Iran Jews in Israel Prefer Ahmadinejad

Alas, Mr. Mousavi can't get any break. This just in from the Jerusalem Post:

Jul 6, 2009 23:58 | Updated Jul 7, 2009 2:34
Iran Jews in Israel prefer Ahmadinejad
By CARRIE SHEFFIELD

Despite unrest and violence following last month's presidential elections in Iran, some Jewish Iranians living in Israel and abroad say life in the Islamic republic is better under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than it would be under challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi.

At a conference of Iranian Jews in Jerusalem on Monday, leaders of the Mashadi Jewish community said that despite Ahmadinejad's blustery rhetoric against Israel, Iran is a safe place for Jews to practice their religion.

"Ahmadinejad speaks badly about Jews, but he is preferable to Mousavi," said Shlomo Zabihi, a Mashadi rabbi. The current government is relatively stable and provides a safe environment for Jews, he said.

Monday's event marked the first meeting of the Global Mashadi Jewish Federation, an umbrella organization of community and religious groups preserving the historical and cultural identity of Jews from Mashad, Iran's second largest city, with a population of about 2.5 million.

During the 1979 Islamic Revolution, many Mashadi Jews fled to the United States, primarily New York City - where some 6,000 Jews with ties to Mashad now live. There are almost no Jews in Mashad today, though an estimated 25,000 still live in Iran, concentrated in Teheran.

"They've found it very safe and pleasant, no problems," said Bahman Kamali, founder of the federation. "Actually, the regime during [the time of reformist president Mohammad] Khatami and the regime now have been very good with Jewish people. There has not been any problem."

Kamali said Ahmadinejad's calls for the destruction of Israel were not the same as condemnation or encouragement of violence against Jews in the Diaspora.

"There's a distinction between the two because Iranians, they respect the religions that have books, Christianity, Judaism," Kamali said. "They respect people freely going to the synagogues and praying there without any problems."

He doesn't think the Jewish community in Iran will face persecution stemming from political unrest following the disputed elections.

"I'm not concerned about that," said Kamali, who downplayed the political involvement of his group. "The purpose of this conference is not political. It's only our heritage, that we are proud of to be from Mashad, Iran, and we would like to preserve that."

De Winter: Geert Wilders Is a Bigot

De Winter: Geert Wilders Is a Bigot
by Ellen de Visser

AMSTERDAM - TV Producer Harry de Winter, President of the board of the foundation Een Ander Joods Geluid [Another Jewish Voice], today placed a remarkable advertisement on the front page of the newspaper Volkskrant.  De Winter puts Geert Wilders's criticism of Muslims in the same category as anti-Semitism.

See below the de Winter ad (click to enlarge)

"If Wilders had said the same thing about Jews (and the Old Testament) as he does about Muslims (and the Koran), he would have been ostracized a long time ago and accused of anti-Semitism."

What is your message?

"We Jews know better than anyone else what this sort of discrimination can lead to.  Wilders claims that the Muslims must be dealt with and that the Koran is a fascist book.  That's how the persecution of Jews once started, by generalization.  Therefore, it is time for a sharper criticism from the Jewish community.  If you say the same thing about the Jews or Israel, you are considered an anti-Semite and ostracized.  It is good that this feeling of justice is so strong, but, for me, there is no difference between the yarmulke and the headscarf."

What impact does this generalization have, in your view?

"When I talk with Muslims, I see that they are hardly preoccupied with the question of faith, but because of Wilders they feel compelled to take a position.  Either they live in fear or they harden and radicalize.  Last week it became too much for me.  Muslims are pushed to the brink, and that is dangerous.  The Muslim community itself, moreover, must also publicly speak out against terrorism."

What do you hope to achieve?

"I hope that we will get support from the whole Jewish community.  At least that's how it should be.  Because we can recognize this problem like no one else."

Harry de Winter Speaks

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Demo against Racism, 22 March 2008, Amsterdam

5,000 people, despite the rainy weather, participated in the demonstration.  The protest focused, among other issues, on the discriminatory views of the "Party for Freedom" (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV). Photo by Nederland Bekent Kleur

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The original interview in Dutch was published in Volkskrant on 17 March 2008.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi.  The Muslim community in the Netherlands are heartened by Harry de Winter and other progressive Jews' solidarity: Michel Hoebink, "Dutch Muslims Surprised by Anti-Wilders Ad," Radio Netherlands, 17 March 2008.

La última vocación del Cristianismo

La última vocación del Cristianismo

Por Yoshie Furuhashi
Traducción Julio Fernández Baraibar

El mensaje para la Navidad de 2007 de Michel Sabbah, el Patriarca Latino y Arzobispo de Jerusalem, es muy convincente: critica agudamente la ocupación mientras aconseja contra "hablar de crear 'estados religiosos' en la Palestina histórica. La última vocación del cristianismo puede ser muy bien convertirse en el mediador entre judíos y musulmanes en el Medio Oriente.

Más aún, en el mensaje Sabbah cita a Jeremías 6:14, quizás la más apropiada respuesta a Anápolis:

Ellos curan a la ligera
el quebranto de mi pueblo,
diciendo: "¡Paz, paz!",
pero no hay paz.

The Last Vocation of Christianity

The 2007 Christmas message of Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch and Archbishop of Jerusalem, is very cogent: it sharply criticizes the occupation while counseling against "talk about creating 'religious' States" in historic Palestine. The last vocation of Christianity may very well be to be the mediator between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East.

Moreover, in the message Sabbah cites Jeremiah 6:14, perhaps the most fitting rejoinder to Annapolis:

They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
'Peace, peace,' they say,
when there is no peace.

Update

Yoshie Furuhashi, "La última vocación del Cristianismo," Traducción Julio Fernández Baraibar, Critical Montages, 25 December 2007.

An All-American Muslim Story

Here's an All-American Muslim story. A group of Christians yell "Merry Christmas" to everyone on subway. In return, two young Jewish couples wish them a "Happy Chanukah." The Christians, enraged by the existence of religious diversity, attack the Jews:

One of the young men, who at one point displayed a tattoo of Jesus, shouted "Happy Chanukah?! That's when the Jews killed Jesus," said [attack victim Walter] Adler, who also heard shouts of "dirty Jews," "you f---ing Jews" and other slurs. (Doug Chandler, "Victims of Subway Assault Push for Hate-Crime Charges," Jewish Week, 12 December 2007)

(The Christian thugs are not only bigoted but also chronologically challenged.)

Only a young Muslim immigrant intervenes to protect the Jews from the Christians -- no one else on the train does. The Christians beat up the Muslim guy, though his intervention allows one of the Jewish victims to pull the emergency brake and call the police.

The Muslim hero, however, is unable to "go to the doctor because he's too busy working two waiter jobs and doesn't have the money for medical care" (Melissa Grace, "Muslim Hero Breaks Up Train Beating," New York Daily News, 12 December 2007) -- that's what makes this not just any old Muslim story but an All-American Muslim story.

What's Good about Islam?

What's behind David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness" week? A short supply of pinkos in the USA, observes Alexander Cockburn: "The left in America is really in very poor shape: near zero Commies, and really only a sprinkling of radical black profs, militant Lesbians and kindred antinomians to beat up on" ("So Much for Islamo-Fascism Awareness," CounterPunch, 27-28 October 2007). Right he is.

Leftists in the USA have built neither a mass communist party nor a mass social democratic party. The Red Purge of the fifties was so successful that few Reds remain in trade unions. There are only two institutions that leftists have managed to "capture" through a "long march" in the USA: academia and mainline Protestantism.¹ The former has been a target of Horowitz for a long time, as its conquest was never complete, its summit (boards of trustees and top administration) firmly in the enemy camp. It's only a matter of time before he turns to the latter.

Cockburn also contends in the aforementioned article: "Coalitions have formed to combat Horowitz's version of Awareness with superior Progressive Awareness about what is good or not so good about Islam" (27-28 October 2007). This I doubt. Rare are secular leftists who, though quick to point out what's "not so good" about Islam, wouldn't stumble if asked to explain what's "good" about it.

Average secular leftists are, in reality, as uncomfortable about encounters with Muslims as rightists. They, unlike rightists, tolerate Islam and even defend Muslims when they become victims of right-wing Islamophobia, but that is as far as they are willing to go. They still think it is a "tragedy" that Muslims, especially Muslim women, adhere to their faith, assuming it to be inferior to their own secular ideology: "Liberal-Leftist Islamophobia Watch (Part I)," Ihsan, 18 September 2007; and "Left-Liberal Islamophobia Watch (Part II)," Ihsan, 23 October 2007.² That won't do. We expect the religious to recognize that the irreligious are morally equal to them. So would they in turn. Unless and until secular leftists realize that Islam is as good a theology of liberation as Christianity and historical materialism, and vice versa, solidarity won't be forever.

1 Left-wing Jews might have "captured" at least Reform Judaism if not other branches had they remained within their faith community, but they have tended to reject their faith altogether. Indeed, Zionists' hegemony of major institutions, secular or religious, that claim to represent Jews is so complete that some Jewish leftists, exasperated, would even consider resigning from "the Jewish people":

Did you ever wonder what your last thought would be just before you died or believed you might die? Well, I did, and a few years ago in the waning moments before going under the knife for a life threatening operation I got my answer. As the nurses wheeled me into the operating room, what burst upon my consciousness was not, as might be expected, the fear of dying but a terrible angst at the idea of dying a Jew. I was appalled to finish my life with my umbilical cord still tied to a people with whom I can no longer identify. That this should be my "last" thought greatly surprised me at the time, and it still does.

What did it mean . . . and why is it so hard to resign from a people? (Bertell Ollman, "Letter of Resignation from the Jewish People," Dialectical Marxism)

2 For secular leftists' criticisms of Islamophobia on the Left, see, for instance, Deepa Kumar, "Danish Cartoons: Racism Has No Place on the Left," MRZine, 21 February 2006; Deepa Kumar, "Fighting Islamophobia: A Response to Critics," MRZine, 3 April 2006; Richard Fidler, "Ontario's 'Sharia Law' Controversy: How Muslims Were Hung Out to Dry," MRZine 27 May 2006; Rami El-Amine, "Anti-Arab Racism, Islam, and the Left," MRZine, 3 September 2006;

La inversión ideológica de los Nuevos Ateos

La inversión ideológica de los Nuevos Ateos

Por Yoshie Furuhashi
Traducción de Julio Fernández Baraibar

Richard Dawkins, uno de los llamados Nuevos Ateos, es mencionado en el Guardian con la siguiente cita:

"Cuando uno piensa qué éxito fantástico ha tenido el lobby judío, pese a que, de hecho, son menos numerosos -- los judíos religiosos, por lo menos -- que los ateos y [así y todo] monopolizan, en más o en menos, la política exterior norteamericana mucho más de lo que mucha gente ve. De manera que si los ateos pudieran alcanzar una pequeña fracción de esa influencia, el mundo sería un mejor lugar". (Ewen MacAskill, "Atheists Arise: Dawkins Spreads the A-word among America's Unbelievers," 1 October 2007)

El comentario de Dawkins sobre los judíos y los ateos ilustra la cuestión de los Nuevos Ateos

Uno: aparte de no ser teístas, los ateos entre sí tienen muy poco en común. Los ateos pueden ser del ala izquierda, del ala derecha o del ala de pollo. Además, en muchas sociedades, incluyendo los EE.UU., los ateos tienden a menudo a ser hallados en los rangos sociales más altos y no en la mitad más pobre de la sociedad. Esto significa que el ateísmo, a pesar de la expresión de deseos de Dawkins, es un cimiento particularmente pobre para una política clasista de izquierda.

Dos: una vez que uno empieza a ver las cosas principalmente a través de una perspectiva que divide el mundo entre la religión y la irreligión y elogia políticamente la última en contra de la primera, uno comienza a imaginar, por ejemplo, que el Lobby de Israel o el lobby judío es un lobby religioso. La columna subjetiva del sionismo, sin embargo, no es la religion, excepto para los sionistas cristianos, y, objetivamente, no es el sionismo el que mueve al imperio multinacional dirigido por los EE.UU. sino que es el imperio que usa al sionismo -- así como explota otros tipos de políticas identitarias, así sean basadas en la raza, el género, sexualidad, la etnicidad, la ocupación o lo que sea -- y lo descartará si le deja de ser útil. En otras palabras, la ideología de los Nuevos Ateos, así como la religión que critican, invierte el mundo real. Una ilusión profana no es un buen sustituto de una ilusión sagrada.

New Atheists' Ideological Inversion

Richard Dawkins, one of the so-caled New Atheists, is quoted as saying in the Guardian:

"When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told -- religious Jews anyway -- than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place." (Ewen MacAskill, "Atheists Arise: Dawkins Spreads the A-word among America's Unbelievers," 1 October 2007)

Dawkins' remark on Jews and atheists illustrates the problem of the New Atheists.

One, aside from not being theists, atheists have little else in common with one another. Atheists can be left-wing, right-wing, or chicken-wing. Moreover, in many societies, including the USA, atheists tend to be more often found among the ranks of the better off than among the poorer half of society. That means that atheism, despite Dawkins' wishful thinking, is a particularly poor foundation for left-wing class politics.

Two, once you begin to see things mainly through the perspective that divides the world between the religious and the irreligious and pits the latter politically against the former, you begin to imagine, for instance, that the Israel lobby = the Jewish lobby = a religious lobby. The subjective pillar of Zionism, however, is not religion except for Christian Zionists, and, objectively, it is not Zionism that moves the US-led multinational empire but the empire that makes use of Zionism -- just as it exploits any other kind of identity politics, whether it is based on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, occupation, or whatever -- and will discard it if it ceases to be useful to it. In other words, the New Atheists' ideology, just like religion that they criticize, inverts the real world. A profane illusion is no substitute for a sacred one.

Update

Read it in Spanish, translation courtesy of Julio Fernández Baraibar: "La inversión ideológica de los Nuevos Ateos," Critical Montages, 15 October 2007.

Dilbert on Ahmadinejad

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, satirizes the American Right's attitude toward the President of Iran:

I was happy to hear that NYC didn't allow Iranian President Ahmadinejad to place a wreath at the WTC site. And I was happy that Columbia University is rescinding the offer to let him speak. If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom of speech.

I hate Ahmadinejad for all the same reasons you do. For one thing, he said he wants to "wipe Israel off the map." Scholars tell us the correct translation is more along the lines of wanting a change in Israel's government toward something more democratic, with less gerrymandering. What an ass-muncher!

Ahmadinejad also called the holocaust a "myth." Fuck him! A myth is something a society uses to frame their understanding of their world, and act accordingly. It's not as if the world created a whole new country because of holocaust guilt and gives it a free pass no matter what it does. That's Iranian crazy talk. Ahmadinejad can blow me. ("A Feeling I'm Being Had," The Dilbert Blog, 22 September 2007)

Very smart. Aside from being a good satirical attack on Washington's media war against Iran, it also is another piece of evidence that Israel is beginning to lose American liberals' support. Good for Palestinians, good for Americans, and good for Jews who are fed up with Zionism.¹

1 See, for instance, this new study of young Jewish Americans' opinions about Israel:

Young U.S. non-Orthodox Jews are becoming increasingly lukewarm if not alienated in their support for Israel in a trend that is not likely to be reversed, according to a study released on Thursday.

Blending into U.S. society, including marriage to non-Jews and a tendency to look on Judaism more in religious terms than ethnic ones, is part of what's happening, the study found.

"For our parent's generation, the question that mattered was, how do we regard Israel? For Generation Y (born after 1976) the question is indeed, why should we regard Israel?" said Roger Bennett, a vice president of The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, which sponsored the study.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But the study found that "feelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation."

The study found only 48 percent of U.S. Jews under age 35 believe that Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy for them, compared to 77 percent of those 65 and older.

In addition, only 54 percent of those under the age of 35 are "comfortable with the idea of a Jewish State" as opposed to 81 percent of those 65 and older. (Michael Conlon, "Study Finds U.S. Jews Distance Selves from Israel," Reuters, 6 September 2007)

Iran's Jews -- Shalom Salaam

"Iran's Jews -- Shalom Salaam," a segment of the Australian SBS current affairs show Dateline hosted by George Negus, was aired on 16 May 2007. You can also watch this program at YouTube. The transcript of the program is available at the Web sites of SBC and the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran.

Maurice Motamed

Maurice Motamed, the lone Jewish MP in Iran's parliament, has the world's most thankless job, but he, bless him, is doing what he can as an Iranian patriot, with his integrity intact:

"When our president spoke about the Holocaust, I considered it my duty as a Jew to speak about this issue," Mr Motamed said in his office in central Tehran. "The biggest disaster in human history is based on tens of thousands of films and documents. I said these remarks are a big insult to the whole Jewish society in Iran and the whole world."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Although he took on Mr Ahmadinejad over the Holocaust, Mr Motamed supports the president on other issues, including the stand-off with the US, Europe and Israel over the country's nuclear programme. "I am an Iranian first and a Jew second," he said.

He acknowledged there were problems with being a Jew in Iran, as there were for the country's other minorities. But he said that Iran was relatively tolerant. "There is no pressure on the synagogues, no problems of desecration. I think the problem in Europe is worse than here. There is a lot of anti-semitism in other countries." (Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall, and Robert Tait, "Iran's Jews Learn to Live with Ahmadinejad," The Guardian, 27 June 2006)

According to Nasser Hadian-Jazy, a friend of the President's, Ahmadinejad promised to "do something to show he is not anti-Jewish. . . . He will make a gesture to the Jews in Iran and that has implications for Jews elsewhere" (MacAskill, Tisdall, and Tait, 27 June 2006). Whatever he has in mind, it had better be good. What about ending the exclusion of Jews and other minorities from "'sensitive' senior posts in the military and judiciary" (MacAskill, Tisdall, and Tait, 27 June 2006)?

What Jewish Leftists Can Do for Iranians

"A story authored by a prominent U.S. neo-conservative regarding new legislation in Iran allegedly requiring Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive colour badges circulated around the world this weekend before it was exposed as false," writes Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service ("Iran Target of Apparent Disinformation Ploy," 22 May 2006). The neo-con in question is Amir Taheri, so keep this name in mind, in case he will be up to more mischief. And he probably will, with connections like these: "Taheri is a member of Benador Associates, a public relations firm that lists a large number of leading neo-conservatives, including American Enterprise Institute (AEI) associates Richard Perle, David Frum, Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, and Joshua Muravchik, among its clients. Major boosters of the war with Iraq, Benador clients, who also include former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey and former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky, have also called for the Bush administration to take a hard line against Iran" ("Iran Target of Apparent Disinformation Ploy," 22 May 2006).

Thankfully, the lone Jewish MP in Iran's parliament, Maurice Motamed, immediately issued a strong condemnation of Taheri's lie: "One Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament, Maurice Motamed, insisted that colour requirements for ethnic minorities had 'never been proposed or discussed in parliament', let alone approved. 'Such news,' he told the Associated Press, 'is an insult to religious minorities here'" ("Iran Target of Apparent Disinformation Ploy," 22 May 2006).

There are several things that Jewish leftists in the United States can do to counter psy-op like this:

• Speak up/write about Iran as a Jewish activist/intellectual, and encourage others to do so.


• Contact the Jewish community in Iran, and invite them to send reps to the US on a speaking tour (I realize getting visas for them would be a hassle, but probably doable).


• Get lefty Jewish organizations to send their reps to Iran to talk to people in the Jewish community there and report back to the US.

Given Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's execrable flirtations with Holocaust revisionism, it would be only Jewish leftists with a nearly infinite capacity to forgive who might even consider undertaking jobs like the above. Yet, those who do so can make a great deal of difference in the citizen diplomacy department at a time when Iranians, including Jewish Iranians, need all the international help they can get.