The leadership of Tehran’s tiny Jewish community announced its participation in a Tuesday conference, attacking the Jewish state and promoting the Palestinian movement in Gaza.
One prominent Iran expert, Beni Sabti, told the Jerusalem Post that Iranian Jewish leaders "do not have to make these types of gestures to the Iranian regime and the Palestinians. Rabbi Hamami-Lalehzar is a very anti-Zionist figure.”
Rabbi Younes Hamami-Lalehzar is the anti-Israel leader of the Iranian Jewish community.
Iranian-Jews distance themselves from Israel
Sabti, an expert on the Islamic Republic of Iran from the Institute for National Security Studies, continued about Iran's Jewish leadership that “Most of the community do not agree with them. This is a very dangerous thing that the leaders are hand in hand with the regime.” Sabti monitors the regime’s exploitation of the Jewish community in Iran.
According to Sabti, the participation of Iranian Jews at the event is “really Stockholm Syndrome.” He said that “Like other cases they have to show that they love to be hostages and to show their loyalty by cooperating with the regime.” Stockholm Syndrome is a condition in which an intense emotional bond develops between hostages and the kidnappers.
Sabti, a Tehran-born Jew who speaks fluent Persian, added that the Iranian Jews also “want to show they are more Iranian than Jews.”
The anti-Israel event was held at the Research Institute for Islamic Culture and Thought, a deeply anti-Western organization that is supported by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Rashad, who is from the institute, spoke at the event.
Akbar Rashad said the issue of Palestine is not a regional issue, but a global issue, according to the Telegraph page of the Jewish community. The self-proclaimed anti-Zionist Rabbi Younes Hamami-Lalehzar condemned in his speech the killing of the people of Gaza, according to the Telegram post.
Hamami-Lalehzar, who is also a medical doctor, emphasized the separation of Judaism from Zionism. The Islamic Republic of Iran codified the fiction that Judaism is separate from Zionism, according to experts. Sabti fired back that “this new kind of Judaism in Iran is a dangerous thing.”
Alireza Nader, a Washington D.C.-based expert on minorities in the Islamic Republic, told the Post that “What choice do the Jews in Iran have but to do as the regime dictates? The small community is highly vulnerable to regime pressure.”
There are roughly 9,000 Jews left in Iran from a population of nearly 90 million people, according to one estimate. The Iranian-American journalist , Karmel Melamed, who is an expert on Persian Jews, estimates the number of Iranian Jews between 5,000 and 8,000. The flourishing Iranian Jewish community once numbered 80,000 prior to the Islamic Revolution. Most Iranian Jews fled Iran after the 1979 revolution.
Nader said “Iranian Jews played a big role in the development of modern Iran. Their expulsion from their homeland after the 1979 Islamic revolution was a big loss for all Iranians. Hopefully all Iranian Jews will be able to return to Iran one day again soon.”