TALKING HEADS IN BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

Good old days for Israelis in the Shah's Iran

In the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival film Before the Revolution/قبل إز إنقلاب Dan Shadur compiles, in a sense, a family album. His parents and sisters lived in Iran under the Shah when there was a thriving Israeli community. He was only a baby. Only at the end he tells us that his father died of a heart attack shortly after their return to Israel and his mother died of cancer a decade or so later. He provides a wealth of home movie footage about his family with interviews with his sister and family friends and neighbors during what they recount were idyllic years in Iran.

Shadur goes beyond a mere personal album, though, because he has located and interviewed top Israeli officials, a man who worked closely with the Shah's generals, the former Israeli ambassador to Iran, a former embassy guard, Israeli businessmen who worked there, and others to fill out his picture.

The approach is to say, imagine this: we used to be chummy with our arch-enemy, Iran. But it should be no surprise to anyone that, as Israel was and is a client of the US, and so was the Shah, Iran should have been a lovely colonial outpost for Israelis to live and work in. As today, Israel was an arms manufacturer, and sold lots of weaponry to the Shah. Like the French coopérants in North Africa I encountered personally while a Fulbright lecturer in Morocco, the Israeli ex-pats in Teheran liked to brag about how they lived high off the hog, in houses so large their kids could skate around in the living room, with multiple servants, all in a lovely neighborhood.

As with most such colonial accounts, the talking heads show they wore blinders. Sure, the ambassador knew there were rumors of atrocities committed all the time by Savak, of people disappearing all the time, but he preferred not to know about any of that. Others chose to ignore the extreme poverty of much of the population: where they lived, things were nice.

The Israelis lived "in a bubble," one says, as they realized when they went to another part of the country, and found locations under heavy guard. Gradually they learned that Khomeini supporters and Islamists were mounting an insurrection. There are ironic similarities between the situation that arose and what happened to the Americans in Saigon; and even deeper ironies touching on the Jewish experience under the Nazis, the unwillingness to believe that the halcyon days were over. There was also official policy. Israel's relationship with the Shah's government was strategically important. Israeli officials opposed getting out of Iran, because if they fled, and the threat to the Shah went away somehow, they would have come to be seen as no longer friends, and would never be able to return.

So when women and children fled, in many cases after living in semi-hiding for some time, some of the key Israeli men remained, until they no longer could. No mention is made of their considering supporting or protecting the Shah, by the way. It seems the Israelis were the takers and not the givers in this romance.

The man who worked closely with the Shah's generals thought they would protect him. It was promised that when Khomeini returned from France the generals would kill him; instead, they protected Khomeini. And then he recounts that the generals were sat in a chair one by one and shot. No more generals.

The film shows powerful footage of the revolution that viewers of Ben Affleck's Argo may find familiar. When demonstrators picked up corpses and walked toward the guns, one speaker says, it was clear that the Shah's men could not repress this movement.

Local color includes one man's account of what it was like to visit the Shah's palace for a dinner, with four servants in white robes and gold belts to pull out his chair, and an invitation to drink whatever alcohol they liked: "In this room there is no Islam," the Shah tells them. Several speakers comment that unlike Europe, here there was no restraint to the grandiosity of the dictatorship -- though they thought it was "benign," despite the rumors to the contrary. A man whose father was an Israeli spy in the embassy as a boy was made to play the piano for a visiting general; the general was so impressed he insisted on giving him his gold watch as a reward. The man who worked with the generals went to market to buy food after the situation had become tense. He was trapped by people who knew he was not Iranian and asked who he was. At first he said his nationality was secret. Then on an inspiration he said he was a Palestinian working for the PLO and they embraced him and insisted he be given the food for free.

Alumni of the Tehran days in Israel, who had loved living high under the Shah ("kubbutzim with servants!"), and found it hard to readjust to life back home, still get together once a year and dance.

All this should surprise no one, and is just a footnote. Those who think it news, or have a personal connection, will rush to see it.

Before the Revolution, documentary in Hebrew with English subtitles about pre-'79 when Israel and Iran were allies, about the large Israeli community in Teheran who woke up one day and had to flee. 60 mins. This is a production of the Heymann brothers, Israeli documentary filmmakers. No release info, but now (Aug. 2, 2013) showing in Tel Aviv. Screened as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.