LA's Iranian Jews Show Support for Israel, Not Iran

There is a faction of Iranian Jews in Los Angeles' "Tehrangeles" pledging allegiance to Israel and not Iran amid the war on Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

Iranians in "Tehrangeles" — an area near Beverly Hills — rejected the extremist Iranian regime and joined counterprotesters at anti-Israel protests on campuses to show their solidarity against Iran, which is long accused of funding anti-Israel terrorist proxies in the Middle East like Hamas, NBC News reported Sunday.

"Right now, no community has more nuanced views about something than the Persian Jewish community," LA resident David Javidzad, whose parents left Iran in the late 1970s, told NBC News. "We love being Persian. We love Iran. We aren't Israelis, but we love that Israel exists."

Many of the Iranian Jews in "Tehrangeles," often referring to themselves as Persian Jews, are children of parents that fled Iran in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution, according to the report.

"To this day, they still talk about the idea of one day returning," LA resident Abby Yosian told NBC News of her family. "Still to this day, my grandmother talks about Iran as the most beautiful country in the world."

But after the 1979 revolution, some fled to America and now say they support Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza, according to the report.

Iran and Israel have been at odds for decades as bookends of the embattled, war-torn Middle East, and UCLA activists protesting Israel's war on terror had Yosian concerned.

"To see what has been happening in the last several weeks, I was concerned as an alumnus,” Yosian, whose parents fled Iran and initially sought refuge in Israel before coming to America, told NBC News.

Iranian American Lisa Daftari shared support for the Iranian and Israeli people.

"Iranians and Israel have a common fight against extremism: It is the Islamic Republic that is the common enemy," she told NBC News.