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When I was a kid, my understanding of cultures other than my own lacked nuance. To me, Christianity was one religion, all Aboriginals spoke one language, and the Middle East was comprised entirely of Muslim-Arabs and Jews.
My understanding changed when I met these people for myself. A Greek Orthodox friend at University converted to Roman Catholicism to marry her boyfriend. Living in Israel, I now count Christian-Arabs, Druze and Bedouin amongst my friends.
Many in Western countries form their opinions based on outdated stereotypes. In the absence of first-hand knowledge, they take their cues from others around them who speak with conviction, hoping to rely on the others’ sources of knowledge and hopefully honest agendas.
Hearsay at Home
You’d think that intelligent, educated people would rely on first-hand experience over hearsay. Protesters around the world accuse Israel and the Jews of being bloodthirsty and genocidal. They listen to what they're told by politicians reliant on large, agenda-driven Arab-Muslim constituencies, and masked Keffiyeh-concealed agitators who threaten anyone who does not support their cause. Jews are bullied throughout society, they're physically assaulted, they're manhandled and refused entry to universities in a very real apartheid that is imposed on them, their personal property is damaged, their synagogues and Jewish day-care centres are firebombed. And this is all based on hearsay about events that the perpetrators are told are happening, thousands of miles away.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1PRtto32C2/
First-Hand Experience
Surprisingly, they seem incapable of relying on their first-hand knowledge. The Jews around them are quietly studying, working, making advances in human development, volunteering and donating to the wider society. They are not attacking Arabs or Muslims (or anyone else), not damaging their property or defacing public property, not preventing them access to public spaces etc.
Based on what westerners see in their own societies, the only explanation for anti-Israel sentiment (which, tellingly, is taken out on Jews who are not Israeli), is antisemitic prejudice.
Those in the Know
Key to understanding the current conflict between Israel and its neighbours is another group of Middle Easterners: the citizens of Iran.
By contrast with the Arabs, Iranians are ethnically Persian, speak the Farsi language and have a distinct culture of their own. Persia has a rich pre-Islamic history (which Jews know from the Purim story). Being quite a distance from the Jewish Holy Land, Iran was not involved in the 1948 Arab war against Israel, and it had warm relations with Israel before the Islamic revolution of 1979.
The radical Islamic regime that replaced the Shah did two things that unintentionally resulted in an interesting affiliation: domestically, it quashed dissent and ruled its people with an iron fist (and still does so); internationally, it targeted Israel as a cause celebre for destruction as a first phase in the export of its Islamic aspirations. Since then, an informal bond has formed between its subjugated citizens and the Jewish State of Israel.
Ex-pat Persians live in significant numbers in the US, the UK, and Israel. I have met them in a variety of countries over the years, and they have shown me incredible warmth and friendship. “Persians and Israelis are friends”, they always tell me, their voices low. “The others”, they add, sweeping their hands to signify whoever is around us, “they don’t understand”. I have had this exact conversation with Persians in Australia, England, America and more,
Melbourne
So it was no real surprise when, in Melbourne, I joined the first Jewish Community rally in support of Israel following October 7. It was attended by Jews and non-Jews alike, but prominent among them were Persians proudly holding aloft pre-Islamic Iranian flags.
Protests and violence against Israel and local Jews sprang up around Australia’s capital cities. Hamas was hailed as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian uprising against colonialist oppressors. Iranians, however, were standing with Israel, shoulder to shoulder. ‘The Ayatollahs are behind it all. They are our common enemy.’ It was heartening to have them with us.
At that first rally, another man supporting Israel stood in the distance, holding a different flag from an even earlier Persian empire. I would meet him multiple times over the next 18 months and will hopefully discuss him in a later blog post.
London
Months later, I sat quietly with a friend on a train on the London underground, people watching. Opposite us sat a well-dressed woman with a Middle Eastern complexion, and we tried to guess where she was from. Unabashed and unfamiliar with the Tube rule of not engaging strangers in conversation, my friend introduced herself to the woman. The latter was originally Iranian and excited to meet two Jews. She expressed support for Israel in its battle against Islamic extremism in Gaza. I suggested that the innocent Palestinian civilians were victims of tyrannical Hamas manipulation. Her eyes opened wide in response and she raised her voice passionately. “They are not innocent! Everyone is a Hamas supporter and wants to kill you all!” I tried to inject a moderate tone into the conversation, but she wouldn’t have it. I was taken aback. Looking around at the other passengers seated nearby, I wondered what they were thinking. Each one remained stone-faced. Then, in that Iranian gesture that was becoming familiar to me, she swept her arm around to indicate the others around us. “They don’t understand what you’re going through. But I do.”
Leeds
Yorkshire is a beautiful part of the UK. I was happy to be invited to Leeds to give a talk on the nuances of life during conflict. On the following weekend, I attended the regular pro-Palestine rally and march in Leeds city centre. It was a very threatening affair. Bystanders watched the marchers take over parts of their town, and one could see the disbelief and disgust in the faces of many locals. No one in the crowd identified as Israeli. No one, that is, except for one, solitary counter-protester, cloaked in an Israeli flag. Arab looking thugs, masked behind kaffiyehs and holding Palestine flags like weapons, approached the fellow threateningly and yelling obscenities. Members of the constabulary stood by, pretending to keep the peace. As an innocent bystander, I watched fascinated, recording everything I saw. Despite the tirade against him, the fellow stood his ground, arguing in Israel’s defence with the masked men in his poor English. His accent was not Israeli, but that did not deter his detractors. “You Israelis are so f….ng dumb. I’m not threatening you,” (said the masked man, nodding to a policewoman for her approval), “but if you join our march, don’t be surprised if you get hurt. Just a friendly warning”. I later watched the counter protester being detained by the friendly Yorkshire police.
I later made some enquiries with a local contact. Our unidentified counter-protestor, insistent on identifying with Israel in an extremely hostile environment, putting himself at risk, was from Iran. “I don’t know much about him, but he’s a very brave man to face down those thugs”, I was told.
Edinburgh
In the summer of 2024, Palestinian flags hung from apartment windows in Edinburgh, and I found the atmosphere a little disconcerting.
A major campaign had taken place to designate the coastal neighbourhood of Leith a Zionist Free Zone.
Much of the graffiti and other hallmarks of the campaign had been cleaned up by the city ahead of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but there was still an undertone in the street that was not comfortable.
Protests took place downtown against Barkly’s Bank for doing business with the ‘Zionist Entity’.
One afternoon, after an impromptu photoshoot for a hairdressing salon, the proprietor and I got to talking. On hearing I was from Israel, he lurched forward and grabbed me in a bear hug. Bring Alan an espresso and sweets!”, he called to his staff with gusto. Then he turned back to me. ’We are together, my brother. Do you know where I am from? Iran. I managed to leave and now have a good business here.” He motioned to pedestrians walking past his store’s display window, and did that sweeping gesture. “The people in Europe are all stupid. They don’t get us. Iran is creating problems for everybody. I was a well-known stylist for the stars. But I had to leave for a better life. The people there are suffering from the radical Muslims in power. Now Israel is suffering from them. There is much power fighting inside the regime, and real change will only come when the Supreme Leader is removed. When he dies, I believe the regime will fall.” We spoke for 2 hours and, in his thick Farsi accent, my new friend recounted a history of modern Iran under the Islamists, its sponsorship of proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and elsewhere, and internal strife between the various Iranian government members.
I thought of the ignorant Scottish protestors holding Palestinian flags two streets away in front of Barclays Bank, telling one and all that Israel was an apartheid entity, that Hamas atrocities of October 7 were fake, that Gazans were caged into their territory and not allowed to work.
I described my encounter with one of the Barclays Bank protesters in a previous blog post.
https://alanmeerkin.blogspot.com/search?q=barclays
When I challenged his accusations against Israel as contradictory to my first-hand, lived observations, he grew agitated. “You’ve been brainwashed by the Zionists!” he shouted.
My Persian hairdresser friend was right. Not only do these people not ‘get it’, but their antisemitic prejudices allow them to be distracted by a fabricated reality. During this intense period of history, Israelis and Jews feel gaslit in the face of fake news about their own reality, which they know not to be true. My Persian friends, on the other hand, make me – and all of us - feel both seen and vindicated.
United Arab Emirates
Earlier this year, I found myself walking through a market in the UAE.
It was my first trip to the Emirates, and I was amazed at how safe I felt there compared with the Western countries I had travelled to in the previous year and a half. Of course, many Israelis have visited since the UAE joined the Abraham Accords, so as an Israeli I was not a novelty to them.
An elaborate candy store in the market beckoned. Delicacies of all kinds lined the displays. Some photogenic salesmen caught my eye. When I asked to photograph them, they were initially a little suspicious until I introduced myself. Their faces lit up. “So happy to meet you!”, cried one of them, his eyes gleaming. “I am from Iran.” The man started collecting candies of all sorts for me as a gift. When I refused his offer, he tried stuffing the goodies in my pockets.
We didn’t discuss politics at length, but we didn’t need to. Even here, in the midst of the Arabian continent, my reception said it all.
Those in the Know vs Those Who don’t want to Know
Persian ex-pats abroad who fled Iran, and the millennials growing up under the Islamic regime, do have first-hand experience of the reality on the ground. Instead of living in a utopian society created by the country’s oil wealth, Iranian citizens have had their money siphoned off. A significant amount of Iran’s GDP has been directed over the years to its revolutionary infrastructure, translated to many billions of dollars to its nuclear program, support for its proxy armies in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere, funding for its military and offensive missile programs. And don’t forget the effect of international sanctions on Iran for all the above. This has all been to the financial detriment of Iranian citizens. They are afraid to rise up against the Revolutionary Guards, whose dissenters are imprisoned and tortured, while young Iranian women have been famously beaten to death by government agencies for not wearing a scarf to their liking.
Western protestors against Israel ignore first-hand accounts of those ‘in the know’. Their naiveté regarding the challenges Israel faces in protecting itself from extremist Islam seems to derive directly from the liberal Western values that I grew up with. These detractors rely on second and third-hand accounts denying the slaughter of Israelis by and in the name of Palestinians, and they believe stories of a genocide against Gazans by Israel. They lack the nuance to understand the difference between urban warfare and genocide, as well as the patience to research facts for themselves. Unlike the Persians around them, they are blind to any connection between Iran and its involvement in the instability of countries throughout the Middle East.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpyrEjeoDLM
They persist in screaming non-sensical slogans, goaded on by their Ayatollah-sponsored friends or prejudiced media, hoping to assuage themselves of the guilt they were taught is theirs for having ancestors who colonised and abused poor, ‘uncivilised’ people in the third world.
https://sapirjournal.org/friends-and-foes/2024/western-guilt/
As you can see from my description, the factors at play behind these protests are complicated.
But one would do well to listen to witnesses who have seen things with their own eyes.
Thank God for the Iranian people. I’m glad we are friends.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16aS6suxR1/
