‘We don’t need governments to make peace’: Israel gets unofficial Iranian 'embassy'

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 inIsrael 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.