Iranian American Jewish author to speak in Bloomington on Israel, Trump

Indiana University on Thursday will host an Iranian American Jewish journalist, activist and author who will discuss, among other things, how the return of Donald Trump as U.S. president could turn the Middle East towards peace and prosperity.
Roya Hakakian will be at the Helene G. Simon Hillel Center, 730 E. Third St., at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14. Hakakian’s lecture is titled “The Iran-Israel Faceoff: The Roots of the Conflict and What May Lie Ahead.”
Hakakian was born in Iran, and she and her family arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1985, according to IU. She has received critical attention for her nonfiction work, including “Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran” and her collections of poetry.
Her most recent film, “Armed and Innocent,” was commissioned by UNICEF and deals with the involvement of underage children in wars, IU said.
Hakakian said via email last week that she believes Donald Trump’s re-election could improve the situation in the Middle East.
“While I take issue with many of Donald Trump’s positions especially on domestic issues, I think his approach to Israel and the Mid East conflict during his first presidency has been the right one,” she said.
“The region needs to hear loudly and clearly that America is not indifferent to attacks on its allies,” Hakakian said. “Just as Europe has had to respond to the Russian attacks on Ukraine, America needs to do the same vis-à-vis Israel if only to reestablish deterrence (to) prevent further attacks on Israel or its regional allies.”
She also warned the conflict may spread “if we appear aloof or ambivalent.”
Hakakian said Americans should care about the Iran-Israel conflict because the U.S. government’s inaction has emboldened terrorists.
“For all intents and purposes, Israel has been fighting the wars that America should have waged but somehow postponed or ignored,” she said.
“Many of the Hizballah figures Israel has eliminated in the last few weeks have been on the FBI’s most wanted list for many years as they had been involved in various assaults on American interests and servicemen in the region. Somehow America thought what it chooses to forget, as in the culprits of those attacks, they simply disappear and no longer pose a threat. But our lack of response has only emboldened them in every corner of the region.
“Above all, America has tried to either ‘appease’ or ‘contain’ Iran,” Hakakian said. “However, in reality, these approaches have not only been ineffective but also empowered Iran and strengthened it. America chose to allow Bashar Assad to use chemical bombs against (his) own people and didn’t intervene to protect the civilians even after Assad had clearly crossed the redlines America had set. Our lack of action, our absence, was subsequently filled with Iran and Russia.
“So Israel is now bearing the brunt of our inaction,” she said.
Hakakian’s lecture is sponsored by the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program at IU’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and co-sponsored by IU’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.
Boris Ladwig can be reached at [email protected].