If Israel keeps Jews safe, why did it bomb a synagogue in Iran?
The remains of Rafi’ Nia synagogue in Tehran, destroyed by an Israeli strike on 6 April 2026
Ronnie Kasrils writes in The Palestine Chronicle on 21 April 2026:
I had the privilege of visiting the beautiful Rafi-Nia synagogue in Tehran as a South African government minister in 2005. The Iranian government had placed it in my program, and I gladly accepted the opportunity. I was escorted around and shown the ancient scrolls by the Chairman of the Board, who was also a deputy of the country’s Consultative Assembly, representing the 20,000 Jews of Iran.
He was an urbane middle-aged man who was also chairman of the Iran-Australia Friendship Association and frequently traveled to that country. I was invited to an upcoming sabbath event, but unfortunately, my flight home had been arranged before that possibility.
I was shocked and angered when news of the destruction of the synagogue occurred. I recall it was in a residential neighborhood, nowhere near any Government building, military or otherwise. No question of error. Unmistakably a target of the Israeli army. That it was such a deliberate act came as no surprise. As the statement of South African Jews for Palestine (SAJFP) declares in a statement I have used in my title: A state which bombs Jewish holy sites cannot claim to speak for Jews.
Yet they sweepingly claim they speak and act in the name of all Jews. Despite strenuous opposition from the onset of this late 19th-century political creed to contemporary times.
Zionism started as a minority doctrine, was derided by most rabbis, and faced stiff opposition from socialists and the dominant Jewish Bund of Eastern Europe. When have Zionists, or Zionist Israel, shown any concern for the deaths of anti-Zionist Jews or any manner of Jews, military or civilian, getting in the way of its agenda? Ask those slaughtered by the IDF in pursuit of the ‘Hannibal Directive’ on October 7, 2023.