It's as if Jewish bibles were to be sent back to the Nazi SS. Daniel Greenfield sets out compelling arguments in Front Page magazine why the Jewish archive should not go back to Iraq:
Despite that the Obama administration plans to send the Jewish Archive consisting of religious artifacts, bibles, marriage contracts, community records and private notebooks seized by the Iraqi Secret Police from the Jewish community back to Iraq.
The material is not the property of the Iraqi government, either Saddam’s regime which stole it, or its Shiite successor which claims to want it, but not the Jews who owned it. It’s the property of Iraqi Jewish refugees and their reconstituted communities in America, Israel and anywhere else.
The personal material, like marriage contracts and school books, should go to the families that owned them and to their descendants. The religious material, which a Muslim country that purged its Jewish and Christian communities has no use for, should go Iraqi Jewish religious communities wherever they are now.
Jewish bibles seized from the custody of the Nazi SS would not be sent to the German government. There is no reason to send Jewish bibles into the custody of the Iraqi government.
To its credit, the State Department in the past, which paid for the salvage and restoration of the records, did ask Iraq nicely. And the Iraqis have always insisted on seizing the Jewish Archive.
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The position of the US government is incredible. You'd think that no case law had been well established to return movables and bank accounts stolen by the Nazis from the Jews.
ReplyDeleteGood point by Anon. Outrageous.
ReplyDeleteThe author, Dan Greenfield, is not aware that Jewish property was being taken by the Iraqi govt starting with the royal regime back in the 1940s. It didn't start with Saddam.