What Iran’s Jews Say

February 23, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

By ROGER COHEN

Esfahan, Iran

At Palestine Square, opposite a mosque called Al-Aqsa, is a synagogue where Jews of this ancient city gather at dawn. Over the entrance is a banner saying: “Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution from the Jewish community of Esfahan.”

The Jews of Iran remove their shoes, wind leather straps around their arms to attach phylacteries and take their places. Soon the sinuous murmur of Hebrew prayer courses through the cluttered synagogue with its lovely rugs and unhappy plants. Soleiman Sedighpoor, an antiques dealer with a store full of treasures, leads the service from a podium under a chandelier.

I’d visited the bright-eyed Sedighpoor, 61, the previous day at his dusty little shop. He’d sold me, with some reluctance, a bracelet of mother-of-pearl adorned with Persian miniatures. “The father buys, the son sells,” he muttered, before inviting me to the service.

Accepting, I inquired how he felt about the chants of “Death to Israel” — “Marg bar Esraeel” — that punctuate life in Iran.

“Let them say ‘Death to Israel,’ ” he said. “I’ve been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I’ve visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian.”

The Middle East is an uncomfortable neighborhood for minorities, people whose very existence rebukes warring labels of religious and national identity. Yet perhaps 25,000 Jews live on in Iran, the largest such community, along with Turkey’s, in the Muslim Middle East. There are more than a dozen synagogues in Tehran; here in Esfahan a handful caters to about 1,200 Jews, descendants of an almost 3,000-year-old community.

Over the decades since Israel’s creation in 1948, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the number of Iranian Jews has dwindled from about 100,000. But the exodus has been far less complete than from Arab countries, where some 800,000 Jews resided when modern Israel came into being.

In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iraq — countries where more than 485,000 Jews lived before 1948 — fewer than 2,000 remain. The Arab Jew has perished. The Persian Jew has fared better.

Of course, Israel’s unfinished cycle of wars has been with Arabs, not Persians, a fact that explains some of the discrepancy.

Still a mystery hovers over Iran’s Jews. It’s important to decide what’s more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations — or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshipping in relative tranquillity.

Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric.

That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 — a position popular in some American Jewish circles — is misleading and dangerous.

I know, if many Jews left Iran, it was for a reason. Hostility exists. The trumped-up charges of spying for Israel against a group of Shiraz Jews in 1999 showed the regime at its worst. Jews elect one representative to Parliament, but can vote for a Muslim if they prefer. A Muslim, however, cannot vote for a Jew.

Among minorities, the Bahai — seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel — have suffered brutally harsh treatment.

I asked Morris Motamed, once the Jewish member of the Majlis, if he felt he was used, an Iranian quisling. “I don’t,” he replied. “In fact I feel deep tolerance here toward Jews.” He said “Death to Israel” chants bother him, but went on to criticize the “double standards” that allow Israel, Pakistan and India to have a nuclear bomb, but not Iran.

Double standards don’t work anymore; the Middle East has become too sophisticated. One way to look at Iran’s scurrilous anti-Israel tirades is as a provocation to focus people on Israel’s bomb, its 41-year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force. Iranian language can be vile, but any Middle East peace — and engagement with Tehran — will have to take account of these points.

Green Zoneism — the basing of Middle Eastern policy on the construction of imaginary worlds — has led nowhere.

Realism about Iran should take account of Esfehan’s ecumenical Palestine Square. At the synagogue, Benhur Shemian, 22, told me Gaza showed Israel’s government was “criminal,” but still he hoped for peace. At the Al-Aqsa mosque, Monteza Foroughi, 72, pointed to the synagogue and said: “They have their prophet; we have ours. And that’s fine.”

Don't turn Iran's Jews into a political football

Feb 26, 2009

By RAFAEL MEDOFF

Are 25,000 Jews living happily and securely under the most repressive and anti-Semitic regime in the world?

Apparently the answer is yes, if one is to believe New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who in a February 23 op-ed reports that what he saw recently in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran demonstrated "Iranian civility toward Jews."

Cohen was especially impressed by the fact that "there are more than a dozen synagogues in Teheran," as well as several more in Esfahan. He attended a prayer service and described it in rather picturesque terms.

Cohen is hardly the first American to be misled by the existence of synagogues in totalitarian countries. Assessing the status of Jews in Nazi Germany in October 1936, president Franklin D. Roosevelt likewise put too much stock in the scenes at the synagogues. "I have just seen two people who have toured through Germany," FDR told American Jewish Congress leader Stephen Wise. "They tell me that they saw that the synagogues were crowded and apparently there is nothing very wrong in the situation [of Germany's Jews] at present."

Interestingly, the Jews whom Cohen met in Iran had only positive things to say about their anti-Semitic government. Soleiman Sedighpoor, who led the prayer service in Esfahan, said he has "never had a problem" as a Jew in Iran. Morris Motamed, former occupant of the lone "Jewish seat" in parliament, said the Ahmadinejad regime exhibits "deep tolerance here toward Jews."

RABBI HASKEL LOOKSTEIN of New York City's Kehilath Jeshurun, who visited the Soviet Union in the 1970s to teach Judaism and assist would-be emigrants, points to an incident at the Moscow synagogue which demonstrated the perilous reality of Jewish life in the USSR. It was Simhat Torah, and the service was crowded, no doubt as crowded as those synagogues in Germany in 1936 or in Iran in our own time.

"As we danced with the Torahs," he recalls, "the Jews exchanged the traditional greeting, 'Let's meet again, God willing, next year.' One man leaned over and whispered in my ear, 'Let's meet again, God willing, next year - but not here in the Soviet Union.' He was so terrified of what might happen if he was overheard, that he could only whisper those words."

Cohen's encounter with the Jewish former member of Iran's parliament reminds Lookstein of his own encounter with Rabbi Yakov Fishman, chief rabbi of the Moscow Synagogue, in 1972. "Rabbi Fishman sat down next to me, to show me a publication from a British group critical of the Soviet government's treatment of the Jews," Lookstein recalls. "He was afraid that such criticism would 'make things worse' for the Jews in Russia. That's why you can never take at face value what a Jew in a totalitarian state says to a foreigner. They are captives of the regime, and whatever they say is carefully calibrated not to get themselves into trouble."

THE STATE DEPARTMENT's most recent annual report on international religious freedom paints a picture of Jewish life in Iran that is at odds with Cohen's description. The report says Iran's Jews live in "a threatening atmosphere" and suffer "officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education and housing." The government "limits the distribution of Hebrew texts, in practice making it difficult to teach the language." Government pressure resulted in the shutdown of the Jewish community's newspaper, Ofogh-e-Bina. And "officially sanctioned anti-Semitic propaganda" permeates "official statements, media outlets, publications and books."

Three-quarters of Iran's Jews have emigrated in the 30 years since the Khomeini revolution, and the State Department notes that some Iranian Jews are continuing to emigrate, "in part due to continued anti-Semitism on the part of the government and within society."

Obviously others choose not to emigrate. Sometimes factors such as family ties, poverty or hope for a change in government are sufficient to persuade people to stay in a country where they are mistreated. In fact, in 1937 - fully four years after Hitler's rise to power - Germany was still home to more Jews than any other Western European country. That was not because they enjoyed Hitler's rule.

The situation of Iranian Jewry must not be turned into a political football. The dangers and discrimination that Iran's Jews face should not be minimized to advance a particular policy agenda. Cohen urges the West to adopt an approach of "compromise" and "engagement" with Teheran, and it is possible the Obama administration will follow his advice. But if it does, one hopes that decision will not be influenced by misleading reports which see "civility" in Iran's uncivil treatment of its Jewish citizens.

The writer is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

www.WymanInstitute.org

Cohen: Iran, the Jews and Germany

By ROGER COHEN

Sunday, March 1, 2009

NEW YORK: So the Jerusalem Post thinks I'm "hardly the first American to be misled by the existence of synagogues in totalitarian countries."

The Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg finds me "particularly credulous," taken in by the Iranian hospitality and friendliness that "are the hallmarks of most Muslim societies." (Thanks for that info, Jeffrey.)

A conservative Web site called "American Thinker," which tries to prove its name is an oxymoron, believes I would have been fooled by the Nazis' sham at the Theresienstadt camp.

The indignation stems from my recent column on Iranian Jews which said that the 25,000-strong community worships in relative tranquility; that Persian Jews have fared better than Arab Jews; that hostility toward Jews in Iran has on occasion led to trumped-up charges against them; and that those enamored of the "mad mullah" caricature of Iran regard any compromise with it as a re-run of Munich 1938.

This last point found confirmation in outraged correspondence from several American Jews unable to resist some analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany. I was based in Berlin for three years; Germany's confrontation with the Holocaust inhabited me. Let's be clear: Iran's Islamic Republic is no Third Reich redux. Nor is it a totalitarian state.

Munich allowed Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland. Iran has not waged an expansionary war in more than two centuries.

Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it's far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable.

Most of Iran's population is under 30; it's an Internet-connected generation. Access to satellite television is widespread. The BBC's new Farsi service is all the rage.

Abdullah Momeni, a student opponent of the regime, told me, "The Internet is very important to us, in fact it is of infinite importance." Iranians are not cut off, like Cubans or North Koreans.

The June presidential election pitting the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, against Mohammad Khatami (a former president who once spoke in a synagogue) will be a genuine contest as compared to the charades that pass for elections in many Arab states. No fire has burned down the Majlis, or parliament.

If you're thinking trains-on-time Fascist efficiency, think again. Tehran's new telecommunications tower took 20 years to build. I was told its restaurant would open "soon." So, it is said, will the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a project in the works for a mere 30 years. A Persian Chernobyl is far more likely than some Middle Eastern nuclear Armageddon, if that's any comfort.

For all the morality police inspecting whether women are wearing boots outside their pants (the latest no-no on the dress front) and the regime zealots of the Basiji militia, the air you breathe in Iran is not suffocating. Its streets at dusk hum with life - not a monochrome male-only form of it, or one inhabited by fear - but the vibrancy of a changing, highly-educated society.

This is the Iran of subtle shades that the country's Jews inhabit. Life is more difficult for them than for Muslims, but to suggest they inhabit a totalitarian hell is self-serving nonsense.

One Iranian exile, no lover of the Islamic Republic, wrote to me saying that my account of Iran's Jews had brought "tears to my eyes" because "you are saying what many of us would like to hear."

Far from the cradle of Middle Eastern Islamist zealotry, she suggested, "Iran - the supposed enemy - is the one society that has gone through its extremist fervor and is coming out the other end. It is relatively stable and socially dynamic. As my father, who continues to live there, says, 'It is the least undemocratic country in the region outside Israel."'

This notion of a "post-fervor" Iran is significant. The compromises being painfully fought out between Islam and democracy in Tehran are of seminal importance. They belie the notion of a fanatical power; they explain Jewish life.

That does not mean fanaticism does not exist or that terrible crimes have not been committed, like the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires 15 years ago, for which Argentina and Israel have accused Iran.

But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.

I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one - the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results.

It's worth recalling that hateful, ultra-nationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's race-baiting anti-Arab firebrand, may find a place in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. He should not.

Nor should racist demagoguery - wherever - prompt facile allusions to the murderous Nazi master of it.

Readers are invited to comment at my blog: www.iht.com/passages

Iran, the Jews and Germany

ROGER COHEN

March 2, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

By ROGER COHEN

So a Jerusalem Post article says that I’m “hardly the first American to be misled by the existence of synagogues in totalitarian countries.”

The Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg finds me “particularly credulous,” taken in by the Iranian hospitality and friendliness that “are the hallmarks of most Muslim societies.” (Thanks for that info, Jeffrey.)

A conservative Web site called American Thinker, which tries to prove its name is an oxymoron, believes I would have been fooled by the Nazis’ sham at the Theresienstadt camp.

The indignation stems from my recent column on Iranian Jews, which said that the 25,000-strong community worships in relative tranquillity; that Persian Jews have fared better than Arab Jews; that hostility toward Jews in Iran has on occasion led to trumped-up charges against them; and that those enamored of the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran regard any compromise with it as a rerun of Munich 1938.

This last point found confirmation in outraged correspondence from several American Jews unable to resist some analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany. I was based in Berlin for three years; Germany’s confrontation with the Holocaust inhabited me. Let’s be clear: Iran’s Islamic Republic is no Third Reich redux. Nor is it a totalitarian state.

Munich allowed Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland. Iran has not waged an expansionary war in more than two centuries.

Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it’s far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable.

Most of Iran’s population is under 30; it’s an Internet-connected generation. Access to satellite television is widespread. The BBC’s new Farsi service is all the rage.

Abdullah Momeni, a student opponent of the regime, told me, “The Internet is very important to us; in fact, it is of infinite importance.” Iranians are not cut off, like Cubans or North Koreans.

The June presidential election pitting the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, against Mohammad Khatami (a former president who once spoke in a synagogue) will be a genuine contest as compared with the charades that pass for elections in many Arab states. No fire has burned the Majlis, or parliament, down.

If you’re thinking trains-on-time Fascist efficiency, think again. Tehran’s new telecommunications tower took 20 years to build. I was told its restaurant would open “soon.” So, it is said, will the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a project in the works for a mere 30 years. A Persian Chernobyl is more likely than some Middle Eastern nuclear Armageddon, if that’s any comfort.

For all the morality police inspecting whether women are wearing boots outside their pants (the latest no-no on the dress front) and the regime zealots of the Basiji militia, the air you breathe in Iran is not suffocating. Its streets at dusk hum with life — not a monochrome male-only form of it, or one inhabited by fear — but the vibrancy of a changing, highly educated society.

This is the Iran of subtle shades that the country’s Jews inhabit. Life is more difficult for them than for Muslims, but to suggest they inhabit a totalitarian hell is self-serving nonsense.

One Iranian exile, no lover of the Islamic Republic, wrote to me saying that my account of Iran’s Jews had brought “tears to my eyes” because “you are saying what many of us would like to hear.”

Far from the cradle of Middle Eastern Islamist zealotry, she suggested, “Iran — the supposed enemy — is the one society that has gone through its extremist fervor and is coming out the other end. It is relatively stable and socially dynamic. As my father, who continues to live there, says, ‘It is the least undemocratic country in the region outside Israel.’ ”

This notion of a “post-fervor” Iran is significant. The compromises being painfully fought out between Islam and democracy in Tehran are of seminal importance. They belie the notion of a fanatical power; they explain Jewish life.

That does not mean fanaticism does not exist or that terrible crimes have not been committed, like the Iran-backed bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires 15 years ago.

But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.

I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one — the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results.

It’s worth recalling that hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s race-baiting anti-Arab firebrand, may find a place in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. He should not.

Nor should racist demagoguery — wherever — prompt facile allusions to the murderous Nazi master of it.

Jeff Goldberg: Roger Cohen's Very Happy Visit with Iran's Jews

26 Feb 2009 07:01 am

Others have picked over Roger Cohen's recent column on Iran's Jews, so I won't try to make the obvious points. But one line struck me as particularly credulous:

Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran -- its sophistication and culture -- than all the inflammatory rhetoric. That may be because I'm a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran.

Warmth, civility, hospitality and friendliness are the hallmarks of most Muslim societies I've visited. I have been in many places -- in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq and Iran -- where people absolutely hate Israel, absolutely hate "International Jewry," and hate the Talmud, or what they think is in the Talmud. But people in these places have been almost uniformly kind to me as a visiting Jewish reporter (and they almost always know, right from the outset, that I'm Jewish, because it's not something I ever hide). The people with whom I visit -- and I count the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah in this group -- are raised by their families to be kind to guests. It's very lovely and civilized -- Israelis could learn a thing or two about politeness from Muslims -- but it's irrelevant to their politics, or to their beliefs about what should happen to the Jewish state and its supporters.

I was once with a mullah in Pakistan who told me that Allah would soon fulfill his promise and destroy the Jews, but who invited me to stay in his guest room rather than make a dangerous night drive back to my hotel. I took him up on his offer, and slept soundly. It wouldn't be fair of me to call this sort of hospitality superficial, because it grows from a real spirit of personal generosity, but I've learned the hard way that the personal isn't always the political.

Did Ya' Hear The One About Cohen & The Iranian Jews?

Richard Z. Chesnoff

Posted February 23, 2009

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Read More: Iran Nuclear Weapons, Jews, NY Times, World News

Ever notice how often the reputedly astute prove amazingly naïve if not downright dumb? Take the New York Times much lauded op-ed columnist Roger Cohen.

In a long rambling piece datelined Esfahan, Iran, wandering analyst Cohen recently told his global readers that the remnant of Iran's once thriving Jewish community is doing just fine - in fact, it's actually living the life of Reza side by side with Islamists, enjoying freedom of worship, business and family life and just dying to join other patriotic Iranians in angry anti-Israel street demonstrations. To back up his contentions, Mr Cohen quotes that esteemed expert Morris Motamed, the man who once served as the mullah endorsed Jewish stooge in Tehran's rubber stamp parliament.

It all reminded me of my 1990 Baghdad visit to the remnants of Iraqi Jewry - a disapora community older and once larger than even Iran's. Like most Iranian Jews, the vast majority of Iraq's 150,000 Musawi or ""Mosaics" wisely fled for Israel and the West in the early 1950s. Of course, they had to leave behind everything they owned. By the time I visited Baghdad, there were less than 300 Jews left in a city where Jews once comprised 25% of the urban population. These Jews also prayed in their synagogue on the Sabbath where their communal president assured

me with great flourish (while Saddam Hussein's omnipresent agents listened to every word) that he and his fellow worshippers were "proud to be both faithful Jews and loyal Iraqi patriots".

The truth was very different - as it is in Iran where the Jewish community is under constant surveillance, where teaching Hebrew is prohibited, where Jewish women are forced to follow the same modesty laws their Muslim sisters do, where Jews are barred from certain jobs and some imprisoned or hung on trumped up charges of contact with "Zionists".

Another journalistic sin of Mr Cohen's piece was his insistence to use Iran's supposed tolerant treatment of its remaining Jews as an excuse to take another of his nasty jabs at Israel. After all, Cohen tells us, perhaps Iran's threats to destroy the Jewish state are merely a "provocation to focus people on Israel's bomb, its 41 year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force."

He then goes on to ignore the hard fact that Iran is behind Hamas as well as Hezbollah and most of the terrorism that currently confronts Israel , the very terrorism that frequently obliges Jerusalem to invoke its "overwhelming force".

Mr. Cohen also attacks "some American Jewish circles" for their "misleading and dangerous...'Mad Mullah' caricature of Iran".

In other words we really shouldn't worry about Iran's race to obtain a nuclear weapon - even though such a weapon would not only threaten Israel, but the rest of the world including the United States.

And as if to underscore its increasingly perverted sense of journalistic balance, today's NY Times runs a second Iran focused op-ed piece alongside that of Cohen's. This one by Iranian born journalist Ali Reza Esraghi is oddly entitled "Our Friend in Tehran" and urges President Barack Obama to stop wasting time and "seize the opportunity to shake the Iranian President (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's) outstretched hand".

Lord protect us from the reputedly astute!

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EDITORS' SELECTIONS (what's this?)

February 23, 2009 6:39 am

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My friend who goes to Bolt is a Persian Jew, and I remember being surprised at the first time I learned that there were actually Jews in Iran. When you think of Iran, and other Muslim nations, you think of ironclad laws, religious doctrine, intolerance to Judaism and Christianity, and assume a predominantly anti-American viewpoint.

My freshman year roommate was half Persian. She visited Iran, and besides having to wear a head scarf, was treated with much warmth. She said that although women are supposed to be veiled in public, they love to shop, just like us. Instead of parading their purchases in the mall, they wear them at home. We often think of the Middle East as a distant place with hateful extremists, and while the treatment of women there irks me, most of the people are part of loving families and are kind to their neighbors. The part in your article about how the Jewish man stood by fellow Iranians against Israeli brutality in Gaza, emphasized how being good to your neighbor - a message taught by all religions - will trump loyalty to one's religion (which in this day in age has be severely politicized.)

The Ayatollah is anti-Israel and anti-women's rights, standard for Muslim religious leaders in the Middle East, unlike their western counterparts. Unlike Al Queda and the Mujahideen, terrorist organizations that sees the American way of life as a threat to Islam in addition to our foreign policy, Iran's problem with us isn't cultural. It's been made clear that they really just want two things from us: 1) For us to take a stronger stance against Israeli violence in Gaza 2) For us to stop creating double standards and acting like we're the boss (ie the bomb).

Let's fix our policy in Israel, get everyone together at the table, and be neighborly to one another. Persian, Muslim, Arab, Jew, American, Palestinian - what have you - we have more in common than we think.

— Liz, NY

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February 23, 2009 6:40 am

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Thank you Mr. Cohen. As an Iranian, it is certainly refreshing to see a mainstream piece of journalism that doesn't depict Iranians as raging anti-Semites. I do, however, take issue with a number of your points:

1. You mention that the number of Jews from various Arab nations has decreased, but your article grossly oversimplifies the reasons why. Essentially, you want the reader to infer that it is due to some form of human rights violation that they were *forced* out, either systematically or not. However, you fail to take into account a vast array of reasons--i.e. the rise of despotism (Iraq), increased pressure/violence from the colonial powers (Algeria), not to mention the formation of a Jewish state--that would encourage people to emigrate.

2. "The Arab Jew has perished?" I feel that several million Mizrahi Jews would disagree with you. Mr. Cohen I think you are gravely mistaken when it comes to your definition of Arab Jews. I would recommend to you Gil Anidjar's "The Arab, the Jew: A History of the Enemy" if you are interested.

3. Not to belabor the point, but I really don't see why you need to compare the treatment of Jews in Iran to what you perceive to be the treatment of Jews in the Arab world. You ultimately seem to be saying that Iranians aren't anti-Semitic, maybe we should engage with them, but Arabs are anti-Semite (so you seem to be inferring) so...what? Let's invade their countries? This dualism you set up is superfluous, if not down right troubling.

4. Based on the evidence from your article, it is clear that the Jews of Iran are critical of Israel, and therefore make a distiction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, yet you seem to avoid this question. I was wondering as to why.

In the end, I must say I find your article deeply problematic, as you seem to be quelling some of the more raging mistruths about the Middle East while simultaneously perpetuating others.

...I suppose one day we'll get there...

— KM, New York,NY

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February 23, 2009 6:40 am

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And this article is "reality". And what would happen if some of these Jews were to tell a different version of Jewish life in Iran and that were to be published in The New York Times? Or perhaps those who told a different truth might find a different version of Iranian "civility" in the sophistication and culture of an Iranian prison.

Mr. Cohen is naive and gullible if he actually believes what he writes here. And under the best of circumstances, what he describes is toleration. How nice. That seems to be fine when it is a Jewish minority. What would he think if Israel's Arab citizens were treated in the same way? (Just how many Jewish members of the Iranian parliament are there and how many Jewish political parties in Iran).

— Joshua Schwartz, Ramat-Gan, Israel

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February 23, 2009 9:42 am

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Perhaps the "'Mad Mullah' caricature of Iran", you speak of is perceived similarly to the mad mullah we just had here. People around the world love and respect America, but hated George W. Bush.

— Ted, Richmond, Va.

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February 23, 2009 9:42 am

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It is Islamic to allow other faiths to be practiced. There is to be no compulsion to religion. This is an authentic hadith that all varieties of Islam recognize.

Iran is a country with energy needs. They're also developing solar technologies. It's incredibly hypocritical of us to say that they are too unbridled to have nuclear potentials or weapons when the U.S. remains the only nation to ever drop a bomb on a human population.

All of that said, it will be of the utmost import that the U.S. engage Iran in talks that recognize the sovereignty of this venerable nation. Persia is not some ignorant bunch of savages. We must treat them with respect. Perhaps then the bridges can be rebuilt. Have we even returned the assets frozen some 20 years ago -- assets taken from private citizens simply because we feared they might support Iran with THEIR OWN MONEY while it was here in our banks? Giving them back that money (or their children, it has been that long) might be a good first step.

Let us be strong and wise and graceful enough to treat others with dignity. Let us lead by that sort of example. Let us deny "humanitarian aid" to Israel or any other nation which persecutes others. Perhaps then we will move closer to peace.

— JT, Chicago

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February 23, 2009 11:52 am

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Mr. Cohen's article is a reminder that Iran is not the radical Islamic juggernaut it is often made out to be, nor the most dangerous nation in the Middle East vis-a-vis American national security interests.

A nations society is - ultimately - the force that determines a nation's foreign policy. And as Middle Eastern national societies go, we should be much more worried about, say, Saudi Arabia and Egypt where radical Islam is a powerful force indeed (despite what current rulers might say or do).

— Gary Peschell, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

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February 23, 2009 11:52 am

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People generally find what they seek. If what you seek are enemies, then that is what you will find. If, on the other hand, you seek friends, then friends you will find.

War is profitable for the rich. The rich make armaments, they direct the activities of the less well off by luring them into virtual servitude that results from debt, they basically laugh in the face of those less well off.

When looking through this prism, the actions of leaders are more transparent. It should seem obvious by anyone who travels in this "dangerous world" that the common people of most countries bear little to no animosity towards peoples of other countries. The rhetoric of irresposible leaders in order to inflame the populace so the leaders can maintain power is the problem.

It is time for America to take the lead. First we need a national debate: do we want peace or war? Talking about peace while dropping bombs on innocents is wrong on every count. Claims that we have "liberated" 25 million people in Iraq ring hollow to the families of the hundreds of thousands who have given their lives.

Over and over again we find that bringing humanitarian aid, building schools and hospitals, and in general taking care of common people do far more in promoting US interests than providing arms to governments.

Shouldn't the goals be to reduce armaments and conflict? Shouldn't the people of the world demand that the legal trade in arms be reduced? Exactly what is our role? If President Obama really wants to bring change to this world, shouldn't those goals be his, and ours?

— Dennis Donaghey, Texas

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February 23, 2009 12:33 pm

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The deeper we get involved in the Middle East region, the more we should realize that we swim against the current in trying to change entrenched cultures and life systems according to our needs and timelines, all under the phony guise that we are doing it for their own good. Changes will come in due time, with their own local flavor such as with the State of Turkey. In the meantime, it is high time that we wake up to a new approach with fresh eyes and ideas, have an embassy representation in Teheran and consulates where appropriate in the interior, staffed with genuine American diplomats as against political appointees or special interests hacks with suspicious agendas. Let?s go back to what has worked before with our foreign policy, in helping other peoples help themselves in finding their own solutions.

— likovid, Houston, TX

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February 23, 2009 12:33 pm

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Mr. Cohen's reaction to the Iranian public's tolerance and civility is about the same as the Iranian public's view of the US ctizenry: They are wonderful but their government is nuts.

— kirkwynn, omaha,ne

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February 23, 2009 12:57 pm

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Roger Cohen's policy view is that the U.S. should negotiate with Iran, and that is a legitimate position, with which one can agree or disagree. Papering over Iran's treatment of its Jewish residents, however, is unacceptable. Iran's Jews have been the subject of numerous prosecutions and "show" trials on false charges of dual loyalty. Their legal status is that of second-class citizens. But putting all that aside, how can any rational, thinking human being come to the conclusion that Iran's Jews are treated "with civility" when their elected government, for God Sakes, holds a state-sponsored Holocaust denial conference. In other words, the government of Iran believes that the Jewish people have concocted a massive lie in order to gain sympathy. Roger Cohen's sets the bar very low for anti-semitism: if they're not killing or maiming Jews, then Jews are being treated "civilly."

— Eric, New York, NY

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February 23, 2009 12:57 pm

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Perhaps Mr Cohen should listen to some of the honey that drips from the tongues of the likes of Nasrallah in Lebanon and also from the mouth of the president of Iran. He might care to listen to the homey homilies of the Ayatolla Khumeini on Israel and the US. I suggest he also check out where the money and the arms come from for Hizbullah and Hamas and perhaps read about the mild antipathy to the US that is so gently put into words by the Iranian rulers and their religious directors. Oh, and does he believe that Bahrein is the 14th province of Iran, as recently noted by a leading Iranian? And was there really a holocaust or did some 60% of my entire family just float off the edge of the earth between 1941 and 1945?

— Eli, Georgia

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February 23, 2009 12:57 pm

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Please focus more on the plight of the Baha'is. While the recent, and remarkable, letter of apology for a century and a half of persecution of Baha'is signed by leading Iranian intellectuals speaks to the civility and sophistication of which you write, the official treatment of Baha'is reveals another side.

Indeed, the Iranian regime seems bent on finding the most effective ways to destroy the Baha'i community that do not excite too much international reaction. That's a sophistication of another kind. Your set of articles on Iran will be incomplete until you examine this story more closely.

— D., Washington, DC

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February 23, 2009 12:57 pm

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Sadly, everything that Poster number 32 says is true. Officially, Iran is a racist state. Like other writers here, I also have several Iranian friends and clients ? some are Muslim, some are Jews, and some are Bhai?. All have one over-arching thing in common: all fled Iran?s repressive government. Had Mr. Cohen interviewed them, I doubt that any would have painted the rosy picture that permeates this piece. How wonderful must Iran?s Jews feel to be ?tolerated!? ? How enlightened are the Mullahs! The current government of Iran has now started 2 wars with Israel through Hezbollah and Hamas (under the cynical guise of ?protecting? the Palestinians) and, in each case, its modus operandi has been to fire rockets indiscriminately at civilians. Yet, at the same time, my own personal Rashomon-like experience (I visited Iran ever so briefly before the revolution) is that the Iranians I have known are intelligent, warm, polite, respectful, and generous to a fault ? justifiably proud of a rich and ancient heritage. As despicable a caricature as I believe Iran?s president to be, and as reckless its regime, as brutalized are some of its minorities, student organizations, and its press, it would, I believe, harm the cause of human rights and democracy not to engage with it. After all, as others here have also pointed out (I believe correctly), the United States overthrew the democratically elected president of Iran in 1953 and helped to install a Shah whose Savak secret police tortured and murdered thousands. Despite that, contemporary correspondents report consistently that Iranian people (when out of earshot of the government) are almost embarrassingly pro-American. (Would Americans express a like warmth towards the people of Iran had an Iranian spy agency overthrown Harry Truman and installed a general who murdered and imprisoned a generation of our citizens?) Speaking (only for myself) as a staunch defender of Israel and a Jew, I hope that the Obama administration can at least attempt some reasoned dialogue with Iran ? not with the naïveté of some post-modernist Dr. Pangloss (or, perhaps worse, Neville Chamberlin), but, rather, with the courage and foresight of a Sadat who seemed to realize that, crowded, discordant, and irrational as the world can be, we, nonetheless, have to share it. Whatever oversimplifications Mr. Cohen may have made in his article, the very fact that he wrote it may have done us all a service.

— Seth, Newton, Massachusetts

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February 23, 2009 12:57 pm

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What a valuable propaganda service you've provided for a totalitarian regime that denies the Holocaust yet wants to initiate a new one. How useful to showcase the happy prisoners. Ever hear of Theresienstadt?

— Steve Siporin, Logan, Utah

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February 23, 2009 1:36 pm

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Dear Mr. Cohen,

I appreciated your article, especially as an Amerian Jewish woman, single, with one child along, who lived in Iran for almost two years during the mid-seventies when the Shah was still in power. I worked for the UN as a Communications Consultant and was treated very well; had access to the highest levels of society, and a better understanding of the village Iranians than my sophisticated Tehrani friends.

One should not draw conclusions of a successful and included group from the decision of so many Jews to remain in Iran. The historical tradition of Persian/Jewish friendship certainly plays a part, as does the much more refined and comfortable way of life that is enjoyed in Iran, and the discomfort of emigration. Add to that that the Bahai and Arabs (often called "blackfaces" in Persian)occupy an even lower position on the social scale of acceptability. The many comments questioning the ability of Jewish Iranians to speak with candor also bear weight.

The anti-Zionist rhetoric did not begin with Ahmadinejad..even under the Shah's leadership of "tolerance"...a word I despise as condescending and more dangerous than outright rejection...I attended a large dinner of influential people in Iran to be shocked when the host led a toast to Adolf Hitler.

Certainly I believe we should engage diplomatically with Iran, but with great caution and with an understanding of and respect for Persian/Central Asian cultural norms, something noticeably absent from our past representation. The Iranians have not forgotten our past actions; the assassination of Mossadegh, our support for a young playboy Shah who used Savak to silence political dissent; our inability to take their position in Central Asia seriously until we came to believe they had developed the power to destroy Israel and other societies they find unfavorable.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak out.

— Joyce Mitchell, Kent Lakes, NY, USA

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February 23, 2009 1:36 pm

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Communist China in a few decades has gone from being America's evil enemy to being an ally tied at the hip economically. Capitalism was the glue.

Will Jews and Muslims ever come together? It's possible if they stop looking back to biblical times to see who really owns the "Olive Tree" Tom Friedman writes about before the world became flat.

Mr. Cohen, great article that only a person with thick skin can write.

— David, Nevada

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February 23, 2009 1:36 pm

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My heartfelt thanks for your article. I am appalled, as a conservative Jew, at the way American Jewry consistently adopts a reactionary position in world politics: not only Israel, right or wrong, but US policy on the Iraq War and the felt need to perpetuate the Cold War itself with respect to Russia and China, which also translates into retrograde domestic policy and mistrust of the Democratic party. The alacrity with which Israel entertains the bombing of Iran, which could lead to a wider conflagration in the Middle East, alerts one to the need to rethink the complexity of societies we reflexively oppose. Your article on how Jewish people are treated there is useful in this regard. Similarly, we visited the Sephardic synagogue in Havana several years ago, and found a small Jewish community living in peace with its neighbors. In fact, the leader of the congregation told us an interesting story. He contacted Fidel and asked him why he did not visit the congregation. And Fidel replied, "but you never asked me." (Fidel also said that he had some Jewish ancestors in his background, from the Galician province in Spain.) Whether he actually came, I do not know. But we must shrug off stereotypes about leftwing countries being necessarily anti-Semitic.

— norman pollack, east lansing mi