Members of Iran’s Jewish community have held what is described as a demonstration outside the UN’s office in Tehran protesting against Israel’s actions in Gaza. Though there are a number of fringe Jewish groups outside Iran who would be delighted to jet into Tehran of their own accord in order to wave banners (this lot or this lot), the Jewish community inside Iran doesn’t have that luxury.
Here’s Yoav Stern:
The official Iranian news agency, IRNA, reported that community members, alongside Jewish parliamentarian Siamak Mara-Sedq, urged Israel to do its part to return quiet and security to the region.
The chairman of Iran’s Jewish Union, Rahmatullah Raafi, said the community had come out in support of the Palestinian people.
“We are here to express out support and sympathy for the Palestinian nation,” he said, adding that Muslim nations could rise up as a single large force against Israel. He also said that the victors of the current conflict were the residents of Gaza.
Israeli sources familiar with the Iranian Jewish community suspect that the demonstration was organized by the government in Tehran, and does not represent that actual stance of Iranian Jews.
I think we can reasonably suspect that, yes.
Interestingly, at around the same time that Iranian Jews were being shepherded into the streets to demonstrate their loyalty to the regime under the guise of rejection of Israel, the Tehran clerics shut down a reformist newspaper for the crime of criticizing Hamas. Gene has the details.
Iranian Jews, like other Iranians, are not allowed to speak freely on any subject.
Moreover, as Jews they need to show a special loyalty to the government or else they would be subject to charges of double loyalties in a country were such a charge carries the danger of an accusation of treason.
You don’t need to suppose much. There are several documented cases pre-1948 in which Jewish communities, previously openly pro-Zionist were cowed into declaring their loyalty to the Arab nation. An example I read recently was of the Jewish community of Syria in 1929 (as a result of the frenzy in the Arab world because of the misreporting of the Massacre in Hebron). They had to go out on the streets too and publish repudiations of Zionism in the newspapers, etc, etc. In later years they were all impoverished and expelled, anyway.
But Syria was only a dictatorship. Iran is a totalitarian regime. Iranian Jews will not have even the option of leaving.
The Yemenite Jews protested Israel’s war too:
http://www.sabanews.net/en/news172467.htm
Here’s some background to the remaining Jewish community in Yemen & reaction to the recent murder of a Jew in Yemen:
http://www.forward.com/articles/14855/