Jerry Ginsberg
This article is the second part of a two-part series. Read the first part HERE.
Hasbara and the Manufactured Existential Threat
The Israeli state has long promoted an official messaging strategy known as “Hasbara” (Hebrew for “explanation”). Hasbara claims that Jews everywhere face an existential threat from terrorists and anti-Semites in the Muslim world, as well as from their “far-left” allies. According to this narrative, groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime hate Jews simply for being Jewish, seek to destroy all Jews, and oppose Israel purely out of anti-Jewish hatred. Hasbara further argues that only Israel can guarantee Jewish safety, and that without it, another Holocaust is imminent.
This framing serves a dual purpose: it justifies military aggression against Iran and its allies, and it delegitimizes any Jewish voice that refuses to accept this existential threat narrative. By painting the entire Muslim world as irredeemably anti-Semitic, Israel can present its bombing campaigns—even those that endanger ancient Jewish communities (such as the Kalini Jews in Iran) — as necessary acts of self-defense.
Erasing Jewish Voices Through Pro-Zionist Media Narratives
Media outlets that support the Zionist narrative often ignore or marginalize Jewish voices that are not Zionist. By trying to create a simple image of the Jewish diaspora, they also try to silence its critics. Zionism works systematically to erase Jewish diversity, especially when that diversity challenges the Zionist project, as with the Kalimi community in Iran. Non-Zionist Jews, anti-Zionist Jews, and Jews who keep cultural or religious ties to another country, including Middle-Eastern countries, are often made invisible.
Much like the anti-Semitic British leaders during the early Zionist movement, today American politicians and supporters of imperialism ignore these “inconvenient” usually politically progressive Jewish voices. The leadership in the two main political parties in the U.S., Republicans and Democrats, refuse to criticize Israel’s actions or support blocking weapons to Israel [5]. These U.S. leaders often claim to support Jewish interests but continue to ignore the anti-war Jewish voices–even before the bombing of the Iranian synagogue, more than half of U.S. Jews disapproved of the U.S. war against Iran [6].
The leaders of our country are promoting the same agenda as the corporate media, which serve American weapons and oil industries. Yet they continue to ignore or pay little attention to Iranian Jews inside Iran [7] and abroad [8] who have spoken out against Israeli and American aggression.
Zionist Anti-Semitism
The Zionist ideological framework provides insight into why Israel and the United States frequently exhibit little hesitation in launching attacks on Iran, even when such actions endanger Jews who have lived in Iran for millennia. Zionism does not always overtly seek to harm Jews; rather, it constructs a hierarchy of Jewish legitimacy. Those who conform to Zionist ideology are afforded protection, while the so-called ‘wrong Jews’ are expected to assimilate or are regarded as expendable.
The Israeli bombing of the Rafi-Nia synagogue demonstrates that a self-identified Jewish state is capable of committing anti-Semitic acts. Although Zionism positions itself as the solution to anti-Semitism, its logic of exclusion of non-Zionist Jews reflects the very dynamics it purports to challenge. Consequently, establishment Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have promoted a broad definition of anti-Semitism that includes any criticism of the Israeli government’s policies thus making it more difficult to combat the real anti-Semitism that is perpetuated by mainly the right-wing extremists and fascists.
Amid increasing incidents of anti-Semitic violence at Jewish places of worship in the United States, the progressive American Jewish movement recognizes the grievances of Iranian Jews and condemns Zionist militarism, which only serves warmongers and money interests, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
The UJPFO condemns the Israeli bombing of the Rafi-Nia synagogue in Tehran.
We condemn the Rafi-Nia synagogue bombing by the IDF. The UJPFO supports the full diversity of Jewish experience and identity—including those Jews who reject Zionism and call Iran their home. We reject the conflation of Judaism with Zionism, and we refuse to accept that any Jewish life, anywhere, should be treated as collateral damage in the service of a political project. Violence at a synagogue or another Jewish place of worship, regardless of its location or the affiliations of its community, is a terrorist act that demands condemnation—and an honest reckoning with how Zionist ideology may, in practice, reproduce the very anti-Semitism it claims to fight.
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvIv7RSXZWM&t=5s
[8] https://forward.com/opinion/814285/iran-israel-war-iranian-jews/