Iran away

The largest group – since the time of Shah – of Jews from Iran just arrived in Israel. Ha’aretz reports:

A group of 40 new immigrants from Iran touched down at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Tuesday, the largest since the fall of the Shah and Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979.The immigrants, from Tehran, Shiraz, and Isfahan, each received a $10,000 grant from international Jewish organizations.

Relatives screamed in delight and threw candy at the newcomers as they emerged into the airport reception hall after a long bureaucratic procedure.
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Two brothers, Yosef and Michael, said they were glad to be in Israel. They declined to give their family name in order to protect relatives.

“I feel so good,” said Yosef, 16. “I just saw all of my family. You can’t put that into words.”

Two paragraphs at the end of the article are worth noting:

In 2000, Iranian authorities arrested 10 Jews, convicted them of spying for Israel and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from four to 13 years. An appeals court later reduced their sentences under international pressure and eventually freed them.No comment was available Tuesday from the Iranian government or the country’s Jewish lawmaker.

The freeing of the ten Jews was somewhat gradual and it was rather uncertain for the men’s relatives. And yes, there is a token Jew in Iran’s parliament.

I don’t know that a lot can be read into this aliyah. Even if this is the largest group of Iranian olim in 30 years, there are at least an estimated 25,000 Jews left in Iran.

Though they’re receiving $10,000 each, the new olim stand to lose their assets in Iran. According to the Jerusalem Post:

Iranians who choose to leave Iran can appoint legal custodians to manage their assets, but if they don’t, their assets are transferred to the state. However, according to sources familiar with their immigration process, the 40 new arrivals – 10 families and three singles, mostly from a middle to lower-middle financial bracket – have not appointed any such custodian. Some will lose those assets entirely.

The immediate danger facing Iranian Jews seems to be uncertain.

According to well-informed sources, imposing a travel or immigration ban on Iran’s remaining 25,000 Jews would not be in the interests of the Iranian government, which is trying to show the rest of the world that despite its problems with the US and Israel, there is a humane regime in Teheran that treats its Jewish minority well.Similarly, the Iranian authorities, fully cognizant of the latest group of 40 Jewish emigrants, can point to the relatively small number and say that the vast majority of the country’s Jews have chosen to stay.

However, not all of the Iranian expat community or those still residing in Iran are happy about the slow trickle of Jews to Israel; some say this phenomenon endangers Jews who choose to stay in Iran.

An Iranian Jew who immigrated to Israel six years ago, however, said that families continued to communicate with each other by phone without too many problems. From Israel, one can dial directly to Iran, and from within Iran, many families are using VoIP technology to communicate with their relatives in Israel via the Internet.

From what I’ve heard, freedom of movement for Iranian Jews is not as easy as the Jerusalem Post reports here.

Boker Tov Boulder asks (and answers) a related question:

That’s funny, only 25,000 and it’s the largest Jewish community in the Muslim Middle East? Hmmm, how could that be? Why so few Jews, when Jews have been all over the Middle East for ages? I guess that’s another truth disappearing into the black hole that Dhimmedia has become.It’s estimated that in 1945 more than 870,000 Jews were living throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Read the rest, for the answer.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.