Iranian Blogger's Bold Support for Israel: A Personal Journey

Elika Le Bon, a well-known Iranian blogger, recently made waves by publicly supporting Israel and criticizing Iran, causing a stir in her home country. Recently, actress Noa Tishby met with her in Los Angeles to hear firsthand what prompted her vocal stance against the Iranian regime and in favor of Israel.

"The surprising backlash was that all my friends, whom I had been best friends with since childhood, blocked me because I condemned Hamas," she shared. "I try to be balanced; I wasn't aggressive in any particular direction to hurt someone—condemning Hamas shouldn't be a reason for friends to block you. I haven't even come to terms with it—adjusting to this new reality is still a shock for me. As for any positive reactions—it will take me a moment to think, as it's been so overwhelming. I don't understand how one can be so full of hate and think that's the right thing."

Tishby asked her if she knew who else thought they were doing what was best for humanity. "Nazis," she replied. "And the Islamic Republic thinks the same thing."

Le Bon explained that she decided to speak out against the ayatollahs' regime following the massacre in Israel. "For me, it was a trigger because anyone who knows anything about Iran knows how the Islamic Republic operates with its proxy forces, and we know they're essentially the same terrorists," she added. "We know they're trained by the same people who killed our families, and we know what this kind of terror looks like."

"When the massacre happened, my initial reaction was, 'This will eventually be okay because everyone will say it's horrific and we'll feel secure knowing the world condemns it.' But then, when I started seeing the reactions and drone footage, and my friends posted Palestinian flags that same day, before there was any reaction, it shook me to my core."

She explained that supporting Hamas cannot be separated from supporting the Revolutionary Guards. "That's the argument I've tried to make recently, as people have long tried to say that the 'resistance' (of the Palestinians) is different, and it's not like the Islamic Republic. I said, 'Okay, Stacey or Becky from Berkeley or Harvard, explain to me how it's different, explain it to me like I'm five.' And they can't tell you how it's different because it's not—it’s part of the same system, the same head of the snake."

"If you don't understand who these people are and what they do to others, even to their own people... they're the reason people in my family were killed, there are gaps in my family tree because of them, and you want to celebrate that? Then you're not my friend. What 'killed' me and many others is the fact we were part of those leftist activist circles that cried out for minority rights together, I stood by you in those struggles and then suddenly—what?"

"I think that's the thing many people struggle to grasp when they participate in these campaigns—they believe that if they were behaving maliciously, they would know about it. They don't understand that the Nazis never thought they were evil. They say, 'I'm not like them because if I were, I'd know I'm evil'—this is a long-standing myth, but evil is not aware of its own evil."