Disturbing reports from #Iran that the tomb of Esther & Mordechai, a holy Jewish site, was set afire overnight. We hope that the the authorities bring the perpetrators of this #antisemitic act to justice & commit to protecting the holy sites of all religious minorities in Iran.
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) May 15, 2020
A few days ago Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League tweeted that the holy shrine of the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Iran was “set afire.” He claimed, without offering any evidence, that it was an “anti-Semitic act.” The story was picked up by the Jerusalem Post’s chief reporter-fabulist Ben Weinthal, who added his own fictional touches to the story, saying that it was “set ablaze;” and adding for special effect that it was “torched.” Another Iranophobic Post report by Seth Frantzman referred to the “burning of Esther tomb.”
You can see in this picture taken at the shrine yesterday by an Iranian source (after the alleged attack) that the main building is entirely intact and undamaged.
Trump’s “Anti-Semitism Czar” added his own denunciation, which was a bit more circumspect, calling the incident an “attack.” But he added for good measure this bit of nonsense: “Iran’s regime is the world’s chief state sponsor of antisemitism.” I have consistently railed against such false conflation of Israel with Judaism. It is a mistake common to real anti-Semites like David Duke and the white supremacists who are favorites of Donald Trump; and of the Israel Lobby and Israeli government. Iran is opposed to Israel. It is not opposed to Jews. Anti-Semitism is an attack against Jews, not Israel.
In fact, there are 25,000 Jews living quite peaceably in Iran and the Jewish community there is one of the oldest continuously-existing Diaspora communities in the world. In fact, the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai is not only sacred to Iranian Jews, it is beloved by all Iranians. Claiming that Iran is anti-Semitic is equivalent to saying that because Israel opposes Iran that it is anti-Shiite. The truth is that while Israel’s leaders hate Iran, they could care less about Shiism. They may know something about Islam, and Islamophobia is rampant among Israelis, especially the far-right. But it’s preposterous to say that Israel’s animus against the country is based on hatred of Shiism.
The anti-Semitism canard is, of course, a convenient cudgel with which to beat those critical of Israel, since the world generally rejects anti-Semitism and reviles anti-Semites; while it does not share the same revulsion toward those critical of Israel. That’s why Israel and its enablers like Greenblatt and Weinthal prefer the anti-Semite tag. It’s something like a comedian who prefers the cheap laugh to the sophisticated one.
There was an attempt by a lone individual to attack the shrine. But it was thwarted and there was no damage to the Tomb. Another building in the same compound was attacked and there was minor damage to its interior. An Iranian source sent me the IRNA story which was published about the incident:
“…A person tried to enter the mausoleum to “take certain actions,” but was prevented from entering it. Security cameras have recorded a picture of the man, and the police is looking for him, but until he is arrested, one cannot be sure about what he intended to do, and the motivation for doing them.”
In other words, what actually happened was that a single individual took it upon himself to attempt to firebomb the holy site. As the attack took place on Israel Independence Day (the same day as the Palestinian Nakba), it was possibly intended as a protest against Israel or the Nakba. But since the suspect is not yet in custody it is far too premature to speak of a motive as Greenblatt falsely did.
Returning to the attack itself, either visitors or security at the site prevented the individual from entering the Tomb. But he did firebomb an auxiliary building causing light interior damage, and the authorities are pursuing him.
The moral of this story is that Greenblatt has foisted a wildly-exaggerated story on an unsuspecting world. He has exploited the ADL’s undeserved reputation for defending Jews against anti-Semitism by leveling false charges against Iran. This should make everyone who sympathizes with the ADL take pause before accepting its reports, unless they are supported by credible evidence.
It goes without saying that Weinthal and the Jerusalem Post have long been known for perpetrating hoaxes on their readers. In some cases, they’ve knowingly reported invented stories and in others they published stories they believed were true, but turned out not to be. The Post has never, to my recollection, retracted or apologized for any of these grave errors of “journalism.” Caveat emptor.
This is what I call an apologist…
What exactly are you saying? It started with “It is a hoax”, now it is just an “alleged attack”. When this sort of things happen in Israel you make it into a collective sin of the whole Israeli/Jewish society.
You have claimed on twitter nothing have happened as soon as you read about, claiming there was no evidence. As someone who break stories yourself, how many times have you refused/failed to provide any evidence to “protect” your sources??
@ Carmel Yativ: A few “minor” corrections to your ramble, as it appears you either can’t read what I wrote or simply ignored it. In case you didn’t realize, when someone like the ADL concocts à narrative for which there is little or no evidence, it takes some time to discover what the true facts are. One thing you do know is that the facts as Greenblatt presented them were exagerrated at best, and invented at worst. What I did was to challenge Weinthal & Greenblatt to present real evidence to support their claims. Which they ignored, producing no support. So I did what they were too lazy to do. Did they consult local sources in Iran? Did they do any research to confirm their claims? No. Could they have? You bet.
I inquired of Iranians who could find out what happened. And they told me what was actually known. As that information was relayed to me I reported it over the course of several days. You neglected to mention this at all.
So was their story a “hoax.” Yes, in large part. There was no fire at the Tomb. No damage to it at all. Was there a fire somewhere else in the complex that was not part of the Tomb? Yes. Did that fire destroy anything vital or cause serious damage? No. Was there a government conspiracy to attack Jews in Iran as Greenblatt and Weinthal claimed? No. Is the regime anti-Semitic as claimed? No.
BTW, when racist settler arson attacks happen in Israel I don’t report rumors or unsubstantiated accounts as they did. I report facts. I do real reporting, unlike what they did. What you dislike is that I point out these stories at all; and that I link them to the underlying rot of racism in Israeli (Jewish) society. For that, I plead guilty as charged.
https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5732334,00.html?utm_source=Taboola_internal&utm_medium=organic
report with photos of the burned site
@cognito: This may be a factor of your Hebrew to English translation, but I would not call the site “burned.” There was minor non-structural damage to the interior.
The ADL would be a great organization if it primarily used its resources to combat oppression, racism, anti-semitism, islamophobia etc. rather than advocating for the US to give BLIND UNCONDITIONAL support to Israel with that country’s oppression of the Palestinian people. It makes absolutely no sense for an organization to claim it opposes those bad isms, but then has absolutely no criticism of a country Israel that perpetrates such with our government’s support. In 1989 the ADL gave its highest award to then former president Ronald Reagan.
[comment deleted: this is off-topic. You know the rules. Follow them.]
For someone who is using the word murder to describe any event a person dies (except if he is a settler), you are very picky about what does the word burned means.
They didn’t write “burned to the ground” or anything similar.
Anybody with some experience with statistics finds these ADL produced antisemitism statistics as pure propaganda. The last ADL report of 2019 informs us that there were recorded 2,107 antisemitic incidents in USA in 2019. In USA are about 7 million Jews so when we estimate the severity of antisemitism in USA the amount of incidents should be compared to the size of Jewish population. So amount of incidents per Jew in USA is 0.000301. It means that only a few of those 7 million have to encounter such events. Even more “hilarious” makes the fact that of these 2107 incidents are 1,127 were cases of harassment, 919 were cases of vandalism and 61 incidents of antisemitic assaults. So 97 percent of those reported cases are more or less serious name calling and swastika paintings. The amount of assaults was 61 which means that an average US Jew has much higher probability to be killed in a traffic accident than encounter an antisemitic assault. Of course each violent assault is regrettable. However considering what in the name of all Jews (as Israel state likes to inform) is done towards Palestinians it is actually a miracle, that it generates so little hate against local Jewish communities which members are in average openly and vocally supporting Israeli actions and policies. Anyway a small Palestinian town could certainly produce much more ”antisemitic” incidents with the same rules as ADL uses than the 7 million Jews in USA have to face.
These ADL yearly reports collect every year enormous amounts of publicity which normally tell us that antisemitic attacks have skyrocketed in USA. Each report generates hundreds of very uncritical media stories. The successful ”antisemitism reporting” strategy is copied in major western countries, where local Jewish organizations generate equal reports.
Tel Aviv university collects a worldwide Moshe Kantor Database on Antisemitism and Racism. In the database are listed events in different countries. They had to enlarge the theme of the database also to general racism because antisemitism generated so little real ”events”. Search in the database using ASM and Finland in the Title field and time last two years produces ”no results”. With time changed to 5 years produces 22 hits of which only a few are about antisemitism.
SimoHurta makes a good point on what the ADL refers to regarding anti-semitism. My family came to America to escape Nazi Germany. I was born in San Francisco after WWII. I certainly won’t undermine that there is anti-semitism in our country just as there is racism, islamophobia, sexism, homophobia and also classism. There were the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. The problem with the ADL and those Jews that blindly support Israel right-or-wrong and they don’t even represent most American Jews, is that they consider criticism of Israel to be anti-semitic. The thing is that if anti-semitism is so rampant in our country, there would indeed be a heck of a lot more serious incidents. I’ll give you an example.
Back in the mid 1990’s I had a position as a daytime custodian foreman in a high-rise office building in San Francisco. I was well liked by most of the tenants in the building and the first 2 managers of that building that I worked under, very much appreciated my work. The 3rd manager who happened to be a Jew railroaded me out of the building. Like a lot of office building managers, she wanted to get the most work out of people with the fewest number of janitors. The labor union I belonged to was corrupt and did not represent workers well. While of course there are plenty of bad managers in corporations who are not Jews, when Jews behave like that it gives us a bad name. Now I certainly don’t advocate this but if anti-semitism is so rampant in this country, Jewish managers and execs that behave like this wouldn’t get away with what they do. People would find out and they certainly would be victims of incidents for doing things like that, and they wouldn’t get sympathy from many people. Again I’m not saying that I want this although I would have no sympathy for this manager but if anti-semitism is so rampant here, this is how it would be. And BTW, I worked for some really nice people who were Jewish. I happen to believe in Tikkun Olam to make our country and the world better.
“In fact, the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai is not only sacred to Iranian Jews, it is beloved by all Iranians.”
Iranian Brown Shirt militia rioters, Basij, have no love for the Tomb of Esther and Mordecai.
https://www.wiesen thal-europe.com/en/news-releases-menu/20-news-releases-2011/96-wiesenthal-centre-to-unesco
Jewish woman murdered by anti-Semitic Iranian thugs.
https://www.tablet mag.com/sections/news/articles/a-reply-to-reading-megillah-in-tehran
@ Lemonade: YOu’ve offered the Wiesenthal Center and Tabloid Magazine (again) as sources. They aren’t suited to wrap fish, let alone provide credible evidence of anything.
BTW, the Wiesenthal Center propagated the hoax claim that Iran was forcing Iranian Jews to wear yellow stars.
I don’t promote such sites so I’ve broken the URLs.