Après "Hitler était juif", "Ahmadinejad est juif"

Source: CRIF

Après "Hitler était juif", "Ahmadinejad est juif", ou les dernières élucubrations du Daily Telegraph

"La presse britannique a eu l’idée d’analyser les photos sur lesquelles Mahmoud Ahmadinejad montre ses papiers d'identité, alors qu'il venait de se déclarer candidat à sa propre réélection à la présidence, rapporte le Journal du Dimanche, sur son site Internet, lundi 5 octobre 2009.

Les journalistes du Daily Telegraph prétendent avoir découvert que l'un des noms de familles du président iranien serait d'origine juive. Les documents attestent en effet que les grands-parents du dirigeant se nommaient Sabourjian. Lors de leur conversion à l'Islam, intervenue juste après la naissance de Mahmoud, ses parents auraient adopté le nom, plus respecté, d'Ahmadinejad. Le président iranien n'a jamais caché que sa famille avait changé de nom lors de son déménagement à Téhéran dans les années 1950, selon le journal britannique. Alors que la blogosphère s'enflamme sur ces "révélations", un expert en généalogie iranienne, interrogé par France 2 au 20 heures du dimanche 4 octobre, a affirmé qu’elles étaient sans fondement valide."
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Qu'il s'agit d'une pure affabulation est confirmé par le journaliste juif iranien qui vit aux Etats-Unis Karmel Melamed. La révélation proviendrait de "réformateurs" qui veulent discréditer Ahmedinejad. Ayant interrogé à L.A. des experts, des intellectuels et des leaders religieux juifs iraniens, il ressort qu'aucun n'avait connaissance d'une seule famille juive iranienne portant le patronyme "Sabourjian". Le mot "sabour" ne veut pas dire talit en farsi, comme le prétendent les "experts" non-juifs consultés par les journalistes du Telegraph. Karmel Melamed indique qu'en Iran la tactique classique pour discréditer un opposant est de l'accuser d'avoir des racines juives. Et cette accusation est aussi colportée par des "progessistes". Il rappelle que la version iranienne des Protocoles des Sages de Sion a été augmentée de plus de 400 pages par rapport à l'original russe de 1880 et que le livre est un best-seller en Iran depuis longtemps.

Ahmadinejad "Jewish" identity accusations cannot be proven

"The article’s authors, Damien McElroy and Ahmad Vahdat claim that "Iranian experts" they consulted with have seen the supposed "Jewish name of Sabourjian –meaning cloth weaver" in a photo of Ahmadinejad’s identity papers from March of 2009. My main problem with this claim about the "Sabourjian" name is that the Iranian Jewish experts, scholars and religious leaders in L.A. I have interviewed today, have never heard of any Jewish family in Iran with such a name. Likewise the handful of English to Farsi dictionaries authored by Solomon Haim (a 20th century Iranian Jewish scholar of Persian language) found at UCLA’s library I have research through today do not identify the word "sabour" as "the name for the Jewish tallit shawl" as both McElroy and Vahdat claim in their article! For that matter, none of the English to Farsi dictionaries I came across even had the word "sabour" nor a definition listed for it! Where these journalists came up with this nonsense about the word "sabour" having a Jewish meaning is beyond me! As an Iranian Jewish journalist fluent in the Persian language for the last 31 years, I have never heard of the word “sabour" uttered by members of my community and the Iranian Jewish community has never used this word as a reference to the Jewish prayer shawl. We
Iranian Jews refer to the Jewish prayer shawl by it’s Hebrew name of "seat-seat" (the Hebrew word for the fringes of the prayer shawl) or we use the Hebrew word of "tallit" just like the millions of other Jews living on this planet. [...]

The most classic and detrimental way Iranian government officials have attacked one another is to claim that the "such and such official was born a Jew, or was once a Jew who converted to Islam, or his family was Jewish a generation ago and then converted". The "Jewish identity label" is your classic textbook example of anti-Semitism at its prime that is thrown around as a type of public insult or verbal assault officials in Iran and in most Islamic nations used against one another in smear campaigns. The Iranian Jewish experts I interviewed this morning in L.A. informed me that for one Iranian government official to call or accuse another government official of being Jewish is the equivalent to individuals or groups in the U.S. to accuse an elected official in America of being a child molester or pedophiliac! This is the sad and unfortunately reality that being a Jew in Iran has a very derogatory meaning.

The negative connotation of claiming that someone Muslim in Iran is Jewish or has Jewish roots brings me to my final analysis of the true origins of this entire Ahmadinejad-Jewish story. Iran experts here in L.A. I recently interviewed said that even before Ahmadinejad, various "reformist" leaders during the "open era" of the past Iranian President Mohammad Khatami during the 1990s and early 2000s were using "Jewishness" as a verbal assault against other rival officials they hated or against other Iranian officials who presumably had Jewish blood. Frank Nikbakht, an L.A.-based Iranian Jewish activist and director of the Committee for Minority Rights in Iran, said the accusations Iranian officials make of each other being Jewish is nothing new for Iran’s current regime. "I remember in early 2000 when members of Khatami’s reformist party in Iran accused one of their hardliner rivals, a man named Habibollah Ashkaroladi Mosalman, of having Jewish roots," said Nikbakht in a telephone interview today. "What we are seeing today with this story of Ahmadinejad being supposedly Jewish is the same smear tactics the reformists have used in the past against their hardliner opponents". It seems as if even the supposed "reformists" in Iran, who Obama administration officials and other Western leaders have long hail as being supposedly "open-minded", are also now showing their true anti-Semitic tendencies by vilifying Ahmadinejad with disgusting anti-Semitic rhetoric! Why else would Ahmadinejad be such an evil and horrible dictator trying to take over the world and kill people? He must no doubt be a Jew. Sounds like garbage you might read in the classic anti-Semitic book the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"! (By the way, the Persian language copies of the Protocols have long been best sellers in Iran with more than 400 pages added to the original Russian version published in the 1880s). [...]"

- Ahmadinejad Jewish? No, Says Israeli Scholar