Cnaan Liphshuz for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 21, 2018
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Do you feel comfortable leaving your wife and two kids alone with three Iranian men you hardly know?
It was the first question that Mohammad Delavari, a well-known journalist in Iran, asked me at my home last month.
It was not a hypothetical query.
Delavari had contacted me on Facebook to request an interview for a documentary about Israelis and Jews in Europe. Before the interview, I left him and two producers with my wife and kids for 20 minutes while I ran an urgent errand.
As soon as I returned, he noted, accusingly, that “anything could have happened,” suggesting he would never have left three men alone with his wife — a modesty issues for many Muslims, and a safety issue for any two peoples presumed to be on opposite sides of a conflict.
It was one of several fascinating exchanges that I had last month with the three journalists, who are producing a film that for the first time in Iranian television’s history attempts to introduce nuance to how Iranians view Israelis and Jews.
And while our talks revealed some mutual suspicion and radical differences in mentality, the encounter also offered plenty of common ground and rare interaction with devoted and highly professional colleagues who perhaps took a greater risk by visiting me than I did hosting them...
Interesting article, more at the link. UPDATE: the full article is not too very long and VERY worth reading in full.