Jews in Iran are being pressured by the authorities to publicly mourn the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, known for his antisemitic ideology.
Nasrallah, head of Iran's largest proxy, made multiple statements against Jews and Israelis over the years, most famously declaring that "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli.”
The Lebanese Shia militant leader also said in 2002 that "If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."
Rabbi Pini Dunner, from the Beverly Hills Synagogue which has a huge Iranian community, told Iran International that “Iran's Jewish community lives in fear of persecution if they don't align themselves with the regime's warped views."
The community, the Middle East's largest outside Israel with around 5-8,000 remaining, was compelled to issue a statement criticizing Israel and America for the killing of the Hezbollah leader.
"What choice do they have? It tells you everything you need to know about how unsafe and insecure the Jewish community feels in Iran," he added.
Tehran-born Beni Sabti, who now lives in Israel, first located the pro-Nasrallah notices on Telegram from the leadership of the Jewish communities in Iran. The Jewish community of Isfahan wrote that it “congratulates and condoles the martyrdom of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah in Lebanon, who was martyred in the brutal operation of the Zionist regime.”
Sabti, a research fellow at Israel's National Institute of Security Studies, said that the Tehran Jewish community also published a similar announcement as the community in Isfahan.
The term dhimmi has been applied to Iranian Jews and Jews living in Muslim-majority nations in the Arab world to capture their servile position where they are legally required to obey Islamist supremacy.
The statement from the Isfahan Jewish community called for “severe retribution” against the actions by Israel against Hezbollah in Lebanon in the last two weeks, including the assassination of the long-time leader.
Iran's Jews numbered around 80,000 until the 1979 creation of the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian-American journalist, Karmel Melamed, an expert on Persian Jews, told Iran International "the majority of them fled Iran and now live in America or Israel”.
Melamed said ”It shouldn't surprise anyone that the mullah regime in Iran has paraded out Iran's Jews and other religious minorities from the country to supposedly mourn the death of the terrorist Nasrallah because this has been their long standing propaganda tradition to do so for the last 45 years.”
He explained that “For nearly five decades the Ayatollahs have either paid off certain Jewish leaders in Iran or used duress against Jews and other religious minorities in Iran in order to have them participate in their sham public events that promote the regime's sick radical Islamic ideology or advance their false persona in the international news media."
While Iran legally recognizes the three Abrahamic faiths, Jews, like other minority groups in the Shia state, have systematically been oppressed. “In reality, this Islamic regime in Iran has treated Jews and other non-Muslims as third class citizens with limited to no rights and created an environment of extreme hostility, imprisonment or confiscation of their properties, to the point where the vast majority of non-Muslims in Iran have fled Iran since 1979," Melamed added.
Alireza Nader, an Iranian-American expert on minorities in Iran, told Iran International that the Jews of Iran are "a small and vulnerable group ... forced to show sympathy for the regime and its allies. Otherwise they could be in great danger.”