An anonymous reader writes: Some years ago a friend of mine from Palestine asked me why most Iranians he had met are against the Iranian government. This was very strange to him given the generosity of Iranian government to Palestine. He just had not realized that Iran is a developing country under strict economic sanctions. The budget that goes into helping Palestine and some of Palestinian organizations comes at a great price to domestic economy. Now add that to regular oppressive internal politics and you get why we are not very excited about it.
Position of Iranian politicians and hardliners towards Israel have always been strange to me ever since I was 9 years old. What's more baffling is those liberals and intellectuals who support the government position on Israel, I'm sorry to say. Just as a reminder, Iranian position is that there should be no state of Israel. In fact, if you travel to Iran and buy a map, you find no country named Israel. There is only a country named Occupied Palestine. If you are not Iranian, I bet you didn't even know such a country existed, did you? According to my Iranian education, after WWII an international movement led my British government decided to move the Jews into today's Israel because they were frustrated with them. So they attacked the innocent people of Palestine and push them out of their land. And there can be no peace until everything goes back to the way it was before. Let me just add that growing up in Iran, I had never heard about the holocaust until my American cousin visited Iran and talked about it. I should also add that even some liberals and educated people in Iran argue that the only solution to Middle East crisis is war until the Muslim side wins. When I was in elementary school I proposed a solution that made my family very angry. I suggested to end the crises as soon as possible, everybody should pray that Israeli army kills all Muslims and Christians and just occupy the whole land. The point I was trying to make was that Israeli people with the support of US government will never allow the Muslim side to win no matter how much help Allah gives to the Muslim side, specially given that the same Allah is helping Israelis since they are also praying. Did I say I was in elementary school!? It certainly seemed at that time that unless we do what said war goes on for ever.
Of course, people outside of Iran who know about the League of Nations [1] after WWII, the holocaust, and the Jewish history know an entirely different story [2]. I hear both from liberal Israelis and Iranians about the controversies on the documents showing the right of Jewish people to Palestinian lands. And of course everybody know about Zion an Zionists. This is a fallacious argument I think and is just there to ramp up political debates. People who live in a land have right to their lands. Jews as well as other ethnic groups have been living in today's Israel and Palestine for thousands of years. And in a larger sense the world belong to all of us and everybody should be able to live where they want, but that requires a separate post. Any logic or document or whatever that argues that Palestine belongs only to Jews or vice verse argues that Jews must not be in Palestine is absolutely false, and completely ridiculous. By that logic, all white Americans should be thrown out of the whole North and South American continent, for example.
There is a third way that even conservatives can accept as a solution. I'm not suggesting Iranian government can think of it or even understand it; this exclusively belongs to people with rational thinking and no political agenda. Even if you want to argue that the right of Jews to Israel is not proven (which is a funny argument to begin with), you have to be pragmatic and know that if you are suggesting that all of Jews should leave Israel after many decades, the consequence of that is uprooting many families that grow up knowing that land as their homeland. You can't just make them leave; you'd be doing what happened to first Palestinians when Israeli started their illegal settlements. That would just make you a hypocrite. This is a case in which you can't answer fire with fire. It just makes a positive feedback loop and creates more and more angry people.
This is what I see people often miss to recognize. It doesn't matter which side prevails and which side is suffering from injustice; there would be injustice anyway. It is not like injustice for Muslims is bad and for Jews is good. Hardliners on the Muslim side do not realize that their suggestions might bring happiness to their Muslim brothers and sisters, but put a lot of misery on our Israeli brothers and sisters. What is the justice in that? We can solve all of these difficult issues if we put down our political and religious agendas and recognize that no matter what our family background and ethnicity is, we are part of the same race and the same species and as long as some of us are not at peace, none of us can be [3].
[1] League of Nations
[2] History of Israel
[3] Saadi
