Joden in Iran

En nu ik wat interessante linkjes aan het doorwerken ben: We horen veel over Ahmadinejad en zijn anti-semitische uitlatingen. Nu is Ahmadinejad een reli-nut en een popularist in eigen land, die genoeg vreemde en soms ook gevaarlijke uitlatingen doet. Maar die worden veelvuldig uit context gehaald en niet in balans gepresenteerd waardoor je dus ook moeilijk kunt beslissen of hij echt gevaarlijk is (hoewel hij in zijn positie in Iran niet geweldig veel macht heeft, de macht ligt vooral bij de geestelijken) of dat hij gewoon voor eigen publiek aan het speechen is.

In dat kader nu dus een linkje over de grote, oude en bloeiende Joodse gemeenschap in Teheran, zodat we in het vervolg verschil kunnen maken tussen zijn opmerkingen over Israel en opmerkingen over Joden.

There is an interesting problem with selling the “Iran as Nazi Germany” line. If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, ready to commit genocide against Israel’s Jews as soon as he can get his hands on a nuclear weapon, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran and more than reluctant to leave despite repeated enticements from Israel and American Jews?

What is the basis for Israel’s dire forecasts — the ideological scaffolding being erected, presumably, to justify an attack on Iran? Helpfully, as US President George W. Bush defended his Iraq policies last month, he reminded us yet again of the menace Iran supposedly poses: it is “threatening to wipe Israel off the map.”

This myth has been endlessly recycled since a translating error was made of a speech Ahmadinejad delivered nearly two years ago. Farsi experts have verified that the Iranian president, far from threatening to destroy Israel, was quoting from an earlier speech by the late Ayatollah Khomeini in which he reassured supporters of the Palestinians that “the Zionist regime in Jerusalem” would “vanish from the page of time.”

He was not threatening to exterminate Jews or even Israel. He was comparing Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians with other illegitimate systems of rule whose time had passed, including the Shahs who once ruled Iran, apartheid South Africa and the Soviet empire. Nonetheless, this erroneous translation has survived and prospered because Israel and its supporters have exploited it for their own crude propaganda purposes.

In the meantime, the 25,000-strong Iranian Jewish community is the largest in the Middle East outside Israel and traces its roots back 3,000 years. As one of several non-Muslim minorities in Iran, Jews there suffer discrimination, but they are certainly no worse off than the one million Palestinian citizens of Israel — and far better off than Palestinians under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Iranian Jews have little influence on decision-making and are not allowed to hold senior posts in the army or bureaucracy. But they enjoy many freedoms. They have an elected representative in parliament, they practice their religion openly in synagogues, their charities are funded by the Jewish diaspora, and they can travel freely, including to Israel. In Tehran there are six kosher butchers and about 30 synagogues. Ahmadinejad’s office recently made a donation to a Jewish hospital in Tehran.