Israelis hope to use Baha'i connections in the future

"While considerable numbers of Persian/Iranian Jews had converted to the Baha’i faith in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is not clear how many of them, if any, moved to Palestine prior to 1948 to form an integral part of the Baha’i community in Haifa or Acre. The emigration of Persian Baha’is to Palestine took place during the period of the First Aliyah (1882–1903), when thousands of mostly European Jews took up new lives in Palestine themselves; hundreds of Persian Jews also moved to Palestine during this period. Indeed, perhaps taking note of this considerable immigration, Baha’u’llah announced ‘the imminent return of the Jews to the land of Israel’ in a letter to French Jewish leader Edmund de Rothschild in 1891. However, there is virtually no mention of Baha’i adherents of Jewish background or descent living in Palestine/Israel in the voluminous correspondence of state officials (or in news reports) either immediately prior to or after 1948. Nevertheless, Israeli officials in and after 1948 were well aware that many Persian Jews had converted to the Baha’i faith in Iran itself decades earlier, and hoped to make use of such connections in the future."

-Randall S. Geller, The Baha’i minority in the State of Israel, 1948–1957