Roger Cohen: Iran, the Jews and Germany - International Herald Tribune
An interesting piece that should be a powerful reminder to the extremists on our side, that things are indeed not as monolithic or as 'evil' as the extremists would have us believe.
IRAN: JEWISH LIFE UNDER ISLAMIC RULE New Society
Turning Back the Clock: Post-Revolutionary Iran
By Victoria S. Golshani
Overnight, the 1979 Islamic Revolution overturned all the societal gains made by the Jewish community under the Shah. In the first few years after the Revolution, dozens of Jews were executed. [27] Habib Elghanian was the wealthiest Jewish philanthropist in Iran where he funded Hebrew schools across the country. Elghanian, who had introduced plastic to Iran, was accused of being a Zionist traitor, or to be more specific, he was charged with “friendship with the enemies of God, warring with God and His emissaries, and economic imperialism.” [28] He was hanged in 1979. Although Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering that all Jews be treated well, [29] and that Iranian Jews should be distinguished from Zionist agents, the record shows otherwise.
The supposed equality of Jews and Muslims and the rhetorical dis-tinction between Jew and Zionist soon became a political joke. Jews reverted to the status of dhimmi. Khomeini reinstituted the jizya and declared that if Muslims had obeyed the divine ordinances, “a handful of Jews would not have dared to occupy our land.” [30] During the year of the Revolution alone, numerous Jews were killed for “causing economic corruption in Iran.” [31] Any person who had a connection with the Shah or had “too much wealth,” was handed a death sentence. [32] Most of those who fled left their wealth behind to be appropriated by the Islamic regime.
These discriminatory practices all continue to this day. All workers in public sectors have to be screened for Islamic credentials. [33] “Blood money,” the payment given by the family of a murderer to the family of the victim, once again became customary in Iran after the Revolution, and the amount of financial compensation a Jew can receive from a Muslim in the case of a relative’s murder or death is equal to one-eighth the amount that is paid if the victim is a Muslim. [34] Further-more, Jews face obstacles in bringing civil suits to trial, are barred from high-level government posts, and are faced with insuperable delays in service delivery. Iranian courts refuse to accept testimony from Jews and, unsurprisingly, murderers of Jews have never been brought to justice. [35]
Parallels have been drawn between the state of Iranian Jewry and the state of German Jewry in the 1930s. [36] The Jewish population’s decline in Iran strongly reflects the new anti-Semitic fervor stirred up by the Revolution. [37] The Jewish population is estimated to have declined from 150,000 at mid-century to 30,000 in the decades following the Revolution. Current estimates range from as low as 10,000 to as high as 35-40,000. Both the U.S. and Israel have recognized the dangerous state of Jewish life in Iran. Immediately following the Revolution, the Iranian government confiscated all Jewish passports and would not allow more than one member of a Jewish family to travel abroad. [38] Although these laws no longer exist, the regime keeps a close watch on the Jewish community, their travels, and their ex-tended family, especially in the U.S. and Israel.
After the Revolution, Iran severed all relations with Israel and de-clared Israel an enemy of Islam. Iranian Jews learned the hard way to renounce any connection to Israel or Zionism in public. [39] “You can be Jewish and not associate yourself with Israel,” says Sarah Hay, a 21-year old computer engineer student from Tehran. [40] Jews are unable to telephone or send mail to relatives in Israel, let alone visit. Jews who have corresponded with family in Israel have been executed or jailed for “spying for Israel.” [41] In 1999, 11 Jews were convicted on this charge. One boy was only thirteen years old. “Virtually every Iranian Jew has relatives in Israel. To regard normal family connections of Jews with Israel a crime makes a mockery of pledges in the Islamic Republic constitution that Jews will be accorded full rights as a recognized religious minority,” another Iranian woman says. [42] In March 2006, fifteen Iranian Jewish folk dancers visited Russia. When the Russian Jewish community brought out a cake decorated with the Israeli flag to celebrate the occasion, the Iranian Jews would only eat from the section of the cake that did not bear the Israeli flag. [43] Even abroad, they feared the possible repression of their government. As Haroon Yashaie states, “supporting Israel is absolutely out of the question.” [44]
The Jewish community, once the most affluent in Iran, now consists mostly of people who are too old or too poor to leave. [45] Given the potential repercussions of speaking out against the Islamic regime, the substance of interviews with Iranian Jews must be viewed skeptically. In recent documentaries, Jews tell journalists of their good life in Iran and their freedom to live as they wish. [46] However, a recent Dateline documentary [47] captured the climate of fear in which they live. The film shows a Jew imploring the Dateline cameraman to stop filming a woman in a Kosher restaurant. When the cameraman puts down the camera, but without stopping the film, the fearful Jewish man says:
“You should stop filming now. That’s enough stop please. You only have a permit from our council…They gave you a permit to film in the synagogue. That’s all. That’s all…Please stop. We have problems. If our members happen to say the wrong thing by mistake… we’ll get in trouble for it.” [48]
Anti-Jewish slogans, cartoons, films, and celebrations, such as that of the one-hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, have permeated Iranian popular culture. Although anti-Semitic violence is rarely reported in Iran, a U.S. State Depart-ment report reveals that Jews, fearing reprisal, are reluctant to speak of mistreatment and that the Jewish community in Iran is closely monitored by the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance and by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. [50]
Iran’s current vehement Holocaust denial is not surprising. Since the establishment of the Islamic Regime, Iran has supported Roger Garaudy, a French author and philosopher who drew much public attention for his conversion to Sunni Islam and anti-Holocaust writ-ings. When the French government fined Garaudy $40,000 for racial defamation and Holocaust denial in his 1995 book Mythes Fondateurs de la Politique Israélienne, Iran helped pay his fine. [51] The link between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Iran was witnessed at the Jaleh Square Massacre of September 1978, in which the government opened fire on crowds of protesters against the Revolution. When a crowd of 10,000 to 20,000 gathered in the square refused to disperse, govern-ment troops began to shoot into the crowd, killing hundreds and wounding thousands. [52] Mujahedeen and Fedayeen guerillas began chanting “Massacre the Jews” with megaphones and opened fire from surrounding rooftops. The Muslim religious leaders in Tehran claimed that thousands had been massacred by Zionist troops. [53]
The complaints of Iranian Jewry are routinely ignored or censored by the government. Maurice Motamed, Iran’s only Jewish parliamen-tarian, accused President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of insulting all the Jews in the world by denying the Holocaust, but did so only in media interviews and not in the parliament. [54] Furthermore, the chairman of the Jewish Central Committee of Tehran, Haroun Yeshaya, sent a letter to President Ahmadinejad strongly criticizing him and inform-ing him that his denial of one of the “most obvious and saddening events of 20th-century humanity” produced “anxiety among the small Jewish community of Iran.” The government promptly acted to censor him. [55] Having protected the Jewish community in the face of strong anti-Israel rhetoric in the early days of the Revolution and having long challenged anti-Semitic television shows and books published in Iran, he was asked not to run for reelection as chairman. [56]
Once again, Jews are being ostracized and are unable to socialize much outside of the small Jewish community because of their precarious situation. Gone are the days of Jewish leadership in local politics and professional circles. [57] Synagogues are now the central point of Jewish life. In a Dateline interview, Robert Halduh, a Jew still living in Iran, says that the “[Muslim] religious environment is more conducive to being a religious [than] a non-religious environment.” [58] Synagogue attendance has soared partly due to the religious atmosphere culti-vated by the Islamic Republic, [59] and partly due to the withdrawal of Jews from public life into close-knit communities. For the most part, Jews inhabit their own separate space within the limits of the Islamic Republic, a “protected” but rather uncertain people. [60]
Even in their own communities, however, Iranian Jews are not free from outside interference and suppression. The Iranian mullahs strictly control Jewish education. They forbid Jewish schools from teaching the Torah or other holy scriptures in Hebrew, [61] thereby forcibly separating Hebrew from Judaism and ensuring that Hebrew is only taught as a secular language. The only school that teaches Hebrew lessons is the Orthodox Jewish Otsar Hatorah School, which the Iranian gov-ernment sardonically forces by law to provide lessons on the Jewish Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest. Despite government interference, Ostar Hatorah is still a far friendlier place for Jews than public schools, where many Jewish children complain of unfair grades and physical abuse due to discrimination. [62] The Goharian family, for example, explains that other students will not sit next to their children at school because they are Jewish. [63] In an interview for a Dutch documentary, one student discussed how her teacher told the other students that she was najas and that if they touched her they would never be able to rid themselves of impurity. [64] The situation became so difficult for the young girl that she was forced to switch to the Jewish school. [65]
The situation of Iranian Jews is so tenuous today that it is difficult to believe how deeply woven they are into the fabric of Persian history. Iranian Jews are the preservers of Shiraz wine from the Shiraz region of southwest central Iran, and they were some of the highest advisors to the former Shah. Of course, Persian anti-Semitism long predates Islam, as the Jewish holiday of Purim attests. After all, Purim celebrates the Persian Jewish princess, Esther, who used her influence with the anti-Semitic vizier, Haman, to save the Jews from captivity and murder. Although there is still a small Jewish community in Iran, it has significantly dwindled from its pre-Revolution heyday and is now a vulnerable remnant of what it once was. Unfortunately, it is only outside Iran that Jews can be both Iranian and fully Jewish. The history of the Jewish community of Iran is centuries old; it may soon be coming to a close.
Lower your tempers on this thread, or I will lower the thread ban boom on your head. I love it when I can make my warnings rhyme. :2razz: