Emergency

Will Iran strike at targets in Jewish Diaspora communities?

Last year American news media reported the existence of the Boston Mapping Project. Most American Jews have never heard of it. That may be about to change.

A Sinister Project

The Boston Mapping Project is an antisemitic and anti-Zionist effort of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. By its own founders’ admission, the goal of BDS is the destruction of Israel, a goal that, in the view of BDS organizers, is key to ending “Israeli colonization of Palestine” and the “restoration of justice” to the Palestinian people.

The Mapping Project is rife with classic antisemitic canards about Jewish power. The central feature of this sinister Map is a schematic of Eastern Massachusetts, naming a wide range of Jewish community institutions. These include the Synagogue Council, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish high school, Jewish philanthropies, a Jewish Arts group, and the liberal advocacy group J Street. The Map also includes The Boston Globe and Boston’s Jewish Journal—-presumably because the Mapping Project’s promoters believe that powerful Jews control these media outlets.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, “The Mapping Project also includes a disturbing and antisemitic call to ‘dismantle’ and ‘disrupt’ most of Boston’s Jewish community and concludes with a thinly veiled threat that ‘every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted.’ ” (Jerusalem Post, March 5, 2023). Tellingly, over two-thirds of the listed targets are not Jewish institutions. These include 271 police stations, nine US military bases and installations, as well as offices of the FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security. Included are weapons manufacturers with US government contracts. Inclusion of these government targets suggests that a foreign enemy has its hands in this. The Map provides exact locations and internet links for Jewish institutions and government assets.

The Iranian Connection

What is going on here? The answer may lie in recent media reports about a disturbing link between the Mapping Project and Iran.

The Mapping Project is ostensibly a creation of the US BDS movement. But in fact, the Iranian government may be the true instigator and architect of the Project. If that is the case, it is not hard to connect the dots.

According to the US State Department, Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Since the Iranian mullahs came to power in 1979 they have initiated, planned, funded and directed hundreds of terrorist attacks around the world. These include the 1994 Hezbollah bombing attack against the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded over 300.

Even a cursory study of Iran’s foreign policy reveals a 45 year pattern of using proxy groups to carry out these attacks. The Mapping Project has an Iranian signature. The Iranian government even has a government division dedicated to carrying out what they dub their “foreign operations:” the Al Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp.

Is the Boston Mapping Project another Iranian foreign operation?

What Happens Next?

Historian Victor Davis Hanson has observed that wars begin when an aggressor nation perceives that it can attack its enemy and get away with it. That is key to understanding why Iran pursues its expansionist strategy indirectly, using proxies and entities like the Boston Mapping Project. A group of Jewish civilians in Boston, Buenos Aires or London has no power to hit back at Iran. The mullahs can get away with these attacks.

Will Iran strike at the targets listed in the Boston Mapping Project, including civilian targets in Jewish Diaspora communities? There is a compelling reason to believe they will.

The Islamic regime in Teheran cannot last much longer. The mullah’s accumulated crimes against their own people have become so egregious that domestic opposition to the regime is unstoppable. A sign that Iran’s rulers are aware of this: Iran’s Supreme Leader recently transferred $4 billion to his heir-apparent son’s personal account in Iran-friendly Venezuela (Jerusalem Post, February 15, 2023).

Once the Islamic regime falls, its rulers may decide they have nothing to lose—-why not go out with guns blazing? Why not do maximum damage to the groups they hate?

Number one among those groups: Jews.