Source: AP, 23-10-2007
JERUSALEM (AL-QUDS) - Evangelical Christians in the U.S. have helped convince dozens of Iranian Jews to move to "Israel" in recent months, offering cash incentives and claiming that Iran`s tiny Jewish community is in grave danger.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a charity that funnels millions of dollars in evangelical donations to "Israel" every year, is promising $10,000 to every Iranian Jew who comes to "Israel", said the group`s director, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein.
The project is another example of the alliance between the Jewish state and evangelical American Christians, many of whom see the existence of "Israel" and the return of Jews to the Holy Land as a realization of biblical prophesy that will culminate with Christ`s Second Coming.
But an Iran expert said the money would not be enough to draw Iranian Jews, who generally do not perceive themselves to be in great danger in the Islamic republic.
About 25,000 Jews are left in Iran - a nation of 65 million - the remnants of a community with origins dating to biblical times. Most Iranian Jews left for "Israel" or the U.S. over the last 50 years.
Still, Iran`s Jewish community is the largest in the Middle East outside "Israel", and Iranian Jews have some legal protections. But "Israel" and Iran are staunch enemies and do not have diplomatic relations.
"Is this not similar to the situation in Nazi Germany in the late `30s, where they (Jews) also felt they could weather the storm?" he asked. Instead, 6 million were killed in the (so-called) `Holocaust`.
Eckstein said his group has helped bring 82 Jews to "Israel" from Iran since the project began this year, and hopes to bring 60 more by year`s end.
The charity, based in Jerusalem (al-Quds) and Chicago, has raised $1.4 million for the project, Eckstein said. The IFCJ initially offered $5,000 per immigrant, but doubled the amount when response was lower than expected, he said. Immigrants also receive government aid upon arriving in "Israel".
One of the recent arrivals, a 31-year-old widow with three children, said she was not in danger in Iran but was concerned for her children`s future.
She is living in the southern port city of Ashdod. Though she claimed to have felt safe in her hometown of Isfahan, she asked that her name be withheld.
The grant from the IFCJ was what enabled her to come to "Israel", she said. Most Jews in Iran have heard about the grant through word-of-mouth and "Israel" Radio`s broadcasts in Farsi, she said.
Iranian government officials would not comment on the new project.
Iran`s Jewish community is technically protected by the Islamic Republic`s constitution, and has one representative in a 290-seat parliament.
In a speech at Columbia University in New York last month, the Iranian president insisted that Iranians "are friends of the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security."
"Generally, Jews are free to practice Judaism inside Iran," said Meir Javedanfar, an "Israeli" analyst whose family emigrated from Iran in the 1980s. Iranian Jews, however, are increasingly concerned about the intensity of attacks on "Israel" by the Iranian press, which they view as bordering on `anti-Semitism`, he said.
Such attacks have not led to a mass exodus from Iran, because the majority of Iranians are hospitable to the Jews and most Jews in Iran are economically comfortable, Javedanfar said.
The IFCJ is one of the most prominent examples of "Israel`s" alliance with evangelical Christians, who have become among the country`s most generous donors and most enthusiastic political supporters.
The ties have been welcomed by many "Israelis" but criticized by others.
Some "Israelis" believe the country should not align itself with a group seen as an extreme element of American society, while others have charged that the evangelicals` goal is ultimately to convert Jews to Christianity, a charge the evangelicals deny.