Our Question of Palestine

 Sina Rahmani
 Political Science Student at McMaster University

It’s 3 a.m. and I haven’t slept for almost 36 hours.  I look up and I see a picture of Yasir Arafat beaming at me.  Below him, a pile of garbage that blends household garbage and what seems to be car parts.  I have no way of confirming whether this is the camp or even whether I am still in Beirut because its pitch black and the only objects that I can make out are the eyes of the stray cats that flicker around me.  I think to myself, how did I, an Iranian from the suburbs of Toronto, get here, one of the most densely populated Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
The next five weeks I spent traversing not just Bourj-al-Barajneh, but other camps in Lebanon. Being Iranian, I looked enough like an Arab that I could pass by without receiving the foreigner’s gaze.  Especially in the camp, I tried not to stick out as much as I could, although all the people I ever ran into knew that I wasn’t a regular.  People would ask me where I was from in Arabic (my Arabic was limited but I could survive) and there would always be an unconscious pause; was I Iranian or a Canadian?  The latter would solicit an easy enough response: do you know so-and-so from Canada? The former would put me in some sort of precarious position: many Arabs resent Iranians for, as one person in the camp put it, “their arrogance.”  Many would smirk and tell me how much they respected what the 1979 Revolution did, or how they supported Iraq during the war because they saw it as a battle of Arab vs. Persian.
Many of the Iranians in my life, including my family, question my motives.  My Palestine activism seems to unsettle them; they ask me why I don’t “help my own people.”  At first, I tried to be patient.  I would calmly argue that the struggle for Palestine is one and the same with the search for democracy in Iran.  I would tell them that anti-imperial struggle should speak to own another and learn from one another. The question of Palestine was not just for Palestinians, but for anyone who believed in human rights and social justice.
But the words became tired clichés to me as more and more Iranians continued in this vain.  Some would even become hostile; associating me with the Islamic Republic which has often evoked the Palestine issue. (Incidently, Jerusalem Day, the day dedicated to solidarity with Palestine happens to fall on my birthday) On campus, I was denounced by some as Hezbollahi, although I doubt Hezbollah would ever welcome someone as secular as I am. Others just steered clear of me because I was too radical and did not want to be associated with someone like me.
In my view Iranians need to immerse themselves in the issue of Palestine.  The same imperial forces that created the Nakba are the same ones that overthrew Dr.Mossadegh. Iranians have been too timid—especially those in the diaspora (and I do this based on my own experience) who blend anti-Regime sentiment with anti-Arab racism.  Rather than finding solidarity with their cause and sharing our own experience with revolution, we scoff and turn a blind eye. We cannot afford to allow our relationships with the Arabs that we live beside—not “surrounded” by.  
In an age of “pre-emptive” wars, Iranians can no longer afford to squabble with our Arab neighbours.  The ethnic divisions that riddle both Iran and the Arab countries need to be settled (including social justice for the Kurds, another oft maligned group) so we can unite to fight the more dangerous enemy: global neo-imperialism. To those imperialists—and those who lend them their blind support—we are all the same.  Let us unite in our difference to show them that we all want the same thing: to be left alone.