In the first year of his reign in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini instituted Quds Day (literally, Jerusalem day), a public holiday observed with rallies and calls for Israel’s destruction. To honor the occasion this year, the office of Khomeini’s successor, Ali Khamenei, released a celebratory poster advocating for a “final solution” to the problem posed by the Jewish state. Arash Azizi writes:
The 2020 poster is headlined “Palestine Will Be Free.” In a cartoonish style reminiscent of the Where’s Waldo series, it shows a group of people who have apparently conquered the courtyard of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque. The Dome of the Rock is seen in the background. The holy mosque is emblazoned with a picture of Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force who was assassinated by the Americans in January. But the most significant feature of the poster is its unmistakable subtitle: “The final solution: resistance until referendum.”
In addition to the [appalling] subtitle, other features of the poster betray Iran’s attitude to the Palestinians. There is no flag of Iran, but there are flags of Iran’s Shiite partners in the region, such as Lebanon’s Hizballah. There are large pictures of Khamenei and Khomeini, plus those of the Hizballah figures Hassan Nasrallah and Imad Mughniyeh, but hardly any images of Palestinian national figures. There is a small picture of Ahmed Yassin, a Palestinian imam and the founding figure of Hamas, assassinated by Israel in 2004. There are only three women in the picture, all wearing the Islamic hijab, and one holding a baby.
This is . . . the “free” Palestine imagined by Khamenei: inspired by Adolf Hitler, for men only, where icons of the Islamic regime of Tehran loom large without any sign of the rich repertoire of Palestinian national life.
Read more on Iran Wire: https://iranwire.com/en/features/7072