by Michael Lipin in the VOA News
The U.S. State Department has denounced as “abhorrent” Iran’s apparent coercion of its Jewish minority into staging an unprecedented series of anti-Israel rallies in five Iranian cities Oct. 30.
In a Friday email to VOA, a State Department spokesperson said the Biden administration is aware of reports Iranian authorities “coerced Iranian Jewish leaders and their communities” to engage in the protests.
Enjoy what you're reading? Subscribe for more!
Iran’s U.N. mission began its statement with a question that included another derogatory term for Israel: “Have the Jewish individuals who staged protests in the American Congress to support the Palestinians and denounce the apartheid regime’s crimes been subject to pressure?”
Asked by VOA for a response to the Iranian statement, Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the U.S. nonprofit Coalition for Jewish Values, said, “The obvious answer is no, because American Jews, like all Americans, do not have the experience of living under a repressive, totalitarian government like that of Iran.” CJV advocates for classical Jewish ideas in U.S. public policy.
The statement of Iran’s U.N. Mission also said, “Iranian Jews, akin to other Jews worldwide … are indeed fed up with the egregious crimes committed by the occupying regime against innocent Palestinian women and children.”
Rabbi Menken noted that Iranian Jews have much deeper experience with antisemitism than their counterparts in America.
“This is also how the State Department knew the Iranian Jews were coerced. What Jews worldwide are fed up with is Israel being attacked by genocidal enemies.”
See the full article in the VOA News
Photo Credit: Student News Agency on Wikimedia Commons