HD: I think that if you have enough audience with a blog, you can be both an observer and an activist. I think the example of my visit to Israel is exactly that, me trying to do those two things. It’s gotten great publicity. And that’s one of the main purposes for coming here. I wanted to counter the image that Ahmadinejad has produced around the world about Iran. I keep doing that, and at the same time I am reporting whatever I see for my Iranian audience. They have long been deprived of any genuine, unbiased information about Israel.

GB: That’s what’s interesting. You become a proxy for everyone else. I love the video and the photos, you taking it all in and sharing it. Have you been enjoying your time in Israel?

HD: It’s pretty nice. I like Tel Aviv. It’s one of those cities that even if you don’t speak Hebrew you can fit in. And there are so many Iranians here. [Ed.: There was a substantial and ancient Jewish community in Iran, almost all of whom left following the Islamic Revolution.] The strangest thing happened yesterday. I was on a mini-bus traveling from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv talking on the phone to a friend of mine in Persian and then a guy who looked Iranian — but you can never tell, because Israelis all look Iranian to me — looked at me and let me know he understood me. One other guy who was sitting in the mini-bus then laughed and then the guy in the front turned around and smiled. It is so interesting to see what a high percentage of the population are Iranian. It must be the highest percentage outside of Iran.

GB: Have you been getting feedback from young Iranians reading your blog [who are] surprised about the picture of Israel you are presenting?

HD: Go to my Persian blog and look at the first comments after the post when I first announced I was going to Israel. That one got maybe 160 comments, almost all supportive, maybe 95 percent. That was very surprising. I had no idea it would get such support. But apparently it’s one of those things that have captured Iranians’ minds — especially young people who don’t have the history of experiencing anti-imperialist, radical left propaganda from the time of the revolution. It’s also kind of a forbidden place for Iranians, so it makes you more interested to understand exactly why it is forbidden.

GB: Have your own misconceptions been challenged?

HD: Israel is very much demonized in Iran and there is nothing but propaganda. What I found here though was a real democracy. There is real political partisanship [but] I was surprised to see how moderate the majority of the people are. That’s why Kadima [the new centrist political party created by Ariel Sharon before he fell into a coma] is winning and why it’s so popular. And a lot of Arabs actually live here, which I found interesting because it would be impossible for Jews to live in any Muslim country. I found Tel Aviv to be much more cosmopolitan and fun than I imagined. I like the café culture. It’s very much like Europe, and I wasn’t expecting it. People are very secular here. Jerusalem was different. I dislike religion and it’s a very religious city.

GB: And you’re staying with blogger friends?

HD: I’m staying with an Israeli-Canadian who I first met in London at a blogging conference [Lisa Goldman, has blogged about her take on Hossein’s visit]. She was open to the idea and she was nice and offered me help and now I’m here.

GB: Do you think there is room for bloggers to move in the direction that you have gone, to use their blogs in the same type of activist way you are?

HD: What I am trying to do with my blog is like rapping, and Iranian politics is like classical music. What I’m doing is unconventional, its political activism that only requires a little bit of creativity, which is completely missing from the political culture of many countries. And if it wasn’t for Howard Dean’s movement in the U.S. and the Jon Stewart phenomenon, I have to say that I haven’t seen any kind of creative new approaches to politics anywhere as far as I know. But those two things really inspired me, and I’m trying to go on and go beyond them.

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