The Iranian press issues propaganda statements on a daily basis. I read them when they come across my radar, or when I want to see what’s going on in the official version of “truth” in Iran. But I don’t believe them, and most legitimate newspapers don’t pass along their propaganda as news.
Last week, I saw that the Iranian press was touting the refusal of Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel in spite of having cash incentives dangled in front of them. Knowing that Iranian Jews are not free to emigrate, in spite of the official statements to the contrary, I wondered if any legitimate newspaper wouold pick up the story as is.
The Guardian did.
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 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 tradable 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.”
Iran is not a free society for anyone, but especially not for Jews.
In the remaining schools, Jewish principals have been replaced by Muslims. In Teheran there are still three schools in which Jewish pupils constitute a majority. The curriculum is Islamic, and Persian is forbidden as the language of instruction for Jewish studies. Special Hebrew lessons are conducted on Fridays by the Orthodox Otzar ha-Torah organization, which is responsible for Jewish religious education. Saturday is no longer officially recognized as the Jewish sabbath, and Jewish pupils are compelled to attend school on that day. There are three synagogues in Teheran, but since 1994, there has been no rabbi in Iran, and the bet din does not function.
Jews are frequently arrested as spies for Israel. The Guardian acknowledges the difficulty that Iranian Jews have in simply living their lives by adding this grudging paragraph at the very end of the article:
Hostility between Iran’s government and Israel means Iranian Jews are often subject to official mistrust and scrutiny.
Let me put that “official mistrust and scrutiny” into more clear terms: Iranian Jews are not allowed to emigrate. If a family wants to go out of the country on vacation, they may not all leave. They must leave at least one family member as a hostage so they won’t flee to another country.
The Jewish community does enjoy a measure of religious freedom but is faced with constant suspicion of cooperating with the Zionist state and with “imperialistic America” — both such activities are punishable by death. Jews who apply for a passport to travel abroad must do so in a special bureau and are immediately put under surveillance. The government does not generally allow all members of a family to travel abroad at the same time to prevent Jewish emigration.
But it’s good to know that the Guardian is on top of the issues that it writes about so frequently. Sure. Free people making a free choice about refusing scads of money to emigrate to Israel. It’s the Iranian propaganda line. And only one “legitimate” newspaper managed to fall for it.
But no legitimate newspaper did pick up the story. It just shows the corrosive effects of constant lying on the teller. eventually, they can no longer tell the difference between plausible lies and stories that would be laughed out of the room.
Take a look at the efforts by the Iranians who settled in Baltimore to get out of Iran.
I cannot believe how anyone could be so gullible as to believe a spokesman for an official Jewish body that exists on the sufferance of the Iranian government. This reminds me of those official Jewish organizations in the USSR whose responsibility was really controlling, not representing, the Jewish community there. I understand that they, too, at times stated that the Jews were doing well there.
What else are they going to say? What else could they say even if they wanted to? I cannot believe that anyone would be so gullible!
This reminds we of a story of someone in the Soviet Union who told his relatives that he would write in red ink if what he was saying was a lie. They got a letter (in black ink) saying how great everything was. At the end of the letter, he said that the only problem was that he had trouble getting red ink.
Siobhain Butterworth is the Readers’ Editor for The Guardian. E-mail her a complaint about this article here: reader _at_ guardian.co.uk
Meryl, you write that the Guardian “fell for” the story, implying that they were fooled into treating it as actual news. I think that’s rather a slur on the judgment of the Guardian’s editorial staff. I’d suggest that they didn’t fall for anything, that they new why the Iranian Jews issued the statement they did and it was a conscious editorial decision to print it as it was.
My apologies; I actually do know that the past tense of “know” is “knew.” I’m not quite as semiliterate as the post seems to indicate.