Re: [Marxism] The Jews and the Baha'i in Iran

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Most of the Cuban Jewish community left after the Cuban Revolution's
triumph because they felt, correctly, that their class interests were
at risk if they remained. Books which are hostile to the Cuban Revolution,
such as Robert Levine's TROPICAL DIASPORA, also confirm that anti-Semitism
wasn't part of the ideology of the Cuban Revolution.

I'm pleased to see some recognition here that this is a complex issue,
not one just to be used as part of the consent-manufacturing process.

Here in Los Angeles, as I pointed out some weeks ago, Iranian Jewish
exiles, and others of a less hawkish mentality here have been writing
in the JEWISH JOURNAL, the weekly newspaper of the official leadership
of the Jewish Community against the approach of Bush, Netanyahu and
others who are working hard to manufacture consent for war on Iran.

A search of the website of the Jewish Journal, which has no brief for
the Islamic Republic, will bear this out. There's been a very harsh
campaign going on around these matters, with top local figures going
bonkers against the Los Angeles Times, which shocked them by printing
a commentary from a spokesman for HAMAS about events in the Israeli-
occupied territories. 

Does anyone know what was the relationship of Israel to the regime of
the Shah, and of the Iranian Jewish community there to the Shah's
regime? I bought my very first computer from Iranian Jewish exiles
in Los Angeles, where they're quite active socially, religiously
and politically. 


Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California

=======================================================================
LOUIS PROYECT writes
These points are absolutely necessary to be made, but there are still 
some troubling aspects to the status of Jews in Iran, no doubt reflected 
by emigration statistics. In 1979, there were 80,000 Jews in Iran but 
today there are only 20,000. That is a mass exodus that needs to be 
analyzed. To some extent, it can be explained by the privileged material 
status of Jews, who were primarily bourgeois and petty-bourgeois. Like 
many other Iranians, particularly those with ties to the Shah, the felt 
that their class interests were being threatened and emigrated to Israel 
or to the United States, where many settled in Los Angeles, along with 
tens of thousands of non-Jewish Iranians.

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/the-jews-and-the-bahai-in-iran/

================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
writer - photographer - activist
http://www.walterlippmann.com
================================

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