POLITICS-IRAN: For Many, Qods Day a Wornout Cliche

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramin Mostaghim

TEHRAN, Nov 23 2003 (IPS) - ”Cutting ties with the Zionist regime is a must for the Islamic world,” reads a placard in Tajrish Square in the north of the Iranian capital, a well-off area with lots of fashionable young passersby.

The placard was put up for the day the founder of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has declared since 1984 as ‘World Qods Day’, Qods referring to Jerusalem. This day fell on Nov. 21.

Asked what he thought of the sign, 19-year-old Kambiz Rasouli, listening to rap music while walking hand in hand with his girlfriend, told IPS: ”It is not our business. Go and ask (Iranian President Mohammad) Khatami.”

Like a number of young people interviewed by IPS, Rasouli appeared to shrug off the importance of World Qods Day on the last Friday of the last day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

But Iranian officialdom, it remains a day of importance. For a week before that day, Iranian state media had been extolling the ”lofty initiative” of Khomeini in regarding Qods Day as the ‘Day of Islam’.

Radio and television channels featured debates among ”anti-Zionism experts” and broadcast live demonstrations against Israel in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

U.S. President George W Bush’s and Sharon ‘s effigies, made in different government organisations, were burned before the eyes of domestic and foreign media. ‘(Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon, the slaughter of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps’, ‘Palestine, part of the Islam’s heart and mind,” were slogans seen in Tehran and provincial towns.

After all, in Iranian political terminology, Israel is not a nation-state but a cancerous gland on the map, as a placard on the north-west wing of Engelab square, reflecting hostility and resentment found in many Middle Eastern governments against Israel, more than 50 years after its creation.

Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the State’s Expediency Council, was once quoted as saying: ”A state known as Israel has no room in the region of the Middle East”.

But the rhetoric does not impress people like Hussein Mohammadi, who say their sympathy for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation does not translate into support for government rhetoric and government-organised rallies on Israel.

Some told IPS the existence of Israel has to be accepted as reality and others called the official rhetoric calling for peace and justice in Palestine hypocritical.

”The whole propaganda machine of the Islamic regime in Iran musters all it can to put anti- Israel rhetoric on top of the national agenda and distract attention from domestic chronic problems,” mused Hussain Mohammadi, the 48-year-old manager of a small firm, poking his head from the window of his apartment near Palestine Square.

The square is 250 metres east of the Tehran University compound where Friday prayers are held.

He continued: ”Of course I do not mind supporting Palestinian cause and helping the refugees, but not in a fully orchestrated rally.”

His views are echoed by Mohsen Ararashnia and his fiance Zoya Alizadeh, both 24. Asked if they had taken part in the Qods rally, Ararashnia says: ”It is beneath our dignity to participate in such rallies in which high school students, governmental employees, army personnel and lots of mobs are bussed in and out exactly like slaves.”

”We both think it is time to revise these religious rhetoric in politics and define our national interests”, explained Alizadeh.

”I do not mind helping the Palestinians, but there is no need to choreograph a rally against Israel,” added Ararashnia, a political science student at Tehran university.

For Qods Day here, around 100 Palestinians injured in the clashes in Israeli attacks in the occupied territories took part rallies.

Talking with media here, they expressed thanks to Iranian officials for inviting them to Tehran on that occasion. In Arabic slogans, they chanted: ” We are ready to present hundreds of thousands of martyrs to liberate our Qods (Jerusalem) from the Zionists. Al Qods is ours, death to Israel.”

Subsequently, an old Palestinian lady told local television: ”Iran is the only Islamic country to invite them and genuinely support the ‘intifadah’ (uprising).”

While IPS was interviewing 69-year-old Aliasgar Ahmadi during the rallies, a broad-shouldered tall man, Hussian Taymori, added his comments.

Saying he worked at a company whose offices are in building over looking Engelab Square, he said: ”I was watching cars of officials passing by after the rally (Friday). All of them went toward north, the well-off area..”

”Well, officials, like the grassroots people, are expected to take part in the Qods Day’s rally. It is their religious onus,” countered the elderly Ahamadi.

But Taymori interjected: ”In the early days of the revolution, these officials were advocating the so¡called Jame’h Betabqeh Tohidi (classless monotheist community) and now they drive in luxurious cars and hypocritically talk about justice in Palestine and condemn Israel .”

Ebrahim Hassanzadeh, a laid-off worker in textile industry who happened to overhear exchange, retorted: ”Five million Jews in Israel can wipe Iran or any other country in the Middle East, what the hell they are chanting (at the rallies).”

”In truth, who we are to decide the very existence of any given country?” remarked the student, Mohsen Ararasshnia. Looking back to last week, dismissed teacher Alidad Akbari, 40, said the participants at the rally were those in the government’s payroll or traditional businessmen in the bazaar and their families, ”but I have to earn my living even on Friday when it was a holiday. I do not care, Palestine or Israel.”

But Mehdi Habibi, a 21-year-old student and political activist who spent 30 days in solitary confinement after being detained after the June unrest, told IPS: ”Leave me alone if I speak out my mind concerning this Qods Day, I will end up in jail once again!”