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Tag: Persian Jews

  • New research says that Jews and Palestinians have close genetic links

    New research says that Jews and Palestinians have close genetic links

    Judaica
    Judaica

    By John Thomas Didymus

    A researcher at the Hebrew University has published results of genetic research studies which show that Palestinians and Jews have a common ancestry in the Kurdish population of Iraq and Turkey.

    Ariella Oppenheim, Ph.D. researcher at Hebrew University, who conducted the DNA studies, said that the results show also that the Ashkenazi Jews of Central Europe are more genetically related to the Palestinians than to the Jewish population of the Middle East.

    Oppenheim’s  study also included a study of the chromosome of the Kohen priests traced by geneticists to a hypothetical “Y-chromosomal Aaron.” Oppenheim’s study showed that many Palestinians also carry the Kohen chromosome and thus may be considered of the Kohen genetic line.

    According to a documentary in which Oppenheim featured, the Palestinian city of Yatta, south of Hebron in the West Bank, which has a population of about 50,000 people, has 90% of its people with Jewish ancestry. According to a report by Mark Ellis of God Reports,

    In some of the dry and dusty Palestinian and Bedouin villages they still circumcise their boys after the seventh day. Hidden away in some Palestinian homes are Jewish mezuzahs and tefillin. Some older residents an recall lighting candles on the Sabbath.

    A report by Steve Hageman of the Turkish World Outreach, according to Mark, says,

    Many of the Palestinians know it [that they have Jewish roots], but it’s not politically correct to acknowledge this publicly among Muslims…There are two houses of Israel in the Holy Land: one aligned with the West and primarily secular or Jewish and the other aligned with the East and primarily Islam.

    A Jewish Rabbi Dov Stein explains Oppenheim’s startling revelation,

    It becomes clear that a significant part of the Arabs in the land of Israel are actually descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Islam over the centuries. There are studies which indicate that 85% of this group is of Jewish origin.

    A documentary by Jewish filmmaker Nissim Mossek captured on camera a Palestinian home where the Jewish mezuzah (a parchment of scripture placed on the doorposts by pious Jews) is kept away from sight under a shelf and the tefillin (or phylacteries) hidden in a dresser. Palestinians who recognize their Jewish ancestry practice their religious way of life in secret.

    Another line of explanation of the genetic links between Palestinians and Jews comes from Ancient History and explains that the genetic kinship between the Jews and the Kurds of Iran and Turkey may have it origins in deportation of the population of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Euphrates-Tigris region of Mesopotamia by the Assyrians in the eighth century BC

    www.goddiscussion.com, September 19, 2011

  • Anthony Doesburg: Stuxnet mystery Israel, bluff, or double bluff?

    Anthony Doesburg: Stuxnet mystery Israel, bluff, or double bluff?

    By Anthony Doesburg

    Irans Bushehr nuclear power plant
    Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, one of the sites the Stuxnet computer worm may have been aimed at. Photo / AP

    Did they or didn’t they? Was the Stuxnet computer worm the work of an Israeli cyberwarfare team or of some other government wanting to implicate Israel?

    The answer, says United States security specialist Bruce Schneier, writing on Forbes.com, is unlikely ever to be known.

    Certainly, the London-based Jewish Chronicle reported last week that Israel wasn’t admitting to having created the worm. But the paper pointed out that the country has the capability – within Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defence Force – to do so.

    And it quotes the head of the IDF’s intelligence branch, Major General Amos Yadlin, saying last year that “cyber will be the new battlefield” of war. Israeli Defence had over the past year “formalised its cyber efforts”, the paper said.

    Stuxnet is such a sophisticated piece of software that there’s little dispute it’s the work of a national government, says Sydney-based Steve Martin of antivirus software company Symantec.

    “The theory is, it looks like it’s government-based rather than from a private entity or criminals, and that probably narrows down the field somewhat,” he says.

    But like Schneier, he believes the many law enforcement and intelligence agencies that will be trying to trace Stuxnet’s source have little chance of success.

    “They want to find its origins, but more, they want to understand the strategy, because this really is the type of malicious code that is ideal for cyberwarfare. If I was a country intent on invading another, before I did that it would be pretty powerful to disrupt their electricity grid or water supplies or other services.”

    The finger keeps pointing at Israel because the main victim of Stuxnet, which first surfaced in June, was Iran. The worm, which targets a particular type of industrial control system from German company Siemens, appears to have disrupted Iran’s fledgling nuclear industry, a flashpoint for tension particularly with Israel and the US.

    Fuelling the speculation that Israel is responsible are clues in the Stuxnet code itself. The worm records a value of”19790509″ in the Windows registry, or settings database, of infected computers. The digits can be read as the date in 1979 when Iran executed Persian Jew Habib Elghanain for spying for Israel.

    Elsewhere in the code can be found the word “myrtus”, which could mean the myrtle plant. The Hebrew word for myrtle is hadassah; Queen Esther, who in the fourth century BC saved Persian Jews from genocide, was named Hadassah.

    Equally, myrtus might mean “my RTUs”, where RTU stands for remote terminal unit, an industrial control system component.

    But obvious markers of Israeli authorship of the worm could be intended to throw investigators off the scent, Martin says.

    “That could well be in there to confuse those trying to track down the source, which is a highly likely tactic for whoever has written the code.”

    Or Israel might have wanted it to look as though it was being framed.

    If it was the work of Israel, Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick wrote last weekend, it showed the country was maintaining a technological edge over its enemies, which was “a great relief”.

    Symantec estimates up to 10 programmers would have taken six months to write Stuxnet, clearly making it a government-sponsored – albeit illegal – effort.

    The worm relies on five “zero-day exploits” – hitherto unknown security vulnerabilities – to infect Windows computers, en route to the industrial controllers that are its target. Martin says zero-day exploits are a rare commodity.

    “To put that into perspective, in 2009 a total of 12 zero-day threats were identified.”

    Symantec is less interested in Stuxnet’s origins than in preventing its spread. As far as Martin is aware, no New Zealand or Australian organisation has suffered damage from it. “The clear advice to organisations with industrial control systems is, first, make sure your security software is up to date on your PC network, and that you’ve scanned for this particular worm.”

    Typically industrial control systems only come in contact with an organisation’s PC network through the intermediary of a USB memory stick, which might be used to transfer a software update.

    “This is the single biggest threat we have seen and it has the potential for causing catastrophic consequences,” Martin says. “One would imagine that if I could turn off a cooling system in a nuclear plant, and also turn off the alarm that it was overheating, that I could get some sort of meltdown. This code absolutely has the potential to do that.”

    Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist.

    , Oct 18, 2010

  • Role of Cuban Pilots in Jewish Air Exodus to Israel Revealed

    Role of Cuban Pilots in Jewish Air Exodus to Israel Revealed

    cubaFollowing the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, a Cuban airline and a group of Cuban pilots were commissioned to transport all the Jewish people who wished to immigrate to the dawning state. Their many flights between 1951 and 1952 as part of what may be the largest air evacuation in human history had remained unknown until now.

    By: Luis Hernández Serrano

    Email: serrano@juventudrebelde.cu

    They were not diplomats or delegates going to an international convention, nor pilgrims on the search for indulgences or archaeological relics. The group of pilots that departed from Cuba in 1951 to the Holy Land had a different mission.

    The event remained unknown for almost 60 years. The Cuban pilots were to take part in the largest mass air evacuation in human history.

    Aviation historian Captain Rolando Marron told Juventud Rebelde newspaper the details of their ordeal.

    “In 1948,” he began, “the Republic of Israel was founded in a territory that had been part of Palestine and was under British control. The deficient economy of the country demanded arms to harvest the land and brains to administrate the dawning republic.”

    “In Europe, as a consequence of the recently concluded world war, there were hundreds of thousands of dispossessed Hebrews eager to move to the new homeland they were being offered. Large groups of immigrants began to arrive in Israel from all over Europe, as it was easier for them to find ways to get there.

    “As the relations between Jewish and Arabs became tenser in Arab countries, the Israeli government intervened to facilitate the evacuation of a larger number of Jewish people to their Promised Land.

    “Arab governments prohibited Jewish immigrants to travel by road, and the Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal made it impossible for them to get to Israeli territory by sea.

    “The only option left was organizing a mass air evacuation. Negotiations began under acute time constraints. Since Israel had no diplomatic relations with Arab League member states, and planes bearing Israeli flags could not therefore be used for the exodus, they had to hire planes from a neutral country.

    “By coincidence, an important official of the Israeli mission in New York was a very good friend of Cuban businessman and civilian pilot Narciso V. Rosello Otero, who was appointed chair of the company created for the plan: Intercontinental Aerea de Cuba S.A

    “When the company had secured the required permits in Cuba, its central office opened at 464 Zulueta, in Old Havana, and a branch office was also inaugurated in Nicosia, Cyprus.

    The historian said that while the final arrangements were made to the administrative structure of the company, Cuban pilot were hired, in compliance with Cuban laws, to fly the planes.

    “The first group was made up of five pilots who were unemployed at the time because the company they worked for, Aerovias Cubanas Internacionales S.A., had gone bankrupt due to the incipient development of domestic commercial flights in Cuba.

    The Air Exodus

    Historian Marron adds that during the nearly two years that the mission lasted, more than 115,000 refugees were brought from Iraq; 25,000 from Iran, and a few hundred from India and Yemen. The Yemen refugees had to cross the border to reach the English territory of Aden to board the planes.

    “Most of the refugees from Iraq boarded at the airport of Baghdad, and the rest in Bahra, near the famed Abadan oil refinery, at the important oil harbour located only a few miles away from the Persian Gulf border.”

    The historian noted that it was in Iraq where the Jewish passengers experienced the most difficulties, given the persecutions and dangers they faced in that country, and it was necessary to evacuate them as soon as possible. The abovementioned number of Iraqi refugees was rescued over a period of approximately ten months.

    “The Iranian refugees,” continued Marron, “were picked at the Teheran airport. They were not forced to leave the country, and all of them immigrated to Israel voluntarily, with the exception of 1,000 who had escaped from Iraq and Afghanistan through the border, and could not remain in Iran due to immigration regulations.

    “The longest flights were to Bombay, in India, where a few hundred decided to immigrate. Many of them would return later to India because they were not able to adapt to the living conditions they found in their new homeland.

    “Taking off from the modern Lydda airport in Tel Aviv, the flight had a stopover in Sharjah, at the Royal British Air Force base, in the remote area of Oman Trucial off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Persian Gulf.

    “A typical Arab village by the seaside and the barracks of the English troops were the only signs of life near the airfield in the middle of the dessert. The second part of the trip was the crossing of the Indic Ocean, battered by the dangerous monsoons, and the journey concluded at the Santa Cruz airport in Bombay.

    “The hardest and more frequent routes were Lydda-Baghdad and Lydda-Teheran,” said Marron.

    A Forced Landing

    “Although the first of these routes was relatively easy in the winter,” explained Marron, “flying conditions would drastically change in the summer, when sandstorms considerably reduced visibility in Baghdad, impeding access to the airport. Sometimes pilots had to land in alternate airfields to wait for the weather conditions in their places of destination to change.

    “Furthermore, high temperatures affected the performance of plane engines. In Baghdad, it was normal to have temperatures between 45ºC and 50ºC in the shade! And not only at noon, but also in the morning and late afternoon. That is why pilots always tried to take off in the night, in order to gain time.

    “Adolfo Diaz Vazquez was the only pilot who had to make a forced landing during the evacuation program. One of the engines of the C-46 he was flying stopped on route between Baghdad and Lydda, at night! Thanks to his vast experience, all the passengers and the plane escaped unharmed. The passengers and the crew were taken to Israel in another plane. Some days later, Eugenio Ramos Escandon flew the plane to Lydda. The aircraft had been repaired by a group of Cuban mechanics under the guidance of Eduardo Segredo Salgado.

    “By the end of 1952, the wave of immigration to Israel decreased and some of the planes that had been used for these ends began flying to European cities: Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Zurich, London, Athens and Geneva.

    “In early 1953, the group of Cuban pilots returned to Cuba, after having successfully transported almost 150,000 Jewish immigrants to Israel. The crew of these flights wore an insignia with a Cuban flag on their uniforms.

    “The main base of operations of the Intercontinental Aerea de Cuba S.A. Company was always in Cuba, but its planes never flew in the national territory; they never even touched Cuban soil. Part of the money earned in this operation was probably used to bribe the Cuban president at the time, since permits were only granted following a local inspection of the aircrafts.

    Pilots who took part in the evacuation program:

    Manuel Gonzalez Linares, with more than 6,000 hours of flight.

    Eugenio Ramos Escandon, experienced C-46 capatain.

    Guillermo Verdaguer Boan, survivor of a plane crash in which one of his comrades lost his life.

    Miguel Acosta Rosellp.

    Antonio “Nico” Fernandez Martinez

    Adolfo Diaz Vazquez, also known as “Lindbergh,” an aerobatics champion. He was the sixth pilot on Narciso Rosello’s payroll.

    Eduardo Segredo Salgado, the brilliant mechanic of the team.

    The Zionist State of Israel

    When the Second World War ended in 1945, Jewish political organizations led by Theodor Herzl pushed for the creation of a state that should have its capital in Jerusalem, Palestine, which was a British protectorate at the time. The plan was to give the Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide a place to start over after the war. It is said that the area was infiltrated by terrorist groups with a view to speeding up the British withdrawal.

    Arab Palestinians, with the support of Eastern Arab states, energetically opposed the plan, which was paradoxically fascist. The wave of immigration had the support of US and British Jewish organizations, and a US-British supervising commission was created for the forced Jewish colonization.

    After the failure of the Conference of Palestine in 1947, England brought the issue to the attention of United Nations, and in November of that year, a plan was drawn up to split the Palestinian territory into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state. On May 14, 1948, when there were only a few hours left before the British rule was to expire, the Jewish proclaimed the independence of the Hebrew state, and they called it Israel.

    Arab government representatives, who never agreed to the UN ruling, rejected this political decision, giving way to an armed conflict in which the Zionist groups, that were better trained and equipped, managed to expand their domain over a broader area, extending as far as the Jordan River. They would later gain more and more ground.

    The foundation in 1948 of the Zionist state in the heart of the Arab region was the beginning of the historic suffering of the Palestinian people, which has come to be one of the most heartbreaking contemporary conflicts in the world.

    In 1967, for example, the human cost of the conflict amounted to more than one million displaced Arab Palestinians, their homes and lands given to the Jewish settlers from Europe.

    It is a fact that the state of Israel was founded by splitting up the Palestinian territory inhabited by Arab Palestinians who had been born in those lands, with the objective of bringing justice to the Jewish people but at the cost of a new injustice.

    Israel’s subsequent history has been a history of unstoppable territorial expansionism in order to gain more land and water, and consolidate their privileged geopolitical position.

    , 21.10.2010

    [2]

    In 1951-52, Cuban dictatorship operated Jewish immigration airlift to Israel

    The Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) reported that an airlift was organized in the early 1950s by the Cuban company Intercontinental Aérea de Cuba S.A., owned by businessman Narciso V. Roselló Otero, to fly 150 000 Jewish immigrants to Israel (of which 115 000 were from Iraq and 25 000 from Iran).

    These revelations shed light on a little-known operation until now.

    In order to colonize Palestine, the Zionist movement planned to displace not only the European survivors of Nazi persecutions, but also the Jewish populations living in the Middle East.

    To compel Iraqi Jews to emigrate, the Zionist movement mounted an operation in three stages:
    An agreement was reached with pro-British Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said to force Iraqi Jews to accept a one-way ticket to Israel. On 9 March 1950, Parliament adopted a law requiring that Iraqi Jews leaving the country had to renounce their citizenship in writing and would not be allowed to return.
    From 19 March 1950 to 30 January 1951, a series of bomb attacks targeted the venues of Jewish congregation. The attacks were falsely attributed to the Golden Square officers (who had sided with Germany against the British during World War II). As it is, they had been orchestrated by Israeli intelligence under the direction of Mordechaï Ben Porat (as endorsed in 1956 by Uri Avnery’s Israeli magazine Haolam Hazeh).
    Immediately, an airlift was set up from Cuba by the dictatorial regime of General Fulgencio Batista enabling the evacuation of 115 000 Jews, terrified by the turn of events. Cuban planes and pilots took off from Baghdad stopping over in Nicosia (Cyprus). Towards the end of the operation, planes with a bigger capacity shuttled from Iraq to Israel directly so as to speed up the operation.

    Mordechaï Porat, a terrorist with close ties to David Ben-Gurion, served four times as member of parliament and once as minister without portfolio. In 2001, he was awarded the Israel Prize for the whole of his career and in particular for having pushed Iraqi Jews to emigrate.

    Narciso V. Roselló left Cuba for the United States after the attack on his home at the hands of Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries, who thus confiscated the weapons that they used to conquer Havana and overthrow General Batista.

    ==

    “Pilotos cubanos en la Tierra Santa”, by Luis Hernández Serrano, Juventud Rebelde, 16 October 2010.

    Bibliography:
    Ropes of Sand : America’s Failure in the Middle East, by Wilbur Crane Eveland, WW Norton & Co (1981, 382 p.), ISBN-13 : 978-0393013368.
    Ben Gurion’s Scandal : How the Haganah and the Mossad Eliminated Jews, by Naeim Giladi, Dandelion Books,U.S. (Seconde edition 2003, 364 p.), ISBN-13 : 978-1893302402.

    https://www.voltairenet.org/article167398.html, 24 OCTOBER 2010

  • Persian Jews welcome the return of the Cyrus Cylinder home

    Persian Jews welcome the return of the Cyrus Cylinder home

    Cyrus the Great and Hebrews
    Cyrus the Great liberated the Hebrew from the Babylonian captivity to resettle and rebuild Jerusalem, earning him an honoured place in Judaism. (Click to enlarge)

    By Brokhim Davoudian from Tehran for CAIS

    LONDON, (CAIS) — The Cyrus Cylinder loaned by the British Museum to Iran and currently on show at the National Museum in Tehran has attracted attention nationally and internationally and has excited all Iranians including the small community of the Iranian Jews.

    The Cyrus Cylinder signifies humanity and kindness and it is considered by many scholars to be the world’s first declaration of human rights issued by the ancient Iranian emperor, Cyrus the Great in 6thcentury BCE.

    Amongst Iranians the most excited for the return of the Cyrus Cylinder being home after forty years, is the small Jewish community. The Iranian Jewish population better known as ‘Persian Jews’, constitute the largest among the Islamic countries.

    A Tehran Rabbi excitingly stating: “it is wonderful and I’m much exited to see that the Cylinder is home – in fact I am doubley exited, as an Iranian as well as a Jew.”

    He continued: “the Cylinder is a Persian artefact, but its contents concerns the history of Jewish people as much as Iranians, which echoes the past and is the voice of our ancestors – it tells us about the history of my ancestors, the Hebrews who were liberated by the ‘anointed of God’ from Babylonian captivity and their return to the holy land. It is the history of my forefathers who stayed behind and who had chosen Iran as their home.”

    Shahram, a young Persian Jew who travelled from the city of Shiraz to visit the Cylinder said: “when I laid my eyes on the Cylinder I start shaking and tears ran down my cheeks, which I had no control over. I felt a bit embarrassed but when I noticed that I am not the only one drowning in the tears of excitement I let my emotions to run.”

    Maurice another teenager who was not lucky as Shahram to visit the Cylinder, said: “I am going to see it no matter how long it takes. From my childhood my family told me about Cyrus the Great and who he was. This artefact has importance for me for a number of reasons: first and foremost because I am an Iranian and second, this is a historical document that tells me how my ancestors were freed from captivity.”

    Daniyal, a patriot Persian Jew from Esfahan and a veteran hero of Iran-Iraq war in moving words told me: “I defended my country during the sacred defence against the Arab aggressors and served in the frontline and I have a shattered leg to prove it. My feelings of knowing Cyrus’s Cylinder is home, is the exact feeling of joy and excitement that I had when I was ready to offer my life defending my country. If I have to sleep behind the doors of the National Museum, I will do it to see the Cylinder.”

    According to Iran’s National Museum over 2,000 peoples are visiting the Cylinder everyday. The number could be have been three times but since the visitors are divided into groups of 20 to 25 individuals and at a time to be led to a special room where the priceless Persian artefact is kept, the numbers are currently limited to 2,000.

    Some Iranians called for the museum to be open 24 hours before the return of the Cyrus Cylinder to England.

    With regard to attacking Cyrus the Great in Western Media, such as a ‘Cyrus-bashing’ article published by Der Speigel in 2008 rabbi said: “We are appalled by those in West who are attacking the character of Cyrus the Great and calling his Cylinder as a hoax, especially that neo-Nazi who wrote the article in the Spiegel. We the Jewish community in Iran are deeply insulted and consider his attack as anti-Semitism, which is no better than those anti-Semitics who are denying the Holocaust from taking place.”

    He added “Cyrus deserves better respect, and I’m pleading to my Jewish brothers and sisters outside Iran to stop these anti-Semitic-Nazis, attacking the man who loved and liberated us from captivity.”

    A prominent Persian Rabbi back in 2008 also called the author of the De Spiegel article a neo-Nazi and an anti-Semitic.

    The Persian Jews

    The Persian Jews trace their ancestry to the Babylonian Exiles of the 6th century BCE and, and like the Armenians and the Assyrians living in modern Iran, have retained their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identity.

    The beginnings of Jewish history in Iran dates back to late biblical times. The biblical books of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles, and Esther contains references to the life and experiences of Jews in Persia. In the book of Ezra, the Persian kings are credited with permitting and enabling the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple; its reconstruction was ordered “according to the decree of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia” (Ezra 6:14). As the result, sixth century BCE is considered as one of the greatest events in the Jewish history.

    Scholars believe that during the peak of the Persian Empire, Jews may have comprised as much as 20% of the Iranian population.

    Jews continued living in various part of the empire including Babylon during and after the fall of Achaemenids. Under the succeeding Iranian dynasties of Parthians and Sasanian, Jews lived freely and practised their religion until the 7th century and invasion of Iran by Arabs, the majority of which along with other Iranians faced execution or were forced to accept Islam.

    The reaming which could afford to pay the Jizyya (poll tax) for not being Muslim to the Arab invaders chose to remain or emigrated to concentrated Jewish areas such as in Assuristan and Khvarvaran (nowadays Iraq), Khuzestan, Fars and Esfahan provinces. As the result the central Iranian city of Esfahan become one of the main hubs for the Persian Jews. Esfahan then divided into two major settlements of Yahudiyeh (the Jewish Quarter) and Shahrestan or Gey (the Zoroastrian Quarter).

    The second major blow to the Jewish community after the Arab invasion of Iran was under the Mongol Ghazan Khan. In 13th century, he ordered a large number of synagogues to be destroyed and forced many to accept Islam. The policy continued under the Tamburlaine’s rule which resulted in more Jews converting to Islam and their resettlement in the north-eastern Iranian city of Samaqand (in modern Uzbekistan) to promote the textile industry.

    The Jewish community however survived in large numbers until the reign of Shah Soltan Hossein (r. 1694–1722) when they forced the majority to convert to Islam once again. Their numbers were estimated in the Safavid capital, Esfahan around 3,000,000 (including the Zoroastrians). As the result Jewish scholars believe a large portion of modern Esfahani ancestry is of Jewish origin.

    Some of the Jewish communities in Iran have been isolated from others, to the extent that their classification as “Persian Jews” is a matter of linguistic or geographical convenience rather than actual historical relationship with one another.

    Persian Jews until the 19th to mid-20th century were still extant communities in the mainland-Iran and the Greater Iran (once were part of Iran) including the present-day Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Eastern Turkey, Georgia, Northern-Iraq, Kirgizstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.

    Before the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, there was an estimated 140,000-150,000 remaining Jews living in Iran, the historical centre of Persian Jewry, the number were expected to be well over 500,000 by early 2000. Over 85% have since left Iran either for Israel or the United States.

    Since the 1979 Revolution in Iran, the Jewish population of Iran dramatically decreased from 80,000 to less than 40,000 today, with around 25,000 residing in Tehran, and the remaining mainly living in the cities of Esfahan and Shiraz, the historical cities of Persian Jewry.

    Modern Israelis of Iranian origin are referred to as Parsim meaning “Persians”.

    It is widely believed the President Mahmood Ahmadinejad is of a Jewish origin who turned against his own people. His surname before conversion of his parents to Islam was Saburjian, meaning ‘cloth weaver’, a traditional Jewish family- name in Iran. Ahmadinejad rejected the claim.

    , 24 September 2010

    [2]

    Falling for Ancient Propaganda

    UN Treasure Honors Persian Despot

    By Matthias Schulz

    A 2,500-year-old cuneiform document ceremoniously displayed in a glass case at the United Nations in New York is revered as an “ancient declaration of human rights.” But in fact, argue researchers, the document was the work of a despot who had his enemies tortured.
    Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi was planning a record-breaking gala. First he proclaimed the “White Revolution,” a land reform program, and then declared himself the “Light of the Aryans.” Finally, in October of 1971, he had taken it upon himself to celebrate “2,500 years of the Iranian monarchy.” The organizers of the celebration had promised to deliver “the greatest show on earth.”
    The Shah had 50 opulent tents set up amid the ruins of Persepolis. Invited dignitaries included 69 heads of state and crowned monarchs. The guests consumed 20,000 liters of wine, ate quail eggs with pheasant and gilded caviar. Magnum bottles of Château Lafite circled the tables.
    At the high point of the festival, the Shah walked to the grave of Cyrus II who, in the 6th century B.C., had conquered more than 5 million square kilometers (1.9 million square miles) of land in a long and bloody war.
    Critics at the time complained that $100 million (€63 million) was a lot of money to spend celebrating the ancient Persian king. “Should I serve heads of state bread and radishes instead?” was the Shah’s brusque rejoinder.
    Religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini, still in exile at the time, was also quick to issue his scathing criticism: “The crimes committed by Iranian kings have blackened the pages of history books.”

    But the Shah knew better. Cyrus, he announced, was a very special man: noble and filled with love and kindness. The Shah insisted that Cyrus was the first to establish a right to “freedom of opinion.”
    ‘Ancient Declaration of Human Rights’
    Pahlevi also ensured that his view of history would be taken to the United Nations. On Oct. 14, just as the party in Persepolis was in full swing, his twin sister walked into the United Nations building in New York, where she handed a copy of a cuneiform document, about the size of a rolling pin, to then Secretary General Sithu U Thant. Thant thanked her for the “historic gift” and promptly praised it as an “ancient declaration of human rights.”
    Suddenly even the UN secretary-general was insisting that Cyrus “wanted peace,” and that the Persian king had “shown the wisdom to respect other civilizations.”
    Then Thant had the clay cylinder (which contains a supposedly particularly humane decree by Cyrus II dated 539 B.C.) displayed in a glass case in the main UN building. And there it continues to lie today, directly adjacent to a copy of the world’s oldest peace treaty.
    Those were grand gestures and grand words, but in the end it was nothing but a hoax that the UN had fallen for. Contrary to the Shah’s claims, the cuneiform degree was “propaganda,” explains Josef Wiesehöfer, a scholar of ancient history at the University of Kiel in the northern Germany. “The notion that Cyrus introduced concepts of human rights is nonsense.”
    Hanspeter Schaudig, an Assyriologist at the University of Heidelberg in the southwestern Germany, says that he too would be hard-pressed to see the ancient king as a pioneer when it comes to equality and human dignity. Indeed, Cyrus demanded that his subjects kiss his feet.
    The ruler was responsible for a 30-year war that consumed the Orient and forced millions to pay heavy taxes. Anyone who refused stood to have his nose and ears cut off. Those sentenced to death were buried up to their heads in sand, left to be finished off by the sun.
    Did the UN simply believe this historical lie — concocted by the Shah — without any further examination?
    ‘The UN Made a Serious Mistake’
    Art historian Klaus Gallas, who is preparing a German-Iranian cultural festival to take place in Weimar next summer, has now brought the matter to the public’s attention. During his preparations for the festival he discovered the inconsistencies between the Shah’s claims and the Cyrus decree. “The UN made a serious mistake,” says Gallas.
    King Cyrus the Great
    The limestone tomb at Pasargadae of King Cyrus the Great.

    Despite having been contacted by SPIEGEL several times, the organization has declined to comment on the incident. Indeed, the UN Information Service in Vienna continues to insist that many still consider the cuneiform cylinder from the Orient to be the “first human rights document.”

    The aftermath of the hoax has been disastrous. Even German schoolbooks describe the ancient Persian king as a pioneer of humane policies. According to a forged translation on the Internet, Cyrus even supported a minimum wage and right to asylum.
    “Slavery must be abolished throughout the world,” the fake translation reads. “Every country shall decide for itself whether or not it wants my leadership.”
    Even Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was taken in by the hoax. “I am an Iranian. A descendant of Cyrus the Great,” she said in her speech in Oslo. “The very emperor who proclaimed at the pinnacle of power 2,500 years ago that … he would not reign over the people if they did not wish it.”
    The experts are now stunned at this example of a rumor gone wild.
    If one thing is clear, it is that the figure at the center of this hoax radically shook the ancient Orient like no other ruler. With what German scholar Wiesehöfer calls “military strokes of genius,” Cyrus advanced with his armies to India and to the Egyptian border. He is considered the creator of a new kind of country. At the height of his power, he was the ruler of a magnificent empire bursting with prosperity.
    But it all began far more modestly. Born the son of an insignificant minor king in what is today southwestern Iran, the young man mounted the throne in 559 B.C.
    Even in antiquity, bizarre legends were associated with the king. According to one of them, Cyrus grew up in the wild and was nursed by a female dog. There are no contemporary images of him.
    His neighbors to the west soon felt the brunt of this man’s determination. After conquering the neighboring Elamite people, he attacked the Median Empire in 550 B.C. with his army’s fast combat chariots and soldiers dressed in bronze armor.
    After that, the upstart king invaded Asia Minor, or modern Turkey, where hundreds of thousands of Greeks lived in colonies. Well-to-do citizens from Priene were enslaved.
    Part 2: ‘One of the Most Magnificent Documents Ever Written’

    The general recuperated from the trials of war at his residence in Pasargadae. It was surrounded by an irrigated garden known as the “paradeisos” and was home to a sumptuous harem.

    But Cyrus soon became restless in his palace and returned to the front, this time heading east to Afghanistan. His life ended at 71, somewhere in Uzbekistan, when a spear punctured his thigh. He died three days later.

    The Walls of Babylon
    The Walls of Babylon, now at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

    Courageous in battle and adept in the politics of running his empire, Cyrus, says Wiesehöfer, was a “pragmatist” who attained his goals with “carrots and sticks.” But he was no humanist.

    Some Greeks praised the conqueror. Herodotus and Aeschylus (who lived after Cyrus’s death) called him merciful. The Bible describes him as the “anointed one,” because he supposedly permitted the abducted Jews to return to Israel.
    But modern historians have long since debunked such reports as flattery. “A shining image of Cyrus was created in antiquity,” Wiesehöfer says. In truth, he was a violent ruler, like many others. His army ransacked residential neighborhoods and holy sites, and the urban elites were deported.
    Only the Shah, who had his own problems in the 1960s, could have come up with the idea of reinterpreting this man as an originator of human rights. Despite his SAVAK secret police’s notorious torture practices, there was resistance throughout the country. Marxist groups carried out bombings while mullahs called upon their followers to resist the government.
    In response, the Shah attempted to invoke his ancient predecessors. Just as Cyrus was once the father of the nation, he insisted, “So am I today.”
    “The history of our empire begins with the famous proclamation by Cyrus,” the Shah claimed. “It is one of the most magnificent documents ever written on the spirit of freedom and justice in the history of mankind.”
    One thing is true, and that is the clay cylinder documents a banal story of political betrayal. When the text was written in 539 B.C., Cyrus found himself in what was probably the most dramatic part of his life. He had dared to attack the New Babylonian Empire, his powerful rival for dominance of the Orient, a realm that extended all the way to Palestine. Its capital, the magnificent city of Babylon, crowned by a 91-meter tower, was also a center of knowledge and culture. The empire itself was bristling with weapons.
    Nevertheless, the Persian ruler decided to risk attacking the Babylonians. His troops marched down the Tigris River. After attacking the fortified city of Opis and killing all prisoners, they advanced on Babylon.

    Babylonian Betrayal
    There, barricaded behind an 18-kilometer (11-mile) wall around the city, sat Cyrus’ beleaguered enemy: King Nabonid, an old man of 80.

    At that very moment, the priests of the god Marduk were committing treason against their own country. Angry over the loss of power they had suffered under their king, they secretly opened the gates and allowed hostile Persian negotiators to enter the city. Nabonid was banished and his son murdered.

    Cyrus Persian Empire
    Cyrus' Persian Empire

    The conditions for a complete surrender were then hammered out. Cyrus demanded the release of fellow Persians who had been carried off in earlier wars. He also insisted on the return of stolen statues of gods.

    These were the passages that the Shah would later reinterpret as a general rejection of slavery. In truth, Cyrus merely freed his own followers.
    In compensation for their treacherous services, the priests were given money and estates. In return, they praised Cyrus as a “great” and “just” man and as someone who “saved the entire world from hardship and distress.”
    Only after all the arrangements had been made did the king enter Babylon, riding in through the blue-glazed Gate of Ishtar. Reeds were spread on the ground at his feet. Then, as is written in line 19 of the Cyrus proclamation, the people were permitted to “kiss his feet.”
    There is no evidence of moral reforms or humane commandments in the cuneiform document. Assyriologist Schaudig calls it “a brilliant piece of propaganda.”
    But the legend of this prince of peace had been born, thanks to the wily priests of Babylon. And since it was placed on a pedestal by the UN, it has become even more inflated.
    Iran’s mullahs have not escaped the Cyrus cult. In mid-June, the British Museum in London announced that it planned to lend the valuable original cylinder to Tehran. It has become an object of Persian national pride.
    “The German Bundestag even recently received a petition to have the proclamation exhibited in a glass case at the Reichstag building,” says Gallas.
    The petition was denied, and yet the distortion of history continues. With its disastrous tribute, the UN gave birth to a seemingly never-ending rumor.
    As the saying from the Orient goes: “A fool may throw a stone into a well which a hundred wise men cannot pull out.”

    https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/falling-for-ancient-propaganda-un-treasure-honors-persian-despot-a-566027.html,  07.15.2008