Jews in Iraq: opening the archives

So much news to catch up on! An interesting Palaeojudaica reference to the bigger story behind the Jewish archives in Baghdad, chiefly reported upon early on in reference to the hunt for a rumored, extremely early Talmud. The article from
the Lebanese Daily Star notes:

The Americans also discovered documents in the General Intelligence headquarters basement relating to Jewish property in and around Baghdad, property that had been sequestered by the Iraqi government beginning in 1951, during the mass emigration. The Israeli government has long campaigned to have the value of Jewish property abandoned in the Arab world deducted from any compensation the Israelis may one day pay to Palestinian refugees for the property they abandoned in Israel in 1948.

How it would all come out is quite the can of worms. At least there haven't been any attempts (to my knowledge) to do the same for other population exchanges, such as that between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s.

The article also mentions some other less than widely reported facts, such as the existence of hundreds of Jewish Iraqi insurance claims from decades back that were never paid out, and also this:

Nor has all the talk of Jewish property compensation been restricted to Israel and Western countries. Discussion of Jews and property has also surfaced within Iraq itself. In late December 2003, a source within the Iraqi Governing Council told the Jerusalem Post that the council was considering restitution of Jewish property seized as of 1951. Rumors of "foreign Jews," presumably former Iraqi citizens, seeking to buy land in Iraq, were rife. The exiled Iraqi Shiite cleric Ayatollah Qazim al-Husayni al-Hairi issued a fatwa from Qom, Iran, as a result. The decree sanctions death for any Jew seeking to buy land in Iraq.

Posted by David on September 10, 2004 5:05 PM