Some thoughts from this week’s monumental events involving Iran’s response to “Israel”, and how those showing solidarity need to be wary of reproducing Zionist narratives. Post below the audio.
It needs to be acknowledged now, that the two Operations ‘True Promise’ from the Islamic Republic of Iran launched in response to attacks on Gaza, the West Bank, groups supported by Iran and their own diplomatic personnel, and the assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, has not targeted civilians or civilian sites. It is in total contrast to the Israeli regime’s escalated genocide of one year’s standing.
The contrast of approach is heightened further by the claims of the Israeli regime – repeatedly – that the operations were failures because no civilian life was lost. Supporters of the Zionist entity in various mainstream Western media up until last week, spoke in similar terms about Hizbullah, stating that the Lebanese resistance group was not in an all out war against the entity because they had not killed any civilians.
The measure of ‘success’ in war, is now clearly demarcated in the West by how many civilians are slaughtered, directly, through targeted attacks. This grotesquery has been passing for normal for too long now. In this narrative, “Israel” is not perpetrating a genocide against a civilian population of a country without a standing army (and whose security forces and apparatus such as they are, have been in long term collusion with the Israeli genocidaires). Instead it is seen as waging a war successfully: the demonisation of their ‘opponents’ ensuring that their deaths do not spark empathy or outrage in observers.
So far, so understood. You would think. Yet, the clamour and desire for blood has also been a feature of parts of the Muslim commentariat, if such a name could be ascribed to the various social media pundits whose voices are as loud as their analyses are poor. It is not a Muslim specific phenomenon of course, but for this piece it is they I aver to. In a scramble to outdo themselves in criticism of Iran in thinly veiled sectarian invectives that bear little relation to anything that has actually happened in the last 45 years, they too have rehashed this argument. “ Iran has done nothing,” “The operations are just theatrics.” You know why? No-one was killed.
There needs to be serious reflection now on how it is that Muslim polities measure military success in Zionised terms?
Muslims – especially those who would incite violence against other Muslims – need to be called out now for their collaboration with Israeli and US narratives.
The genocide in Gaza today, can in many ways also be traced to the failures of narrative that would rather collaborate with the US to disrupt support to the Palestinian resistance in the name of groups rights.
No-one can achieve freedom at the price of another’s. Undermining the current resistance against the Israeli entity in order to cement previous positions, that justified the undermining of the resistance, is shameful.
Learn that lesson now.
Arzu Merali is a writer and researcher based in London, UK. This piece is an addition to a tweet thread yesterday on the undermining of the Palestinian resistance (below).
Photo: People gathering in Palestine Square in Tehran to celebrate the airstrikes on “Israel” on 1st October 2024, by Mostafa Tehrani, Tasnim News Agency
This extends to Shias too who are kowtowing to prevailing British, US and Israeli narratives, either from fear, or worse by choice.
Also, simply speaking about humanitarian crises also undermines the resistance.
Yes, millions are being oppressed, murdered, brutalised.
— Arzu Merali (@arzumerali) October 3, 2024
