In the aftermath of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia University, the Jewish community in Iran released a statement condemning the treatment he received, which read in part: "The constant disrespect and disturbance demonstrated (during Ahmadinejad's speech at Colombia) prove once more that those claiming to be peace loving people have no real grasp of the concept." There's not much more detail about the statement in that story, but the interesting part is that it was released at all.
During his trip, Ahmadinejad also met with a group of rabbis from the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta in New York:
"You understand us and make a distinction between the violent behavior of Zionists and the religious beliefs of Jews," said the senior rabbi who called President Ahmadinejad "a pious man who is seeking to restore peace in the world and has humanitarian plans." Appreciating the rabbis for their gift, President Ahmadinejad said he was happy to visit them.
"All people in the world have now understood that Judaism is different from Zionism," said the president.
He added, "Zionists are a political group looking for taking advantage of the opportunities while Jews are the followers of the Moses who promoted peace and friendship."
Contrary to what the press here would have us believe, Ahmadinejad did not then rub his hands together, grin maniacally, and cackle out, "And that will be your undoing once I use my nuclear arsenal to take control of the entire world! Fools! MWAH HA HA HA HA HA!"
(If you prefer to have your news prejudged for you, you can read about this story as "Fringe Jewish Group Has Third Meeting with Ahmadinejad" from the Jewish Daily Forward, here, or "Radical Rabbis Cozy Up to Kook" from the New York Post, here.)
And finally, from a few months back, here's a Christian Science Monitor story about the Jewish community in Iran:
But despite what appears to be a dwindling minority under constant threat of persecution, Iranian Jews say they live in relative freedom in the Islamic Republic, remain loyal to the land of their birth, and are striving to separate politics from religion.
They caution against comparing Iran's official and visceral opposition to the creation of Israel and Zionism with the regime's acceptance of Jews and Judaism itself.
"If you think Judaism and Zionism are one, it is like thinking Islam and the Taliban are the same, and they are not," says Ciamak Moresadegh, chairman of the Tehran Jewish Committee. "We have common problems with Iranian Muslims. If a war were to start, we would also be a target. When a missile lands, it does not ask if you are a Muslim or a Jew. It lands."
It's worth reading the entire thing. If you do, you'll see that while it's clearly a bit paradoxical to be a Jew in Iran, it's nothing like living in the Warsaw Ghetto.
This kind of background is all worth keeping in mind as you read fevered attributions of anti-Semitism to Ahmadinejad himself or Iran generally; the reality, as usual, is much more tangled and complex. It's particularly interesting to see the scrupulousness of the distinctions made in these cases between Judaism (or Jewish identity generally) and Zionism, since after years of concentrated efforts to conflate the two here it's almost impossible to discuss them separately--so much so that the very word "Zionism", which has a very specific and important meaning, has come to sound vaguely anti-Semitic to our ears.
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