Hello everyone and welcome. Back to people.
You want to know podcast? We are continuing our goal.
You will enjoy season with Shay Kateri.
Shay is a researcher at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle
East Reporting and Analysis, also known as CAMERA, and a
senior fellow at the Yorktown Institute.
His work focuses on Middle East policy, transatlantic relations,
and military strategy. Shay grew up in Iran and left in
the aftermath of the Green Movement.
He's lived in Budapest, Hungary, where he was adopted by the
Israeli community before coming to the United States in 2014.
He and his bulldog Tank reside currently in Scottsdale, AZ And
if you invite him over for. Shabbat he will.
Turn off the lights before leaving.
Shay is truly a righteous gentile, an ardent supporter of
our community, and someone who knows more about Jewish life
than a lot of Jews out there. He's an outspoken, intelligent
Persian man who has. Thought.
Awful views on his heritage and the future of Iran.
I came across Shay thanks to a connection from ZE Silver, a
prior guest of the show, who specifically requested that I
bring Shay on to talk about Iran.
Obviously the political climate is challenging, ever evolving
and I thought that this would be a very timely conversation.
Please enjoy this episode. Hello Shay, welcome to People Do
Want to Know podcast. Thank you so much for being with
me here. Thanks for having me excited to
talk to you today. Where are you based in the
world? Scottsdale, AZ North Scottsdale.
That's very nice. It's extremely nice.
It is 78° right now and that's what we call a cold day.
Lovely, lovely. So I sit here looking outside.
It's like my I'm getting violated by cold wind every day.
I live in this area by the river and it's always very windy.
Anyway, I want to know, please tell us about yourself, what do
you do and how did you get there?
So I have two jobs. 1 is a full time job at camera Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Analysis, Reporting and
Analysis. It's a Jewish organization and
what we do is usually we scan the press to see what has been
inaccurately stated in the press about Israel or the rest of the
Middle East or also the American Jewish community.
And we try our best to contact the press and correct them or
provide more accurate information on our own website.
I'm new to this role and on top of it, I've been working as a
defense policy analyst at the Yorktown Institute for the past
several years. And variety of others think
tanks. How I got into this is that I
grew up in Iran, so I always say that I was the US foreign policy
and I had all kinds of thoughts about it.
When I moved to the USI decided I I care about the the stuff I
grew up in a political family and I decided to be involved.
I went to grad school studying defense policy and from their
God one job after another. Would you say your family was
always supportive of like Western values and being allies
to Israel in the Middle East? Is this something that was
ingrained in your family growing up?
Yes and no more So my parents met at the Iranian Communist
Party and I, I grew up in a very, very good you can write.
It's been the formal far left, most extreme, far left household
you can imagine. But it was a funny time.
I was born in 89 right before the Soviet Union fell and the
year that the the wall came down.
So it there was an element of communism has been defeated.
We have to reckon with reality that this might not have worked.
So my family was also going through that intellectually,
whether that will communism was the right idea or not.
They still were lefties, but there has been a tradition of
pro Israel socialists because Israel was founded as a
socialist state itself with a lot of help from the Soviet
Union. So that element always existed
in our household that they were pro Israel.
As for the United States, the feelings were more complicated.
Oddly enough, my family had set his mind on Israel much easier
than on the US. But as I was growing up, my
family, as I mentioned, was going through transformation.
They were reckoning with reality.
And also they really hated the regime.
And what they realized, they were both political prisoners,
my parents, I should say. So what they realized was that
at the end of the day, the United States is the biggest
enemy of the regime, which would make it different of the Iranian
people and my family. So they came to reality with
that. As for also general broader
values that we hold socially, again, I was raised atheist by
atheist parents. So socially they were always
very much, my dad studied when I lived and studied in Germany for
11 years, Germany and Austria. So and he went to an American
boarding school. So that was very much in tune
with what I what I grew up with. Would you say that that's like
atypical for Iranian households? I feel like this is different
from what most Iranians grow up like.
Well, I would say when you're 12 and your father hands you does
capital, it's atypical for anyone.
But it was very atypical because again, it was a very political
family and it was a very opinionated family, which is to
say I grew up in the average Jewish household despite not
being a Jew, and opinionated, opinionated parents, which
really hammered that into me, to be very opinionated, always
arguing with each other in the most friendly and loving manner,
but fiercely. And it was an intellectual
house, which means that I could not go take 10 steps inside
their house without some books somewhere that was on on the
coffee table or on the dining table.
And it was also a very isolated upbringing because as you
mentioned, it was not the typical family it was growing up
with. So it was self selective in what
kind of people we could we would socialize with.
And there were not many people like us.
That's very interesting, and I'm sure that it posed a unique set
of challenges for you growing up.
I'm curious to know how did you end up being involved with, you
know, Jewish organization supporting an organization
responsible for combating misinformation and
disinformation about the Jewish people?
Like what brought you there? So in Iran I might have met a
Jew or not. I would never be able to tell
because Persian Jews are so assimilated you can never tell
them apart. I always contrast that with
Christian for recent immigrants from Armenia, for the most part,
and like recent meaning 100 years or something, you could
tell if someone's Armenian, Iranian, but for a Jew you could
never tell. So as far as I know, I never met
one until I moved to Budapest in 2011.
And there I had one important mission, which my dad told me
not to surround myself with Iranians.
He said, listen, you're going to another country.
You've been around Uranians enough, Go explore other
cultures. I meet other people, so I
randomly befriend this guy in my class.
I mean, it happens to be from the hobo South of Tel Aviv.
And I was adopted by the Israeli community as one of their own.
I always joke that they treated me so much like themselves, like
an Israeli, that they would even speak Hebrew around me as if I
as if I understood it. And they were my wonderful
friends. And I from there, I two years
later, I came to the US because of my politics and my interest.
I was also anti Islamic Republic and I'm a new conservative.
So there's a proud Jewish tradition of new conservatism.
I always ended up in a Jewish intellectual circles.
By chance. My favorite college professor is
Jewish and they can went to grad school.
All my professors were Jewish, and there was this friendship
that I always had with Jews. And it was this familiarity that
they're Jews are so much like Persians that I always felt like
I was around people I had grown up with.
And on top of that, there was also the work I do.
There was an alignment of missions, which is essentially
overthrowing the Islamic Republic.
And because of that, I ended up being around Jews organizations
and Iran Jews all the time, non-stop.
Having done the research that you've done and what you've seen
at camera so far, what do you make of the current situation
between like how Israel's framed in the West?
What are you seeing like giving an inside look into your
day-to-day a little bit? So this is not cameras view.
We don't have a have an official view, but this is something that
I've gone through my I've come across through my own work.
One is for the past 81 years, since 1945, Europe and North
America, North America, North America was never at war.
Even during World War 2, the war didn't come to the to North
America. So as a society, America has
never been has not been at war since the Civil War, same as
Canada even longer, and Western Europeans have not been at war
since 1945. Eastern Europe is different, but
because of this, there's just a lack of familiarity with warfare
and how it is that would when a nation is under siege.
Man for Israel's case constantly.
And on top of that, you add the historical, historical
background of Jews that have not just been out born, even when
they didn't have a country of their own, you didn't have a
country of your own. There was still always a
genocidal threat against Jews. So all these anxieties that
exist both for Israelis as Israelis, but also on top of it
before Israel as Jews, they just don't understand how it is that
it that have that affects the society.
I think that is a huge problem that people again, don't
understand war and don't understand the society at war.
And that the part that they don't understand war is also
very important because as I mentioned, I studied defense
policy, that I studied military strategy.
I like to joke that the for many people, the view is that
countries have a right to defend themselves.
That bar is just as long as countries are defending
themselves and nobody dies during the war.
And that's not how it works. So there is that.
The other element of it is going back to, you know, there was a
piece in the Economist today that really annoyed me that
talks about, oh, Israelis most reckon with this and that.
And this is the guy who obviously has never been to
Israel or that hasn't tried to understand Israel.
And they act as if Oslo peace, of course, and Intifada, second
interfada never happened, change the Israeli view.
And he says, oh, Israelis rejected the Palestinian, it's
already running Gaza. And the answer is, well, one,
they have a good reason to distrust the Palestinian
Authority and two, Palestinians already ran Gaza after the
withdrawal and then was overthrown by Hamas.
So there is just this fantasy idea of how the Middle East
could work from coming from people who have such European
temperaments or that they have never been to the Middle East or
try to understand the region. And it really bugs me because it
is fine to be ignorant. I just I get annoyed when people
are so confident that they are right in their ignorance.
This is making me think about Iran, obviously, and this is
what I really wanted to talk to you about.
You know, what has it been like for you as an Iranian, somebody
who's escaped the regime? On one hand, I hear from you,
you know, that you're against the regime, which makes sense.
On the other hand, I imagine it's also hard to watch what is
happening to the people and, you know, Iranians getting
slaughtered by the regime day in, day out.
And the coverage on that has really changed.
That conflict is not resolving perhaps and as expeditiously as
we might want. What do you make of that?
Just. On that you said, as an Iranian,
I think it's important for me to just explain my priors.
I always call myself Persian, not Iranian.
And I know that anybody from Los Angeles have heard this, but for
me specifically is a considered description because I hold
Iranian citizenship. I still don't hold American
citizenship, but as far like as far as my heart goes, I'm, I'm
American and Persian is my ethnicity, but Iran, Iranian is
a nationality that they don't, even though again, I am an
Iranian national, but I don't care for it much.
When I say I don't care for it much, I mean that I, I have
adopted the United States as my country and that's that.
Having said this, I still care about that country.
I have loved ones there. I grew up there.
And what really bugs me is there has been decades of trying to
ignore Iran and both on the right and on the left, and I
mentioned I'm I'm on the right, but I see this all the time.
There's an unknownst understanding of Iran's
politics, domestic politics that begin obscures things more than
it explains. And on the other hand,
especially on the left, there is a misunderstanding of the
Iranian society, because this is a society that when the war
started, people were going to the rooftops and making BBQ,
drinking and cheering for the Israeli and American fighters.
And it is completely excusable that people cannot fathom and
understand or even imagine that a nation would go and celebrate
and invent A mating force. But I think it has to some
extent people have come to realize that this is the case
with Iran, but they still do not try to understand why it is that
Iranians arrive to this point that they would cheer for
foreign militaries as opposed against their own country.
And the answer I would give is you see a lot of talk about for
instance, how this is hugely because of economics that are
Iranians grievance or four years ago when the Maso and mini
protest broke out, people will talk about how this that was
about hijab. And the answer is that those are
all triggers. But revolutions happen because
of injustice, not because of one single issue, not because of
economics or anything else. And the real answer there, and
what people don't understand is that Iranians tried everything
to take agency of their own country, to have some control of
their lives. And they're living in a
totalitarian country, which means that it's not just
politics they cannot control about their own lives.
It's even the smallest things, even the smallest details of
your life is controlled by by the regime and you just become a
robot at some point. And they tried everything they
could, from participating in politics through the within the
regime's boundaries, civil disobedience, protest.
They tried everything and they failed.
And the last straw was January massacre, which accounts differ,
but up to 40,000 people might have been massacred over 4 days
in Iran. So and they just gave up.
They realized that one, they are powerless and two, the regime is
even more evil than they had thought.
So. But, you know, again, people
have a sense that Iranians really hate their government,
but they don't understand how it was that they became so
radicalized. And one last thing that really
bothers me is when people talk about how Iranians are a Muslim
nation or Iran is a Muslim country.
And I'm like, well, according to one poll, 30% that here Shiite
Muslims. So at this point, over half of
Iranians do not associate with any religion.
And I think that's also important, an important context
to realize that as Iranians are becoming more and more secular
and reject religion of any kind, they're living under a religious
government. Do you have any thoughts or
feelings around how you would want this thing to resolve
itself now? You're American and you're
Persian and you have vested interests in both places.
How do you hope it unwinds? Well, there is a way for you to
unwind that requires some fantasy thinking that I'd rather
not certainly do. As a serious policy person, I
think the most realistic way is for someone within the regime to
assert himself against the rest of the regime, and you're seeing
some. Sabotage.
That's a lovely theory that also everybody in Russia is waiting
for to play out. They hope the same.
Except that in Russia, Putin is still alive, and that was not
going to happen as long as Harmony was alive.
But he's dead now. So for someone, and this is not
going to lead to a liberal democracy in Iran, after the guy
arises, people, someone from within the regime who's going to
assert himself is not almost certainly not going to be a
Liberal Democrat. But at least it could be someone
who changes the direction of the regime that some civil society
is allowed to form, that Iran moves away from totalitarianism
into some form of acceptable authoritarianism.
And then that could itself then transform into a free society
within hopefully my lifetime, but at least some some country
that is decent for its own citizens and is aligned with the
United States and is at peace with the region.
We need to have a tour, folks. That's what I'm hearing here.
There is a question that was submitted by one of your loyal
fans and my friend Zach Silverman.
He was wondering if you could talk about and I think it would
be interesting for the listener as well.
The The History of Israel. And Iran, because we are looking
at history as it is evolving today, you know, the
relationship between Iran and Israel.
But behind the scenes, kind of in the background, there's
always been this rich history between Israel and Persia and
Israel and Iran, Persians and Persian Jews.
Can you give me some of the highlights?
What do you think would be interesting for people to know?
Well, first of all, hi, Zach. Second, you know when Iran's
Iranians usually trace the founding to Cyrus the Great?
And Cyrus is a meshiach, according to most in the Hebrew
Bible, and that is when the friendship starts.
I don't have to explain to your audience about Cyrus, but, and
that is also important because a lot of the Jews liberated from
Babylon reside in Iran and some say it's Yemen, but it's it's
between Iran and Yemen for the oldest Jewish diaspora community
in the world. Either way, after 2500 years
Persian Jews became entirely Persians, and Iranians were
completely familiar and friendly with Jews.
Now on top of it, Jews were always not even tolerate that.
They were just accepted as a part of the Iranian society in
pre Islamic Iran to a point that when you go to the Sasani
dynasty that fell about 14-13 hundred years ago, Sasani
dynasty was an officially Zoroastrian state.
So Zoroastrianism was the state religion.
And yet there are some anecdotes I really like.
For instance, you read the ancient Iranian history and
Christians had a serious grievance against the
Zoroastrian state, and that was that you're not letting us
persecute Jews. And there was a book a few years
came out a few years ago called about the Persian Talmud.
And it's literally about the Talmudic debates in Iran, a lot
of it between Zoroastrians and and Jewish rabbis.
But so again, this is the state religion.
But what's funny to me is that Jewish rabbis, I feel
comfortable telling these Rasan clerics, the magi, that no, your
religion is wrong. And let me explain to you, it's
not something that Jews could do in most countries.
They were, they lived. And it's not like Jews could
ever go to, in medieval Europe to a priest or to it, to an imam
in an Arab society saying that, well, I think that your religion
is wrong and mine is right. Let me explain to that.
Well, can I add, there was a time in history that was
documented where somebody in I believe, medieval Spain, the
priests organized a debate between the Jews and the
Christians on who was right and who was wrong.
And apparently, as is documented, the Jews kind of won
because they were more compelling.
And they still were, you know, killed because they're like,
yeah, no, no. What what's worse, if you win
the debate or if you lose it in that situation?
Yeah, exactly. So that was the history.
Even after the Arab conquest of Iran, the Jews still left her
and were part of the society. But obviously at some point
relationship became a little bit more antagonistic, especially in
recent hundred, 150 years under especially under the culture and
dynasty. But again, it was not perfect,
but it was better than most other countries for Jews.
At the end of the day, Jews are always going to have it best
either in America or in Israel. But Iran would qualify as top
five places to live historically for Jews.
But then even today that you have a you have a anti Jewish,
anti Zionist evil regime in Iran.
You should keep in mind that officially, I'm not talking
about their practices. Officially they still say that
truths are accepted as a respectable religion and they
are an Abrahamic religion and we give them freedom of worship.
Now, in practice it's very different, but it's because part
of it is religious ideology of the region, but part of it is
also that it is very difficult for the regime to persecute Jews
because of the somewhat protection that Jews have
received from the Iranian society.
So even today it could be much worse for Jews inside Iran if
not for that historical friendship that first of all,
not I wouldn't even say historical friendship, that
being historically part of Iran, I don't even want to say
historical friendship because that would say mean that they
are not Iranian, which they are. So those are some of the
highlights for me personally. And one last thing is that when
you now when you come to today, right now, the Iranian society
losing the diaspora and inside Iran and Iran is 90 million
people. There are a lot of you haters in
Iran for sure and other all kinds of opinions.
But I don't want to pretend as if this is the entire society.
But when you look at the diaspora and inside Iran after
Israel itself, Iran is the most a pro Israel nation in the
Middle East, maybe 50%, but 50% is much higher than any anywhere
else. And also there's an element of
the cutting of history that we liberated Jews 2500 years ago
and now Jews are going to do it for us to liberate us.
So there is also one an element to of looking at Jews as the
savior of the Iranian people today against the regime.
And when you look at when the joint force killed harmony on
February 28th, Iranians and Israelis were on the street
together in London and other places playing singing Persian
songs and Hatikvah. So you see that even in
diaspora, something that is quite unique.
I don't think that there's any ethnic community in anywhere in
the world that is as Jewish friendly as Iranians are right
now. As you were speaking, I was
thinking actually about when it comes to some of the other Arab
nations and their relationship to Israel specifically.
This will be a very boiled down over generalized statement from
my part, but I understood that typically the Arab nations, I'm
talking about Egyptians, Jordanians, a lot of those
people have the notion that, well, this land was never for
the Jews. Like, sure, they might have
controlled it at another point in time, but by the time of the
founding of the state of Israel, that was Arab land.
Whether it was Palestinian or not doesn't matter.
It was Arab land and now it belongs to the Palestinian
people. They are the Arabs that live in
that land. The Jews never had a claim to
it. And that's kind of where the
animosity stems from, is this belief that from the very
outset, the Jews were never entitled to this land to begin
with. But it doesn't seem that this
sentiment kind of translated as much to Iran.
And I wonder why. Is it as simple as the fact that
there was such a Jewish community in Persia that it
humanized, you know, Jews to Iranians and Persians?
Or is it something else? Well, first, you said yourself,
they say the Arabs say that this was Arab land and Iranians are
not Arab, so they don't have any claim to the land to begin with.
So it's not like they're giving up anything.
And that is important for the average Arab.
They think that they are giving up something and Iranians don't
have that sentiment. There's that.
There's also an element of Muslim tribalism that Iranians
had when they were more religious.
And as they have stopped being religious.
So they, if anything, more than Muslim tribalism, you have a
hostility toward Muslims in Iran, especially among anti
regime Iranians. So there's that.
And again, going back to what they said, third one is Arabs
are not going to come to save us, but Jews might.
So we're on the side of Jews and Israel here.
There's that too. And the last one is Iranians are
just, there's no better way of saying it.
They're quite racist against Arabs.
And if you go back and there's a very easy historical explanation
for this, because Iranians were Arabized and there were 1000
years ago. How Iranians, the Arabized
themselves was through an epic poem.
It's the longest epic poem in the world, I believe, the Book
of Kings. And that was the key to telling
the mythical history of Iran and the Arabizing Iran and reviving
the Persian language. But in it, Arabs are the
villains. They're the only villains.
And it is very anti Arab if you read it.
And because of that, that has stuck with Iran, with Iranians.
But there's nothing bad to read about Jews in in that a mythical
poem and that became part of the Iranian national character.
So there is that animosity too, that Iranians have.
Do you have a good sense of what percentage of people are anti
regime in Iran Isn't known. Everything I say is pre war,
okay. I don't know how the war is
going to change the trends in Iran.
Core of the support for the regime was 15% give or take.
This is not to say that 85% were entirely anti regime.
There would be 10-15 maybe even 20% of the population that I
would say closer to 10%. And you'd be familiar with this
like the Russians who are very status.
They will support any state of the country for Russia
regardless of the character of that state.
That would be about 10% of Iranians like that.
We're not pro or anti Islamic Republic.
This is the government we have and we will defend it.
But that would be more. We will defend it, we will defer
to it in Iran. We will defend it against a
foreign enemy and we would sit on the sideline if people are
going to try to overthrow the regime, not that they would
defend it against the Iranian people.
You'll be in on solid ground to say that 60 to 75% of Iranians
would do from going to protest to just sacrifice their lives to
overthrow the regime or at least vote against it in the ballot
box. But 60 to 75% anti regime of
some those of radicalism is probably correct.
What do you think are the most helpful things that Americans
can do right now in light of the climate?
Well, first, most Iranians don't have Internet connection.
About 30% of Iranians have satellite compatible phones.
But the problem is that you need a compatible carrier for that
too. That's because of AUS government
regulation that could be lifted by an executive order.
It doesn't even need to be a law.
So it would be awesome if the US government just waived that
executive order like we did in North Carolina during Hurricane
Helene for Iranians with those types of phones to have access
to the Internet just So even if you want them to mobilize
against the regime and take the take the streets, they need
Internet connection. So that would be very helpful.
And also I miss my loved ones and I'd like to talk to them,
but that's mostly self-serving. The other part of it is just try
to not forget that this issue still exists because it will be
very easy with other headlines in the news.
Midterms are coming up, XY and Z, and I'm sure there will be a
new controversy every week once this war is over.
But the struggle of the Iranian people is not going to be over.
And keep that in mind. Occasionally you just see what's
happening and try, if something comes up, try to talk with
people around you about it. And just keep in mind that this
evil regime is remains evil. I think that just a
consciousness of of that would be very helpful.
Now that you've spent so much time engaging with the Jewish
community and working for camera, doing all this work to
support your allies, I'm wondering if your perception of
Jews has changed at all. No, I didn't have any perception
of Jews when I first encountered my Israeli friends.
The only thing that was that I remember I was at home, I was
talking and something came out. I just used the word Jew hood
and I did not know that. I had just heard that referred
to Jews and I thought that that's what you call them.
And my dad, who was a very easy, chill guy, never suddenly got so
serious as I never used that word again.
That's a slur. Just called him Yahoo D.
That's what you should. And it was just to give you a
sense of the not perception, but just that there was no negative
connotation when it came to Jews.
It's not like Jews were a present part of the conversation
at the house, but the few times that Jews would come up, it was
never negative. So I'm sorry, you probably are
hearing my dog in the background.
So there was no perception when I first met Jews.
It was just these are people. Oh, these are people who are
very much like me. Oh, these are really fun friends
to have. Oh wait, I'm at Shabbat now and
it's complete freaking chaos and people are yelling over each
other and that feels so much like how I grew up and I never
want to leave the community ever again.
So the one thing I will say this actually, the one thing, it was
never a perception, but it was a stereotype that you would hear
that Jews are cheap. And boy, if Jews were cheap, I
would probably be on the side of some street right now dead
because I just financial and non financial time kindness.
Any type of Jewish charity that you can imagine, I've been the
recipient of. And I will never forget how much
I'm in that in in that to Jews. So that that is the one thing
that it's not shocking to me that this stereotype was wrong.
It's just shocking to me that Jews are not like everybody
else, but they are extremely charitable to a point that the
only parallel I've ever seen are Mormons, that those are the two
most charitable people I've ever met in my life, and it's not
even close. You know, that's so nice to
hear, honestly. And as I was thinking about it
like we really need people like you because the reality is your
upbringing influenced your vision and understanding of
Jewish people in Israel. But many people don't have this
upbringing so they come in with clear preconceived notions of
what Jews are or not what Israel is or is not.
Do you have any advice for Jews on how they can build bridges
with non Jews? Be yourselves and if you just be
around non Jews and they will see who Jews are for themselves,
you don't have to do anything special.
Jews are lovely people and as long as they're just being
themselves around non Jews, just the one thing is that you need
to be around Gentiles. That's that's the one thing.
There's no messaging or ad campaign that needs to be nice,
just that Gentiles need to be exposed in real life to
three-dimensional Jews who are walking and talking with them.
Okay, and as part of this go you will enjoy segment.
Every guest gets to ask me and you a question about anything,
you know, Jewish related, my opinion, anything that I can
answer. As a Jewish person, you know
everything there is to know about Judaism, Jewish people,
history, religion. So I know it's tough for you to
come up with something, but is there anything that comes to
mind for you that you would like to ask?
Me. Yeah, actually, where do you
live again? New York.
I'm not going to ask you about your personal politics, but just
I would imagine that you might have been surprised by a lot of
things after October 7. No, I was not surprised.
OK, you were not surprised, so how about your friends?
You know, I had different kinds of friends.
I think there I had friends that were a little delusional about,
you know, what the progressive left feels about Jewish people.
Whereas somebody like me looked at it in 2020 during BLM, when
BLM nobody asked them to do this.
This wasn't relevant. Took a position for BDS, right?
They didn't have to do that, but they chose to do that.
And the question is why? So by October 7th I was already
excluded and alienated from a lot of those progressive causes
because I wasn't willing to let them make me into a doormat as a
Jew and a pro Israel person. But on the other hand, there are
friends I have that weren't surprised like me, and they also
felt kind of ostracized and pariahed out of those spaces,
so. Generally among Gen.
Z and young millennials, millennial Jews who would be
around a lot of progressives, how much reconsidering is there?
And I think that could include, by the way, that deciding to
stick with the progressive left as opposed to embracing their
Jewish identity and just abandoning that or, as my friend
Eli Lake says, doing as a Jew to condemn Jewish survival as a
Jew. Like, tell me, what's the
landscape among young Jews about their place in young America?
Well, there's what I feel and what I experienced given my
circle, and then there's what the numbers say.
So in terms of what I feel and my inner circle, for the most
part, people have doubled down on being Jewish.
I'm not friends with any as a Jews, but when you look at the
numbers you're seeing that the as a Jew proportion year over
year is increasing, which means that it's regardless of what I
experienced, the effect is happening in the other direction
and that's the big concern for Jewish organizations today.
Now there are reasons as to why that is happening right and what
can be done to maybe stop it or reduce the total percentage.
I think a big driver of it is there were unaffiliated, kind of
like secular cultural Jews, who didn't feel strongly about it
one way or the other. But then when it actively became
dangerous or a threat or inconvenient to be Jewish and
Zionist, the cost was so high that they decided to opt out,
right? It was a path of least
resistance. I cannot live with myself if
that is what I were to do. I feel it is a privilege to be
born a Jew and I have been given a gift in this life to be a Jew
and to be part of this tribe, if you will.
Other people do not feel so strongly about their identity
and opt out. I actually have a semi tongue in
cheek joking semi joking advice here.
When you see that that kind of Jew, you should not yell at
them. You should just pick up the
phone and call their parents. And just like who raised this
person who who is yell at the parents like that?
That is absolute parental failure.
Parental failure right there. Well.
I want to tell you a little bit more about that.
So I'm a Russian speaking Jew, right?
It's Jews that came from the former Soviet Union.
And for the most part, Russian speaking Jews are all, you know,
like centrist to right wing. A a lot of Russian speaking Jews
vote Republican and they teach their kids to support, you know,
capitalism, to support Western values.
And, and for a large chunk of Russian speaking Jews, after
October 7th, as a form of rebellion against their parents,
they've become this kind of woke left.
And it really is a pain to the parents.
It's heartbreaking to the parents of these kids who came,
you know, from a country where they only had, you know, a loaf
of bread or however dramatic you want to be about it, to see
their kids have every opportunity in the world to
become successful. And this is what you chose.
You chose to be the purple hair. Good girl.
You know with the kafia. It is absolutely heartbreaking.
Yeah, I have nothing to say then.
It's just, well, the I like your.
Question. Thanks.
The good news is that I guess growing up in Iran has its
benefits. I guess you get a dose of
reality before moving to the US. Well, yeah.
And I think that it's becoming more apparent to me as I get
older too, that. Even though I have lived in
America for most of my life and I'm an American citizen, I came
to this country when I was 9. Most of my formative years are
here. There is a certain kind of
privilege and ignorance, either willful or unwillful, that a lot
of American Jews have about what life is really like for Jews in
other parts of the world. And this like PC culture, it's
on the decline because in some sense we overcorrected.
And for people that come from places in the world like I do,
where there's severe anti-Semitism, crime, you know,
war and ruin, you never have the privilege of being PC because
it's your survival is dependent on it.
Obviously a big part of it is just the Jewish question, to
quote Karl Marx, but the other part of it is it doesn't end
with the question of Jews. I mean, a lot of it is the
resentment of everything that is that exists.
And you mentioned you being an immigrant.
It's just I could never fathom not loving this country because
of how awesome it is. Like robbing your Don.
I living in Hungary. Let me just give you one
example. So in Hungary, mostly randomly,
I ended up living in the Jewish quarter.
And I was once walking on on the street and this guy, this
Hungarian guy, just locks eyes with me as I'm passing him and
just spits on me for no reason. And we couldn't figure out
whether he did it because I'm Middle Eastern or because he
thought I was Jewish or because he was just an asshole.
But I have cousins in Europe all over.
I would stay with them, I travel with them.
And it was quite obvious that even the most respectable
immigrants in Europe is still going to be an immigrant in
Europe. And then I came here, some not
so humble bragging gear. Just last month.
Last month, I was at a round table at the think tank, and
there was the former chief of Naval Operation, former
commandant of the Marine Corps, former commander of the Fifth
Fleet and other people. And there was me and we were
talking about US, India policy and nobody treated me as an
outsider, but he was interested in what I had to say as much as
anybody else. Not that I'm an immigrant or
anything, even though I don't even have citizenship.
And that is something that only would happen in this country.
That is something only I could an immigrant could only have in
this country. So I look around and I not
saying that America is a utopia because utopia doesn't exist on
Earth, but it is as good as I could ever imagine.
It's even better than what they could imagine.
Now to people that you talk about, it's not just Jews they
don't like. It's not just Israel they don't
like. They don't like this country
either. They hate this country.
They resent it. And I could never understand
that. I could never understand how
someone could hate this country unless they they know of no
other country and. And that's why they hate it,
because they don't know other countries.
And you know, going to Vienna as a as an American tourist doesn't
count as knowing another country because.
Yeah, like studying abroad. Yeah, that's not knowing another
country. Try being me in Europe.
Try being a minority in Europe as opposed to a wealthy American
tourist. I will never forget one of my
favorite stories about visiting Russia was when we went to this
famous museum. It's called Ermitage.
It was a RIP off of the Versailles Palace.
And when we came in, you know, there's a big pavilion, and
there are staff sitting there watching to make sure nobody
touches the paintings. And as we come in with my
family, one of the staff looks at my father.
And in Russia, she goes, oh, Sir, be careful.
There are pickpockets in this room.
Be careful. And my dad looks at her and he
goes, wait, if there are pickpockets in this room, why
don't you kick them out, right, so that they don't rob anybody?
And she goes well, the problem is that if we kick them out, new
pickpockets will come and we won't know what they look like,
so we can't stop them. But at least these ones are
known, right? That is amazing.
Yeah, and that's a great metaphor for other countries and
being an immigrant to America from the former Soviet Union.
Anyway, tell me, how can people connect with you and keep up
with your work? I am on Mostly active on
Twitter, occasionally on Instagram and my handle is at
Shakatiri SHAYKHATIRI. You can also find my work on
camera websites and where I blog regularly, and also on the
Yorktown Institute website where and Middle East Forum where I'm
a contributor. Those are the places I publish
my or I publish or aggregate my more policy oriented pieces.
And yeah, just Google my name. Occasionally something might pop
up. Thanks so much, this has been a
delight. I've loved meeting you and I
really appreciate the chance to Share your story.
You are a true boy. You will enjoy.
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