When Western activists defend theocratic murderers

A small group of protesters gathered in New York on Saturday to denounce the US-Israeli military operation against Iran. They carried signs. They chanted slogans. They demanded an end to the war.

What they did not do, not once, not ever, is march for the 30,000 Iranians massacred by their own government during the last wave of protests. 

Not for the hundreds of thousands killed, tortured and disappeared by the Islamic Republic since 1979. Not for the women beaten in the streets for refusing to wear the veil. Not for the young Iranians executed in prison for the crime of wanting to be free.

No marches for them. Just marches against the people trying to end their oppressors' reign.

This is not new. After the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023, when terrorists butchered 1,200 Israeli civilians, raped women and took hostages, the same streets of New York saw crowds rallying in support of Hamas.

Students. Activists. Waving flags for a terrorist organization that had just committed one of the most barbaric acts of the 21st century.

The pattern is consistent and revealing: every time Islamist terrorists attack, a segment of the Western left finds a way to justify, minimize or redirect the conversation toward Israel or America.

What These Protesters Are Really Saying

Let's be honest about what Saturday's demonstration represents. Whether its participants know it or not, marching against the operation that killed Khamenei and is dismantling the Islamic Republic's military apparatus is, in effect, marching for the continuation of the regime.

It is marching for the survival of a theocracy that hangs gay men from cranes, stones women for adultery, funds Hezbollah, arms Hamas, destabilizes Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, and came within reach of nuclear weapons.

These are not human rights activists. They are, at best, dangerously uninformed. At worst, they are ideologically committed to a worldview in which America and Israel are always wrong,  regardless of the facts, regardless of the victims, regardless of reality.

New York's Mayor and the Ultra-Left

It is no coincidence that these demonstrations find their most comfortable home in New York City, now led by a mayor whose political instincts place him firmly on the ultra-left of American politics and who has shown no reluctance to validate these gatherings.

A city that was attacked on September 11, 2001 by the very ideology these protesters are now indirectly defending deserves better leadership than that.

While a handful of protesters paraded through Manhattan, millions of Iranians, inside the country and in the diaspora, were celebrating. Celebrating the fall of a tyrant. Celebrating the possibility, however fragile, of a future without the Islamic Republic.

They were not marching for the mullahs. They were dancing on Khamenei's grave.

Perhaps New York's protesters should listen to the Iranian people - the actual victims - before deciding who deserves their solidarity.

Because right now, they are on the wrong side of history. And the Iranian people know it.