[wvns] Iran's Jews spurn Israel's cash lure

Iran's Jews spurn cash lure to emigrate to Israel
Robert Tait in Tehran
Friday July 13, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2125486,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12#article_continue

Iran's Jews have given the country a loyalty pledge in the face of
cash offers aimed at encouraging them to move to Israel, the
arch-enemy of its Islamic rulers.

The incentives - ranging from £5,000 a person to £30,000 for families
- were offered from a special fund established by wealthy expatriate
Jews in an effort to prompt a mass migration to Israel among Iran's
25,000-strong Jewish community. The offers were made with Israel's
official blessing and were additional to the usual state packages it
provides to Jews emigrating from the diaspora.

However, the Society of Iranian Jews dismissed them as "immature
political enticements" and said their national identity was not for sale.
"The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradable for any amount of
money," the society said in a statement. "Iranian Jews are among the
most ancient Iranians. Iran's Jews love their Iranian identity and
their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will
not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews."

The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported that the incentives had been
doubled after offers of £2,500 a head failed to attract any Iranian
Jews to leave for Israel.

Iran's sole Jewish MP, Morris Motamed, said the offers were insulting
and put the country's Jews under pressure to prove their loyalty. "It
suggests the Iranian Jew can be encouraged to emigrate by money," he
said. "Iran's Jews have always been free to emigrate and
three-quarters of them did so after the revolution but 70% of those
went to America, not Israel."

Iran's Jewish population has dwindled from about 80,000 at the time of
the 1979 Islamic revolution but remains the largest of any country in
the Middle East apart from Israel. Jews have lived in Iran since at
least 700BC.

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