Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
The fight to undermine the IHRA definition of antisemitism continues.
This battle has been brought to the UN, where HRW and other self-proclaimed human rights groups insist that this particular definition of antisemitism is unfair because it puts a damper on free speech by holding those who demonize Israel and hold it to a double standard to account. Specifically, these groups claim the IHRA definition muzzles the free expression of "Palestinian rights" by preventing those kinds of "criticism" of Israeli government policies.
This attempt to claim to condemn hatred of Jews on the one hand while protecting outright demonization of Israel on the other is not something new. And it did not start with BDS.
An article in i24News quotes Ramin Parham, an Iranian writer living in France, who traces this attempt to differentiate between hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel to the Iranian regime and its propaganda:
Parham points out that the strategy of disassociating hatred of Israel from hatred of Jews is distinct from anti-Semitism was not invented by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) or the radical left, but was developed by the fathers of the Islamic revolution with the aim of reassuring the western world."The mullahs are above all good communicators, who quickly understood that the credibility of the regime on the international scene relied on its respect for the Jews and other minorities in the country. But it is only a question of saving appearances," Ramin Parham told i24NEWS. [emphasis added]
While this is not strictly true - Muslims in Arab lands have been claiming since at least 1947 that their opposition to Zionism had nothing to do with Jews, by falsely insisting that Jews had lived in peace and harmony with them for centuries before Zionism and conveniently forgetting events like 1033 Fez Massacre or the 1790 Tetuoan Pogrom - the Iranians have taken pains to give a public face to their supposed philosemitism.
This is a strategy that antisemites have picked up on, claiming that it is not Jews they oppose -- it is the evil Israeli regime. But it is also a strategy that cannot work effectively if the demonizing of Israel and the fabrication of accusations against the Jewish state are undercut by a definition that illustrates the association between demonizing Jews and demonizing Israel.
Thus the attempt to undercut the IHRA definition.
But the Iranians seem to have had success in keeping up appearances, and their claim to be opposed only to Israel and not Iranian Jews was accepted to an extent.
Years ago, New York Times journalist Roger Cohen accepted this claim and wrote about how well the Jews of Iran were treated -- and in 2009 boasted of his perceptiveness, "Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words":
It’s important to decide what’s more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshipping in relative tranquillity.
...I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran, its sophistication and culture, than all the inflammatory rhetoric.
Cohen was reassured. In fact, he was reassured to the extent that Cohen could write about the Iranian regime itself:
Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it’s far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable. [emphasis added]
Yet the evidence of what was really going on inside Iran was available.
In 2007, Ariela Ringel Hoffman wrote an article for the October 3 edition of Yedioth Achronot about the precarious situation of Iranian Jews, as described by Iranian Jews who managed to leave.
o One Iranian Jew interviewed by Hoffman said that Jews in Iran know they are sitting on a powder keg--at least half of them think that either Israel or the US will attack Iran's nuclear reactors. And when they do, the Jews of Iran will pay the price. Even without encouragement from the government, the Iranians on the street will take it out on the Jews.
o Another Iranian Jew tells Hoffman that it was not the threat of war that brought him to Israel, but the desire to live as a Jew. "There, it is difficult to keep Mitzvot, to keep Kosher, to pray and to learn about Judaism. On Shabbat the children have to go to school--everything there is more difficult. [A 2021 article quotes Iranian Chief Rabbi Yehuda Gerami that in recent years Jewish schools are allowed to be closed for Shabbat]
o He continues, saying that it is the Israeli government that Iran hates--and not the Israelis themselves. He believes that things are better than they were 10 years ago--when there was a water fountain in the marketplace in Tehran with 2 faucets: one for Muslims and one for Jews. If a Jew dared to drink from the faucet for Muslims he would be beaten up. Today it is different.
o Another Iranian Jew describes how most of his friends at the university were Muslims--some of whom expressed the wish to visit Israel. He draws a distinction between the Iranian on the street and those in the university, where instructors openly question Iran's need for a nuclear reactor. He believes that Anti-Semitism is something encountered only on the street, where calling someone a Jew is the equivalent to someone in Israel calling someone a Nazi. Yet he admits that Jews cannot hold government posts.o In Iran, serving in the army is mandatory. Many Jews avoid service by paying someone off -- something that is not limited to the Jews alone. One who ended up serving in the army recounts how the Iranians who served were religious and treated him like someone impure, and gave him the hardest jobs. Though service is for 24 months, after 20 months he got disgusted and deserted.o One Iranian Jew told Hoffman:I can tell you, based both on personal experience and on what I hear from friends, that there are places [in Iran] where Muslims have already divided among themselves the homes and property of their Jewish neighbors. They say that if there will be a war, the first thing they will do is slaughter the Jews.
Keep in mind that just 3 months after the Iranian Revolution brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power on February 11, 1979, Habib Elghanian -- a prominent Jewish Iranian businessman -- was executed by firing squad after being accused of being a spy. He was a prominent Jewish leader and philanthropist. His death led to over three-quarters of Iran’s 80,000 Jews fleeing the country.
Eventually, Cohen begrudgingly admitted he was wrong about Iran:
I’ve also argued that, although repressive, the Islamic Republic offers significant margins of freedom by regional standards. I erred in underestimating the brutality and cynicism of a regime that understands the uses of ruthlessness.
Better late than never?
Now and then, the media has reported on the status of Jews in Iran as second-class citizens under the regime. VOA reported in 2021 that Jews are treated like other Iranian minorities, such as Christians and Zoroastrians -- which isn't saying much:
But Iran’s Jews and other recognized minorities are barred by law from serving in the judiciary and security services. They also cannot hold authority over Muslims in the armed forces.
When Jews and other recognized minorities seek “blood money” as restitution for various crimes, Iranian law reduces the value of that blood money to half of what a Muslim is entitled to.
But it's more than that. The previous year, in May 2020, a fire broke out at the burial site of Esther and Mordechai. The only thing more suspicious than the fire was the way the report was disappeared:
An investigation has revealed that a person was caught in CCTV footage trying to enter the holy site through an adjacent bank and “perform a series of actions” but “failed,” opposition news sites said, citing a report in the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
The report said the cameras had registered the person’s face, but “information about the person’s motives and identity cannot be provided until they are arrested.”
The IRNA report was deleted from its website two hours after its publication Saturday morning, the Radio Farda and Iran International websites said.
And that brings us to Pesach this year and reports that the Iranian regime pressured Jews not to celebrate the last days of Passover (actually a Mimouna-type festival the day after Passover celebrated by Persian and Kurdish Jews) so they could participate in the annual al-Quds Day demonstration calling for the destruction of Israel. The Jerusalem Post reports:
Iran’s Jewish community announced on Monday on its social media platform Telegram to its estimated 9,000 members: “Please do not go for picnics or enjoyable activities on al-Quds Day.”
The Jewish community said that Iranian Jews should “care about Muslim sensitivity” and celebrate Passover a week later. [emphasis added]
According to our holy bible, every Jew has to stand against oppression against human beings. When we are approaching al-Quds Day, the Jewish community of Iran will participate in demonstrations against the Zionist regime and will declare their disgust with the Zionist policies against human beings. The Iranian Jewish community is separated from the Zionists. We are with Iranians and Muslims.
Beni Sabti, an expert on Iran at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security is quoted in the article, saying that some Iranian Jews "really are against Israel," a phenomenon we see among some left-wing groups Jews in the US.
Antisemitic pressure on the Jewish community takes a toll.
By the same token, not all Iranians are being swept up in their leaders' hatred of Israel, let alone of Jews. Here is a video from 2020, where the vast majority of Iranian students went out of their way to avoid stepping on the images of the flags of both the US and Israel, which had been painted on the ground to encourage them to dishonor both countries.
And just this week, Reza Pahlavi, the oldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran -- who was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution in 1979 -- became the most senior Iranian figure to make a public visit to Israel.
He announced that the purpose was to "deliver a message of friendship from the Iranian people," adding:I want the people of Israel to know that the Islamic Republic does not represent the Iranian people. The ancient bond between our people can be rekindled for the benefit of both nations...Millions of my compatriots still remember living alongside their Jewish-Iranian friends and neighbors, before the Islamic Revolution tore the fabric of our society apart.
Considering the courage of the Iranian people in opposing the regime, it is not surprising that the government has not been able turn the entire population against the Jews.
It still remains to be seen in the US if Jews will find support among the general population as antisemitic attacks increase.
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