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<\/a>Why do they march for Gaza, but not Iran?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\nJonathan S. Tobin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The silence from the chattering classes, Hollywood elites, and university students and faculty has been deafening. The same people who have been conducting mass demonstrations and virtue-signaling about their devotion to the cause of human rights and their abhorrence of civilian casualties when it came to the war in Gaza have been largely silent about what is happening in Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n That isn\u2019t because no one knows exactly what\u2019s going on.<\/span><\/p>\n Despite attempts by the Islamist regime to black out the internet and halt the flow of information about events inside the country, the scale of the conflict has grown so large that it has been impossible to cover up. Some 2,500 deaths have been confirmed<\/a> by the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, though reports on mass killings of protesters by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have raised the potential death toll to anywhere from 12,000 to 20,000.<\/span><\/p>\n While the liberal mainstream media was slow to pick up the story, it can no longer downplay it. While it has had to compete with its overwraught coverage of the controversy about the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to enforce immigration laws, the Iran protests have been the top story on The New York Times<\/em> website for multiple days, and have also received extensive coverage in The Washington Post <\/em>and on NPR<\/em>. Even leftist human-rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been posting about it.<\/span><\/p>\n But the statistics about casualties and images of military forces shooting peaceful protesters in cold blood haven\u2019t moved the audiences of these outlets in the way they normally do about another conflict in the Middle East. In fact, the same audience that turned out in the tens of thousands to protest the war in the Gaza Strip or to broadcast their identification with Palestinians has zero interest in the Iranian struggle for freedom or the many victims of the Islamist regime.<\/span><\/p>\n This apathy makes itself felt on a number of different levels.<\/span><\/p>\n No mass street protests, demonstrations or tent encampments can be found in U.S. cities or on college campuses dedicated to supporting Iranian protesters. The opinion columnists at major outlets who have been churning out articles falsely accusing Israel of \u201cgenocide\u201d while parroting grossly inaccurate Palestinian casualty figures are mum about Iran. At the Golden Globes awards ceremony, actors and others in past years have shown off their support for the Palestinian war against Israel via lapel pins or biting words. At the event held this past weekend, the cause de jour was protests against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). Not a single person\u2014either on stage or in the audience, as can be seen from the media coverage\u2014was standing in solidarity with the people of Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s not surprising.<\/span><\/p>\n Concern about the way the Islamist theocracy oppresses the people of Iran has never been among its priorities. Or even a subject about which they were even minimally concerned.<\/span><\/p>\n The question is why\u2014given everything heard from the crowd about how terrible it is for the innocent to be killed in conflict\u2014they have nothing to say about Tehran? They\u2019re all very vocal about the backing of a \u201cFree Palestine.\u201d Not so much about a free Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s true that not as much attention has been paid to the conflict in Iran as there has been for the two-year war in Gaza; however, a good number of Iranians have been fighting against the mullahs since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.<\/span><\/p>\n Another reason may be that the State of Israel is supported by the United States. It\u2019s true that even when Washington was most sympathetic to Iran, and seeking to appease its government during the Barack Obama administration, and to a lesser extent, when Joe Biden was president, America didn\u2019t formally support the government of Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n If anything, the fight for freedom there ought to be generating a lot more foreign support than the Palestinian cause. After all, the Palestinians have rejected compromise, peace and a two-state solution to end the Arab-Israeli conflict for nearly a century. And the recent war in Gaza wasn\u2019t an Israeli attempt to stifle democratic protests. It was a morally justified response to a cross-border invasion by Palestinian Arabs on Oct. 7, 2023, which resulted in an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n The main impetus for those rallies, however, wasn\u2019t focused on ending ties between Washington and Jerusalem, though most of the protesters were surely in favor of that idea. Nor was the motivation for the protests simply a matter of backing a ceasefire in the fighting that followed the Oct. 7 massacre in Jewish communities in southern Israel. The ceasefire reached last October didn\u2019t really dampen the ardor of the anti-Israel crowd. It was also not a matter of genuine sympathy for victims; if that were the case, they wouldn\u2019t have been indifferent to the plight of Israeli hostages.<\/span><\/p>\n Rather, as the chants of the pro-Hamas mobs made clear, it was their support for the desire of the Palestinians to see Israel eradicated (\u201cFrom the river to the sea\u201d) and for violence against Jews wherever they lived (\u201cGlobalize the intifada\u201d) that lured them to join the cause.<\/span><\/p>\n Despite their loud proclamations that the anti-Israel protests were rooted in concern about human rights\u2014something that would surely cause them to speak out about Iran\u2014that just doesn\u2019t pass muster. Nobody who actually cares about human rights can support a cause that aims at the slaughter of an entire people, no matter where they live.<\/span><\/p>\n The reason for this can partly be explained by simple ideology. The indoctrination of a generation in the toxic ideas of critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism has led many young people to believe that all conflicts are essentially about race.<\/span><\/p>\n As such, they have come to believe that the world is divided into two groups perpetually at war with each other: oppressed \u201cpeople of color\u201d and their \u201cwhite\u201d oppressors. In that essentially Marxist formulation, Jews are, despite their history of persecution and the persistence of antisemitism, too Western and too successful to merit sympathy, and so must be defined as \u201cwhite\u201d oppressors. That makes the Palestinians the oppressed racial minority. They believe this myth, even though Jews and Arabs are the same race, and the majority of Israelis are people of color since they trace their origins to the Middle East and North Africa.<\/span><\/p>\n The struggle of Iranians to end the rule of tyrannical Islamist theocrats and their terrorist henchmen is irrelevant to this framework because neither side can be identified as \u201cwhite.\u201d That makes it irrelevant at best, and at worst, a distraction from more interesting battles like the one against Israeli Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s equally true that those influenced by these ideas also can\u2019t identify with any struggle against a government that regards itself in conflict with the West, which the intersectional left considers to be irredeemably racist. As historian Niall Ferguson sagely pointed out<\/a> in The Free Press,<\/em> because the Iranian protests are an attempt at a \u201ccounterrevolution,\u201d rather than one against a pro-Western government, they are indifferent to it. In this way, the reactionary Iranian regime\u2014which, like Hamas, oppresses women and considers gays to be worthy of the death penalty\u2014gets a free pass.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s as illogical as it is absurd since it leads people who would be hanged or thrown off rooftops in Gaza or Tehran to march with \u201cGays for Palestine\u201d placards. Yet it does make sense to those who consider the West, the United States and Israel to be inherently evil, and their opponents, even when they are Islamist murderers, to be somehow sympathetic.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s the same reason why far larger and bloodier conflicts, such as the decade-long Syrian civil war\u2014when hundreds of thousands died, and millions were made homeless\u2014never motivated anyone on the left to take to the streets demanding action to stop the fighting. The same was true for what is a real genocide going on in Sudan right now.<\/span><\/p>\n Still, there\u2019s more to it than just that stale and intellectually vapid ideological construct. The \u201chorseshoe\u201d effect, in which the far left and the far right unite in their antisemitism, is at play when it comes to Iran as much as it is about Gaza.<\/span><\/p>\n Anti-Israel extremists on both the left and right are speaking out against any help for the protest movement in Iran. The likes of journalists Max Blumenthal, Glenn Greenwald and Ali Abunimah say they oppose the protests because the demonstrators\u2019 foreign sympathizers just want a pro-Israel government in Tehran. That misses the point. Of course, many people in the West would prefer a government that wasn\u2019t the world\u2019s leading state sponsor of terrorism. But apologists ignore the fact that one of the reasons why Iranians want to overthrow their Islamist tyrants is because the regime has squandered its country\u2019s resources in its frenzy to build a nuclear bomb to obliterate the Jewish state. And that\u2019s despite the fact that Israel and Iran have no real reason to be in conflict other than because of the mullahs\u2019 antisemitic obsessions.<\/span><\/p>\n As seen in recent months, the obsessive hatred for Israel on the part of a certain segment of right-wing opinion also leads those who take this position to be supportive of anyone who claims to be an anti-Zionist, even if that leads them to back some of the most anti-American regimes and people in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s no accident that former Fox News<\/em> host and current podcaster Tucker Carlson has been adamant about opposing American efforts to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon or efforts on the part of the Trump administration to support anti-regime protesters. The same is true of former Trump staffer turned extremist podcaster Steve Bannon and neo-Nazi \u201cgroyper\u201d leader Nick Fuentes.<\/span><\/p>\n Though these people claim to be American patriots and believers in an \u201cAmerica First\u201d or \u201cAmerica Only\u201d foreign policy, they oppose efforts by the Trump administration to rein in and stop a regime that has killed Americans and views the United States as the \u201cgreat Satan,\u201d regardless of its position on Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n The only thing that brings them into agreement with the left on Iran is the fact that the Tehran theocrats hate Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s no way to look at this issue that doesn\u2019t inevitably lead back to an age-old hatred.<\/span><\/p>\n As with other global struggles, antisemites on both ends of the political spectrum are never going to care about a conflict in which neither side is Jewish. As for Iran, its radical oppressors not only support efforts at Jewish genocide but spend enormous sums on terrorist groups and a nuclear program with which that evil objective could be accomplished\u2014money its population never sees.<\/span><\/p>\n Under those circumstances, it is to be expected that the same crowd who write, rally and virtue-signal their anguish about Palestinians will be utterly indifferent to the plight of Iranian victims at the hands of Islamists. The explanation isn\u2019t merely ideology or hypocrisy. It can be summed up on one basis: Jew-hatred.<\/span><\/p>\n Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em> Why do they march for Gaza, but not Iran? Jonathan S. Tobin The movement that turned out en masse to demonize the State of Israel for defending itself is uninterested in the slaughter of Iranians. Maybe it\u2019s because they can\u2019t blame it on the Jews. An anti-Israel protest in Columbus, Ohio, on Dec. 22. 2023. 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\nThe movement that turned out en masse to demonize the State of Israel for defending itself is uninterested in the slaughter of Iranians. Maybe it\u2019s because they can\u2019t blame it on the Jews.<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
![](\"https:\/\/me.jnsi.org\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Anti-Israel-Protest-in-Columbus-Ohio-1320x880.jpg\")
An anti-Israel protest in Columbus, Ohio, on Dec. 22. 2023. Credit: Becker1999 via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\nApathy about Iranian victims<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Racialist myths<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The left and right unite in their antisemitism<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n![](\"https:\/\/me.jnsi.org\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Jonathan-S.-Tobin-480x480.png\")
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS \u201cThink Twice\u201d podcast, both the weekly video program and the \u201cJonathan Tobin Daily\u201d program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
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