02.10.24
Editorial Note
Last week, the media reported that Dr. Lior B. Sternfeld, a US-based Israeli academic, met Masoud Pezeshkianin, the Iranian President, in New York as part of an interfaith dialogue hosted by Iran during the UN General Assembly. Sternfeld, an associate professor of History and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University, is the author of Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran. Sternfeld gave the Iranian president a copy of his book. With Sternfeld were several rabbis, including Abby Stein, a transgender female rabbi who is pro-Palestinian progressive, along with Muslim and Christian representatives. The Iranian PressTV posted photographs from the meeting, showing also members of Neturei Karta, the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox group.
Channel 12 reported that Sternfeld was invited by Iranian researchers with whom he has been in contact. It is said he checked with officials in Israel and got their approval to participate. “It was interesting. It was difficult. It was respectful.” Sternfeld quoted Pezeshkian as saying, “the war is terrible and has to stop.” Sternfeld stated, “Iran wants to play a mediating role on the issue of the hostages.” He also said that Pezeshkian asserted that when Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement on an end to conflict that is acceptable to most Palestinians, Iran won’t carry the flag of the Palestinian struggle.
In contrast, Iran, in addition to advocating for Israel’s destruction and backing terror groups sworn to do likewise — such as Hamas and Hezbollah — has passed several pieces of legislation sanctioning commercial and cultural relations with Israel.
Sternfeld’s 2019 book, Between Iran and Zion, deserves attention. In 2021, Dr. Alessanda Cecolin from the Department of History, University of Aberdeen, UK, whose 2013 Ph.D. focused on Iranian-Jewish Identity, reviewed Sternfeld’s book and found a lacuna.
She stated, “Chapter 4 examines Iranian Jews’ participation in and response to the Islamic Revolution. The main focus of the author is to look at the role of the Jewish intellectuals and their support to the revolution. This chapter follows the development of the leftist intellectual movements and Marxist Jews and claims that the majority of Iranian Jews supported the revolution… The chapter, however, does not account for those Iranian Jews who remained loyal to the Shah. As such, the overall impression is that the whole community supported the revolution when, in fact, mainly the members of the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals (AJII) actively supported the revolution. Evidence suggests that thousands of Jews left Iran during and in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. Despite this lacuna in the chapter… Between Iran and Zion is an important contribution to the current post-Zionist debate on the status and history of Middle Eastern Jews.”
Likewise, Prof. David Yaghoubian from California State University, San Bernardino, who teaches Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict, also reviewed the book. He wrote, “The book presents a revisionist interpretation of Jewish Iranian history that explores the interrelationship between Jews and broader Iranian society. Sternfeld’s approach and findings challenge existing historiography that either views Jewish Iranian history in a vacuum, or extends lachrymose interpretations that selectively center on Jewish oppression and dispossession before ultimate salvation through Zionism and immigration to Israel.”
But, the core problem with Sternfeld’s work is an article he wrote in August titled “Threatened by a moderate Iranian president, Israel is pulling him into a fight.” Sternfeld stated that “Through Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran’s capital, Israel appears to have sought to drag the Islamic Republic into a regional war — one that Iran hoped to avoid — on the first day in office of the new, moderate president.” And that “Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran was intended to urge Iran to respond, and perhaps escalate hostilities, thus finally bringing about the full-blown regional war that Israel craves.” Or that “The Iranian government thus remains reluctant to go to war, in part because it recognizes its domestic risks: war would likely strengthen the ultra-conservative opposition to Pezeshkian, and justify further escalation of oppressive measures at home and abroad. But right now, Israel remains eager to pull Iran into a direct confrontation.”
He wrote that there is a “long and seemingly counterintuitive tradition of Israel preferring conservative, fervently anti-Israel presidents in Iran over reformists, whom it sees as detrimental to its strategic interests. After all, part of Israel’s support among American and European governments derives from the idea that it is a Western democratic outpost in a ‘dangerous neighborhood,’ which can defeat bad actors in the Middle East before they reach Europe and the West. According to this logic, Iran is the chief enemy: an anti-Western, antisemitic, theocratic dictatorship that poses a clear and immediate danger to the world. When Iran elects moderate leaders, it undermines this monolithic caricature — and Israel, which refuses to change its outlook toward its regional neighbors, sees a diplomatic threat.”
He argues that the president of Iran, “As part of his policy of economic openness, and in order to revitalize Iran’s oil industry and economy, he prepared a huge concession for the American oil company Conoco, which included the development of two new oil fields. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei approved the offer, recognizing the value of extending an olive branch to the United States, and by 1995, the U.S. State and Treasury departments had given Conoco approval to move forward with the deal. Then the Israel lobby — AIPAC and the Israeli government — panicked and acted to thwart the franchise. After they warned members of the U.S. Congress of the ‘danger’ of trade agreements with Iran, President Bill Clinton bowed to the pressure. In 1995, he issued two executive orders banning all trade by American companies with Iran, and then allowed a series of new sanctions to be imposed on Iran. The Conoco deal collapsed, and the opportunity to develop U.S.-Iranian diplomacy was lost. The story repeated itself a few years later under the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who was elected on a platform that emphasized the need for dialogue between Iran and the West. Shortly after entering office, U.S. President George W. Bush signaled he was interested in revisiting and potentially restoring US-Iran relations. Therefore, Israel and AIPAC swiftly built up a broad coalition in Congress to renew sanctions on Iran.”
Because of the Israelis, according to Sternfeld, President George W. Bush gave his “Axis of Evil” speech and a “series of new sanctions on Iran. The United States, Israel, and the West had a much easier time with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khatami’s successor, whose provocative style and harsh anti-Zionist statements made it easier to portray Iran as a danger to Israel and the world. But moderate politician Hassan Rouhani was elected president in 2013 on a promise to reach an agreement with the United States and the West that would allow Iran to maintain its nuclear program for scientific and civil purposes, in return for sanctions relief — a situation that Israel was once again unwilling to accept. The Iran nuclear deal in 2015 represented a victory for diplomacy, but it was presented by Israel as a ‘charm offensive’ meant to disguise Iran’s true ambitions. The Israeli government was determined to prevent a thaw in relations between Iran and the West and the possibility of another vision for the Middle East, which could limit Israel’s ability to maintain its policies toward Palestinians.”
According to Sternfeld, “Unlike the picture that Israel and its allies paint, Iran is a rational actor. It is a country with domestic and international interests, and it employs many tools to achieve them: internal repression, ties with militias and non-state actors throughout the region, and various aid and support enterprises.”
Sternfeld is not alone among Israeli academic legitimizers of a brutal regime that terrorizes its own people, uses proxies to destabilize the Middle East, and wages conflicts small and big against Israel. Shlomo Sand and Ilan Pappe come to mind. As IAM repeatedly demonstrated, these and others like them are rewarded with academic positions in American and British universities. The trend to employ bitter critics of Israel in many Middle East Studies departments has added to the antisemitic and anti-Israeli turmoil on Western campuses and raised questions about the direction of liberal arts education.
No doubt that Sternfeld’s description of the Iranian regime as moderate and Israel as the villain earned him the invitation to meet the Iranian president.
REFERENCES:
US-based Israeli professor says he spoke with Iran’s president at interfaith meeting
Lior Sternfeld says he gave a copy of his book to Pezeshkian, who knew he was Israeli; transgender rabbi, fringe anti-Zionist Haredi group also participated in event
By TOI STAFF 25 September 2024, 1:14 am
A US-based Israeli academic said Tuesday he met in New York with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, as part of an interfaith dialogue hosted by Iran on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Lior Sternfeld, an associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University, said Pezeshkian knew he was Israeli and had also told the UN delegation ahead of the session. Despite this, the invitation was not canceled, according to partial remarks posted by the liberal Hebrew media outlet Relevant.
The author of “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran,” Sternfeld said he gave the president a copy of the book.
Several rabbis also attended the meeting, according to Channel 12 news, along with Muslim and Christian representatives. Among them was Abby Stein, a transgender female rabbi and activist who is a leading figure among pro-Palestinian, progressive Jews.
Iran’s Press TV posted photographs from the meeting, which showed that members of the virulently anti-Zionist fringe ultra-Orthodox group Neturei Karta were also present.
Channel 12 reported that Sternfeld was invited by Iranian researchers with whom he has been in contact. The network said he checked with officials in Israel and got their approval to participate. It also said Sternfeld raised the issue of the hostages held by Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza.
“It was interesting. It was difficult. It was respectful,” Sternfeld said of the meeting, while quoting Pezeshkian as saying that “the war is terrible and has to stop” in the Relevant video.
Sternfeld claimed: “Iran wants to play a mediating role on the issue of the hostages.”
He also said Pezeshkian asserted that when Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement on an end to conflict that is acceptable to most Palestinians, Iran won’t carry the flag of the Palestinian struggle.
Iran cut off diplomatic relations with Israel after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In addition to advocating for Israel’s destruction and backing terror groups sworn to do likewise — such as Hamas and Hezbollah — Tehran has several pieces of legislation sanctioning commercial relations with Israel and forbids its athletes from competing against Israelis in international competitions.
Then-Iranian president Mohammad Khatami caused a domestic storm when he was accused in the conservative Iranian media of saying hello to then-Israeli president Moshe Katsav at the Pope’s funeral in 2005. Khatami denied the interaction occurred.
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ISRAELI PROFESSOR WHO MET IRAN’S PRESIDENT: ‘IRAN ISN’T A UNIQUE EVIL, IT’S A REGIONAL PLAYER LIKE ANY OTHER’
Part of the Jewish delegation that sat with President Masoud Pezeshkian in New York, Penn State professor Lior Sternfeld tells Haaretz that being in the room with Iran’s president was an opportunity he couldn’t miss
By Etan Nechin
Haaretz | Israel News
25 September 2024
NEW YORK—On Tuesday, one of the most surprising gatherings on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly was a meeting between Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and a group of Jewish delegates. And arguably, no one was more surprised than the Israeli professor who attended.
Lior Sternfeld, an associate professor of history and Jewish studies at Penn State University and an expert on Iran, told Haaretz he was taken aback when he received an invitation two weeks ago. The meeting was billed as an “interfaith dialogue” (It was later described in Iranian media as “a meeting with several religious leaders and scholars”).
“At first, I wasn’t sure if [the invitation] was genuine. But after some inquiries, I confirmed its legitimacy,” Sternfeld said. The academic’s work on Jews and Iran includes the book “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran,” which assesses how Iranian Jews contributed to Iranian nation-building projects.
Sternfeld said he was also surprised by the reaction when he disclosed his nationality after receiving the invite. “To avoid embarrassment, I informed them that I am, in fact, an Israeli citizen. They assured me it was not an issue.”
The next step was to confirm that his participation was permissible under Israeli law, which prohibits contact with officials from an enemy state. After consulting with the Israeli authorities, Sternfeld determined that his attendance was acceptable.
“It wasn’t an easy decision – I wondered if it was just a ploy,” he said. “But being in the room with Iran’s president, to speak and to listen, was an opportunity I couldn’t miss.”
Several American-Jewish figures, including transgender and pro-Palestinian activist Abby Stein, also attended the meeting in New York. Others present included Ezra Tzfadya, a Rutgers University professor who specializes in Shia Islamic and Jewish political and legal thought, plus representatives from the Neturei Karta Haredi sect (which refuses to recognize the State of Israel and is a permanent presence at pro-Palestinian protests).
Sternfeld, who recently penned a column arguing that Israel is “threatened by a moderate Iranian president” and “Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran was intended to urge Iran to respond… bringing about the full-blown regional war that Israel craves,” said he was the only Israeli present. The meeting, which lasted 90 minutes, was very formal, he noted: “Every delegate had a chance to speak, and Pezeshkian responded to everyone collectively.”
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Threatened by a moderate Iranian president, Israel is pulling him into a fight
Israel prefers hardline leaders to maintain a monolithic view of the enemy. Its assassination in Tehran now forces the reformist Pezeshkian into a corner.
By Lior SternfeldAugust 13, 2024
On July 5, Masoud Pezeshkian won the run-off elections in Iran to replace Ebrahim Raisi as president of the Islamic Republic, after the latter’s death in a helicopter crash in May. During the short campaign, Pezeshkian sought to win over voters with the basic platform of his reformist camp: restarting negotiations with the West to lift sanctions, building the economy, fighting poverty, and investing in housing, healthcare, welfare, and civil society. He was officially sworn in as president at the end of the month.
Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, came to Tehran to attend Pezeshkian’s inauguration. Based on multiple reports, Israel hired local agents to plant explosives in the hospitality compound in which he was staying, used by the Revolutionary Guards to host high-ranking guests. Through Haniyeh’s assassination in Iran’s capital, Israel appears to have sought to drag the Islamic Republic into a regional war — one that Iran hoped to avoid — on the first day in office of the new, moderate president. The expectation is that Iran will have to respond, and more forcefully than its previous choreographed attack on Israel in April.
This continues a long and seemingly counterintuitive tradition of Israel preferring conservative, fervently anti-Israel presidents in Iran over reformists, whom it sees as detrimental to its strategic interests. After all, part of Israel’s support among American and European governments derives from the idea that it is a Western democratic outpost in a “dangerous neighborhood,” which can defeat bad actors in the Middle East before they reach Europe and the West.
According to this logic, Iran is the chief enemy: an anti-Western, antisemitic, theocratic dictatorship that poses a clear and immediate danger to the world. When Iran elects moderate leaders, it undermines this monolithic caricature — and Israel, which refuses to change its outlook toward its regional neighbors, sees a diplomatic threat.
Decades of thwarted diplomacy
In the mid-1990s, Iran was reeling after a turbulent 15 years: the revolution of 1979, an eight-year war with Iraq in which hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded, the death of Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, and an economic crisis that threatened to crush the Iranian economy. Under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had assumed office in 1989, the country aimed to rebuild itself — and chart a new path forward internationally.
In particular, Rafsanjani sought to turn a new page in relations between Iran and the United States. As part of his policy of economic openness, and in order to revitalize Iran’s oil industry and economy, he prepared a huge concession for the American oil company Conoco, which included the development of two new oil fields. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei approved the offer, recognizing the value of extending an olive branch to the United States, and by 1995, the U.S. State and Treasury departments had given Conoco approval to move forward with the deal.
Then the Israel lobby — AIPAC and the Israeli government — panicked and acted to thwart the franchise. After they warned members of the U.S. Congress of the “danger” of trade agreements with Iran, President Bill Clinton bowed to the pressure. In 1995, he issued two executive orders banning all trade by American companies with Iran, and then allowed a series of new sanctions to be imposed on Iran. The Conoco deal collapsed, and the opportunity to develop U.S.-Iranian diplomacy was lost.
The story repeated itself a few years later under the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who was elected on a platform that emphasized the need for dialogue between Iran and the West. Shortly after entering office, U.S. President George W. Bush signaled he was interested in revisiting and potentially restoring US-Iran relations. Therefore, Israel and AIPAC swiftly built up a broad coalition in Congress to renew sanctions on Iran.
After the attacks of September 11, the political and public discourse in the United States completely changed, but there were still avenues for U.S.-Iranian cooperation. Khatami, for his part, asked to help the United States stabilize Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion, which could have helped achieve a sustainable resolution to the war.
Iran had been the most important regional enemy of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, and in December 2001, the United States, Iran, and Russia sat down together in Bonn to establish an Afghan Interim Authority to replace the Taliban — an agreement that led Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to accuse Bush of appeasement, à la Neville Chamberlain. The White House officially rejected those comments, but the next month the collaboration came to an end. On January 29, 2002, Khatami’s efforts were answered by President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech and a series of new sanctions on Iran.
The United States, Israel, and the West had a much easier time with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khatami’s successor, whose provocative style and harsh anti-Zionist statements made it easier to portray Iran as a danger to Israel and the world. But moderate politician Hassan Rouhani was elected president in 2013 on a promise to reach an agreement with the United States and the West that would allow Iran to maintain its nuclear program for scientific and civil purposes, in return for sanctions relief — a situation that Israel was once again unwilling to accept.
The Iran nuclear deal in 2015 represented a victory for diplomacy, but it was presented by Israel as a “charm offensive” meant to disguise Iran’s true ambitions. The Israeli government was determined to prevent a thaw in relations between Iran and the West and the possibility of another vision for the Middle East, which could limit Israel’s ability to maintain its policies toward Palestinians.
After Donald Trump was elected president, in his obscurantism and ignorance, he canceled the agreement, signaling to Iran that it has no partner in the United States, or even in Europe — where American sanctions prevented European economic cooperation with Iran. In turn, Iran accelerated its nuclear project in a way that would not have been possible under the agreement.
This helped contribute to the election of President Ebrahim Raisi in 2021, whose campaign emphasized the failed attempt at diplomacy with the West. However, even under Raisi, there were contacts between the United States and Iran, which had long-term diplomatic potential. Then came Pezeshkian’s inauguration — and the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran only a few hours later.
Urging escalation
Unlike the picture that Israel and its allies paint, Iran is a rational actor. It is a country with domestic and international interests, and it employs many tools to achieve them: internal repression, ties with militias and non-state actors throughout the region, and various aid and support enterprises. When one strategy fails, Iran shifts to another.
Iran can survive and enjoy profitable cooperation with Russia and China. But its preferred way of rehabilitating its regional and international standing is through reestablishing relations with the West. Whenever it has had to choose between developing relations with Russia and China or an agreement with the United States and the West, Iran chose the latter.
Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran was intended to urge Iran to respond, and perhaps escalate hostilities, thus finally bringing about the full-blown regional war that Israel craves. Pezeshkian, on his first day in office, was forced to choose whether to abandon the platform he was elected on, and be dragged into a war that would mainly please his opponents within Iran (especially within the regime’s conservative establishment), or stick to his original path.
It is very possible that Pezeshkian will have to defend Iran’s reputation vis-à-vis the Palestinians, especially Hamas, and perhaps upgrade its support for the group. And so while Israel’s security services have proven that they can assassinate a Hamas leader in a hotel room in the heart of Tehran, they have failed to protect millions of Israeli civilians.
Days after the assassination, multiple officials from Pezeshkian’s administration affirmed that the current president’s priorities remain focused on domestic issues, especially Iran’s economy. Iran’s Foreign Minister even went on record to say that the Islamic Republic would withhold its response if Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza — a message reiterated by Iran’s UN delegation in recent days. The Iranian government thus remains reluctant to go to war, in part because it recognizes its domestic risks: war would likely strengthen the ultra-conservative opposition to Pezeshkian, and justify further escalation of oppressive measures at home and abroad.
But right now, Israel remains eager to pull Iran into a direct confrontation — with devastating consequences for civilians across the Middle East.
A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.
Prof. Lior Sternfeld teaches modern Iranian history in the Department of History and the Jewish Studies Program at Penn State University. He is the author of “Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran.”
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https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/39864
Lior B. Sternfeld, Between Iran And Zion, Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (New Texts Out Now)
Lior B. Sternfeld, Between Iran And Zion, Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran (Stanford University Press, November 2018)
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Lior B. Sternfeld (LS): As a historian of Iran, it has bothered me greatly that historiography of this country makes no effort to reflect the complex social composition of Iranian society. Diversity has shaped Iranian society for centuries, and understanding it is crucial to the understanding of this society today. Iran is a country of minorities. There are almost thirty minorities (religious, ethnic, lingual) and only about half of the population is Persian Shi’i. If you read any of the “big histories” of Iran, you do not get this sense. This historiographical mold can be attributed in part to the nation-building projects of the twentieth century, and also to the dominant trends of Iranian nationalism, to which many of the minorities responded and wanted to interact with.
The case of the Jewish minority presents multiple historiographical and methodological challenges. Historiography of Iranian Jews has been heavily influenced by Iranian national historiography, on the one hand, and very secluded views and methodologies of Jewish studies and Zionism, on the other. The result of this has been a very shallow understanding of the Jewish experience in Iran in the twentieth century. Daniel Tsadik’s book on the nineteenth century had recently come out, revising the entire way scholars should look at the Jewish communities. I read this book in a very transformative period of graduate school and decided to write a paper, a paper which became my first article of this project on Jewish participation in the 1979 revolution.
I found out that the Jews were involved in the revolution in several ways. The Jewish hospital played a key role, and there were other fascinating aspects that, until that stage, remained very silent. The response to my article convinced me that I should write the histories of Iranian Jews in the twentieth century, in all their plurality. I wanted to try and analyze the profound social, political, and cultural transformation of these communities in a very turbulent century.
…just like Iranian society which is far less homogenous than it is usually portrayed, Jewish society is also very diverse.
J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?
LS: This book addresses the responses of Iranian Jews to mainly three political/cultural/intellectual streams that shaped Iran in the twentieth century: Iranian nationalism, Communism, and—in the Jewish case—two phases of Zionism, pre-1948 and post-1948. Iranian Jews articulated many responses to each of these streams. The responses came from different communities, rooted in different contexts, and manifested themselves in myriad ways. For example, we see that Jews felt deep gratitude in a way to the Pahlavi monarchy, which—as they perceived—had liberated them by removing the barriers that blocked them from integrating and assimilating. At the same time, the communist Tudeh Party was the strongest and fiercest opposition to fascism and anti-Semitism in Iran and outside; it talked about social justice, and the vision of an egalitarian society—something that resonated with the Jewish communities, who remained mostly in the lower classes at that time. It was thus the only political party that accepted Jews (and other religious minorities) as members, and so gained many of their support.
This book attempts to show that, just like Iranian society which is far less homogenous than it is usually portrayed, Jewish society is also very diverse. While I am looking at the ethnically Persian Jews as the majority, we also have Kurdish Jews, Iraqi Jews (that can even be categorized as two or three different groups) Ashkenazi Jews (also made of two groups—German professionals that came to Iran in the 1930s, and the other Polish refugees), and many Israeli Jews. All of them helped create these nuanced and multi-hyphenated identities that characterized Iranian Jews—and in a way, still do.
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
LS: I was trained as a social historian of Iran, and I was very much interested in writing social history of the national movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Reflecting back on it, I am not sure that I knew at the beginning that one of the missing pieces of this story is the aspect of minorities—but I was excited to study this new angle.
My training also brought me into the major debates of the rejuvenating subfield of Jewish studies in the Middle East. Without the works of Joel Beinin, Orit Bashkin, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Aomar Boum, Joshua Schrier, Michelle Campos, and others (most of them published also with Stanford University Press), this field would have looked tremendously different.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
LS: I hope that readers interested in Jewish life in the Middle East in modern times and in Jewish-Muslim relations, aside from the Israel-Palestine conflict, would pick up this book. I am also hoping that Iranian Jews in Israel, and other Iranian Jewish diasporas, would find this account enriching. I hope that Iranians in Iran and abroad would find this analysis of their national story useful, allowing additional voices to be heard and illuminating parts of their histories that—for social, cultural, and political reasons—have been unearthed until now. This is something that I have already seen beginning to happen on my book tour. Folks of Iranian-Jewish heritage, first- or second-generation immigrants from Iran, tell me how they relate to the stories I tell; each adds another story that could have entered the book. There is always the Tudehi uncle, the “liberal student” cousin, the many interactions with Zionist organizations, and the perceptions of Iran as a homeland, etc.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
LS: I am now working on two projects. The first one is an attempt to find the origins of “third-worldism” in the Middle East. The story of the third world usually gives prominence (or even ideological monopoly) to the decolonized nations of Southeast Asia. I am not necessarily disagreeing with that analysis, but I think that the Middle East played a greater role than the anecdotal piece it received in the grand historiography. In this project I examine intellectual-popular discourse of the 1930s and 1940s, including that regarding Zionism (which many Middle Eastern intellectuals considered to be a post-colonial movement), through the establishment of the “Third Force” party in Iran in 1948-9, and Prime Minister Mosaddeq, who actively tried to form a Middle Eastern bloc to counter the influence of Britain, France, the United States, and also the Soviet Union on the other side.
My second project focuses on Iranian-Jewish diaspora communities, especially in the United States and Israel. I want to see how the immigration experience shaped their memories of the “old country,” cultural preservations, relations with non-Jewish immigrants from the same places, etc.
J: You tell a story of centuries-long journey for integration and you underscore the immense cultural attachment and Iranian national identity and pride. Yet the overwhelming majority of the Iranian Jewish community left Iran after the revolution. So, did this project fail? If they felt so attached and part of the society, why did they leave?
LS: I tell a story of a journey. And it is a journey—not a linear steady development—and if there is one thing I want the reader to take from this book is that understanding Iranian-Jewish history is not black and white; it is not a story of persecution and redemption, but rather it is a story that always existed in the middle. It is the story of the hyphen between identities and ideologies.
There were two waves of Jewish emigration out of Iran. The first was in 1948 to 1951, when about a quarter of the Jewish population of Iran left, mostly for the newly-established Israel. The Jews who left in the first wave were—broadly speaking—the poorest and the neediest of the Jewish communities. For them, immigration to Israel could offer some kind of redemption—be it religious, national, financial, or cultural. As I show in the book, even this was very complicated, as some returned to Iran at some point in the future.
The second wave was profoundly different in sociological terms. By the 1970s, the vast majority of the Iranian Jews were part of the upper middle classes and the elites. Most of those who left in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution left as part of their “class” exodus, and not necessarily because they were Jews. We also see that they left for the same places that the non-Jewish Iranians of the same socio-economic class moved to (and much fewer to Israel). This is not to say that, as Jews they did not face increasing dangers and discrimination, but the fact that we see today a community in Iran that is still substantial (unlike any other Middle Eastern country) suggests that we cannot read their history in the same terms that we read Jewish histories of other societies.
Excerpt from the book
Iranian Jewish Zionist: An Identity Mélange
During this period of extensive migration to Israel, even as Iran served as a base for that considerable effort, Zionist and non-Iranian Jewish officials were hardly concerned with the complexity of Jewish Iranian identity. Could Iranian Jews be proud, patriotic Iranians while practicing Jewish traditions? Could they be sympathetic to Zionism and to Israel at differing levels? What about Iranian Jews identifying first and foremost as Tudehi but, in accordance with Tudeh’s official party line, strongly supporting the establishment of Israel? For all Iranians, and Iranian Jews in particular, identity categories were not mutually exclusive (in contrast to what had been expected by Israel and modern Zionism). While many viewed the establishment of Israel favorably, and rejoiced over their homeland’s good relationship with Israel (at least in the beginning), they had no intention to exchange Iran for Israel. The percentage of Iranian Jews choosing the Zionist option was relatively low, and those who did immigrate envisioned that they would see an elevation in their status by doing so.
The slowdown of immigrants prompted Zionist organizations to investigate and analyze this unexpected turn of events. Ultimately they arrived at the identity issue. In 1953 Habib Levy wrote a comprehensive report on Zionist activism in Iran and submitted it to Israel’s president, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, whom he knew from the latter’s visits to Iran. President Ben-Zvi forwarded Levy’s report to the chairman of the board of the Jewish Agency, Berl Locker. Surprisingly, Levy’s tone in this report sharply contrasts with the spirit of his historical writing. In his books (both his memoir and his three-volume history of the Jews of Iran), he praises Iranian Jews’ commitment to Judaism and Zionist ideals. Conversely, his report submitted to Israel’s president seems rather gloomy:
When news arrived of the establishment of the State of Israel, the Jews rejoiced… 30% of Persia’s Jewish communities prepared for their Aliyah—in camps without any sanitation, exposed to the death angel on one side and on the other side, greedy officials of the Jewish Agency that in odd ways and on weird pretexts robbed them of their few belongings. Despite life in Iran being comfortable, they [Iranian Jews] went to Israel and were going to forget the bitterness of the Galuth [exile]. After two thousand and four hundred years of exile, and after 24 hundred years of suffering and tears, they were drunk from excitement and did not pay attention to obstacles, betrayals, and deeds of pocket-picking… Unfortunately today the excitement has dissipated and their fiery nationalistic and religious feelings that were a source of endless power and energy have faded.
Beyond the serious accusations targeting Jewish Agency officials and Israel (accusations upheld by corroborating evidence), Levy lamented the loss of this rare opportunity to keep Zionist fires kindled in the hearts of Iranian Jews. The rest of the report also bears examination. In analyzing the reasons that Iranian Jews were turning away from or losing interest in Zionist ideology, Levy cites the following: “lack of physical, national, religious, and spiritual guidance or training.” In other reports, and as a matter of policy, the Jewish Agency tended to blame insufficient knowledge of Hebrew and the practice of Reform Judaism (as opposed to its Orthodox counterpart) for loosening the bond between Iranian Jews and Zionism/Israel. With that in mind, it is interesting to turn once again to Abramovitch, the JDC observer, whose 1952 report contradicts this assessment. In fact, he describes a heightened emphasis on Hebrew language acquisition and Judaism education among Iranian Jewish youths:
We can point to a whole series of achievements. My recent tour of the provincial towns has been an unexpected pleasure. The younger children, those of the primary schools, not only understood our questions but also answered them correctly. Years of guidance and regular examinations have convinced teachers that our instructions should be carried out, that curriculum we’ve suggested should be taught, and that idiotic superstitious stories abandoned. Children read correctly; they translate correctly; there is proper order to their biblical stories, as well as sequence in their history and religious knowledge. Mr. Cuenca, A.I.U. director, and we can point to a whole series of achievements. My recent tour of the provincial towns has been an unexpected pleasure. The younger children, those of the primary schools, not only understood our questions but also answered them correctly. Years of guidance and regular examinations have convinced teachers that our instructions should be carried out, that curriculum we’ve suggested should be taught, and that idiotic superstitious stories abandoned. Children read correctly; they translate correctly; there is proper order to their biblical stories, as well as sequence in their history and religious knowledge. Mr. Cuenca, A.I.U. director, and Mr. Szyf, who accompanied me on this last trip, were as pleasantly surprised as I was at the answers.
How should we reconcile Levy’s and Abramovitch’s contradicting reports? One way to square the two is to conclude that there was, in fact, no credible connection between Hebrew fluency and a deep understanding of Judaism’s teachings and traditions. Later in his report, Levy offers other fascinating though equally far-fetched criticisms that do not necessarily correlate with his other writings. First, he states that Iranian Jews suffer from the absence of a centralized organization. This unfortunate fragmentation, reflected in the proliferation of small community organizations, meant that Iran’s Jewish community lacked a unified front. Without a strong, central organization, Levy opines, requisite political and social influence will never be achieved. Additionally, the majority of wealthy Iranian Jews had distanced themselves from Jewish nationalism. Finally, and perhaps most critically, he laments, “The young Jewish students overwhelmingly [will] tend to support the Tudeh Party, when there is a void of worthy Jewish organizations.”
Levy fails to entertain the possibility that Iranian Jews purposely avoided creating a strong central organization—which would have distanced their community even further from the larger nationalist sphere. Is it not possible that the Jewish community desired to assimilate, to fit seamlessly into the Iranian social fabric, to count themselves as respected and respectable citizens, and thereby enjoy the same rights and experiences as their non-Jewish Iranian peers? Levy also overlooks key reasons why Jewish students overwhelmingly tended to support Tudeh. As demonstrated in Chapter 2, during the early years from 1941 through 1953, Tudeh offered young Jews a stronger connection to their generation and to Iranian society. Since Tudeh was the largest and single most important political organization in Iran, it is little wonder that young Jews found Tudeh so attractive.47
Another section of Levy’s report is devoted to the hardships that Jews faced upon arriving in Israel. Interestingly, Levy mentions racism and discrimination toward Mizrahi and Persian Jews, regardless of their social status, education, or training. Levy points out that these émigrés could not speak Yiddish, a strike against them. Also, their places of origin made them especially vulnerable to discriminatory practices. Levy proffers the following example: Iranian Jews wanting to enroll their children in an elite boarding school near Haifa were told that the school was at full capacity. Nevertheless, in the ensuing days and weeks their Ashkenazi neighbors enrolled sons and daughters with no problem.48 This type of news made its way to Iran, undeniably hurting Israel’s already questionable reputation around immigration. During those early years, not only did many Iranians return to Iran but, as discussed in Chapter 1, Iraqi Jews also migrated from Israel to Iran. These Iraqis, after finding life impossible to adjust to in Israel, and legally prevented from returning to their Iraqi homeland, settled on their second-best option. Iran at least provided a somewhat familiar cultural climate, and furthermore, a significant Jewish Iraqi community had already established itself. Therefore, Iran became a preferred destination for many Iraqi immigrants, to the dismay of Israel and Zionist organizations.
israel-academia-monitor.com 