Jews Of Iran Just Waiting To Be Scapegoated Again

The time is ripe for a pogrom or something, given the way things are going.

Tehran, November 29 – Months’ worth of popular uprising against the repressive Islamist regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has one religious and ethnic minority hopeful for change along with many of their compatriots, tinged with resignation toward the inevitability that the embattled regime will target them, given the precedent of how that minority has fared throughout the Middle East and elsewhere for thousands of years.

The region’s largest Jewish community outside Israel – still sizable only because the Ayatollahs refuse them to emigrate – has grown accustomed to serving as the scapegoat for the regime’s various troubles, usually under the guise of “Zionism” as the source of all ills. It remains only a matter of time, community figures acknowledged, until Khamenei’s thugs subject the Jews collectively to repressive, punitive measures.

“We mouth all the correct mantras,” explained a teacher in the community who withheld his name owing to safety concerns. “Not one of us, with the safety of our families and friends in mind, would even imply that we support Zionism. Officially, barring Zionism, we’re ‘key threads in the glorious Iranian tapestry,’ or some such drivel. In practice, we’re restricted, our wives and daughters – and sons – are targeted for sexual abuse by regime thugs, no matter how loudly we proclaim our loyalty to the Revolution and denounce Zionism. The threat of mistreatment and violence is always hanging over us, and it gets more palpable when there’s trouble. So yeah, the time is ripe for a pogrom or something, given the way things are going.”

A representative of the Basij militia that leads the brutalization of protesters denied any specific orders to extend the brutalization to the Jews, who know better than to participate in overt displays of disloyalty to the Ayatollah. “That doesn’t mean we won’t go raping and beating if we feel like it,” he cautioned.

Official rhetoric has so far steered clear of direct incitement to harm Jews. However, authorities have insisted that the national unrest since September – sparked by the fatal beating of a woman who refused to don a headscarf in public – represents not an authentic grassroots phenomenon but an initiative contrived by the Mossad, CIA, and other enemies of the Islamic Revolution. Previous episodes of raised international and domestic tension similarly featured a crackdown on Jews in Iran, the remnant of an ancient community that once numbered in the many tens of thousands. Today, official census figures claim nearly 20,000 Jews in Iran, but experts say the true figure is probably between five and ten thousand. The bulk of the Jewish population in Iran fled before and immediately after the 1979 revolution that deposed the Shah and brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Those who remained faced even harder initial persecution.

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