New Year fun
A little bit of joy to end 2007.
A few days ago, 40 Jews got out of Iran and made it to Israel. This was not in the script for the Leader that wants to bomb the Zionists into oblivion, but is on the best of terms with his fellow nationals who happen to share the same unfortunate birthright as the above-mentioned, to-be-annihilated Zionists.
So a state organ, PressTV, published an article denouncing the heinous lie that Jews had fled Iran, and to demonstrate the love that the state of Iran feels for its resident Jews, accompanied it with this photograph.
It may be that they were just trying to highlight the lawlessness of the Web, but they did not acknowledge the authorship of the photo. Its source was The People's Cube ("We do the thinking for you"); specifically, an article published in 2005 entitled "Israel Dismantles; World's Problems End". Amazingly, the article was of a satirical bent, and (this is important) the image was photoshopped. Unbelievably, the original placard did not express undying love of the Jews, but the determination to have a nuclear program (with, possibly, the consequences for the Jews that the Beloved Leader has had occasion to mention).
The photo was replaced after 2 days. To read the whole story, including links to screenshots of the original article, go here.
11 comments:
I guess you also should know that there is 25,000 jews are still in Iran and there are two functioning sinagouges. Unlike in Arab countries none of them have been massacred or driven out. There is pressure on them but that is different than violence.
That is true. This is not, by any means, a mass exodus. Yet, according to the article, the population was 100,000 in 1979, so the decline is marked and steady.
I think there is a mass exodus from Third World countries towards wealthy countries and it is not restricted to the Jews. Restricting the phenomenon to the Jews can be branded anti-semitic, so be careful.
There may well be "a mass exodus from Third World countries towards wealthy countries", but I really don't think that this case is really a part of that movement. There are other, more obvious, explanations, and I do hate to ignore the obvious.
Even so, it is not a phenomenon specific to Jews. Palestinians are experiencing the same pressures and so are any other people under oppression. Trying to always paint the Jews as the eternal victims is hardly going to explain anything is it. Only in novels do you get one supreme victim. In real life, there are many. Everyone is having a tough time some way or the other.
Haaretz:
The immigrants, from Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan, each received a $10,000 grant from international Jewish organizations.
Talk about missing or more probably ignoring the blindingly obvious.
It is easy, numbers of jews have been steadily falling in Azerbaijan since 1991 t nobody can fault us in anti-semitism, this was simply a result of Israel accepting their own. I am not lying, but in Iran day to day antisemitism is almost absent, average Persians could care less about Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Official view is rather like Soviet propaganda - not a single person believes it, sometimes not speaker himself.
Excuse me, but the point of the post was the humour of the silly buggers in Tehran desperately seeking an image to illustrate the official line and ending up stealing one from a satirical article whose point was precisely the opposite.
The point was NOT that the Jews are the only victims in the world; there's no end of competition, but the competition doesn't provide the laugh this case does. Nor was it that these people got out with nothing; I've got no idea what they got out with, and it hardly relevant. If they got $10,000, so what? A demonstration of solidarity we might all imitate.
Judging by what you wrote in the original post and your subsequent replies to comments, it seems clear to me (and presumably anyone with basic literacy skills) that what you are implying is that those "evil" Iranians are driving Jews out of Iran because of their antisemitism.
Now, this view doesn't actually tally with the facts as I and the other commenters have pointed out.
If they really are subject to the persecution you claim why did they wait until being offered bribes of tens of thousands of dollars to "flee"?
Yes, I think the comments were about the other comments on here rather than the unprofessional gaffe of the Iranian press to reproduce a photograph without checking its origin and context.
On the subject of the "bribes" wodge raised, I think that not everyone would call the 10,000 dollars they got a demonstration of solidarity, it is certainly a genereous way of demonstrating that. How about "aggressive settlement encouragement policy"?
Jews, like all religious minorities in Iran, are discriminated against. There is a large range of jobs they cannot have and, in the case of Jews, it is made very difficult to learn Hebrew. They can travel, but there are restrictions on how many from the same family can leave at the same time. They need special permission and pay extra.
The status of the $10,000 that you so confidently call a 'bribe' is not so clear. Several reports speak of these people arriving with what they could carry. Such migrations are, of course, part of a propaganda war so there's lots of questionable 'information' flying around.
However, given the present climate, the disadvantaged social position of all minorities in Uran, and the rhetoric of the country's leader, I hardly think people would need a 'bribe' to join their many family members who have already fled (though mostly to the US). If you've ever had to move country (and I've done it 3 times), you'll know that $10,000 is by no means enough to make you do it. If they were leaving for that amount money alone, they were extremely stupid.
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