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What It's Like To Be An Iranian Jew

My Muslim Iranian friends will take offense at this narrative or reject its veracity outright. They'll tell you that Persian culture is among the most tolerant, accepting and enlightened in history. They'll be right. That to be moved by the plight of the Palestinian people or outraged by the acts of the Israeli government is not the same as being anti-Semitic. That loving Iran and its people does not mean condoning the policies and practices of its current regime. That prejudice and fanaticism are not the sole domain of Muslims. They'll be right.
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Time was, you could claim to be a patriotic Iranian, a supporter of Israel and a lover of the United States all at once and be believed by most Iranians. You could say you were all three things without pretense or contradiction, or the need to rank your loyalties in order of intensity, or to distinguish between your support for Israel as a nation, as opposed to any one of its governments. That's what we thought anyway, we Jewish Iranians whose ancestors had lived in Iran for 3,000 years.

The mullahs had always said differently -- that Jews were not "real" Iranians; that our existence was a threat to the rest of the nation; that we had lain in wait for a millennium and a half for the Arabs to come and convert most Iranians to Islam, only so we could use the blood of Muslim children in the baking of matzahs.

Continue reading in the Jewish Journal.

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