It was so heartwarming this week to see the flotilla of human rights activists led by Swedish wunderkind Greta Thunberg steaming toward the shores of Iran on a dozen ships festooned with defiant banners, in support of the brave Iranians seeking to bring down the Islamic fundamentalist regime of the Ayatollahs.
It was wonderful to read petitions by masses of Hollywood movie stars, pop music icons, sophisticated novelists, and other highbrow types denouncing Ayatollah Khamenei for slaughtering thousands of his own citizens in the streets of Isfahan, Mashad, and Shiraz.
It was touching to see the "Free Iran" lapel pins worn by so many glamorous attendees at the Golden Globe film and television award ceremony this week, and to hear the passionate pleas for freedom in the Islamic Republic by distraught award winners.
It was gratifying to see students, including the new group Queers for Iran, setting up tent encampments, and breaking into libraries and classrooms at Columbia, Sydney, McGill, and Oxford universities to protest the war crimes of the Islamist clerics in Tehran.
It was rewarding to learn that powerful feminist organizations around the world, the new mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres all fulfilled their noble responsibilities by condemning the killings in Iran and calling for swift and historic regime change.
It was marvelous to hear the "squad" in the US Congress – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib – and other "progressive" representatives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, known for their ardent advocacy on issues of racial justice and Palestinian rights, give a series of fiery speeches in support of decisive American and Western intervention to back the courageous Iranians seeking to free their country from tyranny.
And it was encouraging to see all of the above marching through Moslem neighborhoods and outside mosques in Toronto, Chicago, and Paris challenging locals to "prove" their loyalty to the cause of freedom in Iran by joining the rallies. Even restaurants serving Iranian traditional fare were picketed by protesters demanding justice in Iran.
BUT OF COURSE and alas, none of the above things are true; none of this happened. Nobody who has participated over the past two years in incessant and vehement condemnations of Israel, and fervid attacks on Zionists and Jews, has spoken out against Iran.
Why is this so? Why the speechlessness, why the indifference to suffering, why the hypocrisy? Where is the genuine sympathy for innocent men, women, and children in Iran? What happened to principled support for freedom and ardent opposition to oppression?
Why have people – intellectuals all! – who screamed so swiftly and enthusiastically about the "starvation" of Gazans and "genocide" of Palestinians (both of which were blood libels against Israel) been struck so utterly dumb about definitive, undeniable, purposeful carnage in Iran?
Well, perhaps this is because the Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi assaults on Israel of the past two years, which the Western paragons of "virtue" essentially supported, were fueled and supported by Iran.
Perhaps they simply hate the West and thus cannot bring themselves to criticize an Islamic regime. Even when Islamists commit mass murder against the innocent, it can only be construed as justified resistance against Western-backed "imperialism."
Perhaps because those who hate the West and Israel sense that if the ayatollahs fall, the entire colossus of anti-Western and anti-Israel animus will fail, or at the very least be severely weakened.
Perhaps the insane totality of their commitment to the Palestinian cause, with Palestinians as the ultimate oppressed people and Israel as the supposed ultimate agent of "apartheid" in the modern world, leaves no mental space, no moral conscience disk space, for any other malevolence.
Perhaps because they are just drunk on Jew-hatred, and/or hatred of US President Donald Trump.
WHATEVER THE CASE may be, the result is clear: The burning of Jews alive in their homes by Nazi-like Islamic stormtroopers is a cause for celebration; the brutalizing of Iranians in the streets by Islamo-fascist revolutionaries is a cause for silence.
Unfortunately, such sickness crosses partisan lines, afflicting radicals of all stripes. Hard-Left columnist Max Blumenthal and hard-Right broadcaster Tucker Carlson, for example, are united in rejecting any American support for the protest movement in Iran. Why? Because that would be "collaborating with Jewish supremacy" and succumbing to the pressures of Jewish "lobby groups" to force regime change "for Israel's narrow benefit."
Here you have the "horseshoe effect" in action – extreme Left and Right coming together in rare consensus, specially and only when it comes to demonizing Israel or defending the forces (like Iranian theocratic dictatorship) that threaten Israel.
The plain fact that Iran is a great threat to America and to Western civilization – and to its own people – is no matter. Israel and its nefarious advocates are the greater threat, you see.
Let us hope and pray that Trump rejects such warped thinking and instead grabs the opportunity to help reset the regional and global strategic situation by helping bring down the evil empire in Iran.
And, in the meantime, let the hypocritical silence regarding Iran of Hollywood heroes, college campus denizens, and so-called international human rights organizations be a stark lesson for Israelis and supporters of Israel around the world: Do not bow a head before them.
Our opponents are motivated by hatred. They are neither honest nor moral. They are crooked actors and distorted thinkers who hold no purchase on justice.
