Israel Hayom:

Isn't there something incongruous about a human rights organization providing a platform to a journalist who has whitewashed human rights abuses?

Next week, an online event organized by the human rights group "3 Generations" will feature New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who sparked an international furor in 2009 when he visited Iran and announced that the oppressed Jews there were not really so oppressed, after all.

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Cohen's assertion that Iranian Jews were "living, working and worshiping in relative tranquility" was met with scorn across the political spectrum. Jeffrey Goldberg, in The Atlantic, called him "credulous." The Anti-Defamation League charged Cohen with viewing Iran through "dangerous rose-colored lenses." J.J. Goldberg, in The Forward, characterized Cohen as "simply naive, and dangerously so."

In subsequent writings and remarks, Cohen not only doubled down on his denial of Iran's anti-Semitic persecution but also heaped praise on the ruling authorities for treating him "with such consistent warmth." That prompted caustic comments recalling notorious instances in history which other dictators wined and dined gullible foreign journalists.

That year's annual State Department report on international religious freedom presented a very different picture from the one Cohen had painted. Iran's 25,000 Jews were the victims of "officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and housing," according to the 2009 report.

The ruling regime "limited the distribution of Hebrew texts, particularly nonreligious texts, making it difficult to teach the language." In addition, "There was a rise in officially sanctioned anti-Semitic propaganda involving official statements, media outlets, publications and books."

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