Why Iranian dissidents stand with Israel and why we should all do the same.

"I stand with Israel because it stands for everything that the Iranian regime and its allies oppose—freedom, democracy, and human rights." ~ Shabnam Assadollahi

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You can listen to me read this essay here:

Women of the “Woman Life Freedom” uprising. Beirut, Lebanon, on September 21, 2022. BILAL HUSSEIN / AP

I haven’t been able to publish anything for the past week due to travel and sketchy internet. It took many hours to get the audio downloaded for this essay and I’m so thankful I was able to! I’m on a mountain in Utah at the moment with a bad headache due to altitude sickness which will go away as my body adjusts.

The death of Ebrahim Raisi, the Butcher of Tehran, was celebrated by Persian dissidents across the world, but especially by women in Iran who had suffered under his cruelty.

On the other end of the spectrum, the UN Security Council observed a minute of silence for Raisi, while his funeral drew many of the world’s vilest leaders to mourn his demise.

In the video below, Mersedeh Shahinkar and Sima Moradbeigi, protesters who lost eyes and limbs to Iran’s strict police, are seen celebrating the death of Ebrahim Raisi, the Butcher of Tehran. They are joined by the daughters of Minoo Majidi, who raised a glass in memory of their mother who was beaten to death by the Iranian morality police. A mother whose son was put to death in Iran in the last few days is also pictured dancing with her daughter.

These women and men, like rapper Toomai Salehi, who protest in the “Woman Life Freedom” movement stand a world apart from those in the West who expend their breath calling for the downfall of Israel. These dissidents identify with Israelis fighting against Hamas. They especially identify with the victims of October 7th.

I find it increasingly hard to stomach how far western influencers, pundits and journalists are now going to justify their anti-Israel stance—many of whom stood with me against the tyranny of the Covid era. At some point, they will have to acknowledge that they do not stand with those who have suffered and died in Iran any more than they stand with the hostages taken on October 7th.

Rather, their hatred of Zionists is so great, they prefer standing with Iran and its henchmen in Hezbollah and Hamas.

What is the Woman Life Freedom movement?

In September 2022 protesters in Iran and abroad adopted the slogan after Jina Mahsa Amini died while in custody for “improper” attire. The death of Amini, a 22-year-old Sunni woman from Iran’s minority Kurdish community, was a reflection of the escalating and unrelenting authoritarianism of the Iranian regime at a time of deepening economic instability.

Kurdish women served as combatants and emerged as a powerful contingent in the fight against Kurdish suppression. Funerals for fallen Kurdish militants, which were banned by Turkey, became a catalyst for resistance, and they resounded with not only mournful dirges but also angry chants demanding change. Although Kurdish funerals were traditionally attended only by men, women often took part in these funerals.

Even though women had become an integral part of the fight for Kurdish autonomy, the patriarchal social structure that pervaded Kurdish society still tried to constrain what women could do. In the early 2000s, as Kurdish women and girls continued to be killed for allegedly denigrating the honour of their families, women took charge to provide—and lead—proper funerals for the victims, who were otherwise denied funerals by the men in their family. Like those fighters who died at the hands of the state, these women who died at the hands of men were remembered with chants for change. Among those chants was “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî”—“Woman, Life, Freedom.”

So, let’s now contrast these courageous Kurdish and Persian women and the video of them celebrating the Butcher’s death, with the massive gathering at Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral, mourning his death.

Look at these men, the women off to the side, faceless and submissive.

These are the “freedom fighters” that want to cleanse “Palestine” of every Jew. I would like to know from all those condemning Israel, are these the guys you prefer? Are these the guys you expect Israel to bow down to? Would you bow down to them if you were in Israel’s situation? Would you want them next door, raining rockets down on your head on a daily basis?

In a conversation with Haniyeh of Hamas, Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised him.

“You are a small group that has managed to defeat a large group, including America, NATO, Britain and some others. So that other promise, namely the elimination of Israel is feasible. The formation of Palestine from the sea to the river. God willing you’ll see the day come, too.”

This is what they want. The elimination of Israel. From the sea to the river. And not only that. They talk as if they have already defeated every other Western nation. They speak as delusionally as ever. In reality, they have lost every war against Israel—wars that they started. Yet they keep on attacking and make it clear they will never stop.

None of this is about creating a Palestinian state. They could care less about Palestinians. It’s about destroying Israel and killing all Jews on the planet. After that, it will be about killing everyone else who doesn’t bow to the sword. Persians know this. Why doesn’t the West listen? Why don’t they realize that standing with these monsters against Israel is helping their own destruction along.

A key to understanding Islamists is understanding that they not only welcome “Armageddon”, but also want to usher it in. They see themselves as its chief protagonist.

This excerpt from a 2015 The Conversation article explains it well:

Armageddon requires a clearly defined foe. IS, [one can replace with Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.] not surprisingly, has a roll call of enemies. It is incensed by the existence of the Jewish state of Israel; it is disturbed by the intervention in the Islamic world (read Iraq) by non-Muslims, it is frustrated by the external economic exploitation of Islamic wealth.

Here, I must remind readers of what was happening at the time this article was written. First, there were the terrorist attacks in Paris, which the New York Times called Three Hours of Terror, resulting in the deaths of 130 people. Then there were the Charlie Hebo shootings that claimed the lives of 17 journalists.

Where was the outrage against the French in 2015? I don’t recall anyone standing up for the terrorists and condemning the French as deserving of the attacks. After all, nobody wanted their French wine or vacations taken away. Nobody supported the terrorists. On 9/11, I don’t recall Americans saying they understood why the terrorists were so angry at the United States and that we deserved it.

Yet, when it came to Israel and October 7th, it was suddenly quite understandable why Hamas terrorists raped, tortured, mutilated and killed innocent Israelis. Palestinians just couldn’t take the abuse anymore. They snapped. That’s what happens.

The very next day, news across the world celebrated the attacks on “Zionists”.

Zionism became the greatest danger to world peace. Every evil could now be blamed on Israel and those pesky Zionists.

So, let’s continue with the article excerpt and the goal of Islamists:

To rid the Islamic world of these adversaries necessitates an epic military engagement. But to engage its foes in this grand war, IS needs to take the combat to them. It knows that attacking its foes on their own turf will force them to come marching into that specific prophetic terrain where they will meet their end. Having carefully prepared its battle plan IS has also pinpointed the location of these future battlefields.

The coming Armageddon, according to the IS worldview, is a necessary condition. So it rejects peace as a matter of principle. If it is to establish an uncontested Islamic empire in the form of a caliphate, it has to actively pursue an all-out war with the rest of the world.

To win this war requires a mammoth effort. It must stand prepared. It must have a strict social order. There must be death-defiant pride among its soldiers. Above all there should be an organizational structure that will make its god proud. The pre-modern tribal laws being practiced in IS-controlled territory is but small testament to this millenarian zeal.

By combining myth and modernity, IS conjures up an ideal post-apocalyptic world where it alone reigns supreme. The vision becomes all the more attractive to its followers when it gives them an actual foretaste of that future world – enacting video-game fantasies of mowing down your enemies in a real-life crowded street to freely plucking enemy women as your sexual slaves.

This is the ideology behind the war in Gaza, inspired by Islam. It is the ideology behind all the wars instigated by Islamic extremists up until this point. And yet, apparently, the terrorists are just defending themselves against the Zionists.

Here they are. The dangerous Zionists, in blue.

Yellow represents the Islamic states who are simply defending themselves against Israels constant aggression.

Every time Islamic nations declare war on Israel, they lose, and then they talk as if they won. At the same time, they keep Palestinians in a state of perpetual victimhood, never allowing them to escape the label of refugees, fueling their hatred against Israel rather than against their real oppressors—the Islamic extremists controlling them.

Israel has been condemned yet again by the United Nations. Amazing how colleagues who called the UN the most corrupt, dangerous institution on earth, during the tyrannical Covid mandates, now herald it as the greatest defender of freedom.

Thankfully there was one brave voice of reason:

Over the past few days, horrifying footage from October 7th has been released, showing the kidnapping of 5 female Israeli hostages from Nahal Oz base.

Remember them. Their names are Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniela Gilboa and Naama Levy.

As Ale Finke astutely commented:

Note how they [terrorists] use "Zionist" as the ultimate slur to justify their brutality, murder, rape. The "Zionists" offend them by existing. I want all the people contributing to sclerifying this term to watch closely what they are complicit of:

The slur “Zionist” is now plastered everywhere across social media, as the absolute worst type of person anyone could be. In order to justify hatred of Zionists, Hamas’s behavior is now justified, even actions in this video are justified, apparently.

These are not “girls”, they are soldiers, critics say.

Well, these young women are not soldiers, they do not carry guns. They were performing jobs any civilian might do. But even if they were gun-caring soldiers, what is wrong with people that they want so badly to justify the suffering of Jews?

And yes, they are girls. If one of them was my child, I would call her a girl, wouldn’t you? Look at them again.

The terrorists make comments like:

“Here, these are the girls who can get pregnant.”

“You are beautiful.”

And then they turn their backs on these girls and pray to their “god”:

Actually, the term ‘Sabaya’ that they use does not refer to “young girls” but to female captives who are enslaved possessions of conquerors on battlefields. It is the term that ISIS used for its Yazidi sex slaves. The doctrine behind the term Sabaya allows for the sexual abuse and rape of women and girls in captivity.

In 2015, it was revealed that “hundreds of Yazidi women and children were abducted from the town of Sinjar, in northern Iraq, and held hostage by Isis for over eight months. Some were sold to fighters as sex slaves or given as ‘prizes’. Many were beaten and forced to convert to Islam.”

Please watch this short trailer of the film “Sabaya” to understand:

I know this hatred towards women. I experienced it in Luxor, Egypt. The day I finally got out of Luxor, in June of 2019, I rescued my friend, Swedish artist, Gitte, who was also trying to leave the country. (I wrote about in an Egyptian Streets article, The Lost Foreign Women of Luxor). She was in a taxi, surrounded by a mob of violent men who were trying to pull her out of the car.

The last word screamed at us, as they banged on our taxi before we sped away was “Prostitute!”

When I asked our driver why they call Western women prostitutes, he said quite matter-of-factly, “Because you are all prostitutes. You all want sex.”

This did not surprise me. After three years of living there, I had figured it out. What surprised me was how easily he admitted it. Perhaps because we were leaving, and he figured we were never coming back, he didn’t mind saying it so openly.

No, it isn’t a cultural thing. It isn’t because these men come from villages and are uneducated. It isn’t because of the misconception of a few. It’s a religious belief that is taught in the mosques from childhood—everywhere across the Middle East. Anyone who isn’t Muslim is an infidel. But women, especially. Read Yasmine Mohammed’s book Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam if you doubt me.

Western women are to be used for sex. This is because they are infidels, yes, and all infidels can be used and abused, but it is also because they still have a clitoris. This makes them sex-crazed and “wanting sex all the time”. I cannot tell you how many times I heard this in Luxor. Western women are no better than animals, to be used. Unclean.

Muslim women, on the other hand, are cut so they won’t experience pleasure, so they won’t stray, so they will remain pure to only be used by their husbands.

Mind you, these men living in Luxor are not terrorists. They are ordinary citizens of Egypt, where 90% of girls still suffer through FGM. Every Muslim man that I encountered in Egypt had this attitude towards Western women. Every one of them had already or was going to cut off the clitorises of their daughters.

And this is my point. This is the point of those who know, who have lived in the region, those who are actually from the region and who stand with Israel for good reasons, because they recognize it as the one free country in the Middle East.

And yet, Western “anti-Zionists” women are quite fine aligning with these men rather than the women of Iran and the people of Israel who risk their lives standing against them.

It’s becoming quite ludicrous how Western pundits will bend over backwards to support anyone, no matter how ridiculous or extreme, if they share the same desire to rid the world of Jews. Influencers proudly quote anti-Zionists like Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, who are no better than extremists of any religion.

Influencers who quote and interview these extremist rabbis wouldn’t want to live under their intolerant rule any more than they would want to live under Hamas. These rabbis hate everyone who doesn’t espouse their extremist views. Imagine if these guys were in control. I grew up in a fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren church. The elders were not half as extreme as these rabbis, but still, I would never have wanted them to be in charge of my country. What a disaster that would be. How power crazed they would become, believing they were ruling on God’s behalf. The same danger applies, no matter the religion. In the United States, we can be a majority Christian nation, and honestly, I pray we stay that way, but religion should always remain separate from the state, and we should never persecute anyone for their religious beliefs.

I recently listened to Trish Wood’s interview of Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro on “The Perils of Zionism”. This interview is an example of the desperation those who advocate for the destruction of Israel will go to in order to justify their position. Rabbi Shapiro is heralded as some kind of expert on Israel, even though he does not live there and says multiple times that he has no interest in Israel and even goes so far as to make fun of the Aliyeh. Like any religious zealot, he condemns those who don’t submit to his very narrow view of Judaism. He claims Zionists “stole the Jewish identity”. But what he really means is that people like him lost control of it.

If Rabbi Shapiro had his way (and others like him), Jews would deny their ethnicity, deny their historical attachment to Israel and live as outcasts in other countries, performing extremist rituals under the domination of men like him to prove their Jewishness. According to Rabbi Shapiro, the people of Israel who worked so hard to turn a barren land into a paradise, should just shrug their shoulders and give it up. Admit that they have no right to be there, no matter what history says.

“Go back to Poland,” is what we hear protestors bellowing. Even though Poland was complicit in murdering Jews during World War II and slaughtered Jews who tried to return after the war.

This is crazy talk. Most Jews outside or inside of Israel, liberal or conservative, are Zionists. I know many Jews and they are all Zionists. And guess what? Persians protesting the Iranian regime are Zionists too.

Yet Rabbi Shapiro and others like him want you to believe that Zionism is a fringe cult of extremists, when it is Rabbi Shapiro who is the extremist.

You only have to read the negative reviews of Rabbi Shapiro’s 1,373-page book The Empty Wagon, to understand why his views are considered so vile for the vast majority of Jews and should be for any decent human being.

Here are two reviews as examples.

A polemic that tries to blame all the failings of the last 150 years on Zionism:

Imagine it’s 1941 and Hitler gives the remaining Jews an ultimatum: emigrate en masse to Israel immediately. If not, they’ll be sent to their deaths in the concentration camps.

For this reviewer and I think most people, the choice is eminently clear: go to Israel. But if one takes the approach detailed in The Empty Wagon: Zionism's journey from identity crisis to identity theft by Rabbi Yakov Shapiro, the choice would be for the remaining millions of Jews to die in the gas chambers, rather than violate the oath of exile, which forbids mass emigration to Israel.

The Empty Wagon is an illogical and histrionic attempt to blame the evils of the Jewish world on Zionism. Reading this book was like reading Nazi, Hamas or similar anti-Semitic propaganda. Zionists are treated as demons whose only goal is to destroy Judaism. Shapiro’s complete contempt for Zionism comes across as an immature rant. His narrow minded perspective comes across in every page, along with a sneering and anti-intellectual approach to the topic.

A book of hate by a self-hating Jew in a black hat:

It is indeed a sad phenomenon to see a book like this published in the name of Judaism. The concept that Judaism and Zionism are diametrically opposed arose among 19th
Century Eastern European Rabbis who feared the encroachment of secularism on traditional Jewish society. Their fears that Zionism was the greatest evil, as postulated in this book , was tragically proven wrong by the Holocaust in which Jews of any persuasion were murdered, from secular to Chasidic, with no Divine favor for the religious anti-zionists ( some of whom, such as the author’s late mentor Avigdor Miller , sickeningly claim the Holocaust as a retribution for such “ sins” as Zionism-easy to do when you were tucked away in the USA during the war).
The quotes in this book , purported to present “true Torah Judaism” are the usual distortions and selective sources used by extremists in the Jewish fundamentalist world, including Satmar and others, who are so insular that they live in America but speak broken English and eschew any secular education.
Israel has more students learning in Yeshiva than Eastern Europe ever did, and the Government pours funds into these. Israel is a world center of Torah learning, and has been home to saintly sages such as Rav Herzog Rav Kook, Rav Obadiah Yosef ZTL, all of whom were Zionists , and Torah geniuses. The late Satmar rebbe Joel Teitelbaum was saved from Europ by the Zionists but never acknowledged it, preferring to build a philosophy of anti Zionist hatred.

The vast majority of Westerners don’t want to submit to Islamic extremism. They just want Jews to. Nor would they want to live under Jewish extremists or Christian extremists. They just want to quote them as justification for their hatred of Israel and Zionism.

When the Butcher of Tehran’s helicopter went down, Craig Murray, a highly admired political activist, wrote on X:

I hope the Iranian President is OK, and that the helicopter problem was an accident. I don't feel very hopeful on either count.

Why would he say that? Why out of all the things he could say, did he say that? How does it make the Iranian women who were tortured by the Butcher feel?

Iran is turning into an heroic nation, right before our very eyes. Watch its transformation. Even though it was behind the October 7th attack—or perhaps maybe because of that.

The Path to October 7: How Iran Built Up and Managed a Palestinian ‘Axis of Resistance:

Along with spreading the Islamic Revolution, one of the main goals of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini was the destruction of Israel. In fact, once Iran’s Shah was deposed, it was Khomeini who then invited Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasir Arafat to Iran, where he was allowed to take over office space in the former Israeli embassy. Arafat himself told a crowd of Iranians that with Khomeini in power and the Islamic Revolution established, “the road to Palestine now leads through Iran.” Since that time, Tehran has never abandoned the goal of Israel’s destruction.

Do we identify with those who spew anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist propaganda, or with those who stand with Israel because they are being tortured and killed for the same reasons Israelis suffered on October 7th. Why don’t these pundits quote those who know what they are talking about instead of fools like Rabbi Shapiro?

Dr. Sheila Nazarian is an Iranian-born Persian Jew, who was smuggled out of the country as a child and clearly remembers the horrors of the regime.

The regime's brutality is epitomized by its persecution of Iran's long-suffering women and girls and the "women, life, freedom" movement that fights for their dignity. Many of the women who have participated in the protests or removed their compulsory hijabs have been raped and tortured by security forces. Many have been executed, often by being hanged by the neck from huge construction cranes in a grotesque mix of the medieval and the surreal.

The regime's malevolence extends far beyond Iran's borders. The ayatollahs' Iran provides sophisticated weaponry, funding, and training to the murderous terrorist groups Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian Territories and Gaza, and the militias destabilizing Iraq and Yemen.

Shabnam Assadollahi, an award-winning Canadian human rights advocate and freelance writer/journalist, was arrested and imprisoned at age 16 for eighteen months in Iran's most notorious prison, Evin. So, I guess she knows what she’s talking about. Here, she explains why Iranians support Israel.

Iranians Supporting Israel: Embracing Democracy and Peace in the Middle East

My awakening came at a young age as I witnessed the systematic suppression of dissent and the brutal crackdown on anyone who dared to challenge the regime’s authority. Like many others, I was silenced, imprisoned, and tortured for daring to speak out against injustice. My experience in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, where I endured unimaginable horrors, solidified my resolve to fight for freedom and justice.

The parallels between the plight of Iranians under the regime and the struggles faced by those living under Hamas and Fatah rule in Gaza are striking. In both cases, dissent is met with violence, opposition is crushed, and basic human rights are trampled upon. While Iran regime and Gaza languish under the grip of authoritarianism, Israel thrives as a vibrant democracy, offering hope and opportunity to all its citizens.

I stand with Israel because it stands for everything that the Iranian regime and its allies oppose—freedom, democracy, and human rights. Israel’s commitment to these values serves as a beacon of hope not only for Iranians but for all those who yearn for a better future in the Middle East. As an Iranian Christian and dissident, I refuse to be silenced by fear and intimidation. Instead, I raise my voice in solidarity with Israel, knowing that our shared struggle for freedom will ultimately prevail.

What is so wrong with Israelis wanting to keep their independent state, wanting to be free, wanting to remain a majority Jewish nation.

Here’s what is happening in Britain and yet, I guess everyone advocating for the end of Zionism wouldn’t have a problem with this guy running their idyllic English countryside town.

A year ago, Mothin Ali, was running for office as the Green Party candidate from Leeds, in northern England.

He has now won the vote and you can see him here, yelling what he already made very clear was his agenda—free Palestine, with echoing shouts of Allahu Akbar!

In the video you can see the silly white woman applauding behind him, desperately trying to wheedle her way into the limelight and continually being pushed back again. But nothing will stop her determined fawning over this fanatic.

Her fluttering eyelashes say it all. The stupidity. The madness. Inviting this into your own country. At least this woman has an honest desire to be ruled by Islamists. She’s not a hypocrite. Unlike most of my colleagues, who would not want men like this running their country, but they somehow think Israelis should.

Explain this to the Iranian women celebrating the Butcher’s death. Explain to them how they have it all wrong. They should not support Israel. The Middle East doesn’t need that “apartheid genocidal” state. It needs more “benign” Islamist rulers.

In standing with Israel, those who live in Iran, in Gaza, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, who have been tortured and imprisoned and have seen their friends and family members killed by these Islamists, are on the right side of history.

For those of us who fight for the same freedoms, we must stand with them. We must stand with Israel.

If you want to find out more about my experiences living in Luxor, Egypt, please read The Egypt Files.