Take Persian Jews Seriously

Recently, the protests at UCLA — a university not far from my own home — reached a fever pitch after a Jewish girl was violently attacked. The girl, who was kicked in the head and knocked unconscious while trying to help her sister pick up a fallen Israeli flag, was a psychology student at a nearby college and a Persian Jew who came with her family to show solidarity with Jewish counterprotesters. 

News of the attack circulated quickly among the Persian Jews of Los Angeles, and within hours, a group of counterprotesters mobilized to push back, not content to let the “Tentifada” set the tone at UCLA — let alone attack a member of the Persian community.

My family immigrated to Los Angeles from Iran when I was a child, fleeing the religious persecution that Jews in Iran are subjected to.I’m thrilled to see the Persian community being recognized for what we bring to the table — for Jews and for America at large. I’ve said for a long time that the American Jewish community has a problem listening to its smaller constituencies, particularly Middle Eastern Jews who don’t vote, act, or look like them. Persian Jews usually hold more conservative positions than the rest of our Jewish counterparts, particularly with regard to foreign affairs and the dangers of radical Islam — but it is because we know these dangers acutely. It did not take the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust for us to see them.

We know these dangers, and have been sounding the alarm about them, precisely because we have lived through and fled them. My family fled Iran, hiding in the back of a pickup truck being shot at by border police, after the Islamic Revolution, when the ayatollahs took the sophisticated, cosmopolitan society I remember from my early childhood and transformed it in a dystopian theocracy that detests women and detests Jews even more. Along with the thousands of other Jewish families who fled, we were among the first victims of the jihadist wave that started then and is still crashing over the world today, with Iran funding the terrorist proxies — from Hamas to Hezbollah — that wreak havoc through the Middle East and hope to do the same to the Western world. 

This is why Persian Jews warn continuously of the evils of radical Islam — we know how it can destroy once-thriving societies until they are unrecognizable, and we know the way this destruction can spread. We understand the pressing, urgent danger that Iran poses to the West, and we understand the need to elect officials and back policies informed by this understanding, even if it means a shift from the traditional American Jewish party line.

Persian Jews also understand another vital lesson that the broader Jewish community seems to miss—the importance of showing strength. This is true for our positions on politics, notably in the Middle East, where we know the dangers of soft leaders who don’t take bold, resolute stances on Iran and its terrorist allies.

Persian Jews also understand another vital lesson that the broader Jewish community seems to miss — the importance of showing strength. This is true for our positions on politics, notably in the Middle East, where we know the dangers of soft leaders who don’t take bold, resolute stances on Iran and its terrorist allies. This is also true for the positions we take on asserting our own identity as Jews. Persian Jews do not apologize for acting in accordance with our Jewish values and interests, and standing up for ourselves rather than bowing to the mob when these values and interests are threatened. We do not feel the need to explain or justify ourselves to the seemingly ever-growing horde of people who do not value our existence — instead, we forge ahead uncompromisingly and look out for our own. This, too, should offer a model for American Jews who don’t understand why their endless efforts at convincing people of their basic right to exist haven’t made any progress. Jewish effort is better spent nurturing and maintaining our own communities than playing endless defense, especially right now, when spending our energy on our enemies means that we will have no energy left. 

I have been warning of the Iranian regime and extolling the foresight of Persian Jews for years and, until recently, it fell on deaf ears. I would have given anything to be wrong about the cruelty of Iran or the essentiality of Jewish strength, but now that these warnings have been vindicated, I can only hope that the wider Jewish community begins to listen to Jews like us who still carry the hard lessons of history.

Dr. Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician whose family escaped to America from Iran. She stars in the Emmy-nominated Netflix series “Skin Decision: Before and After.“