June 26, 2012

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Iraq is cutting archaeological cooperation with the United States because the U.S. has not returned Iraq’s Jewish archives. 

Iraqi Tourism and Archaeology Minister Liwaa Smaisim is pushing for the return of the archives that were removed from Iraq following the 2003 U.S. Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to the French news agency AFP. 

Iraq was home to a large Jewish community prior to 1948 before most Iraqi Jews immigrated to Israel. 

The archives, which were discovered in the flooded basement of Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad, include Torah scrolls, and Jewish law and children’s books.  Seventy percent of the collection consists of Hebrew-language documents while 25 percent of the collection is in Arabic. The rest of the documents are written in other languages. 

Smaisim, a member of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s movement told AFP that Iraq will “use all means” to retrieve the archives. 

“One of the means of pressure that I used against the American side is I stopped dealing with the American (archaeological) exploration missions because of the case of the Jewish archives and the antiquities that are in the United States,” Smaisim told AFP. 

Don’t miss out! Get the JTA Daily Briefing delivered FREE to your inbox!

Click to login and write a letter to the editor.

This article was made possible by the support of readers like you. Donate to JTA now.