Some 52 years ago, when I was in 4th grade of primary school, I found a book "who put glasses on the kid's eyes" in a small book shop in open bazaar of my hometown Ahvaz in khuzestan province of Iran.
A few days later, we had to bring a book to school and read it in front of the class. Happy as I was to have found a great book, I took it to school and read it in front of the class.
I couldn't understand why my teacher was acting so scared and stopped me before I had finished the book and sent me to the principals office.
I was nervous, didn't know what I had done wrong and our principal, who was a really nice man, and went to the same university as my oldest sister took the book and asked me where I had bought it. I knew something was wrong, so I said I bought it at the book store of our local mosque, to protect the guy who was my source of cheap and lovely books and would buy back my old ones to help me afford buying new ones.
In the evening my father came home, agitated and clearly upset. Asked me what I have done and I explained the situation, including the fact that I lied about wher I had bought the book. Told him the highlight of the book about a happy child who was living in a town with happy people who were all wearing glasses.
He was seeing flowers, colorful houses. Nice people and happy children all around him, birds flying in the sky and everyone were so friendly to him.
Until one day he fell of and his glasses broke. He couldn't believe his eyes, the flowers, colorful houses and happy people were all gone. All he could see was a run down city, with piles of garbage everywhere, people wearing worn out clothes, looking hungry and sick.
He was nece happy after that, he couldn't believe that everyone were walking around with glasses and we're happy all the time. But he was sad and miserable, because he had seen his town without those glasses.
Anyway. My father took me to a building close to the main police station on the other side of the Karun river, he spent almost entire day in a room where I could people screaming at him and a few times someone his the table very hard. But couldn't hear what they were saying.
My dad came out. Pulled my hand without saying a word, we walked for an hour to get home, didn't take taxi as we used to do.
He didn't say a word during the whole day and told me to go over my books and bring all the books I had bought from that shop, he through them in a metal bucket and poured some fuel over it, set them on fire and waited until they were completely burned, mixed the ashes to turn them into dust, filled the bucket with water and through it in the toilet.
He told me to never go back to that shop and be careful to take any books to school from now on.
That' was my first interaction with the notorious Savak police of Shah of Iran. In the next days, all the 4 book stores in our town were raided. Books confiscated and doors locked. Never heard about any of them again.
Reading the comments of pro Israeli accounts on mastodon reminded me of that book and that experience that changed my life when I was only 8 years old.
This post specially triggered those memories. Unlike the kid in my book and the people living in the town, these people know very well tat what they are posting is not true, they have seen the horror of the past 76 years of occupation, they have seen the 66 times they were subject to UNSC charges, and 45 that were vetoed by the US..
But they don't care, they see themselves as victims. They don't see the millions of starving palestinians, or the millions living in refuge camps around the world as worthy of their empathy or cause of why Palestinians and some of the world is fed up with their out of control criminal behavior
They don't have glasses on their eyes, they have chosen to be selective and above the laws of the world.
I don't like to share from media discussions, but this is just priceless, the Israeli woman claims that majority of Iranians support Reza Pahlavi (son of Iran's former dictator) and also support Israel bombing their country.
These are the same people who convinced the world that Americans wouldb be greeted with flowers and celebrated as liberators. And it ends up giving us #ISIS and millions of deaths.
Trust them. They know what #Iranian people think and want. They have some #Twitter polls to prove their ponts.
@finche
Ignoring 76 years of ethnic cleansing, colonialist policies, Maas murder, ethnic cleansing, unjustified murder and land grab is ignored, Israel bombing Iranian targets and even Iran over 300 times in the past, terror attacks against Iranian scientist and civilian nuclear facilities, it to forget Stuxnet and the only thing Israeli supporters want us to see is October 7 (not the real story, but the ones Israel wants us to remember) or that Iran attacked Israel.
I do not support, nor say that IRI is innocent, but the main evil source in this conflict is Israel and it's illegal and immoral occupation of Palestine, northern Lebanon and Syrian Golan heights.
But I think you might be overlooking some discussing points, so you come to that conclusions you draw. Be it so.
But: I am not backing terrorism in any way, so I don't support any Israeli extremism like purging land from it's owners. But I won't refer to Israel as Palestine under occupation.
@finche
The whole foundation of Israel was based on Terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
Israeli society has chosen Netanyahu again and again and again. Which means the people support him and on a democracy, when you repeatedly elect a fascist, then large portion of your society calls for genocide, then it's logical that people see the society as a genocidal fascist one.
You can. Ot judge the whole society by the actions of the minority, not in a democracy. Unless you don't believe Israel is not a democracy and that opens a whole new door for dealing with it. @palestine@israel
The swing of Israeli society to Rightists is beyond my understanding. Maybe there was a majority in fear of being overwhelmed by Arab neighbours with ideas to clean Israel from the map or maybe there were other reasons in a challenged society.
There is no excuse partnering with hamas in first leading to the October massacre in consequence. IMO.
I am thinking of the building of the state of Israel 1948 as a rightful act.
@finche
Well, we have to agree to disagree on that one.
If UN had created the 2 states in 1948, and not just Israel, I would say I support it 100%, but sadly it setup the foundation for the bloodiest conflict in the region since then.
But I believe what is done is done. We have the move forward and find a solution before it spills into a regional all out war with consequences that I can't even dare to think of. @palestine@israel
My father visited Persia at around that time. Later, when the "hostage crisis" happened, he was singularly silent about it, even though he was politically conservative.
When I asked him, he said that no matter how bad the Ayatollah's secret police were, he could never possibly be as bad as Savak.
He didn't tell me any more, and now he's gone and I can't ask him.
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