Iran’s stance on Palestinian cause remains unchanged

Foreign media is implying that Iran has softened towards Israel due to the Islamic Republic’s suggestion that the fate of Palestine should be decided by a referendum by true Palestinians.

Iran’s stance on the Palestinian cause remains unchanged. Defending the oppressed has been on its revolutionary agenda all along. The country does have a tradition for this. And calling for a referendum rather than taking up arms, is its chosen method for doing so.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is on a war path to convince the world Iran wants to take Israel away from the Jews by bloodshed and massacre. Iran says bloodshed and baby-killing is Israel's way of doing things. And all Iran wants is democracy in action, that is referendum or voting for Palestinians to take back what was Palestine, should they want it.

In an interview on Press TV’s Iran Today program, Mohammad Kazem Anbarloui, member of the political branch of the Islamic Coalition Party said “compromise” and “resistance” are the two courses that pertain to the conflict between Palestine and Israel.

“At the moment, there are two discourses that pertain to the conflict between Palestine and Israel. The first one is compromise which has been proposed like 50 years ago; numerous negotiations and mediations have taken place but to no avail. The second discourse is resistance through fighting against Israelis oppression and as lately proposed by Iran's leader a referendum,” he said.

Another panelist on the program, Ahmad Momeni Rad, member of the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of Tehran, noted that “'Down with Israel' actually means down with the policies that oppress Palestinians, deprive them from the basic rights.”

“By shouting 'down with Israel,' we want these policies to go down; we want the Israeli regime to cease its oppression, occupation and killings, we want Israelis to respect international laws. Down with Israel is our way of calling the world’s attention to the plight inflicted upon the Palestinians by Israelis,” he stated.

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Israel and Palestine were really one Middle Eastern country on the Mediterranean Sea. That was Palestine till 1948, a land governed by Muslim Arabs living in harmony with their Jewish minority. But 1948 drew up a new map that portrait Palestine converted into the State of Israel and Palestinian territories.

Now that can be a problem to staunch Jews who think of their people as a wandering tribe meant to be stateless till the coming of the Jewish Messiah.

Hossein Rouyvaran, head of political committee. of the Society for Defense, believes “one of the most significant elements of establishing a state is an interconnected nation that has lived in a land for thousands of years”.

“This element does not apply to the Zionist society. They came to Palestine based on a religious claim and then went to Babylon and then to Iran; from there to the [north of] Caspian Sea and the Europe. The Israelis' stay in Palestine is nothing more than seventy years,” he said.  

The Jews displaced in WW2 poured into Palestine from Europe to take over. These were people who probably never had any links to Jerusalem and the Holy Lands. And while Israel today has a surface area of 20,770 km², the de jure state of Palestine has only an inconvenient 6,220 km² for a population not much less than the Jews. In all of the occupied lands, there's over 5 million Palestinians.

When Palestine is called a de jure sovereign state, it means it is recognized as being the legitimate government of a territory over which it has no actual control. This is while being an actual sovereign state requires being both de jure and de facto, that exists both in law and in reality.

Many say, 'Well the Palestinians sold their lands to the Jews. So that's settled.'

“They bring up this issue that the Palestinians have sold their lands and now they have backed out and want to return and get their lands back. Does that make sense that for example 800,000 people from the 1,200,000 community of Palestine became displaced in 1948 within two to three weeks? 800,000 people sold their lands and left? … The truth is that the Israelis committed many massacres … The Palestinians were horrified and ran away,” Rouyvaran stated.  

Zionism, in contrast to Judaism, was a movement for the re-establishment and is now for the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. It was established as a political organization in 1897 under Theodor Herzl, and was later led by Chaim Weizmann.

And on 14 May 1948, the day before the expiration of the British Mandate, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency, declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel."

Abdollah Ganji, editor in chief of Javan daily, opined that the Israelis consider themselves “a superior race” to others and “this racism is rooted in the essence of Zionism.”

“I mean the founders of Zionism, which is relatively new, have these extremist views while the history of Judaism dates back to thousands of years; it is a religion based on ethics as we have seen many times that Jewish Hakhams or scholars participate in the Quds Day demonstrations and they have expressed their hatred from the Zionism in their speeches in the universities of Iran,” he said.

Given Netanyahu's concern that Iran wants to massacre some Jews, it's noteworthy Iran wouldn't have to begin with Israel because the country has its own Jewish population, officially recognized and respected.

Press TV’s Iran Today program has conducted an interview with Iranian Jewish citizens in a Jewish-owned café in central Tehran to see whether or not they feel any difference as a religious minority.

Arash Moghim says, “According to the article 13 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews are recognized as the country's official regions minorities. As a result, we enjoy all the facilities and concessions offered to Muslim Iranians, meaning that we are treated as real nationals of Iran.”

Another Jewish Iranian citizen, Amirfaraz Naimoot, stated, “Religion has never been an excuse for discriminating against the people of Iran from various religious minorities. My Muslim friends and I hang out together all the time without the slightest problem. We go to parties together, have family gatherings, and treat each other as brothers, as fellow countrymen.”

“There are over 60 active synagogues in Iran in which religious worship is carried out regularly… The Jewish community has the benefit of excellent religious freedom in Iran. The government of the Islamic Republic shows Judaism the same respect it shows to Islam in a way that we face no limitations to observe our religious ceremonies and rituals here,” Siamak Morsadegh, Iranian Jewish member of the parliament said.

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Anyhow, Prime Minister Netanyahu pulled off yet another stunt to demonize Iran's government; this time with the Iranian people. He has promised to turn Iran's sewages into the fountain of life, so to speak.

“We will launch a Farsi website with detailed plans on how Iranians can recycle their wastewater. We will show how Iranian farmers can save their crops and feed their families,” Netanyahu has said.

Netanyahu has cleverly placed his hand on a truly sore spot. Because Iran is on the verge of a very real water crisis. But how convincing might his intentions be to Iranians?

“Israelis have actually sensed the danger; the danger of being annihilated because unlike about 50 years ago, today the scope of the voices against Israel has extended to the overseas… Netanyahu’s offer to help us out with the issue of water was very ridiculous. Yes, we are a water-stressed country but we can address the problem ourselves,” said Momeni Rad.

Ganji said, “If they really want to help, why don’t they help the occupied parts of Syria, which are located adjacent to Lake Tiberias?… The Iranian nation knows Israel well; the Iranian nation knows the wicked intentions behind such ridiculous offers. I assure you that even the Iranians who are discontent with some aspects of the government hate Israel and its policies in the region and such offers of help will in no way buy them a place among the Iranian nation.”

Almost all of the drinking water in the Gaza Strip is impotable because of sewage pollution or high salinity levels, and Gazans have to buy water at six times the standard rate from private enterprises.

Israel sounds terribly concerned about Iran's water situation but what about the water situation in Gaza?

“Netanyahu has imposed numerous limitations on them and deprived the women and children from water, food and health care services. People of Gaza do not even have the right to fish in their own waters. Therefore, Netanyahu’s offer of help is more like a joke; a bitter joke. Moreover, only three to four provinces of Iran are faced with the issue of water shortage,” said Anbarloui.

The Palestinian crisis began with the birth of Israel 70 years ago.

“According to the international law and its framework, the usurper Zionist regime is fake and self-claimed. Based on the article four of the United Nations Charter and also according to the Montevideo Convention of 1933, four conditions have been laid out for the formation of a government; one, land, two, nation, three, government and four, sovereignty. The question arises that how Israel can call itself a country while lacking these conditions,” said Momeni Rad.

Imam Khomeini, the father of revolutionary Iran, understood the depth of the issue. As a man of jihad, he took it to heart and called for the movement in defense of Palestine and the world's suppressed, which was again none other than the Quds Day March.

The Imam's relevant writings had two main points of focus: Resisting the great despotic powers, and aiding Palestine and standing against its usurper Israel.

Imam Khomeini, since fifty years ago, had called for a unity against the Zionist regime. He initiated a movement to free the occupied Quds even before the victory of the Islamic Revolution. The issue of Palestine is a priority for the Islamic government of Iran and we never hide our resistance against the oppression of the Israelis. We are in fact proud of our restless attempts to help Palestinians get their occupied lands back. This is totally in line with the principles of our revolution.

Jerusalem is a holy seat to all three Muslims and Jews and Christians but it has long been cause for contention rather than unity as the holy claim has been used as an excuse for expansion and power gained by war and bloodshed.

In the Middle Ages, European Christians came in on a Crusade to recover holy land from Muslims and failed; later European Jews failed in to take over from Palestinians.

And in the mid-20^th century came in European Jews under the pretext of resettling in their Promised Land. Re-settling being the key word. Half of Israel's 6 million plus Jews are from the former Soviet Union and Europe, plus Israeli-born descendants and Ashkenazi Jews. They were never entitled to re-settlement.

As the Israelis themselves claim, they have been subject to genocide in the history; however, no one is allowed to do research on the subject to see if it is false or true. Anyway, under the pretext of returning to their sacred or promised land, they were expelled to Palestine to establish a stronghold in the heart of the Islamic countries as part of the conspiracy of disintegration of Islamic countries and ruining unity among them against the West

The British Government's Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine said in 1920 that there were hardly 700,000 people living in Palestine: a population much less than that of the province of Gallilee alone in the time of Christ. Of these 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns and villages.

The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews. Four-fifths of the whole population are Muslims.

By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews.

In 1918, Imam Khomeini said that he wanted people to be assured of being Palestinian as opposed to ex-Europeans, Russians, etc, then the balance would be more fair because there were 36 thousand Jews in Palestine around that time and a nearly half a million Palestinians so that would give them a fairer result when it came to asking them how they wanted to be governed.

A Jewish takeover of Palestine didn't happen overnight. It was gradual expansion by purchasing, pushing, tempting, deceiving, coercing, and betraying, and finally waging war. All in all, it was all-round, premeditated occupation.

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