Iran’s Happy Jews - A Big Problem For Israel

[GHook93]

Hook, you have got to understand that we are dealing with the most criminal nation in history. Iran need to be destroyed. Even Nazi Germany was small potatoes compared to Iran.

Criminal nation is a strong word. Do the fund terrorist undeniable! Do they preach genocide undeniable. However, no way and no where are they even close to the threat that Nazi Germany was. In fact I would say the biggest threat in the world is Pakistan. They are not are enemy, they harbor Al Qaeda and they possess the nuke.

Iran has promised to nuke the US as soon as they can. We can not wait for them to actually attack us. We just need to eliminate them. There is no other logical course of action.

Btw the US and Iran - MAD will come into play. I don't recall them making any promises! Nevertheless I real hope Iran doesn't get the nuke and we need to try to stop it. But preemptively nuking them seems very very very extreme!

Morally? We are talking about a country that has killed thousands of people in just the last few years with financial support for terrorism.We are talking about a Farsi Speaking populace that has killed millions of Jews in the past 1500 years. In addition to the Jews, they have killed millions of Zoroastrians, Bahais, Christians and others simply because they would not submit to Allah the Moon God. We can not forget these mass murders and these mass murderers. It is time to weigh the scales of Justice, and bring just punishment to a guilty people. Their nation needs to be dismembered.

I respectfully disagree.

 

[GHook93]

If our allies turn on us for defending ourselves, then they were not our allies.

We always lead the way, but we wouldn't follow Britian if they preemptively nuke a country!

I would have no problem with India totally destroying Pakistan. In fact, I would strongly applaud their vital and necessary action.

Both India and Pakistan would hit each other hard! India would take show damages, but hell they have 1.1 billion what is a 100 million!

The only way to deal with Radical Islam is to kill it. We need to turn our state militias loose in the United States to kill all the Radical Islamic leadership and near leadership in this country. I have spoken to several of the state militias about the urgent need to deal with this serious and growing problem. Let's get 'er done.

Its not that easy.

 

[Neubarth]

What do you mean, "It's not that easy."?

All you gotta do is put the Islamics in a Big Meeting hall. Start playing militant Islamic Music. Those Islamics that start Goose Stepping while marching around in circles and doing the Seig Heil salute to each other need to be immediately separated and permanently removed from society.

That is a very easy thing to do. Remove them as they present themselves.

 

[Neubarth]

I respectfully disagree.

You can disagree all you want, but if you do some research you will find that Iran is funding almost all of the Radical Islamic bombings all over the globe. Spain, France, Germany, England, Argentina, and here. The money and the motive comes from Iran. Their history of killing Jews is long established and has gone on for fifteen centuries. The bombings in Argentina were directed at Jews, simply because they are Jews and nothing more.

 

[Shogun]

HA!

says the dumbfuck who, merely an hour earlier, called for the destruction of a muslim holy sight!


It's your kind of stupid that makes dogma junkies such an easy target.

 

[Neubarth]

HA!

says the dumbfuck who, merely an hour earlier, called for the destruction of a muslim holy sight!


It's your kind of stupid that makes dogma junkies such an easy target.

Shitgun, you mean that you don't think that all the Muslims should be evicted as trespassers. Boy is God going to punish you! He is probably going to pour boiling water over you and have your meat pulled apart by metal hooks like it says in the Quran. Boy, that will teach you.

 

[Shogun]

you hold your breath until that happens, dude. for real, since you have faith that this is what will happen then surely, SURELY you have enough faith in your loward to believe that he will fill your lungs with oxygen until he finally does come down and deal with the likes of me.


ok.. start... NOW.

 

[Neubarth]

you hold your breath until that happens, dude. for real, since you have faith that this is what will happen then surely, SURELY you have enough faith in your loward to believe that he will fill your lungs with oxygen until he finally does come down and deal with the likes of me.


ok.. start... NOW.

Shitgun, shitgun, shitgun. Son, what are we going to do with you and your drunken nonsense? Sober up a little before you post in the future.

I suppose that life is bad enough for you being that you are a pencil necked geek, but being a drunk pencil necked geek must really be hard on your psyche. (Or is that "and you're Psycho?/??/???//????///?????)"

 

[surada]

This one's already been done and the bullshit debunked. You aren't "the" Jew-hater ... you're just "another" Jew-hater.

UK considering recognising Palestine state, Lord Cameron says

Britain could recognise Palestine state as part of peace negotiations, foreign secretary suggests.

www.bbc.com

 

[Zebra]

What, no comment from the Zionists on the forum?

maybe there are no Zionists here?

 

[TheParser]

I just realized that this thread dates from 2008!!!

Do 25,000 Jewish people still live in Iran?

Thank you.

 

[irosie91]

I just realized that this thread dates from 2008!!!

Do 25,000 Jewish people still live in Iran?

Thank you.

?? not sure how many---the remnant of several hundred thousand is an aging group-----it was the late 1960s and early 1970s when they were sending
their kids out----something like the KINDER TRANSPORT that saved some Jewish children from the Nazis in the mid thirties. Those who leave---leave all they own----like the German jews, some they stayed on to attempt to preserve what they built in Iran over THOUSANDS OF YEARS----beginning long before the rapist dog of Mecca was born. The future of the jewish culture of Iran is---very uncertain-----their community MORE THAN MEETS the criteria for being
victims of GENOCIDE

 

[surada]

I just realized that this thread dates from 2008!!!

Do 25,000 Jewish people still live in Iran?

Thank you.

Exodus of Iranian Jews - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Many of the formerly 80,000-strong Iranian Jewish community had left Iran by 1978. Subsequently, more than 80% of the remaining Iranian Jews fled or migrated from the country between 1979 and 2006.A small Jewish community of almost 10,000 still resides in Iran as a protected minority.

 

[Ringo]

Iran completes construction of railroad from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf
The Caspian will become a busy trade route and Russian Caspian ports will flourish.
Russia gains direct and short access to the Indian Ocean and Iran becomes a powerful lucrative trade route.

 

[surada]

If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran?


By Jonathan Cook

Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the new Hitler. Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months as they and their American allies try to persuade the doubters in Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential. And if the latest media reports are to be trusted, it looks like they may again be winning the battle for hearts and minds: Vice President Dick Cheney is said to be diverting the White House back on track to launch a military strike.



Earlier this year Binyamin Netanyahu, Israels opposition leader and the man who appears to be styling himself scaremonger-in-chief, told us: Its 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs. Of Ahmadinejad, he said: He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”



A few weeks ago, as Israels military intelligence claimed as it has been doing regularly since the early 1990s that Iran is only a year or so away from the point of no return on developing a nuclear warhead. Netanyahu was at it again. Iran could be the first undeterrable nuclear power, he warned, adding: This is a Jewish problem like Hitler was a Jewish problem. The future of the Jewish people depends on the future of Israel.”


But Netanyahu has been far from alone in making extravagant claims about a looming genocide from Iran. Israels new president, Shimon peres, has compared an Iranian nuclear bomb to a flying concentration camp. And the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told a German newspaper last year: [Ahmadinejad] speaks as Hitler did in his time of the extermination of the entire Jewish nation.”



There is an interesting problem with selling Iran as Nazi Germany. 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 Israels dire forecasts the ideological scaffolding being erected, presumably, to justify an attack on Iran? Helpfully, as George 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 Israels 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 her 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. Ahmadinejads office recently made a donation to a Jewish hospital in Tehran.



As Ciamak Moresadegh, an Iranian Jewish leader, observed: If you think Judaism and Zionism are one, it is like thinking Islam and the Taliban are the same, and they are not.

Irans leaders denounce Zionism, which they blame for fueling discrimination against the Palestinians, but they have also repeatedly avowed that they have no problem with Jews, Judaism or even the state of Israel. Ahmadinejad, caricatured as a merchant of genocide, has in fact called for regime change and then only in the sense that he believes a referendum should be held of all inhabitants of Israel and the occupied territories, including refugees from war, on the nature of the government.



Despite the absence of any threat to Irans Jews, the Israeli media recently reported that the Israeli government has been trying to find new ways to entice Iranian Jews to Israel. The Maariv newspaper pointed out that previous schemes had found few takers. There was, noted the report, a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave. According to the New York-based Forward newspaper, a campaign to convince Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel caused only 152 out of these 25,000 Jews to leave Iran between October 2005 and September 2006, and most of them were said to have emigrated for economic reasons, not political ones.



To step up these efforts and presumably to avoid the embarrassing incongruence of claiming an imminent second Holocaust while thousands of Jews live happily in Tehran Israel is now backing a move by Jewish donors to guarantee every Iranian Jewish family $60,000 to settle in Israel, in addition to a host of existing financial incentives that are offered to Jewish immigrants, including loans and cheap mortgages.



The announcement was met with scorn by the Society of Iranian Jews, which issued a statement that their national identity was not for sale. The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Irans 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.”



However, this financial gesture may not only be unwelcome but self-fulfilling too, if past experience is the yardstick. Israel introduced a similar scheme a few years ago, when Argentinas economy plunged into deep recession, broadcasting an offer of $20,000 to every Jew who settled in Israel. Months later the Israeli media reported a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Argentina, only adding to the pressure on Jews there to leave. Of course, there was no mention of a possible causal connection between the attacks and Israels proffered bribes to Jews to abandon their homeland as other Argentinians sank into poverty.



But if financial enticements and a possible popular backlash fail to move Iranian Jews, there is good reason to fear that Israel may resort to other, more dubious ways of encouraging them to emigrate. That is certainly a path Israel has chosen before with other communities of Arab Jews, whom it has regarded either as a pool of potential spies and agents provocateurs to be used when needed or as human dust, in the words of Israels first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, to be recruited to Israels demographic battle against the Palestinians.



In Operation Susannah of 1954, for example, Israel recklessly recruited a group of Egyptian Jews to stage a series of explosions in Egypt in a bid to discourage Britain from withdrawing from the Suez Canal zone. When the plot came to light, it naturally cast a shadow of disloyalty over Egypts wider Jewish community. Following Israels invasion and occupation of Sinai two years later, the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled some 25,000 Egyptian Jews and, after others were imprisoned on suspicion of spying, the rest soon left.



Even more notoriously, Israel went to greater lengths to ensure the exit of the Arab worlds largest Jewish population, in Iraq. In 1950 a series of bombs targeted on Jews in Baghdad forced a rapid exodus of some 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel, convinced that Arab extremists were behind the attacks. Only later did it emerge that the bombs had been planted by members of the Zionist underground, supported by the Israeli government.



Now, Irans Jews may find themselves treated in much the same manner as simple human fodder. Stories are growing of Israel exploiting the free movement between Iran and Israel enjoyed by Iranian Jews and their Israeli relatives to carry out spying operations on Irans nuclear program. Such reports have come from sources such as the American journalist Seymour Hersh, citing U.S. government officials.



The fallout from such actions is not difficult to predict. Besieged by the U.S. and the international community, Tehran is cracking down on dissent and minority groups, fearful that its own grip on power is shaky and that the well-publicized subversion being carried out by U.S. and Israeli agents is likely only to be stepped up. So far most officials in Tehran have been careful to avoid suggesting that Irans Jews have double loyalties, as has the local Jewish community itself, both of them aware of Israels interests in provoking such a confrontation. But as the strains increase, and Israels need to prove Tehrans genocidal intent grows ever stronger, that policy may end up being forfeited and with it the future of Irans Jews.



More important than the welfare of Iranian Jewish families, it seems, is the value of Iranian Jews as a propaganda tool in Israels battle to persuade the world that coexistence with the Muslim world is impossible. For those who want to engineer a clash of civilizations, the 3,000-year-old Jewish legacy in Iran is not something to be treasured, only another obstacle to war.




Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan press. His website is Jonathan Cook's News Archive - Israel Palestine

www,eldib.wordpress.com/2007/.../irans-happy-jews-a-big-problem-for-israel

In Operation Susannah of 1954, for example, Israel recklessly recruited a group of Egyptian Jews to stage a series of explosions in Egypt in a bid to discourage Britain from withdrawing from the Suez Canal zone. When the plot came to light, it naturally cast a shadow of disloyalty over Egypts wider Jewish community. Following Israels invasion and occupation of Sinai two years later, the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled some 25,000 Egyptian Jews and, after others were imprisoned on....

 

[Toro]

If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran?


By Jonathan Cook

Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the new Hitler. Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months as they and their American allies try to persuade the doubters in Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential. And if the latest media reports are to be trusted, it looks like they may again be winning the battle for hearts and minds: Vice President Dick Cheney is said to be diverting the White House back on track to launch a military strike.



Earlier this year Binyamin Netanyahu, Israels opposition leader and the man who appears to be styling himself scaremonger-in-chief, told us: Its 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs. Of Ahmadinejad, he said: He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”



A few weeks ago, as Israels military intelligence claimed as it has been doing regularly since the early 1990s that Iran is only a year or so away from the point of no return on developing a nuclear warhead. Netanyahu was at it again. Iran could be the first undeterrable nuclear power, he warned, adding: This is a Jewish problem like Hitler was a Jewish problem. The future of the Jewish people depends on the future of Israel.”


But Netanyahu has been far from alone in making extravagant claims about a looming genocide from Iran. Israels new president, Shimon peres, has compared an Iranian nuclear bomb to a flying concentration camp. And the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told a German newspaper last year: [Ahmadinejad] speaks as Hitler did in his time of the extermination of the entire Jewish nation.”



There is an interesting problem with selling Iran as Nazi Germany. 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 Israels dire forecasts the ideological scaffolding being erected, presumably, to justify an attack on Iran? Helpfully, as George 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 Israels 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 her 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. Ahmadinejads office recently made a donation to a Jewish hospital in Tehran.



As Ciamak Moresadegh, an Iranian Jewish leader, observed: If you think Judaism and Zionism are one, it is like thinking Islam and the Taliban are the same, and they are not.

Irans leaders denounce Zionism, which they blame for fueling discrimination against the Palestinians, but they have also repeatedly avowed that they have no problem with Jews, Judaism or even the state of Israel. Ahmadinejad, caricatured as a merchant of genocide, has in fact called for regime change and then only in the sense that he believes a referendum should be held of all inhabitants of Israel and the occupied territories, including refugees from war, on the nature of the government.



Despite the absence of any threat to Irans Jews, the Israeli media recently reported that the Israeli government has been trying to find new ways to entice Iranian Jews to Israel. The Maariv newspaper pointed out that previous schemes had found few takers. There was, noted the report, a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave. According to the New York-based Forward newspaper, a campaign to convince Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel caused only 152 out of these 25,000 Jews to leave Iran between October 2005 and September 2006, and most of them were said to have emigrated for economic reasons, not political ones.



To step up these efforts and presumably to avoid the embarrassing incongruence of claiming an imminent second Holocaust while thousands of Jews live happily in Tehran Israel is now backing a move by Jewish donors to guarantee every Iranian Jewish family $60,000 to settle in Israel, in addition to a host of existing financial incentives that are offered to Jewish immigrants, including loans and cheap mortgages.



The announcement was met with scorn by the Society of Iranian Jews, which issued a statement that their national identity was not for sale. The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Irans 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.”



However, this financial gesture may not only be unwelcome but self-fulfilling too, if past experience is the yardstick. Israel introduced a similar scheme a few years ago, when Argentinas economy plunged into deep recession, broadcasting an offer of $20,000 to every Jew who settled in Israel. Months later the Israeli media reported a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Argentina, only adding to the pressure on Jews there to leave. Of course, there was no mention of a possible causal connection between the attacks and Israels proffered bribes to Jews to abandon their homeland as other Argentinians sank into poverty.



But if financial enticements and a possible popular backlash fail to move Iranian Jews, there is good reason to fear that Israel may resort to other, more dubious ways of encouraging them to emigrate. That is certainly a path Israel has chosen before with other communities of Arab Jews, whom it has regarded either as a pool of potential spies and agents provocateurs to be used when needed or as human dust, in the words of Israels first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, to be recruited to Israels demographic battle against the Palestinians.



In Operation Susannah of 1954, for example, Israel recklessly recruited a group of Egyptian Jews to stage a series of explosions in Egypt in a bid to discourage Britain from withdrawing from the Suez Canal zone. When the plot came to light, it naturally cast a shadow of disloyalty over Egypts wider Jewish community. Following Israels invasion and occupation of Sinai two years later, the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled some 25,000 Egyptian Jews and, after others were imprisoned on suspicion of spying, the rest soon left.



Even more notoriously, Israel went to greater lengths to ensure the exit of the Arab worlds largest Jewish population, in Iraq. In 1950 a series of bombs targeted on Jews in Baghdad forced a rapid exodus of some 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel, convinced that Arab extremists were behind the attacks. Only later did it emerge that the bombs had been planted by members of the Zionist underground, supported by the Israeli government.



Now, Irans Jews may find themselves treated in much the same manner as simple human fodder. Stories are growing of Israel exploiting the free movement between Iran and Israel enjoyed by Iranian Jews and their Israeli relatives to carry out spying operations on Irans nuclear program. Such reports have come from sources such as the American journalist Seymour Hersh, citing U.S. government officials.



The fallout from such actions is not difficult to predict. Besieged by the U.S. and the international community, Tehran is cracking down on dissent and minority groups, fearful that its own grip on power is shaky and that the well-publicized subversion being carried out by U.S. and Israeli agents is likely only to be stepped up. So far most officials in Tehran have been careful to avoid suggesting that Irans Jews have double loyalties, as has the local Jewish community itself, both of them aware of Israels interests in provoking such a confrontation. But as the strains increase, and Israels need to prove Tehrans genocidal intent grows ever stronger, that policy may end up being forfeited and with it the future of Irans Jews.



More important than the welfare of Iranian Jewish families, it seems, is the value of Iranian Jews as a propaganda tool in Israels battle to persuade the world that coexistence with the Muslim world is impossible. For those who want to engineer a clash of civilizations, the 3,000-year-old Jewish legacy in Iran is not something to be treasured, only another obstacle to war.




Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan press. His website is Jonathan Cook's News Archive - Israel Palestine

www,eldib.wordpress.com/2007/.../irans-happy-jews-a-big-problem-for-israel

tl;dr

25,000?

Down from what, 800,000?

 

[irosie91]

tl;dr

25,000?

Down from what, 800,000?

 

[irosie91]

the number of jews left in Iran is more like 8000. After an over 2500 year history in that land the decimation of the population is far greater than meets the definition of genocide. Jews are not the only persecuted and decimated minority----Zoroastrians and Christians and Ethnic arabs and Sunni muslims have been significantly persecuted. People who flee the filth leave ALL they own----they run penniless

In Operation Susannah of 1954, for example, Israel recklessly recruited a group of Egyptian Jews to stage a series of explosions in Egypt in a bid to discourage Britain from withdrawing from the Suez Canal zone. When the plot came to light, it naturally cast a shadow of disloyalty over Egypts wider Jewish community. Following Israels invasion and occupation of Sinai two years later, the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled some 25,000 Egyptian Jews and, after others were imprisoned on....

Note the propagandist vocabulary ^^^. "series of explosions" refers to harmless smoke bombs in a library
at nite---entirely devoid of people. "naturally cast a shadow
of disloyalty" SHEEEEESH --great excuse----at the very least--based on the islamic filth of October 7 the entire muslim population should either be deported or shot. For REAL information---talk to a SUNNI MUSLIM who has fled
Iran. or a zoroastrian. As to the utter bullshit re: Iraqi jews---the filth presented in THAT "citation" is pure fantasy----Talk to a real Iraqi jew or pay attention to Itamar ben Gvir. Welcome to the world of Islamo,Episco-shit

 

[Ropey]

If Ahmadinejad really is Hitler, why are some 25,000 Jews living peacefully in Iran?


By Jonathan Cook

Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the new Hitler. Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months as they and their American allies try to persuade the doubters in Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential. And if the latest media reports are to be trusted, it looks like they may again be winning the battle for hearts and minds: Vice President Dick Cheney is said to be diverting the White House back on track to launch a military strike.



Earlier this year Binyamin Netanyahu, Israels opposition leader and the man who appears to be styling himself scaremonger-in-chief, told us: Its 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs. Of Ahmadinejad, he said: He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”



A few weeks ago, as Israels military intelligence claimed as it has been doing regularly since the early 1990s that Iran is only a year or so away from the point of no return on developing a nuclear warhead. Netanyahu was at it again. Iran could be the first undeterrable nuclear power, he warned, adding: This is a Jewish problem like Hitler was a Jewish problem. The future of the Jewish people depends on the future of Israel.”


But Netanyahu has been far from alone in making extravagant claims about a looming genocide from Iran. Israels new president, Shimon peres, has compared an Iranian nuclear bomb to a flying concentration camp. And the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told a German newspaper last year: [Ahmadinejad] speaks as Hitler did in his time of the extermination of the entire Jewish nation.”



There is an interesting problem with selling Iran as Nazi Germany. 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 Israels dire forecasts the ideological scaffolding being erected, presumably, to justify an attack on Iran? Helpfully, as George 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 Israels 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 her 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. Ahmadinejads office recently made a donation to a Jewish hospital in Tehran.



As Ciamak Moresadegh, an Iranian Jewish leader, observed: If you think Judaism and Zionism are one, it is like thinking Islam and the Taliban are the same, and they are not.

Irans leaders denounce Zionism, which they blame for fueling discrimination against the Palestinians, but they have also repeatedly avowed that they have no problem with Jews, Judaism or even the state of Israel. Ahmadinejad, caricatured as a merchant of genocide, has in fact called for regime change and then only in the sense that he believes a referendum should be held of all inhabitants of Israel and the occupied territories, including refugees from war, on the nature of the government.



Despite the absence of any threat to Irans Jews, the Israeli media recently reported that the Israeli government has been trying to find new ways to entice Iranian Jews to Israel. The Maariv newspaper pointed out that previous schemes had found few takers. There was, noted the report, a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave. According to the New York-based Forward newspaper, a campaign to convince Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel caused only 152 out of these 25,000 Jews to leave Iran between October 2005 and September 2006, and most of them were said to have emigrated for economic reasons, not political ones.



To step up these efforts and presumably to avoid the embarrassing incongruence of claiming an imminent second Holocaust while thousands of Jews live happily in Tehran Israel is now backing a move by Jewish donors to guarantee every Iranian Jewish family $60,000 to settle in Israel, in addition to a host of existing financial incentives that are offered to Jewish immigrants, including loans and cheap mortgages.



The announcement was met with scorn by the Society of Iranian Jews, which issued a statement that their national identity was not for sale. The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradeable for any amount of money. Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Irans 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.”



However, this financial gesture may not only be unwelcome but self-fulfilling too, if past experience is the yardstick. Israel introduced a similar scheme a few years ago, when Argentinas economy plunged into deep recession, broadcasting an offer of $20,000 to every Jew who settled in Israel. Months later the Israeli media reported a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Argentina, only adding to the pressure on Jews there to leave. Of course, there was no mention of a possible causal connection between the attacks and Israels proffered bribes to Jews to abandon their homeland as other Argentinians sank into poverty.



But if financial enticements and a possible popular backlash fail to move Iranian Jews, there is good reason to fear that Israel may resort to other, more dubious ways of encouraging them to emigrate. That is certainly a path Israel has chosen before with other communities of Arab Jews, whom it has regarded either as a pool of potential spies and agents provocateurs to be used when needed or as human dust, in the words of Israels first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, to be recruited to Israels demographic battle against the Palestinians.



In Operation Susannah of 1954, for example, Israel recklessly recruited a group of Egyptian Jews to stage a series of explosions in Egypt in a bid to discourage Britain from withdrawing from the Suez Canal zone. When the plot came to light, it naturally cast a shadow of disloyalty over Egypts wider Jewish community. Following Israels invasion and occupation of Sinai two years later, the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser expelled some 25,000 Egyptian Jews and, after others were imprisoned on suspicion of spying, the rest soon left.



Even more notoriously, Israel went to greater lengths to ensure the exit of the Arab worlds largest Jewish population, in Iraq. In 1950 a series of bombs targeted on Jews in Baghdad forced a rapid exodus of some 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel, convinced that Arab extremists were behind the attacks. Only later did it emerge that the bombs had been planted by members of the Zionist underground, supported by the Israeli government.



Now, Irans Jews may find themselves treated in much the same manner as simple human fodder. Stories are growing of Israel exploiting the free movement between Iran and Israel enjoyed by Iranian Jews and their Israeli relatives to carry out spying operations on Irans nuclear program. Such reports have come from sources such as the American journalist Seymour Hersh, citing U.S. government officials.



The fallout from such actions is not difficult to predict. Besieged by the U.S. and the international community, Tehran is cracking down on dissent and minority groups, fearful that its own grip on power is shaky and that the well-publicized subversion being carried out by U.S. and Israeli agents is likely only to be stepped up. So far most officials in Tehran have been careful to avoid suggesting that Irans Jews have double loyalties, as has the local Jewish community itself, both of them aware of Israels interests in provoking such a confrontation. But as the strains increase, and Israels need to prove Tehrans genocidal intent grows ever stronger, that policy may end up being forfeited and with it the future of Irans Jews.



More important than the welfare of Iranian Jewish families, it seems, is the value of Iranian Jews as a propaganda tool in Israels battle to persuade the world that coexistence with the Muslim world is impossible. For those who want to engineer a clash of civilizations, the 3,000-year-old Jewish legacy in Iran is not something to be treasured, only another obstacle to war.




Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan press. His website is Jonathan Cook's News Archive - Israel Palestine

www,eldib.wordpress.com/2007/.../irans-happy-jews-a-big-problem-for-israel

Iran next?

 

[peacefan]

He [Ahmedinijad while quoting late Kohmeini] was not threatening to exterminate Jews or even Israel. He was comparing Israels 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 her supporters have exploited it for their own crude propaganda purposes.



in other words, we are to accept Iranians and Arabs fighting to 'free Palestine' for eternity, until their stated goals are achieved?
unacceptable. seems regime change is the only viable option. i wonder if it can be done primarily with drone power?
of course, after their eventual surrender, the Iranians who supported their government have to be de-programmed.