Israel Loves Iran
“Israel Loves Iran” reads like an oxymoron.
But it’s not. It never was.
Launched by The Peace Factory in 2012, the “Israel Loves Iran” campaign sought to counter Netanyahu’s desire to go to war then. According to a New Yorker profile, The Peace Factory’s Tel Aviv-based Ronny Edry sought to create a culture of humanizing the other amidst their governments’ saber-rattling, to stop war.
The campaign invited people in both countries to share pro-peace content online. It also invited people from all over the world to share their support, as well as expanded to address other conflicts, including that between Israel and Palestine.
It’s classic people-to-people peace building essential to changing politics on the ground.
Algorithms back then were less refined than today. Anger wasn’t (as strongly?) the primary driver of engagement as it has since become.
Flipping through the bright, colorful graphics on Peace Factory’s Facebook page, it’s easy to mourn the loss of feeling hope and change. Again.
Cue the Obama era nostalgia.
Today, the regime in Iran would likely arrest or even kill someone for posting such a thing (perhaps it happened even back then?). In Israel, the social and professional cost could be devastating if it involves Palestinians.
Yet the recent past reminds us that things can be different.
Until the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was one of Israel’s closest allies.
That’s 31 years of trade, diplomacy, and partnership. I highly recommend Before the Revolution, a spectacular documentary covering the lives of Israelis who worked in Iran for the Shah.
Only once the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) regime deposed the Shah - who was also far from perfect and installed by the CIA - did Iran get strangled by theocratic, authoritarian, antisemitic, misogynist, and anti-LGBTQ extremists. The IRI took Iran’s oil money and invested it in Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups that destabilized much of the Middle East - and killed Jews as far away as Buenos Aires.
The Iranian people, the heirs of over 2,500 years of Persian civilization, lost so much.
LA hosts the largest Israeli and Iranian communities outside of both countries. It’s also home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, as well as the largest Persian Jewish community outside of Israel.
I have Persian Jewish family by marriage on my mother’s side. I grew up with children - Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian, and Christian - whose parents fled the IRI. My condo building has multiple Persian households. I live a stone’s throw away from “Tehrangeles”.
The love I have for this community runs deep. LA would be unrecognizable without Iranian influence. The food, the art, the economy, and more…we’re blessed that this city was a refuge for this community to thrive, especially after 1979.
Persian Jews in particular recall that the 1979 Revolution and the Cultural Revolution that immediately followed in college campuses, with “Zionists” being blamed for the Iran’s problems or simply punished with imprisonment or death.
Jews still are - not were - blamed for all of Israel’s wrongdoings, despite not being Israeli. There’s the doomsday clock in Tehran’s Palestine Square, a direct violation of the UN Charter as no UN member can call for the annihilation of another (yet it’s still tolerated).
Sound familiar?
That same antisemitism rooted in anti-Zionism is back with a vengeance. It’s no wonder many former refugees from Iran (and the FSU, which had the same kind of anti-Zionist antisemitism under the USSR) are especially attuned to extreme rhetoric online and in-person regarding Israel and Palestine.
The grief of fleeing one’s homeland is frequently lingers under the surface of so many I know. It’s also there among those born to refugees, but have never been to Iran. There’s the anger and sadness for the relatives who chose to stay, only to suffer now. And of course, the sharp divisions across the Iranian Diaspora in part shaped by identity and how it dictated one’s ability to safely flee - or be able to ever return.
The trauma gets passed down. Like in so many refugee communities, that trauma at times can be blinding, making it harder to empathize with others’ pain.
Even if I certainly don’t share the rightwing politics that dominate many corners of the Persian Jewish community (as well as those who fled Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China, and Vietnam, among others), I recognize how fleeing “revolutionary” and communist regimes could push people into those views.
I invite others in my center-left orbit to see the depths of former refugee and other immigrant communities, too. Just because they’re majority nonwhite and fled dire circumstances doesn’t mean they’re automatically liberal.
Especially within the Jewish community, the frequent division between Ashkenazim (descended from those fleeing rightwing reactionary and fascist regimes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) versus Sephardim/Mizrahim (overwhelmingly fleeing anti-Zionist revolutionary ones associated with the political left during the second half of the 20th century) results in acute misunderstandings of Jewish history and values that polarize us when many are true all at once.
If we don’t see and meet people where they are in order to engage - particularly on this issue in this time when so many are hurting - we’ll never move forward.
My city already hurts from the fires six months ago, the pain compounded with this month’s ongoing Trump ICE raids kidnapping our neighbors and breaking families apart. And that’s on top of our housing crisis and bracing for impact from tariffs and Medicaid and SNAP cuts.
Amidst it all, upwards of a million of us in Greater LA look east.
We’re constantly checking in on loved ones via WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram…anything to make sure that they’re still physically safe.
I wish others could understand just how close to home this new war feels.
Many of us have loved ones in harm’s way in both countries. And if we don’t know someone in the other country, chances are that we know people who do.
I have family and friends living near sites where missiles have struck Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Haifa, and Rishon LeZion. I have friends whose relatives have fled Tehran.
Even with bomb shelters, at least 24 people have been killed, hundreds injured, several homes destroyed, and thousands evacuated in Israel.
According to the IRI, 224 civilians were killed by Israeli strikes. Hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions now, after Trump’s social media post - are fleeing Tehran.
I’m worried of what’s to come.
I fear for my Israelis, for the many I know with loved ones in Iran. I fear what’s to come for hostages in Gaza - and the 2 million Palestinians suffering from 90% of their region already destroyed by the IDF and inaccessible, often deadly aid distribution.
I fear for the millions of innocent Iranians who suffer under the IRI and want nothing more but to see it go.
I fear IRI-allied terrorist groups - or more likely, local radicalized people - attacking Diaspora Jews who don’t have a say in Israel’s government more than we’ve already seen over the past few months. It will get worse if Trump brings us into the war.
I fear the the hubris behind calling for “regime change” given several decades of failure of imposing it from the outside.
What if it ends up being less of a regime change in Iran, but instead weaponized for an authoritarian one in Israel?
I fear a lack of strategy from Netanyahu even if no regime change on his part occurs, and I worry what it means for literally everyone.
LA is living proof that Israelis, Iranians, and the people who love them can share a society and humanize the other.
While America has never been applicable to the whole world - especially now - a slice of it offers hope. Our corner of the world must sustain a chunk of the people-to-people movement necessary to see through this dark time.
A different future from our terrifying present is possible for Israel, Iran, and even Palestine.
Here are some parameters for how I hope we approach the days to come:
It’s not racist nor Islamophobic to challenge IRI actions and policies, just as it’s not antisemitic to do the same with Israel’s, even and especially during wartime.
Don’t fall for false binaries. Multiple things can be true at the same time.
Just because someone supports Israel’s right to live free of Iran’s genocidal aims doesn’t mean they’re against the Iranian people (nor Palestinians), just as someone who opposes the war doesn’t mean they want to see Israelis and Jews in harm’s way.
Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good when it comes to maintaining allyship and friendship.
It’s okay to change your mind after learning new information.
Democracy on Israel’s part still matters. I refuse to hold Israel to the lower standard of the despotic IRI and Hamas while it claims to be part of the West. Rallying around the flag doesn’t mean giving up one’s values.
When it comes to the standards one applies to the IRI, consider this tweet.
Peace Factory posted the following today:
One day, Iranians and Israelis will freely visit each other’s countries.
One day, my cousins and many friends can visit the land their parents came from, hopefully with their parents.
One day, Israel and Iran will have leaders who both put the future of their peoples first, integrating their nations across the region instead of fomenting more cycles of grief, vengeance, and death.
Israel and Iran: We ❤️ You.
Food for Thought
Israel and Iran at War - What I Am Watching, Ilan Goldenberg
Israel Hit Tehran With Precision – and Left Its Own Citizens Defenseless, Haaretz Editorial
Is Israel Embarking on a New Lebanon, or a New Gaza?, Michael Koplow
We Palestinian Citizens of Israel Whisper Our Grief, and Bury Our Dead in Silence, Nagham Zbeedat
‘This War Is Not Helping Us’, Arash Azizi
Israel’s greatest threat isn’t Iran or Hamas, but its own hubris, Orly Noy
Israel-Iran War May Push It to the Back Burner, but the Palestinian Problem Is Not Going Anywhere, Jack Khoury
A precise, Chekhovian logic guided Israel’s strike on Iran — but chaos could come next, Rob Eshman
The War is Real, Yossi Klein Halevy & Donniel Hartman
Here's Why Despite Netanyahu's Pleas Iranians Aren't Rising Up, K. Ghorbanpour
Germany’s Merz says Israel is doing the ‘dirty work for all of us’ by countering Iran, Times of Israel
Note: These times demand our ideas to be challenged if we want to get through the madness. Some columns use language or descriptions of the situation that I don’t share, but I find that my perspective is strengthened by learning from those with whom I disagree