The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has invoked the Iranian regime’s heinous women’s rights record to justify his heinous war on Iran. This is the man whose genocide of Palestinians in Gaza killed more women and children in its first year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades.
“They’ve impoverished you, they’ve given you misery, they’ve given you death, they’ve given you terror, they shoot down your women, leaving this brave, unbelievable woman, Mahsa Amini, to bleed on the sidewalk for not covering her hair,” he told Iranians in an interview with Iran International.
It is incredible to hear Netanyahu call on the Iranian people to rise up against the very things he has subjected Palestinians to. But it is not surprising. I am all too familiar with the ways imperialists, occupiers and invaders weaponise Muslim women’s bodies and rights to justify their wars.
I really don’t know how to fight the obvious propaganda. It seems like it would help if we had a news media that could and would call it like it is but we’ll never see headlines like “Netanyahu uses blatantly hollow rhetoric to try to justify a genocidal war he started in a desperate attempt to stay in power”.
I don’t know why obvious propaganda works on so many people. People I assumed had functional brains, just turn them off whenever the online. It’s fucking maddening, and I don’t see any way to combat it.