World
Jews in Iran Balance Pride and Peril
They survive by obeying strict political rules, says correspondent Judith Miller.
S
ince the 1979 islamic revo- lution replaced the Shah of Iran with a militant Shiite Muslim theocracy, being a
Jew in Iran has been complicated, if not perilous. After Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in south-
ern Israel, it has become even more so. As citizens of the Islamic Republic,
said Beni Sabti, an Iranian Jew who fl ed to Israel in 1987, Iranian Jews must be — or at least appear to be — loyal to a country at war with Israel and committed to its destruction. “Since Oct. 7,” said Sabti, now at
the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank, Jews have been under increasing pressure to denounce Israel and abide by the regime’s other dictates. “Jews must be more Iranian than
the Iranians,” he said. Immediately after the massacre in
which 1,200 people were slaughtered and 240 others were taken hostage, Iran International, based in the U.K., reported that the regime warned its Jewish citizens to sever all ties with relatives in Israel. In addition, Jews
1979: 100,000
were pressed to denounce Israel at demonstrations. When Israel began retaliating
against Hamas, Iranian Jews were among those who turned out to denounce Israel’s “genocidal” bomb- ing of Palestinians in Gaza. Such denunciations were too much
even for the U.S. State Department, eager under President Joe Biden to improve relations with Tehran to stop
50 NEWSMAX | AUGUST 2024
its nuclear program. A spokesman called the Jewish
protests “coerced” and “stage-man- aged.” This past spring, Tehran, worried
that widespread disillusionment with Islamic rule would prompt an elec- tion boycott, increased pressure on Jews to promote the elections. “Much of this pressure is hidden,”
said Sabti. “It’s like wife beating — hard to prove unless the victim com- plains.” Some of the pressure, however,
is all too overt. In May, after Isra- el bombed a Palestinian hospital in Gaza, Iranian protesters burned Israeli fl ags at the tomb of Esther and Mordecai — the Book of Esther’s heroine and hero who saved the Jews from being massacred in ancient Persia.
Whatever they really think, the Iran Total Population
90 Million Jewish Population
Today: 9,000
Jews of Iran have little choice but to participate in this per- verse Islamist theater that even many Muslim Iranians — particularly the young — increas- ingly mock and shun. Roya Hakakian,
an Iranian-born writ- er now living in New
York, said in an interview that the increasing pressure to spout the Islamic party line refl ected Iranian desperation. Janatan Sayeh, 29, who fl ed Teh-
ran to the U.S. in 2013, agreed. “This is the ploy of an increasingly unpop- ular Islamic regime,” he said. Whereas before the revolution
there were well over 100,000 Jews in Iran — its largest, most integrated
minority — today there are fewer than 9,000, a tiny percentage of the country’s 90 million people. As I learned during my earlier
visits, Iranians, especially Jews, take enormous pride in their heritage, for Jews are Iran’s oldest religious minority with a history dating back 2,700 years. A thousand years before the
advent of Islam there was Persia, the powerful empire formed by the dynasty of Cyrus the Great, who freed the Jews from Babylonian cap- tivity six centuries before the Chris- tian era. Despite their diminished num-
bers, Iranian Jews are still the sec- ond-largest non-Muslim community in the Muslim Middle East after Tur- key. And while Arab states brutally expelled their Jews after Israel’s cre- ation, Iran did not do so. In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt,
and Iraq, where over 485,000 Jews lived before 1948, fewer than 2,000 remain. “The Arab Jew has per- ished,” said Sabti. “The Persian Jew has fared better.” Until the Oct. 7 attack, conditions for Jews had slowly improved over
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