Taliban spokesperson: Last Jew needn’t fear, ‘we don’t harm minorities’
A TALIBAN spokesperson told Israel’s Kan news on Tuesday that the Islamist militia group will respect the rights of minorities in Afghanistan, including those of the country’s last Jew.
Spokesperson Suhail Shaheen has been on a media blitz over the past few days, giving English-language interviews to international media, in an effort to reassure the world that the return of Taliban rule to Afghanistan will not be the nightmare scenario that many in the West expect under the group’s hardline interpretation of Islamic law.
The reporter asked Shaheen about the future for minorities under the Taliban, among them Zebulon Simentov, believed to be the last Jew left in the country.
“I don’t know the last Jew,” Shaheen said. “We don’t harm minorities. There are Sikhs and Hindus in the country, and they have their religious freedom.
“People don’t need to fear and run away,” Shaheen said, insisting that the planned implementation of Sharia law will not bring more deaths, but rather “more peace and stability”.
In April, Simentov, 61, said he would leave Afghanistan for Israel after this year’s High Holy Days, to join his wife and daughters who have lived there since 1998.
Simentov stayed in Afghanistan to tend to its lone shule, located in Kabul, through decades of violence and political turmoil.
“I managed to protect the synagogue of Kabul like a lion of Jews here,” he once said to Arab News.
Without him around, the synagogue will close, ending an era of Jewish life in the country that scholars believe began at least 2000 years ago.
Simentov was clear on what it would mean for him if the Taliban seized power.
“I’m the last, the only Jew in Afghanistan … It could get worse for me here,” he told AFP in April.
“I have decided to leave for Israel if the Taliban returns.”
Kan also asked Shaheen about the congratulations that the Taliban had received from Hamas.
Shaheen said that though he is grateful for the sentiment, there are no ties between the two groups.
“If Hamas congratulated us on our freedom and the end of the occupation that is great,” he said. “But we have not cooperated with Hamas in any area. We fought against occupation only in Afghanistan.”
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