A group of Jerusalem artists this week opened the city’s first unofficial Iranian ‘embassy of culture’ with a gathering of around 500 Israelis, many of whom moved to Israel after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Israelis from all walks of life converged on a three-room building in East Jerusalem’s French Hill settlement, which has been dedicated by the Jerusalem municipality to the Hamabul Art Collective. The new centre of Iranian culture in Israel will display original photography and art, and will host a radio station broadcasting in Hebrew and Farsi.

With an assortment of Iranian snacks like shahtoot (dried red mulberries), chagaleh badoum (salted unripe almonds) and halva, coupled with Persian music, the evening sparked nostalgia for many.

“My brother told me there was a Persian party, so I’m here,” said David Pikali, who emigrated to Israel with his family from Iran in 1958 when just seven years old. Pikali welcomed the chance to reconnect with his mother-culture, and savoured the rare opportunity to gather somewhere brimming with Iranian culture and to speak Farsi.

Relations between Iran and Israel have been tense since the Iranian Revolution, when Iran closed the Israeli trade mission in Tehran, which had operated as a de facto embassy, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini dubbed Israel “an enemy of Islam”. Iran does not recognise Israel. As president from 2005 to 2103, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke of the Israeli state being “removed from the page of history”. Israeli politicians like Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, have argued the Iranian regime poses a threat to Israel’s existence.

Two young women sit on a Persian rug beneath an Israeli flag and an Iranian one bearing the emblem of the Islamic Republic, at the opening of the Iranian embassy of culture in Jerusalem on 21 December 2015. Photograph: Anna Loshkin

But Israeli and Iranian citizens have often spoken out of a desire for better ties. In 2012 Israeli peace activists launched a social media campaign to foster goodwill by showering Iran with ‘Israel loves Iran’ messages.

Pinkas Matan, the mastermind behind the cultural embassy who displayed red and green nail polish symbolising the Iranian flag, doesn’t believe politics should hinder good relations between citizens. Speaking in front of a projector screen playing a documentary about Iranian fashion, Matan announced the goal of the project as sparking communication between peoples, sharing culture and art, and promoting peace.

“I believe that’s enough,” he said, speaking on behalf of the collective of artists that hosted the event, Hamabul, the Hebrew word for the great Biblical flood. “We don’t need governments to make peace - it is up to us, the people.”

People like the embassy’s coordinator, Alexandra Weil. “I met an Iranian man, my boyfriend, while travelling in Georgia and we fell in love,” she explained. “We travelled, he cooked for me, and he read me Hafez poetry, and I fell in love with his culture.”

But unfortunately for the couple, neither could visit the other’s homeland due to legal restrictions.

Attendees look at photographs by Itay Davidyan at the opening of the Iranian embassy of culture in Jerusalem on 21 December 2015. Photograph: Anna Loshkin



Some at the gathering were not convinced by the organisers’ hopes for the ‘embassy’. “Of course this won’t help with peace,” scoffed the 63-year-old Pikali in his Iranian-accented Hebrew. “This is only for the people here in Israel.” And he wasn’t the only sceptic. “Those here already have an open mind,” said Levi Greenberg, an Orthodox Jewish teenager in a colourful knitted kippa (skullcap) twirling his earlocks. “It’s those not in attendance who pose the real issues towards moving forward.” Others said that speaking of an ‘embassy’ was misleading, given that neither government has anything to do with the initiative. One of the artists whose photography was on display, Itay Davidyan, chose to participate not because of the embassy’s mission to bring peace, but rather as a way to reconcile his Iranian and Israeli identities. “My parents came from Iran in 1986, so I grew up in a very Persian household,” he explained. “To me, this is personal.”

Standing before one of his photographs, one featuring his mother wearing hijab, Davidyan declared: “I am proud to be Iranian.”



The Tehran Bureau is an independent media organisation, hosted by the Guardian. Contact us @tehranbureau

