In a tweet, Adriano said, “No war make love.”
It’s a beautiful sentence. Truly beautiful. I have no criticism of it. I even like it. But reading it brought a lot of things to my mind, and I thought it might be worth writing them down here. I don’t even know if anyone still reads this place anymore—it feels like only a few people ever stop by these days. Maybe I should write this somewhere else. But I’m not on any social media, so I’m writing it here. Maybe someone will have the patience to read it. And if no one does, at least I’ll have relieved myself, for a moment, of these words that keep endlessly circling in my head.
Is war really always bad? Living through Israel’s attack on my country showed us that, in just half an hour, we could gain freedoms we couldn’t achieve through fifty years of peaceful criticism and nonviolent resistance.
For nearly half a century—since 1979, to be exact—we tried to reason with the dictators in power peacefully. We tried to point out their mistakes. They didn’t listen. They laughed in our faces. They mocked us. They beat us. They threw us in prison. And they killed many of us—our women, our daughters, our children.
Then Israel carried out a military strike that, in less than an hour, took out several top commanders of this dictatorial regime. And suddenly, today, those same dictators treat us with more caution, with more restraint.
Today, in some major cities, women can walk out of their homes without headscarves. Not everywhere. Not in every province. Not in government buildings. But still—sometimes, they can take them off. There is now an open debate in the country about mandatory hijab. The regime is hesitant. It’s unsure of itself.
Because if the threat of war returns, the regime will need public support, and that means it has to tolerate people, at least for now. But if the threat of war disappears, it will go right back to beating and killing people.
So no—war is not always bad.
As for me, I don’t think there’s much love left inside me anymore. The best moment of my entire 45-year life was that hour when I heard the sound of Israeli missiles hitting my country—hitting the homes of the dictators and those who were beating the people. That sound is still in my ears, and I take a grim satisfaction in it. I can still feel the rush of those moments, waiting for the fighter jets, waiting to hear them fire.
I kept saying, Where are you? Come on. Come on—fire.
One of those bombs could’ve hit our house. We had no shelter. No bunker. The only thing we did was tape the windows, hoping the blast waves wouldn’t shatter the glass. There was nothing else we could do. And even then, we were willing to die—if only, before dying, we could see the collapse of this regime with our own eyes.
You don’t know what that means. You’re sitting somewhere safe and quiet, thinking about love and kindness. But me? I’m waiting for war. I’m waiting to hear those missiles again—the missiles that can rip this murderous regime out by the roots.
This doesn’t mean I like Israel. I don’t. Not at all. They’re not much different from this regime themselves. One of the heroes of my life is Rachel Corrie—an American woman who went from the U.S. to the Palestinian territories, stood in front of Israeli bulldozers demolishing people’s homes, and was killed. I deeply admire her courage and moral clarity.
I am not pro-Israel. But if Israel can wipe out the Islamic Republic, I will thank them for it. Even though, honestly, Israel has benefited from nothing in the region more than the existence of the Islamic Republic. Many of Israel’s current advantages come from playing the victim in the face of the Islamic Republic’s threats to secure international support.
We’re trapped in a vise. To escape one enemy, we’re forced to lean on another. And maybe a war between these two enemies is what ends up saving us.
Of course, we won’t just sit quietly. We’ll keep fighting in our own ways. But today, we do so with a clear understanding of one thing: the power of missiles is greater than the power of our fists—and greater than the power of our pens. Dictators can laugh at our fists. They can laugh at our words. But they can’t laugh at the missiles coming their way.
Comments