In 2003, the American military came upon an enormous cache of Jewish historical documents in the headquarters of the Saddam Hussein-era security service. After securing permission from the new Iraqi government, the U.S. moved the archive to Washington, DC for restoration and preservation—on the condition that it would later be restored to Iraq. Preservation and digitization are now complete, but Edy Cohen argues that it would be wrong to let the document go back:
This decision is both absurd and pathetic, like giving a thief back what he stole. . . . Why should the U.S. return the collection to a place that is no longer home to Jews? Returning the archive to the Iraqis is like returning the belongings of European Jews to the Nazis; it’s stolen Jewish property.
Even though the Jews of Iraq lived in Babylon before the advent of Islam and before the Prophet Muhammad came along, there are no Jews there today. More than 150,000 Iraqi Jews left the country over the course of the 20th century, some motivated by Zionism, and others by fear for their lives. Iraq didn’t know how to protect its Jews, and as early as 1941, hundreds of Iraqis were slaughtering Jews in a massive pogrom known as the Farhud.
When Israel was founded in 1948, and hatred toward Jews continued to mount, the Iraqi government permanently revoked the citizenship of Jews and expelled them from the country, freezing their bank accounts and confiscating their property, which today is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. . . .
Iraq is now well on its way to being a failed [state]. . . . Therefore, it is upon the Israeli government to pressure the Trump administration to ensure that the archive of Iraqi Jewry isn’t returned to Iraq. It isn’t a question of heritage; it’s a question of historic justice.
Read more on Israel Hayom: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/iraqi-jewish-archive-must-not-be-returned/