Conquering Assyrians deported many thousands of Israelite Jews from ancient Israel to parts of what are now Iran and Iraq. In 539 BCE, Cyrus the Great, leader of the Persian Empire, conquered Babylon and permitted exiles to leave and rebuild their temple in Jerusalem, later referred to as the Second Temple.
During the Allied occupation, many Polish and Jewish refugees that escaped Nazi-occupied Poland settled within Iran (see Iran–Poland relations). At the time of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, there were approximately 140,000–150,000 Jews living in Iran, the historical center of Iranian Jewry.
The famous "Cyrus Declaration" allowed the Jews who were living in exile by the river of Babylon to return to their homeland, Judea, to rebuild their lives. But some who had established themselves economically and socially preferred to remain on Babylonian-Persian soil.
The mass movement mainly transpired from 1948 to the early 1970s, with one final exodus of Iranian Jews occurring shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979–1980. An estimated 650,000 (72%) of these Jews resettled in Israel.
Persian Jews have lived in the territories of today's Iran for over 2,700 years, since the first Jewish diaspora when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V conquered the (Northern) Kingdom of Israel (722 BCE) and took some of the Israelites into captivity at Khuzestan.
Who did the land originally belong to, Israel or Palestine?
By more than 1,000 years, “Israel” predates “Palestine.” The land then became home primarily to an Arab population, again for more than a millennium. Both Jews and Arabs thus have a legitimate claim to the land. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen myriad wrongs and brutalities on both sides.
The wars commenced a long period of violence, enslavement, expulsion, displacement, forced conversion, and forced migration against the local Jewish population by the Roman Empire (and successor Byzantine State), beginning the Jewish diaspora.
Furthermore, Iran's new constitution recognized Jews as a “people of the book” and allowed them to practice their religion, which meant they could have synagogues, Hebrew schools, and social institutions. This ostensible status of protected minority did give the community a measure of safety in postrevolutionary Iran.
Since Zoroastrianism is an ancient pre-Islamic religion, it was now glorified as the historic and original Iranian religion. This changed the status of Zoroastrians from one of the most persecuted minorities in Iran to a symbol of Iranian nationalism. This notion continued until the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“It's all recognized religious minorities.” Iranian Jews are allowed to travel abroad, though technically not to Israel — Iranian passports bear the message that “the holder of this passport is not entitled to travel to occupied Palestine.” Many visit Israel anyway via third countries such as Turkey.
The earliest known inhabitants of the region of Israel (ancient Canaan) were indigenous Semitic peoples, primarily the Canaanites, with cultures dating back to the Bronze Age (around 2000 BCE). The Israelites (Hebrews) emerged later, branching from these indigenous Canaanite groups and establishing their own kingdoms around the Iron Age (c. 1000 BCE), with figures like Abraham migrating to the land centuries earlier.
Doctrinal Outline. Ancient Israel was scattered throughout the earth because the people rejected God's covenant. It was prophesied that Israel would be scattered among the nations of the earth because of the people's wickedness (see Leviticus 26:33; Deuteronomy 4:23–27; 28:25, 37, 64; 1 Nephi 10:12–13; 21:1; 22:3–4).
“Jews can buy homes anywhere in the world, in France, in Turkey and even in Iran,” said Shlomo Levinger a spokesman for some 20 Jewish families who want to move into the buildings.
Jews have their minority rights protected in Iran, though there is official discrimination. In order to prevent circumvention of emigration restrictions, the Iranian government prevents Jewish families from traveling abroad contemporaneously.
The biblical name for modern-day Iran is primarily Persia (Paras), especially in the Old Testament books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, referring to the powerful Persian Empire that liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity, with earlier mentions of the region also referencing Elam.
The word Hindu is an exonym, and while Hinduism has been called the oldest surviving religion in the world, it is also described by the 19th century term Sanātana Dharma ( lit. 'eternal dharma'). Vaidika Dharma ( lit. 'Vedic dharma') and Arya Dharma are historical endonyms for Hinduism.
Jews don't suffer from persecution or harm and are permitted to maintain their Jewish lifestyle without interference. Their rights as an official religious minority in Iran are protected by law and constitution, and they even have a representative in parliament,” he said.
Officially, Arab citizens of Israel have legal rights and status equal to all other Israeli citizens. They have Israeli identity cards and passports, are eligible to vote and run in local and national elections, pay taxes, and have freedom of movement within Israel.
“We are Iranian, but we're also Zionist.” Many Iranian Jews say their steadfast support for Israel is embedded in deep cultural and religious ties to Judaism that date back centuries. Historians trace Iran's Jewish population to nearly 3,000 years ago, making Judaism one of the oldest minority religions in the country.
Think of Jews forcibly dispersed from Israel by conquerors as Exiled. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon conquered Judea, destroyed Solomon's Temple (586 BCE), and exiled the Jews to Babylonia and beyond. Cyrus King of Persia then allowed Jews to return to Zion (538 BCE) to rebuild their Temple.
The total land area of all of Palestine west of the Jordan River under the British Mandate was some 26 million dunams. The remaining five-sevenths of the cultivable land was owned by Arabs or was administered by the British and previously by the Ottomans as state or dead lands.
Many religious Jews espouse aliyah as a return to the Promised Land, and regard it as the fulfillment of God's biblical promise to the descendants of the Hebrew patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
