The Daily Star
Israel tallies up compensation claims by Iraq's Jews
Date: Saturday, September 04, 2004
By Michael R. Fischbach
Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, September 04, 2004
On May 6, 2003, the same day that Paul Bremer replaced Jay Garner as head of the US Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) in Iraq, 16 American soldiers from the US Army's Mobile Exploration Team Alpha, along with personnel from ORHA and the Iraqi National Congress (INC), descended into the flooded basement of the bombed-out Iraqi Department of General Intelligence in Baghdad. Although the army team's job was to search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, that day they were seeking something quite different.
A former Iraqi intelligence official had tipped off the INC a few days earlier that an ancient copy of the Jewish Talmud lay deep within the General Intelligence headquarters. The INC then told the Americans, who decided that finding such a valuable cultural relic merited the diversion of the army search team from its normal task. Although the troops did not uncover the Talmud, they did discover something else: thousands of manuscripts, documents and books, some of them hundreds of years old, dealing with Iraq's ancient and once thriving Jewish community, which is now virtually extinct. What the troops had found were the archives of the General Intelligence's Israel-Palestine and Jewish Sections.
It appears that many of the manuscripts, Torah scrolls and books were confiscated from synagogues and libraries after the mass exodus of the Iraqi Jewish community in 1950-51. Most went to Israel. With the permission of the interim Iraqi Culture Ministry, the Coalition Provisional Authority had the water-damaged documents shipped to Texas, whereupon they were freeze dried and sent to the US National Archives and Records Administration in Washington for restoration and preservation. Archives officials are presently seeking between $1.5 million to $3 million in donations to further the restoration work. The final disposition of the documents remains an open question.
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. Indeed, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Natan Sharansky asked the Americans in 2003 to look for anything relating to Iraq's Jewish community after conquering the country.
After the property records were discovered in Baghdad, the State Department in late May 2004 passed along to Sharansky 800 black-and-white photocopies of the Arabic-language documents. After translation, they will be turned over to the Israeli Justice Ministry, whose director-general, Aharon Abramovitz, co-chairs the Israeli government's Compensation Committee for Jews Who Left Arab States. The Justice Ministry maintains an archive of 12,000 files dealing with property claims of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries and Iran. The unit responsible for this archive was first established in 1969, disbanded in the early 1990s, and recently revived.
The Israeli government has not been alone in discussing compensation for Jewish property taken over in Iraq. This was just the latest example of the interest in such property that arose in 2003, soon after Iraq's defeat. Iraqi Jewish exiles in the US began discussing lawsuits. Groups like the World Jewish Congress raised the issue with the US Congress and the British Parliament. Another organization, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, issued a lengthy report entitled "Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress" in June 2003.
The publicity and lobbying worked: The US House of Representatives held hearings on Jewish emigrants from the Arab world in June 2003, and later passed a resolution of support for these emigrants in October. In March 2004, both the House and the Senate adopted a joint resolution calling on the US government to raise the issue whenever it brings up the Palestinian refugee question in diplomatic discussions.
Beyond talk, there even has been one specific success in the campaign to compensate former Iraqi Jews. In April 2004, French insurance giant AXA agreed to pay $130,000 to three Israelis who had bought policies decades ago when they were living in Iraq, and added that four others were eligible for payment. AXA's interest in this issue actually predates the invasion of Iraq. The firm agreed in late 2002 to look into old insurance policies taken out by Jews in the Arab world, and in October 2003 the Israeli Justice Ministry published in the Israeli press information from its files regarding approximately 200 cases of Iraqi Jewish insurance policies that were never paid out.
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.
Jewish property claims have also emerged elsewhere in the Arab world. Perhaps as part of Libya's attempts to emerge from its pariah status, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, stated in March 2004 that the Libyan government would pay compensation for property seized from Jewish emigrants after 1948.
Turning over captured documents on Jewish property was not the first example of American sympathy with Israeli and Jewish interests in Iraq. In July 2003, the Jewish Agency, in coordination with the Israeli prime minister's office and other international Jewish organizations, was allowed to fly six, mainly elderly Jews from Baghdad to Israel. Despite their attempts to stop the illegal export of objects stolen from Iraqi museums, the Americans one month later handed over to Israeli authorities in Jordan the helmet of an Israeli aviator shot down over Iraq in June 1967 that they had taken from a Baghdad military museum. This past March, Secretary of State Colin Powell assured a delegation from the World Jewish Congress that he would work for restoring citizenship to Iraqi Jewish emigrants who were denationalized, as well as for property compensation.
Such attention on compensation could also heighten global attention on compensation and-or restitution of the property abandoned by Palestinian refugees in 1948 and later confiscated by Israel. So, too, might Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision earlier this year that Israel would compensate any Jewish settlers evacuated from settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Where might this money come from? Sharon's disengagement plan calls for an international body to take possession of the buildings left behind in evacuated Jewish settlements, and determine their value for potential compensation payments to Israel.
Whether all this attention on Jewish and Palestinian property abandoned under duress long ago will lead to concrete action, however, remains to be seen.
Michael R. Fischbach is a professor of history at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, and a consultant on refugee property issues. His book, "Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict," will soon be reprinted in the Middle East by the American University of Cairo Press. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR
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