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I’d like to express my gratitude to the people who marched through London yesterday chanting “stop bombing Iran”, culminating in a rally in Parliament Square with protestors waving Palestinian and Iranian flags.
It’s possible to regard these people as Jew hating morons who deserve nothing but contempt from anyone with even a basic understanding of the nature of the Iranian regime. It’s possible, because that’s what they are and that’s what they deserve.
But we should nonetheless be grateful to them for taking time out of their day to express their clearly genuine and deeply held views. Because by doing so, they have provided a useful test to see whether someone is decent but misguided, or simply indecent.
There is an argument that can be made – by decent people who are entirely genuine in their concerns – that Israel’s actions in Gaza are wrong and counter-productive. It’s not an argument I agree with, but making it does not of itself mean you are anti-Israel or antisemitic. To me, it means you are simply misguided in your assessment of what Israel is doing (although of course there are many who make this argument who are indeed anti-Israel and, yes, antisemitic).
But there is no decent argument in support of the Iranian regime. If you defend and support it, you defend and support the world’s main funder of terror. You defend and support a regime which routinely imprisons and kills its opponents. You defend and support a regime which seeks not just to be the dominant power in the Middle East but which aims at the obliteration of Israel and Jews and which regards those who kill Jews as heroes. Khamenei describes Israel as “a cancerous tumour” which must be “excised”.
There is no nuance here; there is only black and white. The Iranian regime is the enemy of decency. And those who support it are not merely indecent; they are themselves the enemies of decency.
Which brings us, for example, to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which yesterday celebrated the rally in support of the Iranian regime with a social media post showing the assembled enemies of decency: “Thousands in Parliament Square demanding our government stop arming Israel and pressure it to stop bombing Iran and end its genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
It’s not as if anyone could really have been in any doubt about the true nature of the PSC, but they are shameless in confirming it.