The Israeli documentary “Before the Revolution” by Dan Shadur recounts the lives of multiple Israelis who worked at the Israeli embassy in Iran before the 1979 revolution. Before the Revolution, the movie states, Israel and Iran had good ties, a sort of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” attitude. In this essay I will compare the experiences of Israelis who immigrated to Iran with the experiences of Jews native to Iran. I will show that while there was a tremendous Iranian Jewish population, the influx of Israelis who immigrated to Iran mostly in search of economic and intelligence work furthered current resentment in the native populations.
In Iran at the time of the Shah there was a large minority Jewish population who were proud to call themselves …show more content…
In the film, one Israeli recalls graffiti saying, “don’t harm Jews, but kill every Israeli you see.” This shows that the resentment was, at least in part, anti-western sentiment, not anti-semitic sentiment. The film leaves out the anti-semitic aspect of the resentment because it is telling the Israeli viewpoint, and not the Jewish one. In many countries in the Middle East, Jews who have lived in the region for thousands of years were persecuted and expelled because of accusations they were working with Israel or America. Iran is no exception-- my grandfather was put in jail due to suspicions he was cooperating with the United States, only because he was Jewish, quickly turning anti-Westernism and anti-Israel sentiment to anti-Semitism. The Islamic revolution took advantage of the notion that Western powers were controlling Iran, and, as is often times seen in Jewish history, the minority Jewish population and Israelis became an easy scapegoat. This is ironic because the Ayatollah actually reached out to the Jewish Iranian population during his radio broadcasts and appealed to Jewish Iranians. Pre-revolution the division between religions was not as great, the focus was more on ethnic Iranians vs foreign influence. Unfortunately after the revolution, the Ayatollah turned on the Jewish population and used them as a means of gaining political capital with the revolutionary