Roger Cohen does a great service in today's New York Times in a surprising article "What Iran’s Jews Say." Reporting from Esfahan, Cohen blows away the image of Iran that AIPAC and the Israel lobby have worked so hard to craft as a frothing anti-Semitic cauldron of hate. Cohen writes:
…I inquired how [Soleiman Sedighpoor, 61, a Jew] 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.”
Just as importantly, Cohen goes on to call out the double standard by which Iran's nuclear program is watched under a microscope while Israel's is willfully ignored. Remember that Obama refused to "speculate" about whether Israel has nukes at his first press conference:
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.
"Repetitive use of overwhelming force." Don't forget that Cohen was "shamed" by Gaza a few weeks back. He finishes with a final shot across the neocon bow–proclaiming "we won't be fooled again" into a war with Iran:
Green Zoneism — the basing of Middle Eastern policy on the construction of imaginary worlds — has led nowhere.
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished and the JTA wasted no time going after the article. Uriel Heilman takes an oddly Zionist tone even for the JTA in this post, "Naive on Iran": "Iran is a place where Jews are punished for expressing the fundamental Jewish value of yearning for Zion." Heilman thinks that Cohen was basically duped and doesn't understand "the possibility that Jews in Iran may be holding back when they talk to him for fear of the regime's long arm." He faults Cohen for not devoting more time to discussing Iran's nuclear program (in an article about Iranian Jews?), and ends by more or less putting Cohen in league with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ("Don't we have enough anti-Israel rhetoric coming out of Iran already?") as he echoes the lobby's litany of Iran talking points.
Contrast this with Rabbi Brant Rosen's take on the article. Now, one apparent difference between Rosen and Heilman is that Rosen has actually been to Iran (Heilman's bio mentions reporting from Israel, the United States, Europe, South
America, and Africa). Rabbi Rosen writes on his blog:
Cohen’s words are very much in line with my own experience. When I attended an interfaith delegation to Iran this past November, we spent considerable time with the Jewish community – and among the many surprising impressions we received was their obvious sense of comfort and safety living as Jews under an Islamic regime.
American Jews are invariably astounded when I tell them that I myself wore a kippah publicly throughout Iran without a moment’s nervousness. (Once we were approached and asked by an Iranian man if we were Jewish – he turned out to be a Jew himself and he promptly invited us to his shul for Shabbat). I’m not being facetious when I say that I actually felt safer as a Jew walking the streets Tehran than I often do in Israel: the only place in the world, frankly, where Jewish lives are under constant threat.
The lobby is only successful as long as journalists (and politicians) are willing to regurgitate its talking points and not actually go to Iran to see for themselves. The Green Zone was made possible through similar misinformation and ignorance. It's looking like they're going to have a tougher go this time around.
