[Buddha-l] Re: buddha-l Digest, Vol 32, Issue 17

[jkirk]

The last time I saw figures Jews originating from Muslim countries were the
majority in Israel.

Lance Cousins
=============================
And from a Guardian article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2125155,00.html

.....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 from 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 tradeable 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 earlier 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...."
----------------
The same article, on what Ahmadinejad really said about Israel, as follows:
 
"The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and
clarifications column, Saturday July 28 2007

In the article below we reported that last year President Ahmadinejad said
(quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini) that Israel should be "wiped off the
map". A more literal translation of the statement he made in 2005, at The
World without Zionism conference in Tehran, is "the regime occupying
Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
--------
Obligatory Buddhist reference: some areas now in Iran were anciently
Buddhist.


Joanna K.




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