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Letter to an Anti-Zionist Idealist

JL;DR SUMMARY Written as a personal letter, this piece contrasts the life experiences of an Iranian Jew who fled to Israel with those of an American anti-Zionist, highlighting divergent perspectives on Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

HamasZionismIranPalestinian ConflictJewish RefugeesAnti ZionismAyatollah KhomeiniMiddle East PoliticsPost Revolutionary Iran

Places mentioned

Khonsar, Khuzestan, Iran
"Two days earlier, there had been a demonstration in Khonsar, a small city in central Iran, where my aunt and her family lived and, along with my uncles two brothers, ran a fabric business."
Tehran, Fars, Iran
"One afternoon in December 1978 in Tehran, only a few weeks before Irans cataclysmic revolution, a chain of knocks pounded the door of our home, rattling it in its frame."
Iran
"The dangerous ideology that Ayatollah Khomeini brought into Iran with the 1979 revolution, which ultimately uprooted some 90,000 Jews from there, declared the destruction of Israel as a core mission."
United States
"You, born and raised in the United States, are the product of a life, as any life ought to be, shaped by the daily struggles of work and family."
Israel
"Two weeks later, we all caught a glimpse of that plan: My aunt and uncle, along with the other two families and their combined 18 childrena grief-stricken lot whose entire wealth was reduced to several bloated suitcases held together by tightly knotted ropesboarded a plane bound for Israel."
Egypt
"Death to the wicked trio: Carter, Sadat, and Begin."

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Cairo Item ID 48184
Cairo Source ID 29
Retrieved 2025-04-03 05:32:21 UTC
Curated 2025-04-03 08:33:49 UTC