 Maurice
Motamed has one of the loneliest jobs in the Middle East. When Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad made his controversial Holocaust statements, the sole Jewish
MP in Iran's 290-member Majlis (parliament) felt he had no option but to
confront him.
-
- "When our president spoke about
the Holocaust, I considered it my duty as a Jew to speak about this issue,"
Mr Motamed said in his office in central Tehran. "The biggest disaster
in human history is based on tens of thousands of films and documents.
I said these remarks are a big insult to the whole Jewish society in Iran
and the whole world."
-
- Mr Ahmadinejad, president of an overwhelmingly
Muslim nation, has not apologised. But Mr Motamed said the president had
since qualified his statement by insisting that he had not denied the Holocaust
and he was not an anti-semite.
-
- Mr Motamed represents Iran's 25,000-strong
Jewish community, the largest such group in the Middle East outside Israel.
Since 1906, Iran's constitution has guaranteed the Jewish community one
seat in the Majlis. The Armenian, Assyrian and Zoroastrian minorities together
hold another four seats.
-
- Although he took on Mr Ahmadinejad over
the Holocaust, Mr Motamed supports the president on other issues, including
the stand-off with the US, Europe and Israel over the country's nuclear
programme. "I am an Iranian first and a Jew second," he said.
-
- He acknowledged there were problems with
being a Jew in Iran, as there were for the country's other minorities.
But he said that Iran was relatively tolerant. "There is no pressure
on the synagogues, no problems of desecration. I think the problem in Europe
is worse than here. There is a lot of anti-semitism in other countries."
-
- Most of his family, including his mother,
father and sisters, left after the 1979 revolution that brought Ayatollah
Khomeini to power, as did 75,000 other Jews, heading mainly for Israel,
the US and Europe. But Mr Motamed, 61, an engineer, opted to remain. "I
love my homeland."
-
- Jews have been living in Iran in large
numbers since Cyrus the Great freed them from slavery when he captured
Babylon in 539BC. Members of the Jewish community in Iran today, for the
most part, keep a low profile and many Iranians are unaware of their presence.
Mr Motamed said there were about 14,000 Jews in Tehran, which has 20 active
synagogues; 6,000-7,000 in Shiraz; 2,000 in Estafan and small groups scattered
throughout the rest of the country.
-
- He confirmed Jews and other minorities
were all excluded from "sensitive" senior posts in the military
and judiciary. And the authorities refuse to allow Jewish schools to close
on the sabbath, a normal working day for the rest of Iran.
-
- Ehrlich: This surprised me.
-
- But Mr Motamed said there had been improvements
in other areas. Legislation was introduced three years ago overturning
a judicial practice of awarding more compensation to the families of Muslim
accident victims than to those of Jews. And when he complained in the chamber
about a TV soap opera regularly portraying rabbis as evil, he said the
speaker of the Majlis expressed support for him.
-
- Nasser Hadian-Jazy, associate professor
of political science at Tehran University and a childhood friend of the
president, said Mr Ahmadinejad was keen to put the Holocaust row behind
him.
-
- "I asked him, 'Are you anti-Jew?'
He said, 'I am not.' I said, 'Why not go to a synagogue to express regret
for what Iranians have done to Jews?' ... He said, 'I have another idea,
a better idea.'
-
- "He will do something to show he
is not anti-Jewish. I hope he will do it soon. He will make a gesture to
the Jews in Iran and that has implications for Jews elsewhere. What he
will say is very important and will remove the idea that he is anti-semite."
-
- Saeed Jalili, Iran's deputy foreign minister
and another close friend of Mr Ahmadinejad, said the Jewish seat in the
Majlis "tells you that we have no problems with Judaism" but
he added that he had not heard of any planned gesture by Mr Ahmadinejad.
-
- "The Jewish community in this country
are very fairly treated ... Of course, a symbolic gesture is good and well,
but we think that what we do is more than symbolic."
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1807160,00.html
-
- END
|
