Posted on 10/06/2017 7:58:43 AM PDT by SJackson
NEW YORK (JTA) — Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer exhorted the State Department not to send back to Iraq a trove of artifacts that belonged to its now exiled Jewish community.
In a letter shared with JTA, the New York Democrat on Tuesday urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to work with Jewish groups and the Iraqi Jewish community in the United States and abroad to find a place for the Iraqi Jewish Archive.
“These items belong to the people who were forced to leave them behind when the Iraqi government chose to exile them from their homes. Since the exile of Jews from Iraq virtually no Jewish life remains in the country – this treasured collection belongs to the Jewish community and should be made available to them,” the Jewish lawmaker said in the letter.
Last month, the State Department told JTA that the archive will be returned to Iraq in September 2018, according to an agreement reached with the Iraqi government.
“Maintaining the archive outside of Iraq is possible,” State Department spokesman Pablo Rodriguez told JTA, “but would require a new agreement between the Government of Iraq and a temporary host institution or government.”
Discovered in the flooded basement of the Iraqi secret service headquarters by U.S. troops in 2003, the items, many of which were looted, include religious materials, books, personal documents and photographs. The U.S. government spent over $3 million to restore and digitalize the archive — which include a Hebrew Bible with commentaries from 1568, a Babylonian Talmud from 1793 and an 1815 version of the Jewish musical text Zohar — and it has been exhibited around the country. Iraqi jewish Archive
This Passover Haggadah from 1902, one of very few Hebrew manuscripts recovered from Saddam Hussein’s intelligence headquarters, was hand-lettered and decorated by an Iraqi youth. (National Archives)
Schumer is among a group of U.S. lawmakers who have joined Jewish groups in lobbying to keep the archive in a location accessible to Iraqi Jews and their descendants, who today live outside Iraq after being driven out amid intense persecution. Iraq and proponents of returning the archive say it can serve as an educational tool for Iraqis about the history of Jews there and that it is part of the country’s patrimony.
“It’s disheartening that parchments of a Torah scroll and prayer books were discovered in such poor condition inside a flooded Baghdad Intelligence Center. After the United States preserved this ancient collection, it makes no sense to return the items to the Iraqi government, where they will no longer be accessible to the Jewish community,” Schumer said Tuesday in a statement released along with the letter.
Earlier this month, Rodriguez said the United States “will urge the Iraqi government to take the proper steps necessary to preserve the archive, and to make it available to members of the public to enjoy.”
Major Jewish groups have remained largely silent on the issue following the announcement of the 2018 return date. The Zionist Organization of America released a statement last month urging the State Department not to send back the archive, and Israeli lawmaker Anat Berko told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pressure the U.S. to not send back the artifacts.
The archive is set to be exhibited at the Jewish Museum of Maryland from Oct. 15 to Jan. 15.
They belong in Iraq....where they originated.
Nonsense. NOTHING non-Muslim of value belongs in that failed state. Schumer is right on this (bites tongue).
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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I have to agree with Sen Schumer here. Sending those artifacts back will be the destruction or at least disappearance of those artifacts. Iraq is currently not a safe place for them. It will be a cultural and archeological loss.
The deal to return these items was originally made and funded under Obama. Where was Schumer then?
Why not give them to the people the Iraqi government stole them from. Do art museums in the US really have to return artworks to their country of origin.
exactly
don’t get involved in these intercine tribal spats. The mideast tribes are all just a bunch of bickering nut jobs.
Why a US senator is wasting time on making speeches regarding these bickering tribesmen is beyond me
Don’t know though I think it dates to 2003. Don’t ever remember his saying anything. I suspect no one ever expected them to be returned. Agreement was with the Coalition Provisional Authority. Artifacts were in the possession of Iraqi intelligence.
I generally don’t agree with Chuckie, but, in this case, I do.
The Moslems in Iraq will destroy these artifacts. That is what these Moslem savages do - destroy EVERYTHING non-Moslem
The artifacts belong to the Jews, and should be housed in a museum and preserved.
Oh, so we can discriminate when there is a rational basis. Who knew?
If I am not mistaken,the Iraqi Jewish community now is home in Israel and there is a museum in that country that covers that community of Jews and its history from Iraq. Donate it to that museum in Israel.
Iraqi is pretty much gone.
Correction: Iraq is pretty much gone.
At least he is not talking about gun control.
Sadly we are going tribal ourselves.
“They belong in Iraq....where they originated.”
As an aside on this subject, I personally know a retired US Army Warrant Officer who was one of the people who led WMD search teams. His group found these records, and he is 100% against returning them to Iraq. He says that he knows with virtually 100% certainty that they will be destroyed out of sheer spite. FYI, he is not Jewish, so he has no particular dog in this hunt.
Just before the Jewish high holy days there was an article of an exhibition in a Jewish museum in FL of this collection from the long gone Jewish community in Iraq. I had even seen a video of one of our millitary guys going through flooded basement finding this great find.
IMHO, Iraq is pretty much gone. It looks like the Kurds are pushing to go indy. Those few Christians that are left are trying get the support from the Kurds. What is left of Iraq will more likely will turn to Iran for help. Better for thid stuff to go to the Iraqi Jewish community.
Correction: the.
Iraq is pretty much gone.
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