May 3, 2023

Most of the analysis surrounding Israel’s 75th birthday have fallen into one of two categories: either earnestly hopeful tributes to the Jewish state’s history and principles, or anguished worry over its path forward in the midst of its current domestic political turmoil. You can mark me down as a qualified optimist, but that outlook comes not from vague dreams for the future or Torah lessons from the distant past, but from the example of another once-fledgling and still-struggling democracy. Ours.

When the United States celebrated its 75th birthday in 1851, the country was severely divided between two factions with opposing beliefs on a fundamental moral issue of that time. But the fairly new nation was also riven over deep religious discord between Protestants and Catholics of the era, which manifested themselves in an endless series of policy arguments. The country appeared to be hopelessly and irreconcilably split on religious, cultural and political matters – its very survival seemed to be in question.

Does this sound familiar?

It should. Israel today is similarly divided, but there’s no reason their differences can’t be resolved in a much less violent manner. The argument over slavery was so bitter and divisive that our country ultimately fought a civil war over the issue. That war was fought over a fundamental policy disagreement for which there was no possible middle ground, because an aggrieved and motivated minority was unwilling to try to find a workable solution. But principled debate and negotiation over judicial reform is much more likely to result in reasonable compromise.

The underlying religious and cultural conflicts that separated the North and the South were not solved by either the defeat of the Confederacy or the Emancipation Proclamation. They continue to roil the United States to this day. Even after the fighting had ended and the slaves had been freed, the country still remained divided  —  through Reconstruction, through the civil rights movement and up to and including today’s fractious politics.

But for all of our hyper-partisanship and polarization, the United States still survives. This democratic experiment, more than 170 years later, is admittedly imperfect and deeply flawed in many ways. However, despite the recurring threats that our system of government periodically faces, we have managed to find a way to keep this fragile exercise in democratic self-governance intact. Even after the post-election riots of January 6, 2021, both the symbol of our democracy, the U.S. Capital, and the democracy itself were badly damaged. But both remained standing, and while both are still in need of systemic repairs, there is no reason that both can not be fully restored.

Our intermittent periods of unity tend to occur when we face a dire external threat – either a war or a severe economic downturn – that forces opposing factions to put aside their differences and come together to face a common foe. Like the U.S. in the 1850’s, the Jewish state no longer faces as obvious an existential danger of the type that both countries overcame in their earlier years. This level of relative security allows for the luxury of internal divisions to manifest that would be unthinkable when facing basic threats to survival.

Referring to the politics in either of our countries as a mature democracy may be overly aspirational, but even a democracy in its adolescence must learn to navigate the less obvious challenges of internal discord. Democracy does not mean unanimity: it requires that strong and principled disagreements are resolved through conversation and negotiation rather than violence. Sometimes the outcome takes months or years, sometimes it requires decades or generations. Sometimes that common ground is never reached, but we settle for uneasy and temporary truces that allow us to coexist with those who hold different opinions than ours. In America, in Israel, in all democracies.

The rallies and protests that have upended Israeli politics do not reflect a weakness of their system but a strength.

This messiness is not a bug in the democratic process but rather a feature of it. The rallies and protests that have upended Israeli politics do not reflect a weakness of their system but a strength. As 75-year-old developing democracies go, maybe this one isn’t doing so bad.

Dan Schnur is a Professor at the University of California – Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. Join Dan for his weekly webinar “Politics in the Time of Coronavirus” (www.lawac.org) on Tuesdays at 5 PM.

Being a pro-Israel advocate often means waiting for the other shoe to drop. For example, last week, while walking on Wilshire Boulevard, I wanted to approach an Armenian man protesting outside the Turkish Consulate in honor of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, and to let him know that the 1915 genocide against 1.5 million Armenians resonated deeply with me as a Jew. But as soon as I approached the man, I noticed he was holding a poster that read, “Armenians for Palestine.” 

I get it (partially). Unlike the United States, Israel still hasn’t officially recognized the Armenian Genocide. And it has good relations with Armenia’s enemies, Turkey and Azerbaijan. But standing outside the Turkish Consulate, I wasn’t delusional for hoping that Armenian protestors focused, well, on Turkey, rather than Palestine. 

So I didn’t approach the man. Instead, I picked up the metaphoric shoe that had dropped and went on my way. 

Months ago, I had respect for members of a newly-formed Iranian (exile) opposition group that has formed a coalition to help free Iran. That included a man named Hamed Esmaeilion. And then, during an anti-regime demonstration in Brussels in late February, an Israeli journalist claimed that when she asked Esmaeilion if he would give an interview to Israeli media, he responded that he would not. 

George Haroonian, an L.A.-based Iranian Jewish activist and community leader, knows the Israeli journalist, who has chosen to remain anonymous, and Haroonian confirmed the exchange between her and Esmaeilion with me. Haroonian is the co-founder of notoantisemitism.org, a website that educates Persian-language readers about antisemitism. 

In March, Haroonian sent Esmaeilion an open letter on Twitter (@AntisemitismTo) regarding his anti-Israel past. For example, in July 2018, Esmaeilion tweeted a quote by the late antisemitic Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, about the Middle East. In April 2015, Esmaeilion, who lives in exile in Canada, tweeted, “Don’t let Canada become a colony of Israel.”

A colony of Israel? Are there other colonies of Israel worldwide? If so, which one has the best, hole-in-the-wall shawarma stand? I’ll reserve a flight tomorrow. 

Before reading Haroonian’s letter, I wanted to support Esmaeilion. And I sympathized with him; the man lost his wife and 9-year-old daughter, who were killed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in January 2020, when they shot down a Ukrainian International Airlines Flight in Tehran that was bound for Kyiv, killing all 176 on board. 

There are few people in the world who hate the IRCG more than Esmaeilion. But could I support someone who wants to free Iran, but has an aversion to Israel? As usual, the other shoe dropped. 

Some days, it seems as though I collect enough metaphoric shoes to render me a West L.A. cobbler. 

Call it anti-Zionist intersectionality. Or thinly-veiled antisemitism. Or plain ignorance. Whatever it is, it sure is hard for me to get behind a cause if the person supporting it is unabashedly anti-Israel.

That’s why last month’s historic and first-time visit of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s last secular leader, the Shah of Iran (who died in 1980) and his wife, Princess Yasmine, meant so much to me and thousands of Iranian Jews worldwide. 

“Today was the best day of my life,” my father, who lives in L.A., declared on the day Pahlavi and his wife arrived in Israel. When I reminded my father that the best day of his life was when I was born (and my sister’s birthday and, let’s hope, his wedding day), he responded, “Of course. That goes without saying. But I’ve waited decades for this.”

Karmel Melamed, an L.A.-based attorney, journalist and Iranian Jewish activist, put it best: He told me that Pahlavi’s visit to Israel, which is home to the largest Iranian Jewish diaspora in the world (estimated at over 200,000), was nothing short of “healing” for a community that escaped Iran and has had to watch its former homeland terrorize Israelis through proxies abroad. 

I believe that in Israel, Pahlavi and his wife, who live outside Washington, D.C., were treated better than they have ever been treated anywhere in the world, simply because of what the man means to Iranian Jews in particular. But not everyone was enamored by his visit. In Haaretz, Israeli journalist Yossi Melman called Pahlavi’s visit a “cynical use of the Holocaust.” The many photos of Pahlavi with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu probably didn’t win over many in Israel who loathe Bibi, either. 

But I wonder how many Israeli journalists spoke with Jews of Iranian descent in Israel regarding the historic visit. For many of them, Pahlavi’s presence was, in the words of Melamed, healing, especially given the painful reality of living in the Middle East, where religious fanatics often crush seeds of progress and tolerance before they even sprout.

Consider the contrast: Whereas the Iranian regime hosts Holocaust cartoon contests and its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, repeatedly denies the Holocaust on Twitter, Pahlavi and his wife arrived in Israel on Yom HaShoah and visited Yad Vashem. Whereas Iran has killed thousands of Israelis and Jews via terrorist proxies, Pahlavi met with and embraced Rabbi Leo Dee, whose wife and two of his daughters were killed in a terrorist attack in April. Whereas the regime forces its Jewish community to protest against Israel on the annual “Quds Day,” Pahlavi and his wife visited the Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem, where they touched their foreheads to the warm, ancient stones and undoubtedly prayed for a free Iran.

Whereas the Iranian regime hosts Holocaust cartoon contests and its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, repeatedly denies the Holocaust on Twitter, Pahlavi and his wife arrived in Israel on Yom HaShoah and visited Yad Vashem. 

For me, the most powerful moment of Pahlavi’s visit occurred when he drew a connection to ancient Persia’s King Cyrus the Great, a Zoroastrian who offered to liberate his Jewish subjects to return to Jerusalem and build the Second Temple. Pahlavi tweeted, “2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great liberated the Jewish people from captivity and helped them rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem. It is with profound awe that I visit the Western Wall of that Temple and pray for the day when the good people of Iran and Israel can renew our historic friendship.”

Consider that the first order of business by the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was to declare Israel an official enemy of Iran (“The Little Satan”) and to make Zionism a capital offense. The first foreign “dignitary” (I use that term lightly) to visit Khomeini was Yasser Arafat. No wonder Israelis, especially Iranian Israelis, showered Pahlavi with rose petals on his visit. 

Yes, rose petals. During one event, as Pahlavi and Princess Yasmine walked a red carpet, Israelis threw rose petals at them. Seemingly everywhere they went, the Iranian imperial national anthem (pre-revolution) was played.

I broke down and sobbed when I watched that particular video of the royal couple. There’s something about the imperial national anthem; it’s just that, imperial. Listen to it on YouTube and you’ll know what I mean. The other anthems, of which there have been several since the 1979 revolution, are so dark. 

Call me sentimental. Or naive (or disqualified from being able to write for Haaretz). But that anthem pulls at my soul. And I suspect it has this effect on many others as well, even those who, like me, belong to a younger generation of Iranians who never lived during the Shah’s reign.

In the last 44 years since the revolution, Israeli and American flags have been placed on the ground at the entrances of Iranian schools and universities so that they would be trampled. In Israel, Reza Pahlavi and his wife walked over rose petals. If that’s not one of the most powerful contrasts between what the Middle East is, and what the Middle East could be, I don’t know what is.

Tabby Refael is an award-winning weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal, and an LA-based speaker and civic action activist. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @TabbyRefael.