1

Antisemitism
Made in Iran
The International Dimensions
of Al Quds Day

Published by
The American Jewish Committee Berlin Ofce
Lawrence & Lee Ramer Center for German - Jewish Relations
Leipziger Platz 15 * 10117 Berlin
Tel.: +49 (030) 22 65 94-0 * Fax: +49 (030) 22 65 94-14 * www.ajc.org
Second and slightly revised edition, June 2006

Editors:
Arne Behrensen
Sergey Lagodinsky
Udo Wolter

Translation and editing:

Toby Axelrod
Stephen Jacob
Sandra Lustig

Contents

Foreword

II

Introduction

1.

The Ideology of Hate

Islamic Unity through Enmity towards Israel? Udo Wolter
Al Quds Day and the Rise of the Islamic Reich Alireza Nourizadeh
April 2006: A New Conference Against Israel in Tehran Udo Wolter
Spelling Zionism In Tehran Reza Bayegan

8
8
10
12
13

2.

Reacting to Ahmadinejad
Arab Press and Governments React to Ahmadinejads Anti-Israeli Invective:

14

A Summary Jochen Mller, Udo Wolter.

A Response to Ahmadinejad: Questions of Strategy Walid Salem

14
16

Press Release: Statement on Ahmadinejad Iranian Dialoge Circle Berlin

18

3.

International Dimensions of Al Quds Day

Overview Arne Behrensen
Lebanon Mira Dietz
Turkey Deniz Ycel
Berlin Claudia Dantschke, Udo Wolter
London Mark Gardener
United States Yehudit Barsky

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19
20
23
25
27
29

4.

The Anti-Al Quds Campaign in Berlin

Three Years of Campaigning
Berlin Alliance against the International Al Quds Day
October 2005 Protest Call: Together against political Islam and Antisemitism!

31
31
34

Contributors

36

5.

I.

Foreword

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there have been three

cornerstones of Iranian state ideology: animosity toward
the West, the destruction of Israel and hatred toward
Jews. This publication reveals the systematic misuse of
antisemitism and anti-Western ideology by the Iranian
government to promote Iranian ambitions to become a
leading regional power. Our goal is to offer insights into
Iranian political ideology, thus explaining more fully the
clear and present danger to global security from a nuclear
armed Iran.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected as
president of Iran in 2005, has given speeches and
interviews that continue to demonstrate the continuity of
anti-Western, anti-Israeli, and antisemitic ideology in the
Iranian regime. As the essays in this book demonstrate,
President Ahmadinejads denial of the Holocaust and calls
for the destruction of Israel has its roots in the statesponsored ideology instituted by the Mullah regime.
The current political crisis in Iran is more than a conict
instigated by a single, allegedly irrational political leader.
President Ahmadinejad is not a political accident. He
is representative of a whole political generation and a
product of its ideology.
A highly illustrative example of this statesponsored ideology of hatred is the political tradition of
Al Quds (Jerusalem) Day celebrations. This holiday was
proclaimed by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 and has been
marked ever since on the last Friday of the holy month
of Ramadan by the Iranian regime and its supporters in
Teheran, Berlin, London and other cities worldwide. Year
after year, the demonstrators chant slogans coined by
the Iranian regime and its spiritual leaders calling for
the annihilation of the State of Israel. The disgraceful
international display of hatred, which until recently has
often gone unrecognized by the general public, did not
begin after Mahmoud Ahmadinejads election as Iranian
president in 2005. It has been a lynchpin of solidarity
among supporters of the Iranian regime for nearly three
decades.
Long before Ahmadinejads electoral victory, a group

of grass-root and non-prot organizations in Germany,

among them the Berlin ofce of the American Jewish
Committee, have been watching closely the growing
dissemination of hateful ideology promulgated by the
Iranian regime. In 2005, a group of concerned observers
launched the Berlin Campaign against International
Al Quds Day, to mobilize those who refuse to tolerate
antisemitism made in Iran spreading in the streets of
Berlin and other cities on Al Quds Day.
The Berlin campaign group achieved international
success in 2005 by contacting several dozen universities
and other institutions that falsely list Al Quds Day as a
religious holiday on interreligious calendars, to inform
them about the antisemitic nature of Al Quds Day. Many
of the publishers contacted, from Harvard University
to www.interfaithcalendar.org, were grateful for the
information and immediately deleted the reference.
The cooperation between the Berlin Campaign
against International Al Quds Day and the AJC Berlin
ofce resulted in the idea to chronicle at greater length
the concept, history and manifestations of an annual
propaganda event whose sole purpose is to incite hatred
against Jews.
We invited authors from capitals around the world
to report on the ways in which the Iranian regime directs
a global campaign of hate against Israel and Jews. We
would like to extend a special note of appreciation to
Berlin-based journalists Arne Behrensen and Udo Wolter
for their work on the conception, organization, and
editing of the material, to Toby Axelrod and Sandra Lustig
for their translation work and to Stephen Jacob for his
editing assistance.
In Iran, the Jewish presence has a long history
marked by a fruitful co-existence between Jews and their
Muslim neighbors. Sadly, since the ascendancy of the
autocratic regime of Iranian mullahs, the propagation of
antisemitism and hatred of Israel has become a widespread
tool in the regimes struggle to maintain power both
domestically and internationally. In doing so, the Iranian

government negates thousands of years of a rich Jewish

heritage, instrumentalizing the Palestinian cause to achieve
its own political goals.
What has also become apparent in the process of
preparing this publication is the encouraging number
of Iranians at home and abroad who actively oppose
antisemitic propaganda. Supporters of democracy within
the Iranian society and among Iranian exiles are an essential
part of the process of attaining peace in the Near East and
Mideast.
We are grateful to Arne Behrensen and Udo Wolter
for their work on the conception, organization, and editing
of the material, to journalists Toby Axelrod and Sandra
Lustig, who readily agreed to translate it on short notice, as
well as to Stephen Jacob for his editing assistance.
The information presented in Antisemitism Made in
Iran is not well-known to many readers. This brochure is
intended to create more public awareness of a campaign
of hatred that can only be stopped by uniting forces in
civil society, including politicians, non-governmental
organizations, Iranian opposition leaders, and experts on
the region. It is time to judge the Iranian regime by its
own words. It does not harbor well for the fate of peaceful
coexistence in the Mideast unless more pressure is exerted
on the Iranian government to stop waging a propaganda war
against Israel. We hope these essays will better gird all of
those dealing with Iranian partners, whether at negotiation
tables or at the soccer stadium, with the knowledge of the
ideology of hatred driving Iranian political ambitions.

Deidre Berger, Director

Sergey Lagodinsky, Advisor to the Director
The American Jewish Committee / Lawrence & Lee Ramer
Center for German - Jewish Relations
Berlin, June 11, 2006

II.

Introduction

In 2003, we formed the Berlin Alliance against the

International Al Quds Day to oppose this annual
demonstration of antisemitism in Berlin. From the
outset, our alliance has been a heterogeneous coalition
of dissident Iranians in exile, experts on Islamic ideology,
and of left-wing and civic initiatives active against
antisemitism, racism, and right-wing extremism.
Participants have included people of various political
and ethnic backgrounds with differing views on the
conict between Israelis and Palestinians. We see our
intervention against Al Quds Day as an opportunity to
set an example by bringing together and consolidating
our different perspectives and experiences in a common
ght against Islamism and antisemitism. We do not want
to be a single-issue movement against Al Quds Day, but
rather want to further critical social debate as well as civil
demonstrations on Islamism, the Iranian dictatorship, and
antisemitism. At the same time, we clearly oppose any
attempts to misrepresent or reinterpret our criticism of
the political phenomenon of Islamism as racist defamation
or discrimination against immigrants.
For the third successive year, our campaign against
the Berlin Al Quds Day got signicant public support
and gained national media attention in October 2005,
especially after Iranian president Ahmadinejad, preceding
preparations for Al Quds Day in Teheran, called for the
wiping out of Israel. With this brochure, we would like to
present our successful campaign to international readers,
and for the rst time convey a comprehensive picture
of the global Al Quds Day. We hope that our campaign
can be an impetus for similar civil alliances to develop
elsewhere. This could include but not be limited to
other cities in which Al Quds Day demonstrations take
place, such as London.
We would also like to stress the importance of
general support for Iranian dissidents and their struggle
against the brutal human rights violations of the reigning
theocracy. As you can read in this publication, some of
them protest loudly against the antisemitic propaganda
of the Iranian regime. With our initiative we want to
encourage even more of them to add their voices against

hate and in support of Israels right to exist.

We are pleased that we were able to win a number
of well-known journalists and scholars to contribute
to this publication, including Iranians in exile with
outstanding expertise on the political conditions in the
Islamic Republic.
The rst section, written by Udo Wolter, Alireza
Nourizadeh and Reza Bayegan, offers an overview of
the history of Al Quds Day in Iran, a look at how the
antisemitic propaganda of the Iranian regime functions,
and details how the Iranian dissidents reacts to it.
The following three essays offer an overview of
reactions to Ahmadinejads infamous wipe out speech
of October 2005. Jochen Mller and Udo Wolter provide
a survey of reactions from Arab governments and media.
Walid Salem, from the Center for the Dissemination
of Democracy and Community Development in East
Jerusalem, and a political group, the Iranian Dialogue
Circle in Berlin, offer a powerful and critical analysis of
Ahmadinejads speech.
After an overview by Arne Behrensen, the country
reportsby Mira Dietz from Lebanon, Udo Wolter and
Claudia Dantschke from Germany, Mark Gardner from
Great Britain and Yehudit Barsky from the United States,
as well as an article by Deniz Ycel on the situation in
Turkeyoffer insight on the international dimensions of
Al Quds Day activities.
The concluding part of the publication describes
the highlights of the three years campaign against Al
Quds Day in Berlin. It is followed by a documentation of
the 2005 Al Quds Day counter-rally.
Last but not least, we would like to express our
gratitude to the Berlin ofce of the American Jewish
Committee for its support and cooperation during our
activities, as well as for offering us the opportunity to
voice our concerns and report about our activities in the
form of this publication.

Berlin Alliance against the International Al Quds Day

Anetta Kahane, Amadeu Antonio Stiftung (Amadeu Antonio Foundation),

Claudia Dantschke and Ali Yildirim, AYPA-TV,

Siamend Hajo, Europisches Zentrum fr kurdische Studien (European Center for Kurdish Studies),

Arne Behrensen, Udo Wolter, Bndnis gegen Antisemitismus [BgA] Berlin (Berlin Association
Against Anti-Semitism),

Meggie Jahn, Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft

Berlin (German-Israeli Society, Berlin),

Gerlinde Gerber, Jugendforum der DIG Berlin

(Youth Forum of the German-Israeli Society, Berlin),

Aycan Demirel, Kreuzberger Initiative gegen Antisemitismus (Kreuzberg Initiative Against AntiSemitism, Berlin),

Ahmet Dag, Kurdistan AG in der Freien Universitt

Berlin (Kurdistan Association of the Free University of Berlin),

Hamid Nowzari, Vorstand des Vereins Iranischer

Flchtlinge in Berlin e.V. (Board of the Association
of Iranian Refugees in Berlin),

Thomas Uwer, Wadi e.V. - Verband fr Krisenhilfe

und solidarische Entwicklungszusammenarbeit
(Association for Crisis Help and Development Cooperation in Solidarity)
Donations account
for the October 2006 campaign against Al Quds Day:

Contact:
[email protected]

Acount owner: KIgA e.V

Bank name: Bank fr Sozialwirtschaft
Acount number: 332 93 00
Reason for payment: Al Quds Day 2006
IBAN: DE32100205000003329300
BIC: BFSWDE33BER

1. The Ideology of Hate

Islamic Unity through

Enmity towards Israel?
Al Quds Day and the Meaning of
Antisemitic Elements in the Ideology of Khomeini
and His Companions in Spirit
By Udo Wolter
The western press often has trivialized Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejads anti-Israeli and antisemitic tirades since October
2005 as the ideological effusiveness of a fundamentalist hardliner
or even of a lunatic of Tehran. Likewise they were interpreted as
relapses into the blind ideology of the early years of the Islamic
Republic. It is true that Ahmadinejad won the Iranian presidential
election in June 2005, above all with populist promises of justice
and afuence for the poorer population as well as with slogans
that called for a return to the original values of the Islamic
Revolution. However, it is misleading to believe that images
of Israel and the West as enemies played little or no role in the
presidency of reformer Mohammed Khatami, who preceded
Ahmadinejad. The latter merely voiced, without any diplomatic
regard, what has been ofcial state doctrine in Iran since the
Islamic Revolution of 1979, and which Khatami and others had
applied towards Western partners in dialogue. In order to put
this in the proper perspective, it is helpful to focus briey on
the meaning of Israels image as an enemy for the ideological
development of the so-called Islamic Revolution. This focus
inevitably rests upon Al Quds Day, which is celebrated annually at
the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting. It was no coincidence
that Ahmadinejad chose to launch his anti-Israeli propaganda
campaign with a conference under the motto A World without
Zionism on October 26, 2005, Al Quds Day.
Khomeini formulated his ideology largely during his
Iraqi exile in Najaf (1965 to 1978). Even then, for instance in his
key work Hokumat-e eslami (The Islamic State, 1970), all the
elements are present that one encounters in the propaganda of
the Islamic Republic of Iran to this day. In the center of the idea
of pan-Islamic unity that Khomeini formulated then is the image
of the West as an enemy, which is alleged to be an anti-Islamic
conspiracy of the powers of arrogance, with the great Satan
1

2
3

USA at its head, and Israel, allegedly the most important country,
participating in this conspiracy.1
The common Islamic identity that spans all religious schisms
and national divisions was constructed rst of all against the state
of Israel, the alleged cause of all evil and chief representative of
the enemies of Islam. Israels role continued to be emphasized,
with revolutionary rhetoric maintained even after a more
pragmatic stance came to the fore following the consolidation
of the Islamist dictatorship. This became clear, for example, when
in 1984 Khomeini emphasized the brotherhood with all Islamic
groups in the world and the global alliance with all Islamic states
against Zionism, against Israel and against the colonial powers.
His close comrade Ayatollah Montazeri dened the unity of the
word (vahdat-e kalame) thus: Every single Muslim was to be
free ... to act ... according to his own religious doctrine. (...) But
they shall be unied against the enemies of Islam, the Zionists,
America, the Soviet Union and the West.2
After the victory of the so-called Islamic Revolution,
Khomeini, who had returned to Iran from exile in Paris, proclaimed
Al-Quds Day on August 7, 1979, using the Arabic and Persian
name for Jerusalem:
I ask all the Muslims of the world and the Muslim
governments to join together to sever the hand of this usurper and
its supporters. I call on all the Muslims of the world to select as
Quds Day the last Friday in the holy month of Ramadan which is
itself a determining period and can also be the determiner of the
Palestinian peoples fate and through a ceremony demonstrating
the solidarity of Muslims world-wide, announce their support for
the legitimate rights of the Muslim people. I ask God Almighty for
the victory of the Muslims over the indels.3
Khomeini promoted the international character of Al
Quds Day as a day of political struggle against Israel and the
western powers of arrogance in several speeches following this
proclamation. At rst, propagating Al Quds Day demonstrations
internationally was part of the strategy of exporting the revolution
that Khomeini followed in the early years of the Islamic Republic.
Since then, this day is commemorated annually in Iran with mass
parades whose character is strongly reminiscent of the obligatory
mass marches in the real-socialist dictatorships of the former
East Bloc. At the mass rallies, which are staged by the government

See (on this note and the following one): Wilfried Buchta, Die iranische Schia und die islamische Wilfried Buchta, Die iranische Schia und die
islamische Einheit 1979-1996 [Iranian Shia and Islamic Unity 1979-1996], Hamburg 1997, pp. 52 et seq..
2 Ibid., p. 69.
This and further speeches and statements by Khomeini on Al Quds Day are documented in English on the home page of the Iranian government television service IRIB: www.irib.com/worldservicemam/palestin_E/10.htm

in Tehran and other Iranian cities, Israeli and American ags are
burned, and slogans like Death to Israel, Death to America,
May Israel be erased from the map, and Jerusalem is ours are
displayed on banners and chanted by demonstrators.

Antisemitism in Iranian Propaganda

Especially after Khomeinis death in 1989, under his successor
Ayatollah Khameini in the ofce of spiritual leader and under
Rafsanjani as president of the state, Irans foreign and domestic
policies were given a more pragmatic orientation that included
at least ofcially dispensing with the strategy of exporting the
revolution. Pan-Islamic appeals to the unity of Sunni and Shiite
Muslims were now to be heard mostly on special occasions like Al
Quds Day. At the same time, the rhetoric of annihilation directed
towards Israel remained as strong as ever. For instance, Khameini
declared in his speech at the Tehran Al Quds Day rally in 1999,
The existence of Israel [is] a tremendous threat for the peoples
and states of the region. (...) And there is but one way to solve the
problem in the Middle East, namely by shattering and annihilating
the Zionist state.4
The ofcial propaganda still regularly employs unambiguous
antisemitic images, for example in describing Israel as a cancerous
growth or a festering sore in the body of Islam. The singling
out of Jews as diseased alien elements in society, well known
from modern European antisemitism, was transposed here to the
Middle East conict. This reduces to absurdity the claim in Irans
ceaseless anti-Israel propaganda that Iran differentiates between
Zionists and Jews, whom one supposedly respects as adherents
to one of the three religions of the book. It is precisely the use
of these metaphors that underlines yet again the function of the
anti-Zionist/antisemitic elements in Iranian state doctrine to create
unity, as shown above. They contribute ideologically to unifying
the movements within Islam and to bridging not only the more
nationalistically determined differences between Iran and the Arab
world, but also those between Iran and the non-Islamic world. In
speaking about being victims of the Jewish-imperialist archenemy,
one can appeal also to non-Islamic countries, for example, when
trying to win potential anti-imperialist allies: The most important
and painful problem confronting the subjugated nations of the
world, both Muslim and non-Muslim, is the problem of America.
[America] exploits the oppressed people of the world by means of
the large-scale propaganda-campaigns that are coordinated for it
4

6
7

10
11

12
13

by international Zionism. By means of its hidden and treacherous

agents, it sucks the blood of the defenseless people.5
Accordingly, Khameini called Israel a rotten and dangerous
tumor6 in his speech on Al Quds Day 2000. In 2002, he accused
Arabic forces that appeared willing to negotiate with the West and
Israel of wanting to maintain this cancer [Israel] at any price. He
praised suicide attacks as deeds of martyrs and the crowning of
resistance.7
Such statements are to be heard by no means only from
the quarters of Iranian hardliners like the current president. The Al
Quds Day demonstrations are in any case supported both by the
radical wing of the Islamist regime and the so-called reformists.
For example, former state president Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who was
always considered moderate during his term of ofce and is still very
inuential, said in his address to the Al Quds rally in 2003, Israel
has no future. Those who are counting on a tumor are wrong.8 It
was also this allegedly pragmatic politician who said openly in
2002 that the use of an atomic bomb would leave nothing on
Israels soil, while the Islamic world would merely be damaged.9
Even Mohammed Khatami, who for years was held in high
esteem by European governments as a moderate politician and
partner in the so-called critical dialogue, appeared at the Al Quds
Day celebrations in Tehran in 2003 and had his picture taken with a
child on his arm who was waving a little ag with the words Death
to Israel.10 According to reports from the Iranian news agency IRNA,
he did try to strike a moderate tone in that speech.11 However, in
an interview with Swiss television, he emphasized expressly that
Israel had no right to exist.12 He already had spoken of Israel, in his
sermon on Al Quds Day in Tehran in 1998, as an old wound in the
body of Islam that cannot be healed, a wound that possesses truly
demonic, stinking and contagious blood.13
In conclusion, in all factions of the government system of
the Islamic Republic of Iran, discourse about Israel is permeated
with the same antisemitic images and stereotypes. They are used
repeatedly, with only minor variations, in the Al Quds Day addresses.
Regardless of the political outlook of representatives of the ruling
regime, from reformers to doctrinaires, enmity toward Israel is
one thing on which they all agree.

Quoted from www.islam-pure.de/imam_d/imam0003.htm (as it appeared on October 21, 2004, meanwhile the speech, for which the state-run
Iranian News Agency IRNA was quoted as source, has been removed from the site).
Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, p. 304 et seq.., cited from Klaus Holz, Die Gegenwart des Antisemitismus [Anti-Semitism Today], Hamburg 2005,
p. 104.
www.islam-pure.de/imam/imam_d/ansprachen/ansprachen2000.htm (as it appeared on June 10, 2006).
Quoted from www.islam-pure.de/imam/imam_d/ansprachen/ansprachen2002a.htm (as it appeared on June 10, 2006), see also Kntzel, loc.
cit. p. 138.
This is emphasized not least by Islamist supporters of Al Quds Day demonstrations, for example in a report on the campaigns in 2003 on the
English-language web site islam-online, which is one of the most commonly read by an international audience. The quotation by Rafsanjani is
veried there: www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-11/21/article07.shtml. (as it appeared on June 10, 2006).
Quoted from MEMRI Special Dispatch, January 3, 2002, Former Iranian President Rafsanjani on Using a Nuclear Bomb Against Israel, www.
memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Area=iran&ID=SP32502.
Source: www.intelligence.org.il/eng/bu/iran/jerusalem.htm
MEMRI Special Dispatch of November 20, 2003, Iranische Presse ber die weltweiten Aktionen zum Al Quds-Tag (Iranian Press on Global Campaigns on Al Quds Day), www.memri.de/uebersetzungen_analysen/2003_04_OND/iran_alquds_20_11_03.pdf
Journalist Richard Herzingers weblog on www.zeit.de, entry on August 6, 2004, Moderate Anti-Semite.
Quoted from Jungle World, May 29, 1998, Fundis aller Lnder, vereinigt euch! [Fundamentalists of the World, Unite!], www.nadir.org/nadir/
periodika/jungle_world/_98/05/29a.htm.

10

Al Quds Day and

the Rise of the
Islamic Reich
By Alireza Nourizadeh

At the early hours of a cold day in February 1980, a year after

the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, in the afuent north
Tehran Takhte Jamshid Avenue (now renamed as Taleghani after
a revolutionary ayatollah, where the US embassy and many of
the capitals boutiques, grand hotels and bars were located), the
passers-by were witnessing an unprecedented convoy of black
Mercedes delivering a group of young men whose faces were
covered in Palestinian scarves.
The strange veiled passengers of the diplomatic cars
entered the traditionally designed Sina hotel, which, up
until a year before, had been the most popular hangout for
Irans leading writers and poets (who would drink there until
the early hours of the morning). These were totally different
visitors than the hotel had seen since its opening a decade
earlier; the rst gure to enter through its revolving door
was Khalil Alwazir, or Abu Jihad, the second in command of
the Palestinian Liberation Organization, who was assassinated
some years later by the Israeli commandos in his residence in
Tunisia.
The entourage of Palestinians was only joining a much
larger group of the guests of Irans Ministry of Foreign Affairs
who had gathered in the hotel to attend what was to become
the annual Conference of the International Revolutionary and
Liberation Movements of the World. Later these developed
into the international conferences held in Tehran every
year, dedicated to the Palestinian cause and support of the
Intifada.14
In 1980, the conference was opened by a speech by
Mehdi Hashemi, the brother of Ayatollah Ali Montazeris
son-in-law, who delivered a ery message from the Ayatollah
Khomeini, instigating revolt and disobedience throughout the
Islamic world.
The bill for organizing the 1980 conference, around
1 million dollars, was footed by the Foreign Ministry, and
included rst class tickets and accommodations for every
single delegate, plus generous gifts of silk Persian carpets to
14
15

give a rst hand taste of Iranian hospitality.

By organizing this conference at such a time, Khomeini
was trying to assure every single Islamic movement of the
worldfrom the PLO and Egyptian militants to the Morus of
the Philippines and Fatanis of Thailandthat with him in power
they now had a powerful supporter in their bids to take over
the government in their respective countries.
However, when Abu Jihad came across a representative
of the Liberation Organization of Jazirat Al Arab (Saudi Arabia),
who was on the payroll of the Kingdom, Jihad strongly objected
to the presence of the Saudi delegation and demanded their
departure from the conference, otherwise he would leave
immediately.
As most of the revolutionary delegates derived their
credibility from their support for the Palestinian cause, they
begged Abu Jihad to stay, and unceremoniously threw out the
Saudi elements from the hall.
During the course of the conference, the Khomeini
regime committed itself to providing unwavering nancial and
military support to all the organizations whose representatives
had attended and pledged their loyalty to the Tehran regime.
The Palestinians in particular were looking to Tehran
for unlimited support, because only a couple of days after the
victory of the Islamic Revolution, the PLO leader had appeared
shoulder to shoulder alongside the Iranian revolutionary
leaders in recognition of their past help to topple the Iranian
monarchy.
However, very much like the Arab leaders, Khomeini
would not have anything less than total obedience from the
Palestinians in return for his vast nancial and military support.
So much so that when Yasser Arafat wanted to mediate between
Iran and Iraq to end their war in the early 1980s on the argument
that the conict was seriously damaging the Palestinian cause,
Khomeini had publicly told him off by suggesting that once
his army had defeated Saddams forces and captured Jerusalem,
Arafat would not be allowed to set foot in Palestine.15
Arafat had replied to the threat by telling Khomeini
through Hashemi Rafsanjani that if the Ayatollah could see a
single hair on his palm he can also see the day to capture Iraq
and free Palestine.
From then onwards Arafat fell out of favor with Khomeini
and his circle and fully sided with Saddam Hussein to the extent

For futher information on these conference see the overview following this essay.
Ed. Note: Khomeini had claimed that the Persian Gulf War between Iraq and Iran was only a rst step to liberate Jerusalem. After the victory
over Saddam, the holy Army of Jerusalem would move on to free Palestine. When Khomeini accepted United Nations Resolution 598, which set
up a cease-re with Iraq in 1989, this was a moral blowback for Khomeini himself as well as his allies like the Lebanese Hizbollah, who had built
upon these declarations.

11

that pro-Khomeini elements tried to kill the Palestinian leader on

many occasions. Arafat blamed the former Iranian Ambassador
to Syria, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, of being responsible for
some of these attempts on his life. Mohtashamipour also is called
the midwife of Hizbollah for his role in creating and funding
the pro-Iranian Hizbollah in Lebanon, as well as in creating the
Islamic Jihad and funding Hamas in Palestine itself. Today he
regards himself as a part of the reformist wing, but keeps on
organizing and leading the above-mentioned conferences for
the support of the Palestinian struggle in Tehran, where all these
groups regularly send high-ranking representatives. No wonder
that already in the late eighties Hizbollah similarly inicted heavy
losses on Palestinian ghters and leading gures of the PLO in
Lebanon during their political and military rivalries with the
Amal movement. They did so to show their loyalty to Khomeini,
whose dream of throwing the Jews of Israel into the sea was on
his mind until his death.
It was on the basis of this twisted objective that
immediately after his rise to power Khomeini named the last
Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as Al Quds Day (Jerusalem)
and instructed his supporters to advocate the destruction of the
Jewish state on the occasion.
While the Tehran regime has always referred to the Jews as
followers of the book of revelation who deserve to be respected
as a religious minority like the Christians and Zoroastrians, a
large number of Iranian Jewslike the famous merchant Habib
Elghanian, who loved his motherlandwere executed for their
religious beliefs and their wealth was conscated.
Khomeini was clearly an anti-Jewish character; and
today, Mahmood Ahmadinejad is undoubtedly following the
same ideology of his mentor. Ahmadinejad is a front for a group
of the Revolutionary Guardsthe Basijand the intelligence
service. They are the ones who paved his way to power. These
people believe that Israel is behind all evil and is pushing the
USA to attack Iran. They regard the Jews as a people who have
no preoccupation but to shed the blood of other nations; and if
given the opportunity, they will even make stews with the blood
of Muslim children.
While Al Quds Day has lost it gloss among the Iranian
people, the Tehran regime still spends around $20 million per
year to commemorate it around the world. The regime also
spends substantial sums to organize the hundreds of thousands
who attend the annual Al Quds Day rally in Tehran. In order to
mobilize the masses, Imams in the shantytowns and villages
around Tehran are contacted and organizational committees set

up days before the event. According to the requirements reported

by these committees, on Al Quds Day busses are sent to these
quarters to drive people to the rally in the center of Tehran after
the Friday prayers. The participants from the poor quarters also
receive meals and vouchers for food. So only around ten per cent
of the participants attend the rally deliberately for political or
religious reasons; the rest follow the appeals for Al Quds Day for
material reasons.
Many agree that people like Rafsanjani and Khatami are
not antisemites; they had, in fact, included Morris Motamed
the only Jewish member of the Majlisin their entourage when
visiting foreign capitals.
However, the ultra-conservative mullahs and radical leaders
of Irans Revolutionary Guards, and the Basij mobilization force
and the security organizations, just like the Nazis, regard the Jews
as unclean and undesirable people who should be exterminated
to arrive at a cleaner world for humanity.
Al Quds Day in Tehran this year was reminiscent of the
occasion during Khomeinis rule.
Images of Ariel Sharon and other Israeli leaders were burnt
in European capitals and the United States. The Iranian Jews who
have immigrated to Israel and are looking forward to returning
to their beloved motherland feel extremely scared about this new
wave of religious hatred against them.
Ahmadinejad does not make a bone of his intention that
given a chancelike the fascists and Hitlerhe would send all the
Iranian Jews to gas chambers.
The Iranian regime can only tolerate other minorities so
long as they behave as slaves to its ideological doctrine of Shiaism.
The Jews are right to fear the rise of an Islamic Reich in Iran.

12

April 2006:
A New Conference Against
Israel in Tehran
By Udo Wolter

The Iranian regime holds international conferences on the

struggle against the Zionist Enemy on a regular basis; recent
examples include: The International Conference of Support
for the Intifada and the Islamic Revolution in Palestine (24
April 2001), World Conference of Support for the Palestinian
Intifada (1-2 June 2002) and Intifada: a Step Toward Freedom
(19-21 August 2003). Attendants have included high-ranking
representatives of Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Hizbollah, as well
as delegations from mostly Islamic states and a diverse range
of activists. A common feature of all these conferences was
the rejection of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and the
praising of martyrdom operations such as suicide bombings,
as legitimate forms of resistance. High-ranking officials of
the Islamic Republic called for the annihilation of Israel often
enough at these conferences that Ahmadinejads infamous
speech at last Octobers conference World without Zionism is
hardly an exception.
Usually these conferences are planned and organized
on the direct initiative (by decree in plain English) of the
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The actual organizer
is Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, the secretary of the
Support for the Palestinian Intifada Conference Series (see also
Alireza Nourizadehs article).
Most recently the International Conference on al-Qods
(Jerusalem) and support of the rights of Palestinian people was
held from April 14-16, 2006 in Tehran. Conference Secretary
Mohtashamipour recalled that the late Imam Khomeini
declared the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as the
International Al Quds Day, while addressing the conference
participants at the mausoleum of the Founder of the Islamic
Republic. According to IRNA, Irans official news agency, the
conference was attended by 600 foreign officials, including
20 parliamentary speakers from Islamic as well as non-Islamic
countries like Zimbabwe, Cuba, Sri Lanka and Venezuela.
Palestinian representatives of nearly all political camps were
present: from the Palestinian Ambassador to Tehran and
Fatah officials, to leading figures from the Popular Front for

the Liberation of Palestine General Command, the Palestinian

Islamic Jihad, and of course Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal.
Supreme Leader Khamenei praised suicide-bombings,
directing these words to representatives of Palestinian terror
groups: The noble blood of your martyrs has hardened and
deepened your resolve and firmness. () The Jihadi groups
emerged in Palestine and Lebanon and the culture of Jihad and
martyrdom was revived as a decisive and endless source.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated that the
Zionist regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with
a storm. Ahmadinejad also referred to his former statements on
the Holocaust by claiming that there might be doubts about
the Holocaust, but there are definitely no doubts about the
Holocaust happening in recent years in Palestine. He called
the new Hamas-led Palestinian government the only legitimate
body formed in Palestine in recent years.
The speaker of the Majlis (Iranian parliament), GholamAli Haddad-Adel, in a meeting with Islamic Jihad leader
Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, also expressed his satisfaction over
Hamas victory in Palestines recent election. Shala emphasized
that Islamic Jihad would continue attacking Israel, while Khalid
Meshaal confirmed that Hamas would never accept Israel.
One of the main issues of the conference was raising
funds for the new Hamas-led Palestinian government after the
US and Europe ended their financial support. Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki, addressing the closing ceremony of the
Conference, said that Iran allocated $50 million for Palestine.
The final resolution reads: The Conference considers the Zionist
regime presently on the soil of Palestine as usurper, unfamiliar,
non-native, and foreign to the regional Arabic and Islamic fabric,
and legally and legitimately has no right of existence.
A day after the conference a suicide bomber killed 9
people in Tel Aviv in the most serious terrorist attack against
Israelis in one and a half years. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility
for the attack.
(All quotes are taken from the official Iranian news
agency IRNA, www.irna.ir/en/ )

13

Spelling Zionism in Tehran

Mahmud Ahmadinejad for saying the Holocaust was a myth, and

calls him ignorant and politically prejudiced.16

By Reza Bayegan

Yet in spite of all these strong ties and afnities between

the two nations, the Israeli government and Iranian opposition so
far have not been able to form a fruitful alliance. One important
factor contributing to this failure is a lingering hostility towards
Israel harbored by some backward forces within the Iranian
opposition.

In the late 1990s, walking one day in a poor district of southern

Tehran, I noticed a slogan on a tumbledown wall in Persian script:
Marg bar Zionism or Death to Zionism. There is of course
nothing unusual in seeing such a slogan on the wall of the capital
of the Islamic Republic. What attracted my attention however was
that the word Zionism was misspelled. The inescapable irony here
is that anti-Israeli sentiments in Iran go hand in hand with poor
education and underdevelopment.

Many members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq Organization

(MKO), who conducted a violent ght against the Shah in the years
leading to the Islamic Revolution and now are bitterly opposed
to the rulers of the Islamic Republic, were trained in Libya and
Lebanon and were brothers in arms with the PLO and other antiIsrael terrorist organizations. Their ideology, an amalgamation
of fanatical Islam and Marxismregardless of tactical shifts and
strategic alliances that they are capable of making from time to
timeis inimical to Israel and the democratic values of modern
Western civilization.17 The Mujahideens classmates in terrorist
training camps of the PLO and PFLP were the Marxist members
of Iranian Peoples Fedayeen Guerrillas. Up to this day they pride
themselves in having had the opportunity to ght the Zionist
enemyalongside their Palestinian brothers.18

The animosity of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader

of the Islamic revolution, towards Israel was part and parcel of his
hatred of what the Pahlavi dynasty stood for, that is modernization
and advancement. Initially he did not oppose the democratic
shortcomings of the political system under Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi, but did attack the Shahs plans of equal opportunity for
women, land reform and also Irans close relationship with Israel,
a country he used to refer to as a cancerous tumor. By declaring
the last Friday of Ramadan as Al Quds Day, he also aimed to
stie unique Iranian nationalistic values and bring Iranianswho
had no common aspirations with Arabsunder the broad umbrella
of the Islamic Omah or nation. Proud of their rich culture and
language, for the past 1,400 years Iranians have vigorously resisted
assimilation into the larger Arab-Islamic community.
Located in a turbulent region and threatened by the
encroachment of hostile cultures, both Iran and Israel have
many areas of common interest. For historical, geographic and
political reasons, Irans most natural ally in the whole Middle East
is the state of Israel. Beyond Israel, Iran holds the worlds oldest
Jewish community. Even after the mass migration of Jews from
Iran after the Islamic Revolution, Iran is still home to the largest
Jewish population in any Islamic country. Iranian Jews who have
migrated to Israel have prospered and hold key positions in the
government. Moshe Katsav, the President of Israel, was born in the
Iranian city of Yazd, and Shaul Mofaz, Israels Minister of Defense,
was born in Tehran. One proof of the irrepressible strength and
deep roots of the Jews within Iranian society is that the chairman
of Irans Jewish Council, Haroun Yashayaeialbeit under extreme
political pressurefeels condent enough to take to task president
16

17

18

BBC News, Feb. 11, 2006, Iran Jews express Holocaust shock:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4705246.stm
www.mojahedin.org The MEK - also known as Peoples Modjaheddin rightfully is on the US and EU list of terrorist organizations.
www.fadai.org/ and www.geocities.com/~fedaian/

An opposition to the monopoly of the hardliners has emerged

in the past decade from within the Iranian ruling establishment
in the form of the reform movement. The spiritual leader of this
movement is Mohammad Khatami, the former president. This
political force that at one point seemed quite promising turned
out to be a ash in the pan. In the June 2005 pseudo-democratic
presidential election, people voted for Ahmadinejad not because
they knew him or trusted him, but because they were totally
disgusted with the hypocrisy and incompetence of Khatami and
his political descendents. The attitude of the reformers towards
Israel is not very different from that of the hardliners.
In a recent interview reprinted by Kayhan London (23
February), Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, Irans most prominent
dissident cleric and a darling to many reformers, sharply criticized
the Islamic Republic and Mahmud Ahmadinejad on the regimes
human rights record and suppression of freedom of speech, but
went on to say that he agrees with Ahmadinejads stance on the
Holocaust. I have expressed these viewpoints myself many years
ago. Even if we assume that the Nazis slaughtered the Jews, why
should Palestinians pay the price? The state of Israel was created
by brute force and is illegitimate. Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the
so-called moderate former president, has expressed similar views.
What is obvious is that the future of Iranian politics does not

14

belong to the so-called reformist movement. Reformists lack

the credibility to galvanize public opinion for major democratic
change or offer any cogent plan for a modern pluralistic
society.
Conversely, many enlightened members of the Iranian
opposition, whose attitude represents the aspirations of the
modern, forward-looking portion of the Iranian population,
show no hesitation in categorically condemning the clerical
regimes antisemitic stance. Fighting to reclaim their homeland
as a country capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st
century, they are well aware of the great potential for future
cooperation with Israel as the most progressive and democratic
country in the region.
In preparation to this article, I managed to ask Dariush
Homayounthe veteran journalist and politician who plays
a key role in the most inuential Iranian party in exile, The
Constitutional Party of Iran19 about Ahmadinejads wild
declarations on wiping out the state of Israel. He responded by
saying:
Once another mad demagogue declared his nal
solution and got on with most of his plan. This shows that the
world should not shrug off IRIs president as just propaganda for
receptive Arab masses. He and his regime would wipe out Israel
if they could. It also should make the world more determined
to prevent the Islamic Regime from acquiring atomic weapons.
Ahmadinejad, by denying the Holocaust, is preparing the
ground for something of his own. The Iranian people, as the
longest standing friends of Israel, are outraged by such criminal
statements.
In an article called Revealing Errors,20 Abbas Milani,
the Iranian scholar and director of the Iranian Studies Program
at Stanford University, provides ample evidence to support his
argument that throughout history Iranians spared no efforts to
protect the Jews and particularly assisted them in eeing from
Nazi persecution. Strongly condemning antisemitic statements
made by Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Milani concludes his article
by saying that although the nation has been taken hostage by a
cruel dictatorship, Iranians should not be made responsible for
the conduct of their hostage takers.
In an article published in Kayhan London (23 February
2006), Abdolkarim Lahidji, an Iranian human rights lawyer who
runs the Paris-based Iranian League for Human Rights,21 refers to
the Islamic regimes antisemitism as part of the hate campaign
of the clerical regime against everyone and everything that does
not t within its narrow-minded ideology and world view.
19
20
21
22
23

www.irancpisd.com
www.iranian.com/AbbasMilani/2006/February/Black/index.html
www.ldh-france.org/
www.rezapahlavi.org/
www.rezapahlavi.org/audiovideo/fox10706.html

One of the strong voices amongst the Iranian opposition

speaking for modernity, democracy and universal values of
human rights is that of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah of
Iran.22 He advocates a total separation of religion and government
and a political system that considers no one as a second-class
citizen. In an interview with Fox News in January 2006, Reza
Pahlavi referred to Ahmadinejads comments as disgraceful
and abhorrent to the vast majority of the Iranian people. It is
quite signicant that in the same interview Reza Pahlavi goes on
to say that what Iranians desire is nothing less than modernity,
freedom and economic opportunity.23
An Iran that is economically prosperous and politically
democratic would no longer be a natural breeding ground for
fascism and fanaticism. Through a campaign of hate-mongering
and xenophobia, the regime intends to deect attention from
its own decadence and incompetence. The majority of Iranians
however are intelligent enough not to swallow what the state
controlled media is telling them, and in spite of many restrictions,
turn to the Internet and to the Farsi service of Radio Israel and
other international media for reliable information.
Like the rest of the world, Iran is not immune to the
disease of antisemitism. But today antisemitism as well as
anti-Americanism, are state policy on the part of the clerical
government. Falsication, fear and fanaticism are essential to
the survival of the Islamic Republic. To bring freedom to Iran,
one needs to make a greater effort to reach the ears and intellect
of its citizens and prepare them for the nal moment when they
can cast aside the manacles of backwardness and tyranny. On
that day of enlightenment, Zionism will not be a misspelled ugly
word on a tumbledown wall in a depressed district in Tehran,
but understood in all its dimensions by a prosperous nation
that begrudges a prosperous homeland for no other nation and
generously embraces a pluralistic and peaceful world.

15

2. Reacting to Ahmadinejad

Arab Press and Governments

React to Ahmadinejads
Anti-Israeli Invective:
A Summary.
By Udo Wolter and Jochen Mller (MEMRI)

While the anti-Israel and antisemitic comments of Iranian

President Ahmadinejad sparked outrage in Europe and the
USA, Arab governments reacted hesitantly to the speech he
delivered at a conference marking Al Quds Day. One exception
was the chief negotiator of the Palestinian Authority, Saeb
Erekat, who immediately and unmistakably condemned
Ahmadinejads statement that Israel must be wiped off the map.
This is unacceptable to us, he was quoted in the liberal Israeli
newspaper Haaretz. We have recognized the state of Israel and
we are pursuing a peace process with Israel, and ... we do not
accept the statements of the president of Iran.24 Certain political
analysts from the Middle East point out that Ahmadinejads
uncompromising stance sheds light on the differences between
Iran and other countries of the region. The former Egyptian
diplomat and foreign policy advisor Mohammed Wahbi criticized
his governments silence, suggesting Ahmadinejads statement
ruined prospects for peace in the region.25
The Arabic press, too, initially refrained from commenting.
Excerpts of Ahmadinejads speech appeared on the front page of
many Arabic newspapers without commentary. Only following
western reactions of outrage and after Ahmadinejads additional
anti-Israeli statements did some of them add remarks, sometimes
sympathetic, sometimes critical. By the end of last October, the
Egyptian state newspaper Al-Ahram was clear in its accusation,
suggesting:
[Ahmadinejad] was not thinking when he made these statements, or perhaps he was imagining that he was still in his
fanatical days of youth and not yet president of Iran... If
the Iranian president feels concerned about the Palestinian
24
25
26
27
28
29

lands, then it is best for him to withdraw from the three

islands of the Emirates that Iran has occupied for over ten
years. It is best for him to stop interfering in Iraqs internal
affairs.26
But at the same time, a lead article in the Egyptian
newspaper Al-Jumhuriyah, which is close to the government,
said the western capitals revealed, through their anger, that they
perceive the world with an Israeli eye.27 Along similar lines,
journalist Nawaf Al-Zarwa wrote the following in the Jordanian
newspaper Al-Dustour in mid-December, after Ahmadinejad
questioned the Holocaust:
Whenever someone carefully broaches the subject of Israel
or the Israeli occupation and Israels extermination war
against the Palestinians, or if a researcher, intellectual or
high level politician like the former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir and the Iranian president attempts to criticize
the measures of the Zionist state or to question the Holocaust, the American-Zionist media opens re on them and
accuses these researchers, intellectuals or politicians of racism and antisemitism.28
Some papers, while urging understanding for Irans
situation, carefully included the critical observation that
Ahmadinejads statements damaged Iranian and ultimately
Palestinian interests. The Jordanian newspaper Al-Ray, also linked
to the government, already had noted following Ahmadinejads
remarks on Al Quds Day that no one could tell whether the
Iranian presidents remarks on Israel on wiping Israel off the map
were merely a slip of the tongue or simply deliberate. Whatever the
case, Ahmadinejads remarks have caused an additional problem
for Iran.29 In much clearer apologetic undertones, columnist
Abdul Wahab Badrakhan wrote in the London-based newspaper
Al-Hayat:
Undoubtedly, Ahmedinejads statement that Israel is like a
cancer, after he called for wiping it off from the map, in
addition to his proposal to transfer it to Germany or Austria,
provokes the American-European West, which spent the
last ve decades covering up for Israels crimes and offering all support to illegal and inhumane violations used to
implant Israel in the middle of the Arab region. After the
Arabs stopped ghting it and even stopped condemning its
existence, the Iranians extract slogans, considered outdated
and obsolete, to remind the Westand Israel that the historical facts are not what they portray and work hard to estab-

PAs Erekat: Irans anti-Israel statement is unacceptable, Haaretz, 27.10.2006.

Arthur Max, Arab States Mum on Irans Israel Remarks, Associated Press, 27. October 2005.
Arab press torn on Ahmadinejad call, BBC News, 30. October 2005.
Supra.
Al-Dustour, 14.12.2005.
See footnote 3.

16

lish. () Ahmedinejads statements might deserve Western

condemnation, but it is difficult for the Arabs to endorse
this condemnation even if they did not line up in support
of the IranianPresident. 30
Ahmadinejads statements on the Holocaust rekindled
the debate about how this issue is viewed in Arabic lands, where
many commentators take relativist positions or put such positions
on an equal basis with scholarly knowledge. An example is the
comment of Zain Al-Abidin Al-Rukabi in the newspaper AlSharq Al-Awsat that the Holocaust is an historical fact, which
nevertheless is marked by countless additions, embellishments,
exaggerations and that Israel makes use of and instrumentalizes
it in a nasty and racist manner.31
One of the most well-known and renowned Arabic
journalists, Hazem Saghieh, opposed this widespread tendency
in the newspaper Al-Hayat with a remarkable critique:
Most importantly, the culture of denying the holocaust
has grown to occupy a dominant position in the public
Arab and Islamic life. Although the issue was about to
come to an end and be confined to narrow margins that
gather utter fanaticism with utter retardation, the heavy
poisoned Iranian rain blew on us and was welcomed, quite
avidly, by the eager Arab deserts.

The issue is now no longer restricted to narrow margins. The reason is that [Ahmadi]nejad, regretfully and
painfully, is the President of the Republic elected bymillions of Iranians...Ushered by some writings of the former
Syrian Defense Minister Mustapha Tlas, or some letters and
instructions of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri,
the library of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah abounds
with long excerpts drawn from Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, The Jewish Peril, and other yellow pages intermingled
with mythical visions about martyrdom and graves...

The ailment is swelling up from the heart of the
societies to the decision makers therein. It is not a coincidence that the elements of the bloc spreading and
disseminating the above mentioned ideas are those
same elements who promise us salvation from occupations and darkness to a brighter and more glowing
horizon. It is also not a coincidence that the same bloc
represents an anti-modern sensitivity... 32
Detailed excerpts from these and other Arabic media on this theme
can be found at www.memri.de in:
MEMRI Special Dispatch - Die Holocaust-Debatte in den arabischen
Medien [The Holocaust Debate in Arabic Media], January 4, 2006.
MEMRI Special Dispatch - Arabische Reaktionen auf Ahmadinejad,
[Arabic reactions to Ahmadinejad], December 12, 2005.
MEMRI Special Dispatch - Arabische Stimmen zum UN-HolocaustGedenktag [Arabic Views on the UN Holocaust Memorial Day], November 23, 2005.

A Response to Ahmadinejad:
Questions of Strategy
By Walid Salem

Personally, as a Palestinian working responsibly for the last

thirty-one years, including five years in prison as a political
prisoner, it is very difficult for me to continue as if nothing
has happened when hearing a President of an Islamic State
returning to the 1960s and 1970s slogans calling for the
elimination of Israel. At that period, these were the slogans
of the Arab nationalist movements (and also the Palestinian
armed Marxist organizations). Today, these slogans have become
Islamist political propaganda resurrected by the Iranians and
different political movements that use Islam as their announced
ideology.
The dangers of such slogans lie not only in their role
in incitement, but also in the fact that they express a lack of
strategic vision about the following issue, which also relates to
post-disengagement issues in Palestine, namely: How do we deal
with the so-called Jewish question in the Israeli-Palestinian
and also in the Israeli-Arab/Islamic context?
The first point in this regard is the question of the Jewish
question itself: Do we in the Middle East ask ourselves about
this question? With the exception of a book written a few years
ago by the Lebanese journalist Joseph Samahah, I have not seen
other Arabic writings that recognize the Jewish question, not
only as a European question, but also as an Arabic/Islamic one.
The second point is built onto the first: if the Jewish
question is recognized, then its phenomena should be discussed.
In this regard, very frank questions need to be asked: Were the
rights of the Jews throughout the ages guaranteed in Arabic
and Islamic countries? If the answer to this question is yes, then
why did the Jews of these countries emigrate to Israel? Was it
only Zionist propaganda? If it was only Zionist propaganda that
led to the migration to Israel, then why do at least a portion of
those who came to Israel from the Arabic and Islamic countries
adopt right-wing positions towards the Palestinians and Arabs?
Moreover, what have Arabs and Islamic countries done in order
to maintain good relations with these Jews after they migrated
to Israel? These questions need frank answers; and if we continue

Al-Hayat, 12.12.2005

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 24.12.2005.
32

Al-Hayat, 24.12.2005; see also Zvi Barel, After
`poisoned Iranian rain, Haaretz, January 1, 2006.
30
31

17

justifying oversights, the results will only be further deterioration

in the Israeli/Palestinian and Israeli/Middle Eastern relations.
My third point centers on the strategy towards Israel.
Do Ahmadinejad and others of his ilk think that this kind of
propaganda helps Palestinians? Do they, on the other hand, help
Israel to integrate in the Middle East? Or does their attitude just
help to increase those trends that call for Israel to be part of the
West and to disconnect itself with Eastern culture and ties, except
those ties of hegemony and dominance? Do such statements help
bring peace to the Middle East, or more hatred and violence and
proliferation of nuclear weapons? Does Ahmadinejad hope to use
these weapons in order to eliminate Israel? Moreover, does he
realize that an Israeli response might bring about the elimination
of Iran and probably other Middle Eastern countries? Why are we
giving momentum to militarization and a proliferation of weapons
of mass destruction instead of peace? What kinds of strategies are
these? What do they say about our leaders?
The fourth point regards our roles in solving the Jewish
question. Of course the greater part of this problem was created
in Europe, but as the Jewish State was established in the Middle
East, it falls upon us to answer the question: Will we accept the
challenge of integrating Israel into the area? Alternatively, do
we want to create new problems just because we do not bear
the responsibility of creating the original problem? Even if the
creation of Israel was not our direct responsibility, it is still our
overall humanitarian responsibility to find a common solution
to the Jewish question rather than to resolve the suffering
emanating from the establishment of Israel by causing anguish
for the Jewish people! These are issues that Ahmadinejad did not
think of because his very blind strategy does not acknowledge the
humanity of the opposing side.
The fifth point ponders whether these actions reflect Islam.
Is this the tolerant Islam that all average citizens know, the Islam
that recognizes the other? Is this the Islam that promotes equal
rights for all people whatever their religion, color, gender, etc.?
These blind ideologies have nothing to do with Islam. They only
create the opposite of what Islam stands for: they create hatred
out of religious differences and thereby religious wars.
On all of the above points, moderate Muslims are called upon
to raise their voices. Moderate Muslims must be vociferous against
blind strategies, and instead should call for a real and intensive
discussion about the Jewish question and about Israels position
in the Middle East. Without such deep and fruitful discussion, the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict will not be completely solved.

The article was published first November 1, 2005 at MidEastWeb

for Coexistence www.mideastweb.org and republished on
November 8 in the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star.
copyright 2005 by Walid Salem and MidEastWeb for Coexistence
- reprinted by permission

18

Press Release: Statement

on Ahmadinejad
By the Iranian Dialog Circle in Berlin
(Iranischer Dialogkreis Berlin)

The statements of Ahmadinejad also deserve condemnation

because so many Jews of Iranian background live in the State
of Israel today. They have become more influential in recent
years. Witness the fact that Moshe Katzav, born in Iran, became
president of Israel. Likewise, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was
born in Iran. The influence of Iranian-born Jews also is seen in
the cultural world. One outstanding example is the writer Dorit
Rabiniyan, a winner of the Jewish Book Award, whose novels
deal with themes of Jewish life in Iran. Another is the popular
singer Rita, whose repertoire always includes Persian songs.

We are appalled by the statements of our President

Ahmadinejad about the state of Israel and the Holocaust. Even
if we are critical of some political developments in Israel, we
find the repeated statements of Ahmadinejad unacceptable and
shocking.

Numerous associations of Jews with Persian roots serve

to nurture the culture of their former homeland. Furthermore,
Iranian culture is part of the academic curriculum at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, represented by an internationally
renowned faculty.

Therefore, we, the members of the Iranian Dialog Circle

that has been involved for years with transmitting Iranian culture
and politics in Berlin, distance ourselves fully from all antiSemitic and inhumane statements of the Iranian government. The
statements of Iranian officials do not at all represent the opinion
of the majority of Iranians, and rather distract attention from
the manifold examples of positive relations between Iranians and
Jews. For centuries, Jews have lived in Iran and have contributed
enormously to the culture of the country. The connection goes
back to biblical times. The Persian Kyros made it possible for
the Jews exiled to Babylon to return to their homeland and to
rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. He was even referred to in the
Bible as Gods Messiah (Isaiah 45,1). The Babylonian Talmud
also bears witness to the close relationship between Jews and
Iranians. The works of Jewish poets of the Middle Ages, such as
Shahin Shirazi or Imrani, are part of classical Persian literature.
In the past century, when Jews were exposed to so much hostility
and persecution, Jewish Iranians were able to live undisturbed in
their homeland. For the most part this remains the case today,
demonstrated by the fact that despite a rapid decrease in the
Jewish population since the 1979 Revolution, Irans Jewish
community remains the largest in any Islamic country. Jews
are not only present in Iranian public life, but they participate
actively in interfaith dialog within Iran. Basic texts of the Jewish
faith, such as the Ethics of the Fathers (Pirke Avot), or works of
Jewish philosophers such as Martin Buber, have been translated
into Farsi and are available in Iranian bookstores. This makes it
even more regrettable that the irresponsible utterances of the
Iranian president once again disseminate worldwide a one-sided
image of the Iranian people.

We believe that it is exactly this strong presence of Jewish

Iranians and the nurturing of Iranian culture in Israel that offers
an opportunity to affirm friendly ties between Jews and Iranians,
independent of political relations between the State of Israel
and Iran. We thus urge Iranian officials to revise their hostile
attitude towards Jews around the world, and hope that positive
relations between Iranians and Jews will continue to develop.
Kambiz Behbahani, journalist
Iranian Dialog Circle, Berlin
Berlin Dec. 14, 2005
First published in German on December 15, 2005 in the News
and Community Portal www.iran-now.net

19

3. International Dimensions of Al Quds Day

Overview
By Arne Behrensen

The hegemonic claim of Khomeinis Islamist ideology is universal,

which is why events are held around the world each year on
Al Quds Day. Whether this day of antisemitic propaganda is
commemorated in a given country, by whom and in what manner,
depends on the specic national context.33
One of the most likely factors that determine the form
and extent of Al Quds activities is the proportion of the Shiite
Muslims in the overall population. In Muslim countries with a
Sunni majority, Shiites are often subjected to greater social and
political exclusion and more frequent violent attacks. It was these
Shiites in other countries that the Shiite regime in Iran wanted
to inuence with its strategy of exporting the revolution.
Accordingly, demonstrations are now held on Al Quds Day in
cities in Pakistan34, Bahrain35, and since 2003 in Iraq36 as well. But
Irans most successful example of exporting the revolution is the
formation and rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon. For this reason, the
following country reports will begin with an essay from Beirut.
The next essay on Turkey demonstrates that the Al Quds
organizers are not always exclusively Shiite Muslims linked to the
Iranian regime, but occasionally originate from other political and
religious groups.
Demonstrations to mark Al Quds Day in Western countries
are compared to Teheran and Beirut relatively small and for the
most part organized and attended by Shiite Islamists loyal to the
ideology of Khomeini. The reports from Great Britain, Germany
and the USA analyze the local organizational structures behind
the Al Quds events and the various forms of their activities. It is
33

34

35

36
37
38

39
40
41

worth mentioning that similar actions also take place in other

Western cities, such as Toronto, Canada37.
What is remarkable about International Al Quds Day is that
the people who are supposed to benet from its propaganda do
not hold demonstrations themselves. There have been no reported
demonstrations in the Palestinian Territories in the past few years.
There was, however, a joint Al Quds Day statement in 2003 by the
Sunni Hamas (which is descended ideologically from the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood) and the smaller Islamic Jihad (which looks to
the ideological heritage of Khomeini and is massively supported by
Iran). According to a media report these two terror organizations
announced that there would be more suicide attacks: The real
conict arena, for those who wish for Jihad and martyrdom, was in
Al Quds, Palestine and the occupied Arab lands, which witness the
daily shedding of Mujahideen blood, the statement concluded.38
Unlike in the Palestinian Territories, Al Quds Day rallies and
demonstrations are held by Islamist organizations every year in
countries in South and Southeast Asia, such as Bangladesh39 and
Indonesia40.
Demonstrations in African countries, especially in South
Africa and Nigeria, deserve a closer examination. In South Africa,
demonstrations on Al Quds Day are regularly held in Cape Town.
As Islamist websites proudly reported, after the 9/11 attacks,
thousands of people from various ethnic and religious backgrounds
attended a Palestine Solidarity March to the local U.S. Embassy
on Al Quds Day in December 2001. Only 300 people took part in
the demonstration on the following Al Quds Day in November
2002, but the march was led by children disguised as suicide
bombers or armed Hizbullah ghters. As the demonstration took
place less than twenty-four hours after the Al-Qaeda killing of
fteen tourists (three of them from Israel) in Kenya, this march in
Cape Town was met with a storm of criticism in the South African
press.41 In South Africa, the demonstrations are also organized by
a Khomeinist organization supported by Iran. The South African
Qibla Movement was formed in the 1980s and propagated the
aims of the Islamic revolution in Iran within the anti-Apartheid

An afrmative overview of international activities marking Al Quds Day is given by Mansoor Limba: Imam Khomeinis International Quds Day:
From Street Marches to Cyber-Demonstrations, (Paper presented at the International Conference on Imam Khomeinis Thoughts in the View of
World Thinkers, Tehran, June 1-2, 2004), www.geocities.com/icpikw/cyberquds.html.
Bush threat to world peace: speakers: Al Quds Day observed in twin cities, in: Dawn The Internet Edition, November 22, 2003, www.dawn.
com/2003/11/22/nat2.htm.
Bahreinis Hold Quds Day Rally, Al Jazeera online, 29. Oktober 2005, www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2005%20News%20Archives/
October/29%20n/Bahrainis%20Hold%20Quds%20Day%20Rally.htm.
www.intelligence.org.il/eng/bu/iran/je_apb.htm.
www.cpcml.ca/Tmld2001/TMLD228.htm#6.
The Palestinian Information Center Daily News: Hamas-Islamic Jihad issue joint statement on Quds Day, Nov. 22, 2003, www.palestine-info.
co.uk/am/publish/article_3348.shtml.
www.jafariyanews.com/nov2k2/30_bangla.htm.
www.tempo.co.id/hg/nasional/2003/11/22/brk,20031122-01,uk.html.
Outrage as suicide bombers hit Cape Town, in: Independent Online, 29.11.2002,
www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=6&art_id=ct20021129214338612B5162757&set_id=1.

20

movement.42 The Qibla sees the struggle against Israel as a

continuation of the South African struggle against Apartheid an
idea that gured prominently in the Iranian regimes anti Israel
propaganda for many years, but also shared worldwide by other
political and religious groupings, as became especially obvious
during the massive anti-Israeli and antisemitic disturbances at
the UN Anti-Racism Conference in Durban, South Africa.43
In Nigeria, Al Quds Day demonstrations take place each
year in the Northern federal states where the population is
predominantly Muslim. Because of the disputed introduction of
the Sharia in some of these states, there have repeatedly been
bloody confrontations between Muslims and Christians in the past
few years, which have led to many deaths. Among the competing
Muslim organizations in Northern Nigeria, the militant Muslim
Brotherhood led by Ibrahim Al-Zakzaky, a follower of Khomeini,
is the main sponsor of the Al Quds Day activities.44 In 1999,
according to the organizers, up to a million people demonstrated
in Zaria on Al Quds Day.45 Al-Zakzakys Muslim Brotherhood
is thus one of the few examples of movements inspired by
Khomeini that also manage to attract large numbers of Sunnis.
Again in late October 2005, 25.000 people supposedly attended
the Al Quds Day demonstration in the Northern Nigerian city
of Kano, which would mean that the demonstration in Nigeria
to mark this global antisemitic propaganda day was the largest
after those in Iran and Lebanon.46
The following reports focus on a number of important countries. It is essential to keep in mind that the actual scope of Al
Quds Day activities goes far beyond these regional examples.

42

43

44

45
46
47
48

49

50

Lebanon
By Mira Dietz

The problem is that many people in Lebanon forget that Israel

exists. Or they dont want to know. Or they do not see Israel as
an enemy, a threat, and a danger. Thats why they only talk about
Syria.47 Hassan Nasrallah, General Secretary of Hizbullah, could
hardly have given a clearer explanation of the importance of Al
Quds Day in Lebanon for the party. The event is meant to turn
attention toward Jerusalem, which according to Hizbullah is
to be liberated from Israeli occupation as the third holiest city
of Islam.
Particularly since Syria has come under harsh criticism in
connection with the investigation of the assassination of former
Lebanese Prime Minister Rak Hariri in February 2005, Hizbullah
is deeply invested in clarifying the existential difference between
the Syrian brotherland and the eternal enemy, Israel.
On Al Quds Day we renew our vow regarding Jerusalem,
its people, its cause and its Imam: it will remain in our
consciousness, our concern, our struggle and our goal.48 With
such statements, Nasrallah makes it clear that Hizbullahs goal
is not only to retrieve Lebanese prisoners from Israeli jails and
bring the Israeli occupation of the Shebaa farms to an end.
(Hizbullah as well as the Syrian government continue to claim
that this small region belongs to Lebanon, even if the UN has
refuted this claim, so that the farms can be contested only as a
part of the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel.) Rather, to
this day the Party sees its task as eradicating Israel and bringing
Jerusalem under Arab-Muslim control.49 Al Quds Day serves as
a high point of its antisemitic ideology.50 With and beyond this
ideology, the Party addresses its own members, the Lebanese
people and their government as well as the countries of the
region and international political powers.

Concerning the attempt of the Qibla Movement to gain inuence among the Moslems of South Africa, cf.: Annelie Botha: PAGAD: A Case Study
of Radical Islam in South Africa, in: The Jamestown Foundation: Volume 3, Issue 17 (September 8, 2005), www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/
article.php?articleid=2369781.
An overview on South African anti-Zionism and its relation to the struggle against Apartheid gives the anti-Zionist activist Naeem Jeenah:
Palestinian Solidarity in South Africa, 2001, http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/religion/IE/institutes/institutes_JSR_Ms_Palestinian_.html.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Nigeria (www.islamicmovement.org/) should not be confused with the Sunni Moslem Brotherhood in Arab countries.
Shedrack Best: Nigeria: The Islamist Challenge: the Nigerian Shiite Movement, in: Monique Mekenkamp, Paul van Tongeren, Hans
van de Veen: Searching for Peace in Africa - An Overview of Conflict Prevention and Management Activities, 1999,
www.conict-prevention.net/page.php?id=40&formid=73&action=show&surveyid=1#author
Short Report by the London Islamic Human Rights Commission: www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=458.
www.dawn.com/2005/10/29/int2.htm.
Hassan Nasrallah in an interview on the Lebanese station New TV on January 18, 2006.
Conclusion of the speech by Hassan Nasrallah on Al Quds Day 2005, printed in the Lebanese daily
newspaper Al-Sar on October 29, 2005.
Amal Saad Ghorayeb points out that this goal is explained both in religious and Arab-nationalist terms
(Amal Saad Ghorayeb: Hizbullah. Politics and Religion, London: Pluto Press, 2002, p. 161et seqq.).
See Ester Webman, Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizballah and Hamas, Project for the Study of Antisemitism, Tel Aviv University, http://
ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=51. Contrary to rumors, the Hizbullah denied any involvement in a conference of Holocaust deniers
planned for Beirut in March 2001. But on the other hand, Mohammed Raad, then head of the Hizbullah parliamentary faction, told the Lebanese
newspaper The Daily Star that the content of the conference was completely in accord with the Party (The Daily Star, March 24, 2001. Regarding
the conference, which in the end was banned by the Lebanese government, see also Gtz Nordbruch: An attempt to internationalize the denial of
the Holocaust, in: International Center for the Study of Antisemitism,Annual Report, Jerusalem, 2001, p. 9-11).

21

Demonstration of Military Strength

With thousands of uniformed militia (including children),
battalions marching in lockstep, and demonstrations of special
units showing off their military training with rappelling exercises
all this against a backdrop prepared for days in advance, with an
extremely efcient system for maintaining order that sends men
and women into the observer stands and only permits residents
in the surrounding buildings Al Quds Day in Beirut in 2005,
as in the previous years, is a perfect demonstration of military
strength. It is so perfect that it hardly matters that none of these
ghters carries a weapon. This was not always the case; in 1994,
the Party ran into problems when the Lebanese Security Council
decided that armed demonstrations were illegal. Today, with their
unarmed military rallies, the Hizbullah underscores its claim that
weapons are to be used only in the struggle against Israel and are
not aimed at the Lebanese.
It is not only the thousands of Hizbullah members present,
bussed in from across the country, who are supposed to be impressed
with their organizations show of strength: the demonstration
is oriented just as much toward the politicians in attendance
and toward the television viewers (the festive proceedings are
broadcast worldwide live via satellite over the Hizbullah channel
Al-Manar for hours, while other Lebanese channels report about it
fully in the evening news). Usually, the Iranian Ambassador is not
the only dignitary sitting beside General Secretary Nasrallah on
the tribune on Al Quds Day. He is also anked by representatives
of the Lebanese president, the prime minister and the president of
the parliament as well as representatives of the most important
parties, the army and security forces. The variety lends the event
a non-partisan character. The fact that in 2005 neither Prime
Minister Fuad Siniora nor the party of Hariris son Saad which
is in conict with Hizbullah over its position toward Syria sent
representatives to the event held in the Shiite outskirts of Beirut
was immediately seen as a political statement. Whoever attends Al
Quds Day, the most important annual demonstration by Hizbullah,
testies at the very least to his respect for the Party, which is a
powerful force on the plane of domestic politics, too. Since the
parliamentary elections of June 2005, Hizbullah also has been
involved in the government; but with its pro-Syrian stance, the
party frequently takes positions explicitly opposed to the other
governmental powers.

Keynote Address for Supporters and Opponents

Standing behind bulletproof glass and wearing his black turban,
Hassan Nasrallah, General Secretary of Hizbullah since 1992,
cannot be missed. Nasrallah, who carries the title Sayyed,
51
52

Al-Sar, October 29, 2005.

Al-Hayat, November 6, 2005.

suggesting he is a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad,

embellishes his long speech with broad gestures. Facing him,
standing on the highway that bears the name of his son Hadi
killed in 1997 in a skirmish with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon
are thousands of supporters who hang on his every word. The
people drink up this speech of the Sayyed; they are convinced by
his words and remember them. They adopt his words as their own.
() The population, convinced of the injustice in the world, listens
to Sayyed, who gives them strength, pride and security, writes
the pro-Syrian Newspaper Al-Sar.51 In fact, Al Quds Day not
only serves to strengthen Party followers in the ideology of their
struggle against Israel and martyrdom and to provide them with
an intoxicating communal experience; the mass rally on the last
Friday of the month of Ramadan is also an opportunity to take a
stand on questions of national and international politics. In his
speech, Nasrallah wastes no time linking his positions on current
events (such as the death of Yassir Arafat in 2004, the UN reports
on the implementation of UN Resolution 1559, and the murder of
Rak Hariri one year later) with the obligatory conspiracy theories
of resistance against Israel.
The Lebanese media follows these statements closely; the
speech is reprinted virtually in its entirety and is commented upon
in the following days by politicians of all stripes. In the eyes of
the public, Hizbullahs domestic and foreign policy positions are
hardly uncontroversial, even though Hizbullah liberated southern
Lebanon from Israeli occupation in 2000 with its terror campaign
in the name of national resistance. And Shiite supporters are not
the only ones who give the movement credit on this point.
But many Lebanese are just as angry about Hizbullahs
insistence on its right to be armed (as the only militia not required
to give up its weapons after the Civil War, in reference to the
Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon), and with its insistence
on placing the insignicant Shebaa farm territory under Lebanese
supervision, as they are with Hizbullahs repeated military
provocations against Israel.

A controversial political player

What did and do the Hizbullah demonstrators shout? Death
to America! and Death to Israel! In other words: Death to us.
() It has become clear that Israel is not the only danger for the
region, its inhabitants, its souls, its property and its afuence.
We are opposing something else entirely: stupidity, paired with
high aspirations. We want to prevent the realization of their plans
and the plans of their supporters.52 These comments of Lebanese
journalist Dalal al-Bizri in the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat
reect the opinion of a growing number of her fellow citizens.

22

Al-Bizri points out that Hizbullah itself, which so vehemently

protests American inuence in Lebanon, is steered by powerful
forces from abroad, namely Iran.
In his speeches on Al Quds Day, Nasrallah always refers
to Khomeini as the creator of this day; and in fact, Irans
deployment of Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon in 1982 was
not the countrys only act of decisive inuence on the founding
of the Party. To this day, Iran supports Hizbullah politically and
nancially.53 The model of the Islamic state remains another
reference for Hizbullah, even if it has insinuated for several
years that such a state cannot be established in Lebanon at the
moment.

Al Quds Day programs worldwide, and to disseminate images

of these events via its television station Al-Manar. Hizbullahs
antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric as well as its militant terrorist
activities represent worldwide the ostensibly successful national
and Islamist resistance against Israel. With its annually repeated
call to demonstrate, Hizbullah gains an international following
that can serve as a lobby against international pressure to
disarm (intensied with UN Resolution 1559). Jerusalem Day
has become Hizbullah Day.

The aggressive and antisemitic statements of Iranian

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who was elected in 2005,
represent the ideology of the Party of God even if its General
Secretary, in his speech on Al Quds Day, does not touch the
subject out of fear of international protest. But Nasrallah did
not miss the opportunity to meet with Ahmadinejad in January
2006 on the Iranian presidents rst ofcial visit to Damascus.
Many Lebanese saw the provocations by the world
champion of negationist theories in all categories54, as
Ahmadinejad was described in the Lebanese daily newspaper
LOrient-Le Jour, just as critically as they did Hizbullahs
demonstrations of power on Al Quds Day. True, there is a broad
anti-Israel consensus in Lebanese society. Antisemitism is rarely
criticized in Lebanese media. But increasingly, voices are heard
favoring a pragmatic relationship with the neighbor to the south.
In a commentary on Al Quds Day 2005, Ghassan Tueni, publisher
of the largest Lebanese daily newspaper, Al-Nahar, argued
expressly for stationing the Lebanese Army on the border with
Israel that is, in the very region whose military protection
laid the foundation for Hizbullahs interdenominational and
non-partisan reputation. This Greek Orthodox journalist thus
indirectly questioned the legitimacy of the Party of God. In his
commentary, he refers to the religious signicance of Jerusalem
for Christians, too, and expresses the hope that the citys divine
inspiration would lead all Parties of God to become godfearing.55
Yet, while many now look upon the Hizbullah and its
staged Al Quds Day in Lebanon with suspicion, the mobilization
of the Party has become a motivating reference elsewhere in the
region. Al Quds Day in 2005 was celebrated in Palestinian refugee
camps of Lebanon and Syria, as it was in Bahrain or Damascus,
where demonstrators also protested international pressure on
Syria. Among the partys active tasks abroad is to help organize
53

54
55

According to western diplomats in Beirut, the Hizbullah receives about $100 million annually from Iran (International Crisis Group: Lebanon: Managing the Gathering Storm. Middle East Report N 48, December 2005, p. 16).
LOrient-Le Jour on Ahmadinejad, January 20, 2006.
Al-Nahar, October 28, 2005.

23

Turkey
By Deniz Ycel

The Turks largest worry is certainly not the existence of the State
of Israel. In contrast to people in many other Islamic countries,
Turks do not blame Israel or Zionism summarily for every
problem. This has less to do with Turkeys relationship to Israel
than with its relationship to the Arab world. Since the Kemalist
revolution in the 1920s, Turkey has oriented itself towards the
West; and more importantly, modern Turkey developed particularly
by emphasizing its differences from the Arab world. It is not that
the Israeli-Palestinian conict does not interest anybody, or that
people do not sympathize with Palestinians. Rather, the issue
does not mobilize large masses of people in Turkey or unify all of
Turkeys political forces.
However, it would be incorrect to conclude that antisemitism
does not exist in Turkey. In the early phase of the Republic, Turkish
Jews were suspected of disloyalty, as were members of all other
ethnic or religious minorities; in the 1930s and 1940s, a poll
tax on non-Muslims as well as occasional pogroms induced a
large part of Turkish Jewry to emigrate to Israel. In antisemitic
discourse in Turkey, the State of Israel also took the place of socalled International Jewry, and Turkish leftists joined with the
Islamist and extreme nationalist spectrum in putting the battle
against Zionism on their agenda. But these developments are
more readily comparable to those in European countries than to
those in Arab ones.
The specically Turkish variety of antisemitism in turn
the paranoia about converted Jews who, camouaged as Muslims,
allegedly control both state and society has nothing to do
with Israel. Even for political Islam, which began to form in the
late 1960s with Necmettin Erbakans Milli Gr movement (out
of which the Refah Party later developed), the subject of Israel
always held a less prominent place on the agenda than did other
topics such as the earlier battle against communism, followed
by the ght against head scarves ban in state institutions.
All this explains why Al Quds Day did not nd greater
resonance in Turkey or in Turkish communities across Europe.
Nonetheless, once an Al Quds Day did cause a furor in Turkey:
on January 31, 1997, Bekir Yldz (of Erbakans Refah Party),
mayor of Sincan, a small town in the Ankara district, staged a

Jerusalem Night. He praised the Islamic headscarf as a banner

of honor, while Muhammed Riza Bagheri, Irans Ambassador to
Turkey, appealed to the audience of about 500 to ght against
Israel and the US and recommended introducing Sharia Law in
Turkey. Afterward, a play about the oppression of the Palestinians
was performed.
This event was to be the end of the rule of Erbakan, who,
thanks to a coalition of his Refah Party with Tansu illers True
Path Party, had become prime minister in June 1996 and had
sought a reorientation of foreign policy. His rst trips abroad were
to Islamic countries, including Iran. The army brass, who consider
themselves the custodians of Kemalism, had been waiting for just
such an opportunity as the one in Sincan as an excuse to push
out Erbakan, whom they despised. On the morning of February 4,
1997, tanks drove through Sincan; the threat of a coup was not
to be misunderstood.
What incensed the Turkish public was not the call for
Israels annihilation, but the play, which was seen as an incitement
to rebellion. And the public was angry about the presence of the
Iranian ambassador as well as the Hizbullah and Hamas ags that
decorated the auditorium. This was believed to be the ultimate
proof that foreign countries controlled Erbakans government.
Soon afterward, the army coerced Erbakan to resign; then his
party was banned.
The second generation of Milli Gr functionaries
associated with the current Prime-Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoan
learned their lessons from the events of February 1997. From
then on, they pursued policies of moderation and supported
closer ties to the European Union, hoping this tactic would
reduce the inuence of the military. After separating from the
Erbakan wing, Erdoans new Party for Justice and Development
(AKP) won the parliamentary elections in late 2002, and his rst
trips abroad were to Western European states.
If and when Al Quds Day was commemorated in the
years after the events in Sincan, the known organizers came
from circles outside of Milli Gr, especially people associated
with the magazines Kuds (Jerusalem) und Haksz (Word of
God, or Word of the Law), as well as the website kudusyolu.
com, all of which serve as platforms for radical Islamist,
antisemitic and anti-American authors, and are independent of
individual organizations. The goals of Kuds and Haksz include
uniting Muslims in the struggle against Israel and the USA, and
overcoming the traditional discrepancies between Sunni and
Shiite Muslims.
One of the prominent gures in this spectrum is Ahmet

24

Varol, a columnist of the inammatory Islamist daily Vakit

(banned in Germany since early 2005) for which Selahaddin
E akrgil, also editor-in-chief of Haksz, also writes. Another
prominent gure is Nureddin irin, who was sentenced to a
long prison term in 1997 because of his role in the events of
Sincan and his membership in the Turkish spin-off of Hizbullah.
Burhan Kavuncu is also in this circle. Like many other cadres
of the right-wing extremist Gray Wolves, he turned away from
Turkish ethnic nationalism in the 1980s. While most of those
listed above at that time supported the program of a TurkishIslamic synthesis, Kavuncu went further with a small group
of like-minded people. They then considered themselves antinationalistic followers of a universal political Islam, with the
Islamic Republic of Iran as their model. The most conspicuous
gure, however, is Hakan Albayrak, a young writer and
journalist, once a rebellious leftist intellectual, who, impressed
by the Bosnian war, turned to political Islam. Finally, Yaln
Iyer (a.k.a. Cumali Hoca) should be named; living in Essen,
Germany, he is imam of that citys Verein fr kulturelle Dienste
am Menschen (Society for Cultural Services to Mankind).
The Internet portal haksoz.net leads to Germany as
well: its domain is registered in Duisburg. While kudusyolu.com
is reserved for its own writers, haksoz.net presents itself as a
politically broad-based portal, featuring texts by leftist and
left-liberal authors from Turkey and other countries.
The power of this spectrum to mobilize, however, is
limited. For instance, in October 2005 only a few hundred people
took part in the demonstrations on Al Quds Day in Istanbul
and the Kurdish town of Batman; and beyond the Islamist
propaganda, the Turkish media did not take note of them. The
event in Istanbul, where Kavuncu, Varol and irin spoke, was
organized by the Al Aqsa Society for Help, Solidarity, Education
and Culture (Aksader), and the one in Batman by the Society
for the Right to Free Thinking and Education (zgr-Der). Both
organizations belong to the spectrum around Haksz.
The organizers avoided any mention of the Iranian origin
of Al Quds Day, since Turkish Islamists learned from the events
in Sincan that the link between Al Quds Day and Iran could be
dangerous. However, there is no evidence that the circle around
Haksz, Kuds and Vakit are guided by Iran in contrast to
the Turkish subsidiary of Hizbullah, which was founded by Iran
in the 1980s, and then inltrated by the Turkish intelligence
service. At the end of the 1990s (some say, after it had fullled
its role in ghting against the PKK), it was broken up along
with the other militant Islamic organizations. This, however,
did not stop remnants of these groups from carrying out the

terrorist attacks of November 2003 in Istanbul in cooperation

with Al Qaeda.
When it comes to Turkish Islamists in Germany, those
who seize on Al Quds Day also follow an Islamist antiimperialist strategy and thereby aim to create coalitions with
decidedly anti-American leftists. According to the moderate
Islamist daily newspaper Yeni afak, Selahaddin E akrgil
(who writes for Vakit, as mentioned above) spoke at an Al
Quds Day event in Cologne in October 2005 alongside
Wilhelm Langthaler, the speaker of the Antiimperialistische
Koordination (Anti-imperialist Coordination) from Vienna,
which considers itself as part of the left. Also involved were the
Duisberg-based Organisation fr die Wrde und Rechte des
Menschen (Organization for the Dignity and Rights of Man),
which is counted as part of the radical wing of Milli Gr,
and the multilingual Internet portal mizan.de, which is close
to Haksz.
The most important Al Quds Days in Germany in recent
years, however, took place in Berlin. The Turkish born brothers
Yavuz and Grhan zouz, who run the Internet portal muslimmarkt.de, played an important role. This Internet portal is a
good example of a European Islamism formed independently
of Islamist organizations in the countries of origin. All of the
texts on muslim-markt.de are in German; Islamic services
of all kinds are offered, even a matchmaking service; and
application forms are available for parents who want their
daughters released from swimming instruction at school. We
are fundamentalist Islamists in Germany is the title of a book
that the brothers zouz have published, and one might add
that these are German Islamists, and as such the campaign
against Israel is an important eld of agitation for them.
But the Al Quds Day events also have helped trigger a
long overdue debate on antisemitism among Turkish immigrants
in Germany. On the occasion of the Berlin demonstrations, but
also after the attacks on the Istanbul synagogues, representatives
of Turkish organizations as well as private individuals spoke out
against the antisemitism found in Turkish society. Still, as the
considerable success of the feature lm Valley of the Wolves
showed recently, much remains to be done.

25

Berlin
By Claudia Dantschke and Udo Wolter

In keeping with the instructions of Ayatollah Khomeini, Al Quds

Day demonstrations have been held in Germany since the 1980s.
Little is known about the origins of these events, other than the fact
that they were organized from the outset by individuals connected
with the Shiite Hizbullah. Until 1995, the main German Al Quds
Day demonstration usually took place in Bonn; in 1996, the event
moved to Berlin. 56
The Islamic Center of Hamburg (Islamisches Zentrum
Hamburg - IZH) has always played a major role in organizing
the Berlin Al Quds Day demonstrations. This is where the strands
of local Hizbullah subsidiaries come together with the Iranian
Ayatollahs. According to the Hamburg Ofce for the Protection
of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz Hamburg), the IZH and its
related Imam-Ali Mosque are steered and nanced by the Iranian
government, and the centers director is appointed directly by the
religious leader Khamenei.57 Even a quite benevolent investigation
by the Institute for Ethnic Studies (Institut fr Volkskunde) of the
University of Hamburg determined that among Iranians living in
Hamburg, this institution is feared by individuals and groups from
the left-wing and liberal spectrum as the long arm of the Islamic
Republic. 58
This concern is underscored by the fact that according to the
Berlin District Court in the so-called Mykonos case Kazem Darabi
who was behind the assassination of four Kurdish-Iranian exiled
politicians in 1992 in Berlin also frequented the IZH. According to
the Federal Ofce for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt
fr Verfassungsschutz), this Hizbullah functionary and agent
of the Iranian government also organized the Bonn Al Quds Day
demonstrations in the early 1990s. As a head of the Iranian Union
of Islamic Students in Europe (U.I.S.A.), an organization loyal to the
regime, Darabi also played an important role linking the Hizbullah
in Germany to the Islamic Republic of Iran.59 As early as in 1998,
during the Al Quds Day demonstration in Berlin, U.I.S.A. yers were
56

57

58

59

60

61
62

distributed to passers-by and to the press from the loudspeaker

van. Since then, it appears that the U.I.S.A. has refrained from such
publicity acts.
In recent years, the IZH increasingly has tried to present a
more moderate image, oriented towards religious tolerance and a
dialog of cultures and all references to Al Quds Day activities
have been removed from the German language Internet site. Instead,
the IZH participates in the annual nationwide Day of the Open
Mosque and has become a recognized center for interfaith dialog in
Hamburg. Even high-level representatives of the Protestant regional
church and the Hamburg Jewish community make appearances in
the IZH.60 Following the terror attacks in London and Sharm elSheikh in July 2005, the current director and Imam of the IZH,
Ayatollah Ghaemmaghami, delivered a religious opinion (Fatwa),
in which he stated unequivocally that, according to Islamic law
(Sharia), all forms of terrorism and the killing of innocent people
are prohibited.61
Nevertheless, the IZH remains connected to the organizers
of Al Quds Day in Berlin, both in content and in structure. While
the march no longer is headed by the directorship of the IZH, it
did organize the possibility for members to travel by bus to Al
Quds Day in Berlin in 2005, according to the Hamburg Senate.62
Moreover, the Berlin Senate Department of the Interior conrmed
the close connection between the IZH and the organizers of the
demonstration:
One of the two registrants for last years [2003] demonstration
is a member of the board of the Islamic Cultural Association for
Iranians in Berlin-Brandenburg, Inc (Islamische Kulturgemeinde
der Iraner in Berlin-Brandenburg e.V.). There are obviously close
connections between the association, founded on May 20, 2003,
and the IZH connections that follow from the associations
statutes. In fact, IZH also owns the property where the association
is headquartered and in its new Persian-language internet site,
the IZH itself mentions its connection to the association based in
Berlin-Tempelhof.63 According to the Berlin Senate Department of
the Interior, the same members of the association registered the Al
Quds Day demonstration on October 29, 2005.64
The dominant status of the IHZ and its inuence far beyond
Berlin institutions of Arab, Turkish, and Iranian Shiites results from

The organizers have presented photo documentation in the Internet of the Al Quds Days in Berlin since 1999: www.islamischer-weg.de/demos/
qudstag.htm
See Landesamt fr Verfassungsschutz: Fhrungswechsel im Islamischen Zentrum Hamburg
[Ofce for the Protection of the Constitution: Leadership change in the Islamic Center of Hamburg], January 20, 2004, source: http://fhh.
hamburg.de/stadt/Aktuell/behoerden/inneres/landesamt-fuer-verfassungsschutz/archiv/archiv-2004/fuehrungswechsel-izh-artikel.html.
Karin Hesse-Lehmann, Die Imam-Ali-Moschee an der Hamburger Auenalster. Ihr Einuss auf das interkulturelle Zusammenleben. Ein Forschungsbericht [The Imam-Ali Mosque on the Hamburg Auenalster Lake. Its inuence on inter-cultural coexistence. A research report], source: www.
uni-hamburg.de/Wiss/FB/09/VolkskuI/Texte/Vokus/2002-22/moschee.html
Archiv fr Forschung und Dokumentation Iran-Berlin e.V., Verein iranischer Flchtlinge in Berlin e.V. (Hg.), Mykonos-Urteil in der Strafsache
gegen Amin und andere wegen Mordes und Beihilfe zum Mord [Archive for Research and Documentation Iran-Berlin Inc., Association of Iranian
Refugees in Berlin Inc. (Eds.), Mykonos decision in the criminal proceeding against Amin and others on charges of murder and aiding and abetting murder], Berlin 1998, p. 207 et seq.
Further prominent guest speakers in recent years included Professor Udo Steinbach, head of the German Orient Institute; Protestant theologian Dorothee Slle; writer Luise Rinser; Jewish theologian Pinchas Lapide; the late politician of the German Green Party, Petra Kelly; and the
former mayor of Bremen Henning Scherf.
www.presseportal.de/story.htx?nr=706370&rmaid=58953.
Hamburg State and Municipal Parliament [Brgerschaft der freien und Hansestadt Hamburg], Document 18 / 3074: Written request of the
members of Parliament Nebahat Gl, Antje Mller and Dr. Till Steffen (GAL), October 26, 2005 and response of the Senate.

26

its connection to the Iran-based Ahl-ul-Bayt World Gathering.65

This internationally active Iranian NGO is directly supervised by
Ayatollah Khamenei.66 According to its own website, its goals
are the development and promotion of cultural, economic and
social conditions of the successors of Ahl-ul-Bayt67 as well as
the unication of Islamic nations to resist various conspiracies
and courses of actions of globally arrogant powers.68 According to
experts and constitutional protection authorities, the organization
is better described as a religious network for spreading Khomeinis
Islamist ideology. The German center of the Ahl-ul-Bayt World
Gathering is according to its own statement the IZH.69
For years, the Delmenhorst-based brothers Grhan and
Yavuz zoguz have fullled an important networking and bridging
function between the IZH, and various Shiite communities and
Hizbullah subsidiaries on one hand, and other Muslim and nonMuslim supporters of the antisemitic message of Al Quds Day on
the other. They regularly show up in headlines as avowed followers
of the spiritual leader of the Islamist Iranian dictatorship, Ayatollah
Khamenei, and the Lebanese terror organization Hizbullah.70 With
their Internet portals islamischer-weg.de, islam-pure.de and
especially muslim-markt.de, they call for participation in the
Al Quds Day demonstration, and also provide the appropriate
ideological arsenal, including numerous writings of the Ayatollah
Khomeini, his successor Khamenei, as well as other leading gures
of the Islamic Revolution. They have dedicated two categories on
their website muslim-markt.de to ceaseless agitation against the
existence of Israel: Boycott Israel and Palestine Special. Here,
prepared demonstration slogans can be downloaded, which rhyme
in German: Is the world blind and deaf? Israel means murder and
robbery!; Is the world deaf and dumb? Israel murders children,
and so on.71
For years, the zoguz brothers have come to the
Berlin demonstration with their association, Islamic Path Inc.,
Delmenhorst, to support the brothers and sisters in publicly
presenting the prepared mottos and statements as well as in an
organizational sense.

63
64

65
66
67
68
69
70

71

72
73

74

75

That the efforts of the zoguz brothers and their Shiite

allies also found acceptance among Sunni Islamists became clear
at the Al Quds Day in December 2000, when more than 2,000
demonstrators72 on the Kurfrstendamm in Berlin-Charlottenburg
called for the liberation of Palestine and the holy city of
Jerusalem. One year later, after 9/11, the march was diverted to
Kreuzberg and its organizers were clearly anxious to make any
Hizbullah ags disappear. In November 2002 the activists returned
to the Kurfrstendamm with renewed condence, repeating old
familiar slogans (Death to Israel, Death to the USA). This time, the
rallys closing address was delivered by the Berlin correspondent of
Iranian state television, IRIB.
Since 2003, a moderate tone has prevailed, primarily due
to a counter-campaign started that year by a broad coalition of
civil society groups (see reports about the campaign in the next
session), and the ensuing critical media attention. In addition, strict
conditions placed on the demonstrators by the Berlin authorities
contributed to the moderation. Participants at the 2005 Al Quds
Day demonstration were explicitly forbidden to refer to the
antisemitic tirades of the new Iranian President Ahmadinejad in
an afrmative manner on their posters or slogans.
Because the demonstration organizers clearly had little
condence in their own clienteles preparedness to show restraint,
since 2003 the event has been a silent protest. Numerous patrols
take strict care that the demonstration guidelines are observed.
Meanwhile, the number of demonstrators has shrunk from
1,100 in 2003 to 400 in 2005, while the event is dominated by
Khomeini-loyal Berlin Shiites with their local networking gure
Yakup Kilic73, a musician and employee of the cultural department
of the Iranian Embassy in Berlin, as well as representatives of the
Imam-Riza Mosque74 of Berlin-Neuklln. Concerning the general
character of the demonstration, where marchers are strictly divided
by gender, nothing has changed. As always, they carry numerous
photos of Khomeini, Khamenei and other dignitaries of the Iranian
regime. The Berlin daily newspaper Tagesspiegel was justied in
commenting, Their loudspeaker is in Tehran; they demonstrate
around the world, including in Berlin, for all those who fanatically
cry: Liberate Jerusalem, destroy Israel!75

www.izhamburg.com/user/farsi/viewcenter.asp?id=133. Read on February 5, 2006; see also: www.ikib.net.

House of Representatives Berlin, Document 15 / 11 864: Written request of the member of Parliament zcan Mutlu (Bndnis 90/Die Grnen /
Green Party), September 17, 2004 and response; on the continuity of the registrants through 2005, see Document 15 / 12 872: Written request
of the member of Parliament zcan Mutlu (Bndnis 90/Die Grnen / Green Party) October 6, 2005 and response.
www.ahl-ul-bait.org/english/ABOUT-US/index.htm.
www.iranexpert.com/2003/iraqishiite18march.htm.
Ahl-ul-Bayt: literally house of the prophet, here intended as the party followers of Ali (SchiatAli).
www.ahl-ul-bait.org/english/ABOUT-US/index.htm.
www.ahl-ul-bayt.org/english/english.htm: Institutes & Centers Europe Germany Islamic Centre Hamburg.
Yassin Musharbash, Mit zwei Klicks per Internet direkt zur Hisbullah [With two clicks on the Internet, direct to Hisbullah], die tageszeitung,
August 17, 2002.
Several even more explicit slogans, such as Zionisten sind Faschisten / Tten Kinder und Zivilisten [Zionists are fascists/ they kill children and
civilians]; Zionisten wolln die Welt / Kaufen mit geklautem Geld [Zionists want to buy the world / with stolen money] have in the meantime
been removed from the muslim-markt website because of the weight of public and governmental pressure on the provider.
Other observers have estimated the total at up to 3,000.
www.intizar.de as well as www.irankultur.com, domain owner query on February 27, 2006:
Owner Contact: Yakup Kilic, Embassy of I R Iran, Drakestr. 9 b, Berlin, Germany, D-12205, Germany.
What Iran-loyal Islamists could no longer achieve on Al Quds Day 2005, they were able to accomplish in the winter of 2006 regarding the affair
of the Mohammad caricatures. On February 11, 2006, exactly the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, they called for a demonstration
in front of the Danish Embassy in Berlin. Directed by Yakup Kilic and the Imam of the Imam-Riza Mosque, Sabahattin Trkyilmaz,
some 700 Muslim women and men of various religious and political orientations condemned the defamation of Islam.
Lorenz Maroldt, Al Quds-Tag: Das ist uns nicht gleichgltig, [Al Quds Day: Its not all the same to us]
Tagesspiegel, October 29, 2005.

27

London
By Mark Gardner

Speakers Corner, at the edge of Londons Hyde Park, traditionally

has symbolized the British commitment to freedom of speech. Every
Sunday, a bewildering assortment of speakers delivers the diatribe
of their choice, often to the bemusement or anger of passers-by
and tourists. It is, therefore, only tting that this also should serve as
the starting point for Londons annual Al Quds Day demonstration,
when Central London witnesses a street theatre that has more in
common with Tehran or Beirut than it does with red double-decker
buses, Christmas shoppers, and unarmed London bobbies.
The innovative minds website provides the most detailed
coverage of recent Al Quds Day rallies.76 It also shows the milieu
and broader worldview of the London rally activists, featuring
pro-Islamist and anti-Western campaigns, and advertisements
promoting pro-Khomenite memorabilia. Press releases after the
rally stated that thousands had attended, but it is very likely that
the actual attendance was under one thousand, as it has been for
a number years. A much wider than usual array of Islamist groups
supported the 2000 rally; but the number of attendees showed
no particular rise.77 The 2004 rally had been notable for a counter
demonstration of the Alliance of Iranian students in London and
Supporters of the Pro-Democracy Movement in Iran; there was no
similar protest in 2005.78
As in other countries, the London rally attendees appear to
be drawn predominantly from the local Iranian Shia community
and divide according to sex and seniority. Nevertheless, the
demonstrators at the 30 October 2005 rally were promised speeches
from a cosmopolitan array of speakers, including Yvonne Ridley,
Azzam Tamimi and Rabbi Ahron Cohen of Neturei Karta.79 This mix
reects alliances in London between different strands of Islamist
activism, and the eagerness of the ultra-orthodox, anti-Zionist
Jewish sect Neturei Karta to share a platform with those who would
destroy Israel.
Yvonne Ridley is a former Fleet Street journalist who
converted to Islam after being taken hostage in Afghanistan in 2001.
She is now an impassioned public advocate of the international
Islamist cause. Azzam Tamimi has been the spokesman of the Sunni

76
77
78

79
80
81
82
83

Muslim Association of Britain, a pro-Muslim Brotherhood group

that sprang to prominence after its alliance with leftist movements
in Britains anti-Iraq War movement. He has admitted to advising
the Hamas leadership, and has publicly praised Hamas suicide
bombings.
Rabbi Cohens speech on the 2005 Al Quds Day rally can
be heard on the website of Neturei Karta, subtitled Jews United
Against Zionism.80 Cohens conclusion begins with the words, We
want to tell the world, especially our Arab neighbors, that there
is no hatred or animosity between Arab and Jew. [] It was only
the advent of the Zionists and Zionism which upset this age old
relationship. Cohens speech is also given emphasis on the website
report of the Muslim Association of Britain81, which states, The
crowd made clear distinctions between Jews and Zionists, yelling,
Judaism: Here to stay; Zionism: No way! The denial of antisemitism
is a key tactic for Britains increasingly media-savvy Islamists, and
is also benecial for their partners on the revolutionary left, in
particular those who support George Galloways Respect Party. It
is, however, the opposite of the current antisemitic trajectory being
pursued by the organizers of the somewhat more signicant Al
Quds rallies in Iran and Lebanon.
The Al Quds Day organizers in London describe themselves
as the Justice for Palestine Committee, but it is the Islamic Human
Rights Commission (IHRC), and its head, Massoud Shadjareh, that
appear to be the main driving forces behind the event. The IHRC
now represents the British wing of the Khomenite tradition, an
international network seen in publications such as the originally
Toronto-based English language magazine, Crescent International.82
In earlier years, the rally was organized by the United Islamic
Students Association, a pro-Iranian student group that is now
relatively inactive in the UK.83
The IHRCs skilled use of the language of western human
rights has facilitated its legitimization as a Muslim lobbying
group.84 This is premised upon the tactic of dissimulation whereby
the cause of Islam is furthered by the tempering of its message to
suit prevailing local conditions.
Nevertheless, the IHRCs very name gives the game away:
This is the Islamic Human Rights Commission, precisely because
it campaigns for Islamic rights, rather than for human rights as
dened by the United Nations. This position was made explicit by
Shadjareh in an IHRC newsletter in 2000: Human Rights are the
new criterion by which the West considers itself to be civilised
and all others as barbaric () Throughout the Wests history their

www.inminds.co.uk.
For the supporters of the 2000 rally see: www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=94.
On the 2004 counter rally: www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=11&d=06&a=7. Motivated by the counter campaign in Berlin, there were critical observers of the 2005 London rally on the blog Harrys Place: http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/10/26/khomeinist_propaganda_there_and_here.php.
www.inminds.co.uk/quds2005-poster.jpg.
www.nkusa.org/activities/Demonstrations/2005Oct30London.cfm.
www.mabonline.info/english/modules.php?name=News&le=article&sid=571.
www.islamicthought.org/icit-crescent.html.
www.uisaeurope.com/isauk/isauk.htm, see also previous article on Berlin.

28

opponent has remained the same: Islam and Islamic universality.

The newsletter continues to explain how the Western idea for
universal human rights, proposed by a leading Zionist, provides
an idea of human rights that is the direct opposite of how they
would be dened in Islam.85
The real politics of Al Quds Day have not deterred a handful
of would-be suitors of both left - and right - wing persuasions
from occasionally joining the march, but this has only been a
minor feature.86
Study of the rhetoric, combined with analysis of the
personal, ideological, and organizational links of the London Al
Quds Day organizers provides a valuable insight into much of the
British Jihadi spectrum, and in particular its willingness to work
across sectarian and ideological divides.
The IHRC grew out of the Muslim Parliament, which was
a briey successful attempt by the pro-Khomenite body, the
Muslim Institute, to further its attempts at patronage over British
Muslims. The Institutes and Parliaments leader, Kalim Siddiqui,
had gained notoriety as the man who advised Ayatollah Khomeini
to place the death fatwa on British writer Salman Rushdie.
Since Kalim Siddiquis death in 1996 the Parliament is now led
by Ghayasuddin Siddiqui (no relation to Kalim Siddiqui), who,
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and again after the 7th July 2005
London bombings, renounced his own past rhetoric as having
been divisive and dangerous. Siddiqui had dismissed Shadjareh
from his chairmanship of the Muslim Parliaments Human Rights
Committee, and from his other Parliament posts, in 1997, citing
negligence and mismanagement. This was the catalyst for
Shadjarehs founding of the IHRC, in which he continued to
perform publicly many of his previous activities.87
Given their image as a human rights group, it may not
be surprising that the IHRC opposes British and American antiterrorism legislation; the IHRCs opposition, however, is based in
part on the belief that Britain and America may be deserving
targets for terrorism, so any attack on a British or American
target should not necessarily be declared illegal. An IHRC paper
called Legislating Against Terror or Breaking Dissent?, authored
by the Muslim journalist and IHRC advisor Faisal Bodi, declared
such attacks would only be an exercise of the right to selfdetermination or self defence against western hegemony.88

84
85
86

87

88

89
90

91

The IHRCs belief in the legitimacy of Islamist terrorism is

the basis of its campaigning for arrested or convicted Prisoners
of Faith to be released from prisons around the world. The best
known of these is Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, imprisoned in New
York for plotting a series of terrorist atrocities across the city. He
is closely linked to the group that rst bombed the World Trade
Center in 1993. Shadjarehs most recent defense of a Jihadi was
that of the notorious Abu Hamza al Masri, whom a London court
sentenced in February 2006 to seven years imprisonment for
incitement to murder.
In London, Iranian President Ahmadinejads call for the
destruction of Israel was criticized by Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw, and sparked a demonstration outside the Iranian Embassy
by 250 Jews and Christian friends of Israel. 89 Shadjareh criticized
Straws reaction at the Al Quds Day rally, claiming that Israel had
destroyed 400 Palestinian villages without protest from Britain.
The IHRC itself does not engage in the type of outright
Holocaust denial that has provoked widespread concerns about
President Ahmadinejads extremism. Its attitude to the Holocaust,
however, is to use it as a stick with which to beat Israel.
In January 2001, the group criticized the UKs rst
Holocaust Memorial Day on the basis that it did not commemorate
the Israeli Holocaust against Palestinians.90
Shadjareh drew heavily upon the Holocaust in his comments
about the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed that had
sparked rioting and deaths in the Muslim world in early 2006.
He warned that their re-publication had exceeded anything done
against the Jews in 1930s Europe, and warned that it presaged
systematic violence against Muslims.91
This summarizes the underlying fears of the Al Quds Day
demonstration participants in London in 2005. The open hatred
was of course directed against Zionists, Israel and the USA, yet this
was a demonstration that also went to great lengths to assert that
not all Jews are Zionists, and that Zionists should not be confused
with Jews. Its propaganda and its world view, however, remain
infused by conspiracy theories that owe far more to the notorious
antisemitic hoax of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion than they
do to Zionism as it is understood and known by practically every
Jew: with the exception of Neturei Karta.

For IHRCs campaigns like the annual Islamophobia Award see www.ihrc.org/.
Massoud Shadjareh: Human Rights, Justice & Muslims in the Modern World, 7. May 2000, www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=10.
In May 1988, two British far Right organisers from the political soldiers National Front splinter group were photographed on the
rally. The Innovative Minds website also shows activists from Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism on a previous rally.
For the history of the Muslim Institute until 1998, his successor, the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, and their differences with Ghayasuddin Siddiquis Muslim Parliament see www.islamicthought.org/mi-intro.html and www.muslimparliament.org.
uk/history.htm.
Faisal Bodi: Legislating Against Terror or Breaking Dissent? National Anti-Terrorism Laws 1998 2001, August 2001, www.ihrc.org.uk/le/
01durbanTerrorism.pdf
Jewish News 12/01/06.
IHRC press release, 25/01/01: Holocaust Victims Forgotten United Kingdom remembers one holocaust, ignores the rest, www.
ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id = 84.
Shadjareh was quoted on the Mohammed Cartoons by the Scotsman newspaper on February 5, 2006: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id =183562006

29

United States
By Yehudit Barsky

Ideological supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic

Republic of Iran in the United States have adhered to the Iranian
political observance known as the Worldwide Day of Al Quds
(Jerusalem) since its introduction in 1979. Public demonstrations
marking its observance have been promoted by the Iranian regime
among Shi`a communities in the United States and throughout the
world in its continuing efforts to export its Islamic Revolution.
Since the early 1980s, mosques and Islamic centers
throughout the U.S. were funded by the Iranian government
controlled Mostazafan Foundation in New York, now known as the
Alavi Foundation. According to former FBI counterterrorism chief
Oliver Revell, US ofcials have concluded that the Foundation is
closely linked to Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards,92 which are
considered responsible for the establishment of the Hizbullah
terrorist organization in Lebanon. A number of the mosques that
received funding from the Foundation openly espoused support
for Khomeini and the Tehran regime and have participated as cosponsors of Al Quds Day demonstrations.
In the United States, the pro-Iran organization that has
traditionally organized Al Quds Day is the Muslim Students
Association-Persian Speaking Group (MSA-PSG), which is also
known as Anjoman Islami. In testimony before the Senate
Appropriations Committee on Commerce, Justice, State and the
Judiciary Subcommittee in 1999, then FBI Director Louis Freeh
described Anjoman Islami as consisting of pro-Iran students who
serve as a resource to the regime in Tehran:
There are still signicant numbers of Iranian students
attending United States universities and technical institutions.
A signicant number of these students are hard-core members
of the pro-Iranian student organization known as the Anjoman
Islami, which is comprised almost exclusively of fanatical, antiAmerican, Iranian Shiite Muslims. The Iranian Government relies
heavily upon these students studying in the United States for lowlevel intelligence and technical expertise. However, the Anjoman
Islami also represents a signicant resource base upon which the
government of Iran can draw to maintain the capability to mount
operations against the United States, if it so decides.93
Throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s, the group
92
93

94
95

96

97

coordinated demonstrations across the United States to

commemorate the Ayatollah Khomeinis Worldwide Day of Al
Quds. As was done in the Middle East, the demonstrations would
take place on the last Friday of the Muslim month of Ramadan each
year. The Worldwide Day of Al Quds became the largest public
manifestation of pro-Khomeini activity in the United States.
Over the past two decades, material distributed by the MSAPSG overtly expressed support for the global Islamic revolution.
One of several prominent examples was the 1989 leaet entitled
Demonstrations of the Worldwide Day of Al Quds concluding with
a statement that supported acts of violence that were legitimized
as military initiatives against Zionist usurpers, that is, Israel: We
endorse and support the Islamic military and political initiatives
against the Zionist usurpers.94
This was illustrated with a picture of the Al-Aqsa Mosque
in Jerusalem superimposed over a map of Palestine covered with
barbed wire and prison bars in the shape of a six-pointed Star of
David, symbolic of Israel. The corners of the star were depicted as
having been broken and dripping with blood.
The 1989 demonstration cosponsors included representatives
from different sectors of the Muslim community: Council for Muslim
Unity, the MSA-PSG, United Muslim Women Association Muslim
Group, Detroit branch, Tawheed Association, Islamic International
Development Association, United Michigan Muslim Association,
Azari Students Association and the Islamic Cultural Society (ISFS).
Like many other radical Islamic organizations, the MSA-PSG
began to use the Internet to organize its followers in the 1990s.
Flyers for demonstrations that were held throughout North America
were posted in a special section on the organizations web site.95
The 1998 Worldwide Day of Al Quds was observed in
Washington, D.C.; Dearborn, Michigan; Seattle, Washington; and
Toronto and Montreal, Canada. The national yer for the day quoted
the Ayatollah Khomeini: To liberate Quds (Jerusalem) Muslims must
depend on the power of Islam. The day of Quds is a day when all
Muslims must concentrate on Islam.96
Slogans that were chanted during the demonstration
included: Islamic RevolutionIs the Only Solution, Quds Is a
Muslim LandIts Return We Demand, Zionism Is Racism, and an
expression of loyalty to Irans Supreme Islamic Guide, `Ali Khamene`i:
Our Leader Khamene`i Long Live Khamene`i.97
Organizations that cosponsored the local events included
the Washington, D.C. Quds Committee, which provided as contact
information telephone numbers for Bahram Nahidian, a longtime

U.S. keeps close tabs on Muslim cleric, Washington Post, January 1, 2003, www.hvk.org/articles/0103/51.html.
Prepared Statement of Louis J. Freeh, Director Federal Bureau of Investigation, before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary Subcommittee, February 4, 1999, Federal News Service, February 4, 1999.
Worldwide Day of Al Quds flyer, May 5, 1989.
Worldwide Day of Al Quds flyer for rallies in US cities on January 15, 1999; originally on the MSA-PSG Quds Day website,,www.
msapsg.org/quds, now only at http://web.archive.org/web/20030902131038/www.msapsg.org/Quds/quds99/images/fquds99.pdf.
Download Quds flyers, originally on the MSA-PSG website; www.msapsg.org/flyers.html, PDF document titled qudsall-1.pdf.
Some MSA-PSG documents on Al Quds Day 1998 and 1999 still at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000304214036/www.msapsg.org/archive.html
Ibid., PDF document slogan98.pdf.

30

pro-Khomeini activist in Potomac, Maryland, and the Manassas

Mosque in Virginia.98 In Michigan, the organizers were listed as
the Michigan Quds Committee, and in Seattle two mosques, the
Islamic Center of Portland and the Islamic Center of Seattle, were
co-sponsors of the event.99
In recent years, proponents of Al Quds Day have been
focusing their efforts on mobilizing extremist Sunni Muslims
and other supporters of the Palestinian cause to participate in
Al Quds Day. In the US, the Islamic Association for Palestine,
an organization linked to the Hamas terror organization, also
promoted and participated in the observance of Al Quds Day.
Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that
heightened concerns over Islamic extremist activity in Western
countries, pro-Iran organizations organizing Al Quds Day
have attempted to obfuscate the origins and meaning of the
observance by altering the rhetoric, slogans and chants used at
the demonstrations to focus on Palestinian rights and to play
down connections to Iran.
In recent years Al Quds Day demonstrations in the U.S. have
become much smaller. It is hard to know exactly what happened
since there is no information on what happened inside the MSAPSG. Unfortunately, there was no movement to isolate Islamic
extremists within Islamic communities; rather the extremists have
been portraying themselves as moderates.
Several hundred demonstrators participated in the 2002
demonstration in Houston, Texas that was organized under the
name Worldwide Movement for Justice and Peace (WMJP).
Participants chanted, Long Live Palestine and Death to Israel,
and the slogan chanted by American antiwar protestors, No
justice, no peace.100 Only some dozens of supporters participated
in the 2004 demonstration held in Dearborn, Michigan,101 and a
Rally for the Liberation of Palestine was organized by the WMJP
on Al Quds Day at Houstons City Hall in 2004.102 The 2005 US
demonstration organized by the WJMP in Houstons City Hall
similarly focused on Palestinian rights and called upon participants
to voice your opposition to the unjust, illegal, and inhumane
occupation of the Holy Land by the usurping Zionist entity.
From these recent developments, it appears that supporters
of the Iranian regime will continue to attempt to organize Al Quds
Day observances without obviously linking themselves to Iran. At
the same time they will also try to co-opt more organizations that
are not Muslim to their cause. This serves the purpose of showing
that the Iranian regime has a new source of followers for the
observance of Al Quds Day. It will also demonstrate that others
from a more mainstream part of society are willing to provide
legitimacy to their cause.
98
99
100
101

Ibid., PDF document qudsdc-1.pdf.

Ibid., PDF document qudswa-2.pdf.
Groups rally for Palestinians, Houston Chronicle, November 30, 2002.
Arab groups hold Arafat memorial in Dearborn, Associated Press, November 12, 2004.

31

4. The Anti-Al Quds Campaign in Berlin

Three Years of Campaigning
By the Berlin Alliance against
the International Al Quds Day

It all started in Texas in November 2002, when the Student

Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran
published a public call, requesting that the freedom-loving and
struggling nation of Iran, especially the youth and the students,
deliver a crushing response to the promoters of antisemitism and
terrorism by boycotting the sham and mandatory demonstration
of the so-called Worldwide Day of Ghods (Al Quds Day).103 This
text alerted the attention of activists of the small, left-wing Berlin
Alliance against Antisemitism104 to the Al Quds Day activities
in the German capital. Subsequent meetings with experts on
radical Islam and Iranian dissidents in Berlin showed that many
of them were quite familiar with Al Quds Day activities and their
organizers.105 These meetings resulted in the establishment of
our Berlin Alliance against International Al Quds Day106 in 2003.
Since then, we have staged annual rallies to protest against the
Al Quds Day march in Berlin.
Al Quds Day in November 2003 marked our rst public
call for protest against the Al Quds Day march. In addition to
the Berlin Alliance against Antisemitism, the sponsors included
Anetta Kahane, Chairperson of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation,
German-Iranian journalist Wahied Wahdathagh, Iranian dissident
Mohammed Schams, cabaret artist and actress Parvaneh Hamidi,
as well as Claudia Dantschke and Ali Yildirim from the GermanTurkish television station AYPA-TV.
By November 22nd, 291 individuals had put their signatures

102

103
104
105

106
107
108

109

110

under our protest appeal. The list included many distinguished

representatives of migrant communities, representatives of
Jewish communities and anti-racism initiatives, as well as
federal and local politicians especially from the Alliance 90/
The Greens and the socialist PDS.107 The action sparked great
interest from the media. The Berlin State Ministry for the Interior
prohibited the Al Quds Day organizers from using the prestigious
Kurfrstendamm boulevard in the heart of the main shopping
district in the western part of Berlin for their march. They were
offered a secondary, less central route.
On Al Quds Day itself, a large group of critical journalists
closely followed the Islamist demonstration for the rst time,
and a small group of protestors organized a counter-rally. The
organizers of the Al Quds Day activities had decided to transform
their demonstration into a silent march, to avoid attention being
focused by critical observers on the usual antisemitic chants. For
the rst time, the alliance was able to effectively counteract the
Al Quds demonstration in Berlin.
The next year, in 2004, we prepared the campaign over
a longer period of time and used contacts to our prominent
supporters from the previous year. zcan Mutlu, Member of
the Berlin State Parliament for the Green party submitted a
written inquiry to the Berlin legislature and by doing so, made
Al Quds Day the subject of parliamentary discussion. Udo Wolter,
a member of our alliance and a co-editor of this publication,
was commissioned by the Federal Commissioner for Integration
to prepare a comprehensive study on Al Quds Day.108 Due to
support from our sympathizers (among them the American
Jewish Committee), we were able to organize an international
conference entitled Al-Quds Day as an Example of Islamist
Ideology. Among the guests were Professor David Menashri from
Israel, one of the worlds leading Iran experts, and Tefwik Alall, a
representative of Manifeste des liberts, the laical initiative of
Muslim citizens in France.109
We also established contact with Iranian activists in
London who organized a small counterdemonstration to the Al

Peace and Justice Events Calendar, Pacifica.org, November 2004,

www.pacifica.org/calendar/index.pl?Calendar=rootcalendar&View= Event& DateID =11/12/
2004& Repeatid= CRfOTcXmre9TceFRRzo8TnxDR.
SMCCDI: Leave Palestine alone, think about us! November 28, 2002, www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/printer_462.shtml
www.bga-berlin.net.
One of the founding members of our Alliance, Wahied Wahdathagh, already wrote about the Berlin Quds Day march in 1998: Wahied Wahdathagh and Jrgen Elssser, Fundis aller Lnder, vereinigt Euch! in: Jungle World, May 28, 1998, online: www.nadir.org/nadir/periodika/jungle_
world/_98/05/29a.htm.
www.against-al-quds-day.org.
See the text of the protest call and list of supporters of the 2003 appeal at: www.aktion-november.de/en/index.html
Udo Wolter, Beispiel Al-Quds-TagIslamistische Netzwerke und Ideologien unter Migrantinnen und Migranten in Deutschland und Mglichkeiten zivilgesellschaftlicher Intervention, November 2004, download: www.integrationsbeauftragte.de/download/gutachten__Quds.pdf
Among the nancial sponsors and organizers of the conference were the Heinrich Boell
Foundation (associated with the Green party), the social democratic Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Middle Eastern Media Research
Institute Berlin, and the American Jewish Committee (Berlin ofce).
For the report and yer about the counterrally, go to: www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2004&m=11&d=06&a=7.

32

Quds Day march there.110 Unfortunately, the courageous group

of Iranian refugees in London protested alone. In Berlin, on the
other hand, our alliance grew. This time our call for protest
against the Al Quds Day also appeared in English and Persian. It
was again signed by more than two hundred people.111
As in the year before, despite our proclaimed goal to
remain open to all political parties, manythough not all of
our initiators main supporters came from the left-wing and
Green/alternative political spectrum. We planned our actions
along the lines of protests that civil society actors use to
confront the Neo-Nazi marches. Such protests traditionally
include counterdemonstrations, distribution of printed
materials and blockage of Neo-Nazi demonstration routes. We
also used yers and posters to further disseminate our appeal
to join our rally against the Al Quds Day march. We especially
focused on distributing this material in the Kreuzberg district
of Berlin, center of a strong left-wing scene and a large migrant
community. Our main message was that antisemitic and antidemocratic endeavors of Islamists threaten not only Jews or
mainstream German society, but also the migrants of Muslim
background themselves. We chose a broader slogan Against
Islamism, antisemitism, and racism! to preclude racist freeriders from feeling empowered by our protests.112
With the help of the media and prominent supporters,
it was possible once again to counteract in no small measure
the Al Quds Day march; there were fewer participants than
the year before and those who marched, proceeded in silence
along a secondary route. On the other hand, only about three
hundred protestors joined our counter-rally. It turned out that
in contrast to protests against right-wing radicals, the leftwing political activists are hesitant to join protests against
antisemitic Islamist actions.
In October 2005, our alliance expanded in two ways.
Firstly, the Kreuzberg Initiative against Antisemitism, the
Kurdistan Study Group of the Free University of Berlin, and
the European Center for Kurdish Studies joined the initiative,
which furthered our goal to raise awareness among the Turkish
and Kurdish communities in Berlin. In 2005, our manifesto thus
appeared for the rst time in Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic.

111
112

Secondly, the Berlin division of the German-Israeli

Society (DIG) and the German-Israeli Youth Forum joined the
alliance. Even before we ofcially released our manifesto, we
had already secured the support of twenty-seven prominent
signatories, including a number of active and former members
of the German Bundestag from all parties, and many public
gures of migrant background, such as Cem zdemir, Member
of the European Parliament, and the well known feminist
lawyer Seyran Ate.
The already signicant media interest was boosted by
Ahmadinejads notorious call to annihilate Israel, which made
our protests against the Al Quds Day in Berlin a major national
media event. All television stations reported on it.
Though only about three hundred people attended our
counter-rally this time, it was the diversity of the demonstraters
that made the protest so impressive. Among the protesters
were people of Kurdish, Turkish, and Iranian descent, together
with members of the Jewish community and other Berliners.
Encouraged by a Jewish cantor, protesters loudly sang a Jewish
song of peace, Hevenu Shalom Aleichem, when the Islamist
marchers passed by. Well-known politicians joined our protests
- among them the Green Party Chairman Reinhard Btikofer,
the Liberal Party (FDP) Member of the Bundestag Hellmut
Knigshaus, Petra Pau and Hakki Keskin, both Members of the
Bundestag from the Left Party, Kenan Kolat, Chairman of the
Turkish Community in Germany, as well as Cem zdemir from
the European Parliament as a main speaker. A special surprise
was a spontaneous intervention by Michael Sommer, Chairman
of the German Federation of Trade Unions, who forcefully
condemned Ahmadinejads wiping out Israel speech as
incitement to genocide.
We did not place our hopes solely on the inuence
of prominent politicians. With smaller targeted actions we
challenged the Iranian propaganda on various levels. In our
letter to more than fty institutions who listed Al Quds Day
on their Web sites as a Muslim religious holiday, we explained
the propaganda character of this day. The addressees included
universities and interreligious organizations in Britain, the
United States, and Australia among them Harvard University

For the text of the protest call, and the list of initiators and supporters from 2004, go to: www.aktion-november.de/en/index.html
The signature of support by the federal chair of the Christian-fundamentalist party of Christians faithful to the Bible (Partei Bibeltreuer Christen) in 2004, as well as other representatives of organizations with racist tendencies the following year, conrms that this fear was unfortunately justied. These signatures were of course refused.

33

and The Boy Scouts of America. As a result, most of the

institutions such as the leading international interfaith online
calendar interfaithcalendar.org deleted the references to Al
Quds Day.113 This was a major success in preventing the Iranian
regime from appropriating religious legitimacy for its hateful
propaganda.
All in all, three years of our campaign against Al Quds
Day in Berlin have succeeded in raising awareness of the Iranian
propaganda imported to Germany. As a result of the public
pressure, the organizers of the Islamist demonstrations in Berlin
have been forced to moderate their tone and downscale their
Al Quds activities. The Al Quds events have lost much of their
attraction and the number of participants has continuously
declined.
Our campaign has also drawn international attention.
Our manifesto attracted signatories from France, Belgium, Great
Britain, Turkey, Israel, the United States, Greece, Norway, Sweden,
The Netherlands, Austria, Canada, Switzerland, and Finland.
Valuable contacts have been made for future alliances against
Islamist propaganda. The continuing antisemitic incitement by
the Iranian leadership under President Ahmadinejad demonstrates
how necessary it is to expand the international network of civil
protests against Iranian propaganda. The Al Quds Day 2006 will
be the next test for this network in Berlin, London, Toronto, and
elsewhere.

113

For further details, see: Toby Axelrod, As Iran calls to destroy Israel, new look at holiday with same goal, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October
28, 2005, www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=15976&intcategoryid=2.
Pro-Khomeini Islamists on the Philippines wrote about our activities in their newsletter, see: SMERI researchers thesis on Quds Day under
fire, in: Shajaratun Munta Educational and Research Institute, Newsletter December 2005, www.geocities.com/smuntazirah/issue12.pdf

34

Together against political

Islam and Antisemitism!
Call for protest against the
international Al Quds Day 2005

In 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini called for a demonstration on

the last Friday of Ramadan for the liberation of Jerusalem
(Al Quds) and the destruction of the State of Israel. This year
the Iranian government, together with its radicalized Islamist
supporters, have called once again for worldwide demonstrations,
including ones in Tehran, Lebanon, Berlin, London, Jakarta, and
Toronto. The Al Quds Day activities fuel hatred against Jews
and strengthen the power of the Islamic dictatorship in Iran
and its supporters worldwide. We, the signatories of this call,
have different views on the Middle-East conict, but we are
united in our protest against this international day of Islamist
propaganda.
Since 1995, an Al Quds demonstration has taken place
every year in Berlin; this year it will most probably take place
on October 29th. In the early phase of the Al Quds movement,
there were direct calls for the destruction of the Jewish state
with slogans like Death to Israel. After increasingly vocal public
protests, the organizers of the Al Quds manifestations have
been trying to use more neutral slogans as a cover for their
real intentions. Nevertheless, Al Quds Day is not a peaceful
demonstration against Israel! On the contrary, it is the expression
of pure hatreda public manifestation of antisemitism under
the cover of criticism of the State of Israel, as well as an attack
on universal values of freedom, equality and emancipation.
The ideology of political Islam has become a vehicle
to spread antisemitism in everyday Muslim culture, through
which youth and children are being intentionally indoctrinated.
Antisemitism is not the only form of expression of aggressive
Islamist thinking. Other forms of this totalitarian mentality
include sexual apartheid and sexual discrimination with its
various aspects: homophobia, honor killings, and stoning. Only
recently, two minors have been sentenced to death and hanged
in Iran because of their sexual orientation. Three brothers,
motivated by a misogynist code of honor, are currently under
investigation in Berlin for killing their sister, Hatun Src. Their
crime is also connected to the social model propagated by the
ideology of Islamists, which stigmatizes any self-determined way
of life as profane, westernized and decadent, and furthers a
climate of violence among young Muslims in our society.

Neither the looking away of well-meaning multiculturalists,

nor the racist reex of proponents for widening the practice
of deportations of foreigners, can be the right answer to this
worrisome development. For us, ghting political Islam means
rst and foremost solidarity with its victims. Everyone who
dares to resist the radical Muslims understanding of society is
in danger. The terror acts in Madrid, London, Istanbul, Bali and
Baghdad have been clear proof of this threat. They have also
demonstrated the close link between the thinking of political
Islam on the one hand and the criminal conduct of its adherents
on the other.
This is why we are calling out to protest against the
Al Quds demonstration in Berlin on October 29th. We also
encourage countering Islamic propaganda in other cities and
towns on this and other occasions.

Initiators:

Anetta Kahane, Amadeu Antonio Stiftung (Amadeu

Antonio Foundation),

Claudia Dantschke and Ali Yildirim, AYPA-TV,

Siamend Hajo, Europisches Zentrum fr kurdische

Studien (European Center for Kurdish Studies),

Arne Behrensen, Bndnis gegen Antisemitismus [BgA]

Berlin (Berlin Association Against Anti-Semitism),

Meggie Jahn, Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft Berlin

(German-Israeli Society, Berlin),

Gerlinde Gerber, Jugendforum der DIG Berlin (Youth

Forum of the German-Israeli Society, Berlin),

Aycan Demirel, Kreuzberger Initiative gegen Antisemitismus (Kreuzberg Initiative Against Anti-Semitism,
Berlin),

Ahmet Dag, Kurdistan AG in der Freien Universitt

Berlin (Kurdistan Association of the Free University
of Berlin),

Hamid Nowzari, Vorstand des Vereins Iranischer

Flchtlinge in Berlin e.V. (Board of the Association of
Iranian Refugees in Berlin),

Thomas Uwer, Wadi e.V. - Verband fr Krisenhilfe und

solidarische Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (Association for Crisis Help and Development Cooperation in
Solidarity)

35

First supporters
1.

Sharon Adler, Editor of AVIVA feminist online-magazine,

Berlin

20. Michael S. Cullen, Journalist and historian of architecture

2.

Seyran Ates, Attorney, Berlin

21. Eberhard Seidel, Journalist, Berlin

3.

Evrim Baba, Speaker on womens political issues for the

Linkspartei.PDS (Left Party.PDS) in the Berlin House
of Representatives

22. Silke Stokar, Speaker for domestic affairs for Bndnis

90/Die Grnen (Green Party) in the German Parliament

4.

Eckhardt Barthel, fomer Member of the Bundestagd

5.

Marieluise Beck, Member of the Bundestag, Bndnis

90/Die Grnen (The Greens), Germany

23. Bernd Wagner, Zentrum fr Center for Democratic Culture, Ltd., Berlin

6.

Niloofar Beyzaie, Playwright and director, Frankfurt/M

7.

Jean-Yves Camus, Political scientist, CERA, Paris

8.

Koray Gnay-Yilmaz, Journalist, Berlin

9.

Jochen Feilke, President of the DIG (German-Israeli Society), Berlin, former vice president of the DIG, former
Bundestag member, Berlin

10. Parvaneh Hamidi, Cabaret artist, Cologne

11. Kadriye Karci, Spokesperson for the Federal Association of Anti-Racism, Migration- and Refugee-Politics of the Linkspartei.PDS (Left Party.PDS), Berlin
12. Sanem Kleff, Educator, Berlin
13. Dr. Martin Kloke, Schoolbook editor and journalist,
Berlin
14. Kurdistan Kultur und Hilfsverein (Kurdish Cultural and
Welfare Association), Berlin
15. Prof. Manfred Lahnstein, President of the DIG and
former Federal Minister, Berlin
16. zcan Mutlu, Educational policy speaker for the Bndnis 90/Die Grnen (Green Party) in the Berlin House of
Representatives
17. Dirk Niebel, Member of the Bundestag for the FDP and
vice-president of the DIG
18. Cem zdemir, Member of the European Parliament for
the Bndnis 90/Die Grnen (Green Party), Brussels
19. Petra Pau, Member of the Bundestag, Linkspartei.PDS
(Left Party.PDS), Berlin

24. Josef Winkler, Speaker for immigration for Bndnis 90/

Die Grnen (Green Party) in the German Parliament
25. Turgut Yksel, Member of the City Council (SPD),
Frankfurt am Main
26. Steffen Zillich, Member of the Berlin House of Representatives, Linkspartei.PDS (Left Party.PDS)

All 274 supporters and photos of the protest rally can

be found at www.gegen-al-quds-tag.de

36

5. Contributors

Yehudit Barsky

is Director of the Division on Middle East and International Terrorism of the American Jewish Committee. She is based in New
York.

Reza Bayegan

is a freelance author and journalist living in Paris. His articles

appear in FrontPage, National Review and on Iranian.com.
He teaches American Literature at the Facult Libre de Droit
dEconomie et de Gestion and works for the British Council.

The Iranian Dialog Circle in Berlin

is a group of Iranians in exile that promotes German-Iranian cultural dialogue.

Jochen Mller

holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and is head of the Berlin ofce of

the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Alireza Nourizadeh

Arne Behrensen

is a political scientist living in Berlin.

is an Iranian journalist living in exile in London. He is currently

working as a columnist for Keyhan, an Iranian newspaper published in London, and is a Senior Researcher at the Center for
Arab & Iranian Studies.

Claudia Dantschke

Walid Salem

is an Arab studies expert. Since 1993 she has been a freelance

journalist for the German-Turkish television channel AYPA-TV
in Berlin. In 2002/03 she published a widely acclaimed survey
Anti-Democratic Phenomena and Opportunities to Intervene,
also focusing on migrant communities in Berlin.

Mira Dietz

is a sociologist currently living in Beirut.

Mark Gardner

is Head of Communications of the London based Community Security Trust that provides analysis on antisemitism and security
for the Jewish community and the general public.

is the Director of Panorama, the Center for the Dissemination

of Democracy and Community Development, East Jerusalem ofce.

Udo Wolter

is a freelance author and journalist based in Berlin. He is the

author of Al Quds Day Islamist networks/ideologies among
migrants in Germany and opportunities for interventions by civil
society (2004), commissioned by the Federal Commissioner for
Integration.

Deniz Ycel

is a political scientist and editor of the Weekly Jungle World.

He is based in Berlin.

37

Notes

38

June 2006

American Jewish Committee Berlin Office

Lawrence & Lee Ramer Center for German-Jewish Relations
Mosse Palais Leipziger Platz 15 10117 Berlin
Tel. (030) 22 65 94-0 Fax (030) 22 65 94-14 www.ajc.org