'Tehran' star opens up about the pressure to abandon Israel advocacy – and her refusal to do so

Daughter of Iranian Jews, Liraz Charhi is a singer and musician, but shot to fame after her role in the popular drama series “Tehran." Her partner, Tomi Avni, lost five family members in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel, and Charhi has used her platform to speak on the issue consistently. However now she has been instructed she must say “Free Palestine” instead.

Charhi, 47, explained in an interview with YNet how the pressure had been gradually mounting, pushing her to abandon her advocacy for the Jewish state, and how she feels about it.

“Why should I be silent?” she asks. “I’ve fought my whole life for voiceless women, for my grandmothers, for myself. I grew up in a home where I was silenced. I wasn’t willing to be silent and stop."

She started to see her engagements being cancelled and she was vetoed from festival bookings. “They had received threats and weren’t willing to have Israeli musicians on their stage, even though my message is one of peace and love, and even though I make albums with artists from enemy countries. None of that mattered to them," she said.

Her record label managers were increasingly alarmed as she spoke out publicly on CNN and Sky News, and were trying to manage the PR nightmare of a vocal advocate for Israel. However Charhi was not willing to be told what she could and couldn’t say. 

“I told them, ‘You keep trying to put words in my mouth; I know how to give an interview. What do you want me to say?’ Their answer was: ‘We want you to post on your social media, “Free Palestine, Cease-fire now.'"

Charhi’s parents both made aliyah [immigrated] from Tehran, and so she grew up with both Iranian and Jewish cultural influences. She starred in Avi Nesher’s 2004 film "Turn Left at the End of the World" and performed alongside Sean Penn and Naomi Watts in "Fair Game," among other movies and TV shows. The film "Reading Lolita in Tehran" – based in the 1970s as the Islamic Revolution was brewing – has been described as a “visual gem” with a stellar cast, and features a song that she co-wrote. 

Although she’s an accomplished actress, Charhi’s first love is music. She has made several albums and sings in both Hebrew and Persian, and was in the process of making her sixth album when war broke out. 

Despite her best attempts to continue life and work through the crushing grief and logistical challenges of cancelled flights, incoming missiles and lockdowns, Charhi has watched her career slowly implode. None of the fallout has been due to lack of effort on her part. She shared with YNet some of the extreme lengths she went to in order to meet the requirements of her label.

“To meet their deadline, I found myself dodging rockets on the Ayalon highway [a major highway in Tel Aviv], driving with my daughters, who had no school, just to get to the studio, while everyone around me was in mourning,” she says.

In addition to experiencing cancellations and contract disruptions, her London-based label delayed the release of her album multiple times. They also requested that she make public statements critical of her country, something she cannot bring herself to do.

Despite these challenges, Charhi maintains a composed outlook, acknowledging the broader difficulties currently facing Israel.

“I’ve learned people aren’t necessarily antisemitic, they’re just deeply ignorant. They don’t understand what’s happening here, and they never will, and they judge us unfairly. Saying ‘Free Palestine’ is a trend. It came out of nowhere, and it will fade the same way. They don’t know the history of this conflict,” she surmises.

“Even in LA, where I’m recording my seventh album, I see all these stickers. I’m sure they’ll eventually understand what happened to us and what’s still happening in Israel. What happens here is happening abroad, too. In Berlin, there’s a terror attack every five minutes. They've just foiled a bombing at a Lady Gaga concert. Terror is taking over the world. Same story, different place. Sadly, Europe and the US are going to learn the hard way. We’re all in the same boat,” she added.