Iranian-American Jewish "Spies" Arrested in Tehran

Tehran is always trying to improve its negotiation standing by holding hostages. 

Given the mutual hatred and animosity between Iran and Israel, it is suprising that there are Jews living in Iran. They appear to have not been persecuted when the Jewish colony was artificially created in Palestine, as Zionist propaganda continues to blare, nor were they somehow forced to leave when the Islamic revolution brought the Mullahs to power. If they had been persecuted, one wonders why they haven't left long ago to settle in Israel?

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Two American Jews arrested as spies in Iran

Two Iranian-American Jews were in Iran to visit family. They were among 35 Jews who were arrested in Iran's Tehran and Shiraz last month for having ties to Israel.

This development appears to be part of a government crackdown by the Islamic Republic that began right after the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June.

Five of those arrested are still detained, including one of the two American Jews. The one American Jew still imprisoned had initially left Iran for New York three decades ago, but returned to also visit relatives.

An additional 11 Jews were released from detention in recent days, according to the report, and efforts are still being made for the remaining five detainees' release, the report said.

A report earlier this month quoted a senior Iranian communal leader, who lives in Los Angeles, as saying that Islamic Republic authorities are checking the cell phones of those they arrest, looking for records of any calls to the Jewish state. They may be learning from their American counterparts who regularly check the cell phones and laptops of visitors to the US to find any record, message, joke, cartoon, article, or other representation or expression of derision or criticism of the Donald Trump administration and its officials, as well as any criticism of Israel's barbarity in Palestine. 

Most Iranian Jews have family in Israel. One wonders why these Iranian Jews stayed in Iran after the creation of Israel, apparently living normal lives under both the Shah's regime and the Islamic revolution. Zionist propaganda has long clamored that Middle Eastern Jews flocked to Israel because they were being persecuted in their native countries: Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria... all of these countries still have significant Jewish populations who refused to move to Israel.

I know from personal experience that these Jews were hunted down, not by angry Arab mobs as Zionists claim, but by the Jewish Agency during the early 1950s. They were threatened with their lives and possessions if they did not move to Israel. They were given immeasurably generous compensations (money, houses that used to belong to expelled Palestinians, jobs, etc.) that many could not refuse. In my childhood neighborhood, three Jewish families came tearfully to say goodbye to us - one was the pharmacist and two were teachers in the local high school. 

Many rejected the Jewish Agency's threats and incentives and left their native countries for traditional countries of immigration (mainly the north and south American continents) and did not want to deal with the radical Zionist colonial enterprise that has turned this otherwise peaceful region into a crucible of religious wars. In fact, for millennia, Jews have lived in harmony alongside other communities in those middle eastern countries, there being an identity within the "Semitic" culture between those known nowadays as Arabs and Jews. 

It is only when Europeans, the vast majority of whom are recent converts to Judaism and have no cultural or genetic connection with the more authentic Jews of the region, underook the colonial me-too project of creating their own exotic colony that relations between Arabs and Jews soured. 

During the nearly 800-year long (711 through 1492) Arab Muslim rule over Spain, Jews and Arabs, as well as Christians, established a superior culture to the barbaric Europeans of the time, a culture in which scientists, learned men, artists, physicians, alchemists, mathematicians and astronomers thrived. If Europe emerged from its Dark Ages, it is thanks to their exposure to the Middle East during the Crusader colonial period and to their exposures to the advanced Andalusian Muslim-dominated culture in Spain. Everything changed in Europe from that time forward: clothes, architecture, science, etc. leading up to the Renaissance.

Do not fall for the fallacy of a "Judeo-Christian" culture. It only came into existence after World War II and was promoted by Zionist propaganda to make Israel more "western" than it really is. Throughout the long history of Jewish presence in Europe, Jews were persecuted, hunted down, subjected to the Inquisition, hated for "having killed Jesus"... all of which culminated in the 19th century with the rise of popular and academic antisemitism, followed by the Holocaust during the early 20th century. 

In contrast, at no time in the long history of Arabs and Muslims were Jews persecuted because of who they are. In fact, they were revered as co-equals in the Abrahamic tradition. The prophet Mohammed may have been himself a Jew, though Muslims are loathe to admit it. Alliances and disagreements between those who later became Muslims and existing Jewish tribes were politically motivated, not unlike the same relationships with Arab Animist and Christian tribes of the Arabian peninsula.

But at least it is factually true that Mohammed grew up in a Hebraic culture preceding the rise of Islam. Which explains why Islam was a revolution against the rising Christian religion with its watered down monotheism (God now has a mother, a son, etc.) rather than the strict monotheism of Jews and Muslims. Islam reinforced Jewish traditions and kept them intact: circumcision, memorizing holy texts by bobbing heads back and forth, prohibition of eating pork, celebrating many feasts and rituals that were always shared, including Abraham's sacrifice of his son, and most importantly re-instauring the direct relationship with God without the intercession of third-parties like a church or a priest, something that the Protestant Reformation centuries would also later adopt.