Palestinianism and the Deafening Silence on Iran
The near-total silence from Western activists, academics, international organizations, the UN, and NGOs who claim to champion Palestinians and social justice, while Iranians fought and died for their freedom, was not merely hypocritical—it is revealing.
At a moment when people in Iran were bravely confronting an extremist regime—and facing executions, mass repression, and deliberate internet and power blackouts designed to crush dissent—the absence of sustained outrage from those who present themselves as moral authorities is impossible to ignore.
The uprising in Iran exposes the distortions of contemporary critical social justice ideology, particularly post-colonial and orientalist frameworks that divide the world into simplistic categories of “Western oppressors” and “indigenous oppressed peoples.” Iran does not fit this framework. It is neither a Western colonial power nor a proxy of one; it is an indigenous theocracy that violently subjugates its own population, especially women, religious minorities, and dissidents.
Because this oppression cannot be blamed on Israel, Jews, or the West, the familiar machinery of activism breaks down.
The slogans, protests, and viral campaigns that appeared almost overnight in support of the Palestinians was conspicuously absent as Iranians rose up against Islamist rule. This is not a failure of information—events in Iran were widely documented—but a failure of ideology. The reality is that much of the pro-Palestinians activism was never primarily about supporting Palestinians as oppressed people, but about demonizing Israel.
This is why many of the same activists who flooded social media, occupied university campuses, and filled Western streets under the banner of Palestine averted their eyes as Iranian women burnt their hijabs, protesters were imprisoned and executed, and entire cities were plunged into darkness to suppress revolt. The disparity in response reveals that outrage has been selectively applied rather than grounded in universal principles.
Another uncomfortable truth is that large segments of the radical pro-Palestinian movement—what might be called Palestinianism—actively align themselves with the Iranian regime because of its hostility toward Israel and Jews. That alignment persists even when the regime brutalizes its own people. Opposition to Israel, not concern for human life or liberty, is what ultimately matters.
What we are witnessing is that much of the so-called pro-Palestinian movement was never fundamentally about standing with oppressed people wherever they exist.
It was about constructing a moral hierarchy in which one cause is elevated above all others, regardless of context or consequence. When the victims are Iranians—and the enemy is Islamist tyranny rather than Israel—that hierarchy collapses into silence. In this warped worldview, to stand against the Iranian regime, was to do violence against the Palestinians, who demand absolutely loyalty to their cause above all.
A genuine human-rights movement does not behave this way. If justice were truly the goal, the Iranian struggle would be impossible to ignore. The fact that it is ignored demonstrates that ideology, not solidarity, has driven the pro-Palestinian movement over the past two years—an ideology that demands absolute loyalty, even when that loyalty requires turning against the Iranian people because their revolution does not advance the Palestinian cause.
