an Islamist road, or at least if the government and military appear ready to tolerate such assaults, one can easily imagine one million or so Copts heading for the exits in the next few years. How would Europe like to receive these people who—in contrast to many other immigrants—would be legitimate asylum seekers with a genuine fear for their lives?
Today's news: Church Protests in Cairo Turn Deadly A demonstration by Christians angry about a recent attack on a church touched off a night of violent protests here against the military council now ruling Egypt, leaving 24 people dead and more than 200 wounded in the worst spasm of violence since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February.
Note how carefully the article blames the military council for the violence. Muslims are generally portrayed as protecting the Christians. Here's how the reporter framed the conflict: Nada el-Shazly, 27, who was wearing a surgical mask to deflect the tear gas, said she came out because she heard state television urge “honest Egyptians” to turn out to protect the soldiers from Christian protesters, even though she knew some of her fellow Muslims had marched with the Christians to protest the military’s continued hold on power. “Muslims get what is happening,” she said. The military, she said, was “trying to start a civil war.”
Later on there's an acknowledgement: The protest took place against a backdrop of escalating tensions between Muslims and Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the population. Christians had joined the pro-democracy protests in large numbers, hoping for the protections of a pluralistic, democratic state, but a surge in power of Islamists has raised fears of how much tolerance majority rule will allow.
But then it's hedged with: But the most common refrain of the protests on Sunday was, “The people want to bring down the field marshal,” adapting the signature chant of the revolution to call for the resignation of the military’s top officer, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. “Muslims and Christians are one hand,” some chanted.
One question is whether the reporter was on the scene as the protests happened or simply interviewing witnesses after the fact, when he can be a lot more selective about what aspects of the story to emphasize. Naharnet has a rather different approach. Several cars were on fire in a large street next to the hospital, and Coptic protesters were tapping the cars to make petrol bombs. "God is with us, Christ is with us. They want that it (the state) be Islamic, but we will not leave," said one of the demonstrators. The Muslim protesters, for their part, chanted: "Islamic, Islamic", of their view for the Egyptian state.
The Naharnet does blame security forces for the killing of protesters, but doesn't mix in the "Muslim concern for their Christian neighbors" theme so prominently included in the New York Times report. More from Elder of Ziyon and Israel Matzav. Knowing that the threat of Islamization may accompany the downfall of a tyrant might be one reason why the New York Times reports Fearing Change, Many Christians in Syria Back Assad. Abu Elias sat beneath the towering stairs leading from the Convent of Our Lady of Saydnaya, a church high up in the mountains outside Damascus, where Christians have worshiped for 1,400 years. “We are all scared of what will come next,” he said, turning to a man seated beside him, Robert, an Iraqi refugee who escaped the sectarian strife in his homeland.
“He fled Iraq and came here,” said Abu Elias, looking at his friend, who arrived just a year earlier. “Soon, we might find ourselves doing the same.”
In fact a few years ago Keith Roderick observed: While the Muslim population has expanded rapidly in Europe and the U.S., Christians in the Middle East have experienced a negative population-growth rate. The only country noting a positive growth rate for Christians is Israel.
(Don't worry there are still plenty of people who blame Israel for the declining Christian population in areas ruled by the PA.) Elder of Ziyon notes that revelations in Wikileaks endanger few remaining Jews in Iraq. David Gerbi's experience in Libya may not be an isolated incident. Is one of the likely outcomes of the so called "Arab spring" even less tolerance for non-believers?
Labels: Arab spring, Christians, David Gerbi, Iraqi Jews, Jews, Libyan Jewry, Middle East Media Sampler, Soccer Dad
Wikileaks endangers Jewish community of Iraq
A
Wikileaks cable (easier to read
here) with details of the last seven remaining Jews in Baghdad has
endangered the lives of those seven Jews.
One of the cables, some of 251,287 made public by the WikiLeaks website, recounts the deteriorating conditions one member of the community said Jews faced after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, primarily because of the rise of al Qaida in Iraq.
Another was poignant in its assessment of the future:
"The Jews of Iraq do not appear likely to share in Iraq's future as a nation," the writer said. "They have no children, and cannot contribute culturally or even materially while unable to participate freely in Iraq's public life. They remain in Iraq, but not of it, hiding at the center of a country whose majority may, one day, welcome them again, but does not accept them at present."
The cable provides biographical sketches of each of nine Jews that the cable writer said then made up the entire complement of the Baghdad Jewish community. They ranged in age at the time from 40 to 82. One of them was Levi, the recent emigre to Israel. Another has since died, bringing the total number of Jews in Baghdad to seven.
Jews first arrived in the land now called Iraq in 721 B.C., exiled here after the Assyrian conquest of the Judean Kingdom. In 586 B.C., Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem and destroyed King Solomon's temple, then led tens of thousands of Jews into captivity, where they built the hanging gardens of Babylon.
The population survived repeated conquests of Iraq, by Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Arabs, the Shiite Muslims and the Turks, but over the centuries it flourished, producing the Babylonian Talmud, the Rabbinic work of law that supplements and interprets the Old Testament, the Five Books of Moses.
By the early 20th century, Iraqi Jews constituted one of the wealthiest communities in the country, serving as bankers, importers, retailers and academics. But Iraqi nationalists fighting British rule seized on Nazi ideology in the 1930s, giving rise to rabid anti-Judaic views.
The beginning of the end of a community then numbering some 130,000, was the Nazi-inspired pogrom in 1941, known as the Farhud, or violent dispossession, in which hundreds of Jews died at the hands of armed Iraqi Muslims. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948, followed by the declaration of war by Arab states including Iraq, brought more severe repression here.
The Iraqi government first made it a capital crime to be a Zionist, then reversed policy in 1950, after which more than 100,000 Jews emigrated to Israel. There was more repression in the 1950s and 1960s, and most of the remaining Jewish population emigrated to Israel in the early 1970s.
What will become of Iraq's handful of remaining Jews seems a foregone conclusion.
One is a prominent surgeon, but most of the others rarely leave their dwellings, and many conceal their Jewish identity, according to the cables, one of which discusses the conversion to Islam of some members of the community.
"A 50-year old woman ... reportedly converted to Islam after the fall of Saddam, as did a family of five," the cable said. It quoted another member of the Jewish community as saying that "the members of this family will no longer speak to Jews in Baghdad."
With Levi's departure, the community lost its only public voice.
Reached in Israel Friday, Levi said the Jews who remain here are "afraid" and "don't like to talk to anyone."
What a pitiful way to live.
Labels: Baghdad, Iraqi Jews, Wikileaks
