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By Palash R. Ghosh: Subscribe to Palash's RSS feed
February 25, 2012 11:39 AM EST
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is perhaps the world’s pre-eminent anti-Semite, frequently denouncing Zionism and calling for the destruction of Israel. He has also repeatedly denied the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6-million Jews.
Now, as the war rhetoric ramps up between Israel and Iran, the conflict between the two countries could take a deadly turn as the Jewish State is believed to be planning a military strike to destroy Iran’s nascent nuclear program.
However, amidst all this back-and-forth talk of attacks and retaliation and worries about the outbreak of a potential World War III, Ahmadinejad may be hiding a secret -- he may be Jewish himself.
That may not be so shocking, considering that Jews have lived in Iran for at least 2,600 years. Jews have experienced periods of tolerance and prosperity in Iran, mixed with eras of persecution, discrimination and forced conversions.
Under the Pahlevi dynasty, which was established in 1925, Jews in Iran began a renaissance of sorts and played as significant role in Iran’s political and cultural milieu.
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According to Jewish Virtual Library (JVL), as many as 100,000 Jews lived in Iran in 1948, during the formation of the state of Israel. By 1979, when an Islamic Revolution deposed the Shah, about 80,000 Jews lived in the country. Thereafter, thousands of Jews fled, many of them wealthy businessmen who were forced to abandon large amounts of property.
There are believed to be between 20,000 and 25,000 Jews left in Iran now. The Teheran Parliament designates one seat for a Jewish member, but he is constrained by law to support Iran’s foreign policy, which includes, among other things, strident opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel.
The Iranian parliament’s sole Jewish MP, Maurice Motamed, has criticized Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denials, but has supported his foreign policy stances otherwise.
"I am an Iranian first and a Jew second," Motamed has reportedly said.
JVL noted: “The Jewish community does enjoy a measure of religious freedom but is faced with constant suspicion of cooperating with the Zionist state and with ‘imperialistic America’ -- both such activities are punishable by death.”
Still, Iran has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel.
Moreover, it is entirely conceivable that Ahmadinejad himself has Jewish roots.
According to a 2009 report in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Ahmadinejad’s national identity card shows that his family’s original surname was Sabourjian, a Jewish name that means cloth-weaver.
Sabourjian derives from “weaver of the sabour,” the name for the Jewish tallit shawl worn in Persia.
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