No Badges for Iranian Jews after All

from Bloomberg:

Iran Denies It Passed Law to Force Non-Muslims to Wear Badges

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Iran denied a report that it passed a law
that would force non-Muslims in the Islamic Republic to wear colored labels identifying their religion.

The Canadian National Post yesterday reported Iran's parliament passed a law last week for a public dress code that would require Jews to wear a yellow strip of cloth on their clothing, Christians a red one, and Zoroastrians blue. Iran is a predominantly Muslim country.

``Such a bill was never introduced in the parliament,'' said Maurice Motammed, Iran's only Jewish deputy who represents Iran's community of 25,000 Jews, on state television today. ``Iranian minorities benefit from the same liberties and social rights as other people.''

A bill to promote ``an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women'' was passed in Iran's Parliament on May 14. However, it didn't mention religious minorities, Emad Afrough, head of the parliament's cultural committee and one of the main designers of the measure said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA. The article appeared in several newspapers around the world, drawing criticism from top Canadian and Australian officials. U.S. State department spokesman Sean McCormack said such a decision would be ``despicable'', Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.

The report was described by Iran's local state media as a failed ``campaign lead by a Zionist newspaper.'' Iran's new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has come under criticism since his election in June 2005 for questioning the existence of the Holocaust and for his statement that ``Israel should be wiped off the map.''

Wouldn't you know they can always manage to blame 'the Zionists' for everything, lol? Even if such a move could hardly be seen to be in the Zionists best interests.

WorldNet Daily writes that Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he believes the original reports, although acknowledges he has no independent confirmation.

"We know that the national uniform law was passed and that certain colors were selected for Jews and other minorities. If the Iranian government is going to pass such a law then they are not likely to be forthcoming about what they are doing."

To read about the history of the persecution of Persian Jews, see:

notice this:

Even under Shah Abbas, one of the more enlightened Safavi Monarchs in his treatment of religious minorities, particularly the Armenians, the jews, along with Zoroastrians and Christians became subjects of forced conversion, and evicted from Isfahan in 1656 because of their pollutant effect and religious impurity. But many forcefully converted Jews continued to practice their religion in secret and the failure of the policy gave rise to protests by the clergy and some Moslem erchants who did not consider these converts as real Moslems and hence a new edict in 1661 allowed them to revert to open practice of Judaism under state restrictions, including the wearing of a patch to identify them as Jews. The wearing of a patch to identify a non-believer was not limited to the Jews, and was also required for the Christians who wore a cross, though by a decree, the Armenians were exempted from wearing a patch. 10

It appears that the Nazis were preceded by the Iranians on this "badge" idea. Perhaps the word comes from "badger"...

New Iranian Law will require Jews to wear yellow star

According to the Jerusalem Post

A great place to read about it is at the site Western Resistance

There are some places that are suggesting that it is not true or hasn't happened yet. It is not widely reported in MSM. We shall have to wait and see.

I just wanted to add a little something about Persian Jews for the record.

An interesting and informative site regarding the Iranian Jews is here: The Jews of Persia

and this from "Kosher Delights"

"In 1986 there were an estimated 50,000 Jews in Iran, a decline from about 85,000 in 1978. The Iranian Jewish community is one of the oldest in the world, being descended from Jews who remained in the region following the Babylonian captivity, when the Achaemenid rulers of the first Iranian empire permitted Jews to return to Jerusalem. Over the centuries the Jews of Iran became physically, culturally, and linguistically indistinguishable from the non-Jewish population. The overwhelming majority of Jews speak Persian as their mother language, and a tiny minority, Kurdish. The Jews are predominantly urban and by the 1970s were concentrated in Tehran, with smaller communities in other cities, such as Shiraz, Esfahan, Hamadan, and Kashan.

Until the twentieth century the Jews were confined to their own quarters in the towns. In general the Jews were an impoverished minority, occupationally restricted to small-scale trading, moneylending, and working with precious metals. Since the 1920s, Jews have had greater opportunities for economic and social mobility. They have received assistance from a number of international Jewish organizations, including the American Joint Distribution Committee, which introduced electricity, piped water, and modern sanitation into Jewish neighborhoods. The Jews have gradually gained increased importance in the bazaars of Tehran and other cities, and after World War II some educated Jews entered the professions, particularly pharmacy, medicine, and dentistry.

The Constitution of 1979 recognized Jews as an official religious minority and accorded them the right to elect a representative to the Majlis. Like the Christians, the Jews have not been persecuted. Unlike the Christians, the Jews have been viewed with suspicion by the government, probably because of the government's intense hostility toward Israel. Iranian Jews generally have many relatives in Israel--some 45,000 Iranian Jews emigrated from Iran to Israel between 1948 and 1977--with whom they are in regular contact. Since 1979 the government has cited mail and telephone communications as evidence of "spying" in the arrest, detention, and even execution of a few prominent Jews. Although these individual cases have not affected the status of the community as a whole, they have contributed to a pervasive feeling of insecurity among Jews regarding their future in Iran and have helped to precipitate large- scale emigration. Most Jews who have left since the Revolution have settled in the United States. "

I imagine they are feeling pretty insecure right now. Apparently some people have learned nothing from the Holocaust, and it is possibly that Ahamadinejad will be responsible for a holocaust upon his own people, as he attempts one for the Jews of the middle east.

The Europeans, however, seem intent on bending over, something that has worked so well for them in the past.

Good News for American Jews

Mind you this was taken a year ago. I would be interested in seeing a more recent one.
Pew Poll

Actually the Muslims don't do as badly as one might expect considering. It would also be interesting to see a similar poll in Europe. Might not look so good for Jews there, lol!

Internet Jihad

Recently my regular forum was hacked and went down, along with over 100 other blogs, including a few in my 'must read' list, such as Little Green Footballs. You can read about it at Michelle Malkin's blog. I was going to send you over to Aaron's cc: , but when I popped over there to check it out again it had been hacked yet again. If you want to see the hack, it is at http://aarons.cc/wp-content/witty/index.html . I think the regular blog is at http://aarons.cc/ but they hijacked it. Hopefully Aaron will get the situation fixed in a hurry. "They" are the Muslim Brotherhood this time, according to aarons, --they apparently left a calling card in the hack.

Little Green Footballs seems to think it was the Saudis, or did think so yesterday. A couple of years ago Malkin was hacked and she said it was the Turks that time.

So at any rate, D. and I decided to post at some different forums. As a social liberal in many ways I decided to go see what the Left was saying about Israel/Palestine in their forums so signed up for the Democratic Underground Forum . The forum requires a 24-hour waiting period if you sign up from Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail or Gmail etc. So we went in to check it out.

There were a couple of Zionists and a slew of "anti-Zionists" there. Negative things about Israel were raised and praised, Palestinians were raised and praised. Nothing bad was permitted to be said about Palestinians, yet IDF were called 'murdering racist thugs' with impunity. Arutz-Sheva was called "a right wing racist scum" newspaper and I was roundly excoriated for recommending it, along with the Jerusalem Post, as a balance to Ha'aretz. Three days in, I got a popup window saying my posting privileges were revoked! (I swear I had said not one bad word nor called anyone a name!). The form said I could write in and ask questions, and that they answered all email, so I did so, asking simply why I had been banned.



Honestly, the only reason I can figure is my point of view, which is pro-Israeli. It has been a number of days now and I have got no answer from them at all.

Meanwhile D. was still posting (for 2 more days) when! in the middle of a post he got the word! POSTING PRIVILEGES REVOKED! What made the timing of that particularly annoying was that he had just been called a "liar" by a fellow poster regarding the situation in Iraq, and he was defending his position.

It seems the Democratic Underground cannot brook any counterarguments. They have made an intellectual ghetto over there --or I should say a non-intellectual ghetto-- where all they do is stroke one another.

Oh and another thing I found interesting was that the ONLY conflict that was at that board was the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict. I brought that question up, asking why it was that when there were presumably 70 conflicts going on in the world that this forum only had that one? What about Kashmire, Afghanistan etc?

After I was banned, I noticed that my thread was gone, and a number of my posts had been deleted as well as my name. The same thing happened to D. So it appears that the Democratic Underground is not really into free speech, real debate, or pro-Israel posters. How too bad.

Jews have always been known as strong supporters of human and civil rights. They were extremely active for civil rights in this country during the MLK era, and Jewish activists were even murdered for their support of civil rights for Blacks.

Now that many (most ) American Jews support Israel's fight against the terror perpetrated by the Palestinians, many Democrats and so-called 'Progressives' shun/denounce Jews who support Israel as 'racists.'

The have become a part of the Internet Jihad, silencing the very same position that the Jihadists are attempting to silence.

I am at a loss to understand how the Jihadists are more 'progressive' than D. or I! Anyway, will keep you posted if I ever find out why either one of us got banned.