Iraq, the country that kicked out all its Jews and turned them into instant refugees wants a massive Iraqi Jewish archive back.
The archive of personal effects and documents was found in a soggy basement compartment of the Saddam Hussein's secret service.
I say: TOUGH SH&T.
Here is a short background article, but the best article I read about this recently was by Joe O'Conner in the National Post. He is simply an outstanding feature writer and this was a haunting, personal tale.
"Like sending back art Nazis looted: Iraqi Jews who fled persecution fight to stop U.S from "returning" "stolen" artifacts to Baghdad.
How about the fact that it was stolen from the Jews?
Their property, possessions, land-everything.
One of my good friends in Israel, a professional photographer, is an Iraqi Jew. There are lots of them in Israel and many are concentrated in the Ramat Gan area. That made it even more bloodily ironic when missiles from Iraq rained down on them in the Gulf War.
She had an idyllic childhood. Her parents were wealthy, her father was a lawyer. They had several servants, and a home with a courtyard fountain in the centre. She tells me of rose water tea being served, of her whole family being together.
One fine day, her entire family was thrown in jail. She was about seven years old at the time. They were imprisoned to give the regime time to loot their house and her parents assets because they were Jews. When they were released from jail, they were allowed to take one suitcase of belongings each and told they had to get out of the country-or else.
Her father never recovered. He was shattered and was not able to practice law in Israel. The second generation did better, the third generation are "sabras".
But they had everything. It was all stolen from them.
Of course similar tales are told from Jews from all Arab/Muslim countries.
So please, spare me the sob stories about Palestinians and "their" land being "stolen".
Unless there are reciprocal tears shed and reparations made to Jews from Arab lands, I'm just not interested.
