After spending time with Jews in Iran over the last months and hearing about their lives in the Islamic Republic - they’re free to practice in peace and are not particularly discriminated against - this news is predictable:
Iran’s Jews have given the country a loyalty pledge in the face of cash offers aimed at encouraging them to move to Israel, the arch-enemy of its Islamic rulers.
The incentives — ranging from £5,000 a person to £30,000 for families — were offered from a special fund established by wealthy expatriate Jews in an effort to prompt a mass migration to Israel from among Iran’s 25,000-strong Jewish community. The offers were made with Israel’s official blessing and were additional to the usual state packages it provides to Jews emigrating from the diaspora.
However, the Society of Iranian Jews dismissed them as “immature political enticements” and said their national identity was not for sale.
“The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money,” the society said in a statement. “Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran’s Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews.”
The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported that the incentives had been doubled after earlier offers of £2,500 a head failed to attract any Iranian Jews to leave for Israel.
Iran’s sole Jewish MP, Morris Motamed, said the offers were insulting and put the country’s Jews under pressure to prove their loyalty.
“It suggests the Iranian Jew can be encouraged to emigrate by money,” he said. “Iran’s Jews have always been free to emigrate and three-quarters of them did so after the revolution but 70% of those went to America, not Israel.”
If Iranian Jews speak openly of their support for Israel, they would certainly run into troubles with the authorities. But the arrogant presumption of this offer is that every Iranian Jew is desperately unhappy in their country and dying to leave. This is certainly not the impression I received when I was there.
Why would they speak openly to you. Any Iranian Jew would be weary of who they spoke to and it wouldn’t take to much research to be weary of Antony and suspect that he might betray them if they show interest in Israel.
And you know this from experience I take it Keith?
Still stuck on stupid I see.
Andre, the Jews of Iran are looked upon with suspicion by the authorities in Iran. Iranian Jews still languish in Iranian prisons on trumped up charges of spying for the “Zionists”. Not that long ago 15 Iranian Jews were charged with espionage by the paranoid Ayatollahs.
The movement of many Jews (and many others in Iran) are tracked on a daily basis by the secret police. Their right to travel abroad is restricted. Do you really expect them to come out with a statement supporting this initiative (and live)?
Further, you ask Keith if he knows what he writes from experience. I doubt that most of what you and Antony comment on in this blog come from first hand knowledge either.
Oh Carrie,
I suppose you stil believe that Iranin Jews are forced to wear wloth badges indetifying them also?
Languish in Iranian prisons? How many exactly? 15 Jews charged with espionage? How long ago? How many hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese Arabs have dissappeared into Israeli prisons to be tortured and never heard from?
And how do you know that the movement of many Jews are tracked by secret police? The same source that reported about the cloth badges? Iranian Jews themselves have laughed at the preposterous allegations made about their treatment Iran. Yes, the Jews in Iran do have to maintain a low profile, which is regrettable, but they are represented in Iran’s government and obviously enjoys standing in Iran;s society that puts Israel’s apartheid state to shame.
Their travel abroad is restricted? Really? Why then, did 90% of them manage to leave Iran after the 1979 revolution?
With all due respects, you need to get a grip. Ant spent a couple of weeks in Iran talking to such people. Keith, who has frequently demonstrated attempt to refute Ant’s first hand experiences is beyond pathetic, as it amounts to a petulant rebuttal based on an unsubstantiated alternative possibility.
The fact that Iran has the second largest Jewish population in the ME outside Israel has been a cause for major embarrassment to Israel, and so long as this remains the case, the argument that Iran’s leadership is hell bent on killing Jews falls flat on it’s face. This latest stunt is an effort to overcome that paradox.
The bottom line is that if life for these people even remotely reflected your delusional account of events. they would be leaving, especially with tens of thousands being help in front of their to noses.