An Iranian Jewish leader on Wednesday said his community would not mark this week's 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, which he accused of “killing innocent” Palestinians. “We are in complete disagreement with the behavior of Israel,” said Siamak Morsadegh, the incoming Jewish member of the Iranian parliament following a March election. “It is not related to us,” he said about Thursday's celebrations in Israel. “We are Iranians. We have no relations with Israel.” Iran's ancient Jewish community has dwindled by roughly 75 percent to 25,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution, but is still believed to be the biggest in the Middle East outside Israel. Morsadegh said Jews in Iran enjoyed freedom of religion and other rights: “There are no specific problems for Jews in this country,” he said by phone. The Jewish community leader criticized Israel's policies towards Palestinians, especially in Gaza, saying it showed “anti-human behavior ... they kill innocent people.” Meanwhile in Italy, the Turin book fair opening Thursday sparked fresh Muslim anger and boycott calls for honoring Israel on the 60th anniversary of its creation. Writer and professor Tariq Ramadan on Monday criticized the planned presence of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at the fair, saying his attendance would make it “a political and not a cultural event.” He said last week that he would not “offer his support to 60 years of a policy of oppression of the Palestinian people.” Ahead of the five-day expo, several Muslim writers, intellectuals and artists as well as the Free Palestine association staged a two-day protest seminar at the University of Turin. Several Arab and Muslim countries and writers' groups boycotted the Paris book fair two months earlier which was inaugurated by Israeli President Shimon Peres and marred by a bomb threat. The boycott call is not all one-sided. Acclaimed Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai snubbed Paris and will not attend the Turin event, saying that they were “purely another occasion for Israel to make propaganda and gain more support for its military occupation” of the Palestinian Territories.
