Iranian Jews Reject Outside Calls To Leave
Push From Israel, U.S. Groups Falls Flat Despite
Ahmadinejad
By Marc Perelman
Forward
12 January 2007
http://www.forward.com/articles/iranian-jews-reject-outside-calls-to-leave-1/
A campaign to convince Iran's 25,000 Jews to flee the
country has stalled, with most opting to stay in their
native homeland despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
Holocaust denial and anti-Israeli speeches.
In recent months, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,
Israeli officials and some American Jewish communal
leaders have urged Iranian Jews to leave. But so far,
despite generally being allowed to travel to Israel and
emigrate abroad, Iranian Jews have stayed put.
According to the statistics compiled by HIAS, 152 out of
25,000 Jews left Iran between October 2005 and September
2006 -- down from 297 during the same period the previous
year, and 183 the year before. Sources said that the
majority of those who have left in recent years cited
economic and family reasons as their main incentive for
leaving, rather than political concerns.
At the same time, HIAS workers in Vienna have detected a
substantial increase in the number of Iranian refugees
from other minority faiths, including Bahais.
Since the August 2005 election of Ahmadinejad, a
conservative firebrand, the fate of Iranian Jewry has
become part of a broader diplomatic game between Teheran,
Washington and Jerusalem.
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly used rabid anti-Israeli
rhetoric, threatening to wipe Israel off the map, and has
questioned over and over again the number of Jews killed
in the Holocaust. Tehran recently hosted a conference to
"assess" the Holocaust, and last year a leading daily
newspaper held a contest soliciting Holocaust cartoons as
a response to the uproar caused by a Danish caricature
contest of Prophet Muhammad.
At times, as international tensions mounted over Tehran's
nuclear ambitions, staunch opponents of the mullah regime
have launched accusations of religious and ethnic
discrimination against Iran in an effort to depict the
country as a pariah state.
HIAS declined to comment on its efforts to promote
emigration, but some observers claim that the main reason
Iranian Jews have chosen to stay is that they are, for the
most part, free to practice their faith. "Iranian Jews
have a comfortable Jewish life," said Meir Javedanfar, an
Iranian-born Middle East analyst now living in Israel.
At a time when Tehran and Jerusalem trade barbs and
threats, the 25,000 Jews of Tehran, Shiraz and Yazd attend
packed synagogues, send their children to Jewish schools,
buy their meat in kosher butchers and are even exempt from
prohibitions on alcohol. This modus vivendi is the result
of a compact between the leadership of the Jewish
community and the Iranian authorities, whereby Jews are
permitted to practice their faith as a community on the
condition that they remain out of politics and do not
speak out in favor of Israel.
Some Iranian expatriates dispute the assertion that Jews
are staying because conditions are good. Sam Kermanian,
secretary general of the Los Angeles-based Iranian
American Jewish Federation, asserted that the majority of
Jews remaining in Iran are elderly and only speak Persian,
and are naturally less inclined to emigrate.
In the early days after the Islamic revolution in 1979,
several Jews were executed on charges of Zionism and
relations with Israel. About 80% of the community left the
country in which Jews had lived for nearly 3,000 years as
descendants of slaves from Babylon saved by Cyrus the
Great and enjoyed a "golden age" during the 1960s and '70s
under the Shah.
The situation for Jews improved in the years after the
revolution, and Judaism is one of the recognized minority
religions in Iran. Jews, Zoroastrians and Christians have
rights enshrined in the Islamic constitution, and they
each elect their own member of parliament and are entitled
to worship freely but not to proselytize.
The State Department's religious freedom reports have
noted that the Jewish community in Iran is closely
monitored by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance
and by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. In other
words, Jews, like other minorities, face discrimination
because of the inherently Islamic nature of the regime,
which prevents them, for instance, from securing
government jobs or becoming army officers.
Seven years ago, a group of 13 Orthodox Jews in the
southern city of Shiraz were accused of spying for Israel.
The case prompted an international outcry that led to the
eventual release of the Jewish prisoners after years of
quiet diplomacy.
Some criticism of the regime has proved to be unfounded. A
few months ago, several conservative media outlets in
Canada and the United States published reports claiming
that the Iranian government had approved legislation
requiring religious minorities to wear a distinctive sign,
invoking charged memories from World War II. The reports
turned out to be wrong.
"Some people are trying to use the climate created by
Ahmadinejad and the nuke issue," said William Beeman, an
Iran expert and professor of anthropology at the
University of Minnesota. "But Iranian Jews have a fairly
vibrant communal life, and they can even criticize the
regime within the constraints of the Islamic regime."
Both Maurice Motamed, the Jewish member of the Iranian
parliament, and Haroun Yeshaya, longtime chairman of the
Jewish Central Committee of Tehran, who have regularly
criticized Israel, nevertheless publicly condemned the
president's views, the latter in an unusual letter to
Ahmadinejad, sent in February 2006.
Kermanian, of the L.A.-based Iranian Jewish federation,
said that "given the situation and the current climate,
some Jews there will say things are not too bad, but the
totality of the picture is negative." He said that the
recent uptick in antisemitic propaganda in books and the
media had stoked fears within the Jewish community in
Iran.
The regime's anti-Zionist propaganda has at times provoked
antisemitic incidents. Last summer, a hard-line weekly
newspaper, Yalesarat, published photographs of people
waving Israeli flags in synagogues to celebrate Israeli
Independence Day. The paper falsely asserted that the
synagogues were in Iran, prompting an assault on two
synagogues. Motamed, the Jewish parliamentarian, described
the vandals as "opportunists" in comments to the BBC, and
said that the incident was defused by the Iranian security
forces.
Several times in recent years, Jewish burial areas were
overtaken by local authorities for urban development
purposes. A Western diplomat said that while antisemitic
intentions played a part in the incidents, another factor
was that, in general, burial places are less sacred for
Shia Muslims than they are for Jews.
For all his inflammatory rhetoric, Ahmadinejad has been
careful not to single out Iran's Jews, and his office even
donated money to Tehran's Jewish hospital.
"The government goes to extra lengths to differentiate
between the government of Israel, with whom they have
fundamental issues, and the Jewish people, especially
Iranian Jews," said Amir Cyrus Razzaghi, a Tehran-based
commentator who is not Jewish. "There is a genuine
interest to keep the Jewish community in Iran to
demonstrate to the world that the government is
anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish. This is especially
important to a government that strives to be not only the
leader in the Islamic world, but also a key regional and
global player."
The result is the only Jewish community living under an
avowedly Islamic regime. In Tehran, where the majority of
the community lives, there are six kosher butchers and
about 30 synagogues. In addition, there is the Jewish
hospital, which has a Jewish director and is funded by
donations from the Diaspora, though the vast majority of
its staff and patients are Muslim. Children attend Jewish
schools where they are taught Hebrew and receive religious
training. All principals are Muslim, the schools do not
close on the Sabbath and the curriculum is supervised by
the government.
While Jews are allowed to obtain passports and visas to
leave Iran, they have to submit their requests to a
special section of the passport office and there are
restrictions on families leaving en masse. Iranian Jews
travel to and from Israel via a third country with the
full knowledge of the authorities. Both sides had kept
quiet about such journeys, but recently acknowledged them.
"It might seem strange," said Javedanfar, the Israel-based
expert, "but they can travel to Israel and other places,
come back [to Iran] and have a comfortable Jewish life, as
long as they keep quiet about Israel."
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