Israelis gathered in downtown Jerusalem’s Independence Park Thursday evening for a rally in support of the Iranian people who have taken to the streets in recent weeks demanding greater freedom of expression and freedom of religion. The woman pictured above holds a sign that says “Women, Life, Freedom.”
The Iranian protests were sparked in September when a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman named Mahsa Amini was killed while in police custody. Amini was arrested for not wearing a headscarf in public as is required for all women under Iranian law which is based on strict enforcement of Muslim laws.
Since then tens of thousands of Iranians have been protesting all over their country in a fearless show of defiance of their country’s authoritarian theocratic regime. Such massive national protests are reminiscent of the ones that broke out all over East Europe at the end of the 1980s, and those protests brought down numerous such oppressive regimes.
One of the people who spoke at the rally was Jerusalem Deputy Mayor in charge of foreign relations, international economic development and tourism Fleur Hassan-Nahoum. She is also the co-founder of the Gulf-Israel Women’s Forum.
One of the rally’s organizers, Hassan-Nahoum spoke with TPS about why she felt it was important for Israelis to come out and show their support for the Iranian people who are today fighting for religious freedoms.
“About a week and a half ago I saw that all over the Western world there are demonstrations in support of the women of Iran against the cruel regime that is killing them indiscriminately on the street,” she said, “…so we came out during the Jewish holidays to show our support for the Iranian women.”
“Israel has done more than any country to try and pull down the Iranian regime,” she added. “And now we need the big countries of the west to stand up, every single country where there are equal rights for men and women should be standing with the women of Iran and working to bring down that horrible, misogynistic, homophobic and genocidal regime.”
On the matter of religious issues in Israel and how women in certain areas in the country are required to dress conservatively, Hassan-Nahoum adamantly rejected any comparisons between Israel and Iran, calling Iran a “Handmaid’s Tale” county.
Another organizer of the event was Ateret Violet Shmuel, Director of Indigenous Bridges USA.
She told TPS, “We here in Israel see what the people of Iran are dealing with, what they are going through. We see them. We hear them. We care.”
“We want the Iranian people to know that we see them and that we are standing in fierce and loyal solidarity with them, here in Israel,” she added.
