Gaza demonstrations in Iran draw Reformists
Iranian activists, many of them Reformists who were arrested during the 2009 post-election crackdown, show their support for Gaza independent of pro-conservative demonstrations.
Less than five years ago during the post-election protests of 2009, on the last Friday of Ramadan, known as Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), hundreds of thousands of followers of the Green Movement took to the streets of Tehran following a call to participate by the movement's political leaders, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The protest included slogans criticizing the Iranian government’s foreign policy toward Palestine and Lebanon, the most famous being: “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, my life for Iran.”
The political establishment, which had controlled the Quds Day demonstrations for the past three decades, was clearly shocked by the fact that the opposition had managed to completely take over the streets. At the time, the establishment tried very hard to accuse the supporters of the Green Movement, and their leaders, of being indifferent toward the Palestinian issue or even being pro-Israeli.
