Mahsa Amini, Iran, Israel, and Gaza’s Vital Importance in the 2024 US Presidential Contest
Kamala Harris’ policy record suggests she CANNOT resolve the violent conflicts in the Middle East.
Mahsa Jina Amini in a hospital bed in Tehran, Iran, right before her tragic death in 2022. The photo image is courtesy of www.noticiasrcn.com.
Back in May, we posted an essay about the tragic story of Mahsa Amini’s death at the hands of Iran’s notorious Gašt-e Eršād (Guidance Patrol–or “Morality Police”).
The article was part four of a five-part series focused on 20 Years of US Military Imperialism in the Middle East. The “Morality Police” arrested Mahsa Amini – a twenty-two-year-old woman in Tehran, Iran, on September 13th, 2022.
Unfortunately, Ms. Amini died three days later. Iranian authorities claim Amini fell into a coma and died after having a heart attack during a court hearing concerning her arrest. However, numerous women who witnessed Amini’s arrest by the “Morality Police” reported to official investigators and media interviewers that the religious authorities severely beat her during and after her arrest.
An unofficial physician report listed Amini as having suffered a skull fracture caused by a blow to the head. Mahsa Amini’s crime was neglecting to wear her hijab per Sharia Law standards.
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Mahsa Jina Amini.
Friday, August 23rd, marks two years and one month since protests erupted in cities and towns all across Iran after Mahsa Amini’s death.
The public protests and rioting of Iranian citizenry – led by women and girls outraged by the assault upon Ms. Amini, her death, and decades of brutal repression by the “Morality Police.” The demonstrations gained worldwide public support and influenced solidarity protests by female sympathizers in Western Europe and North America.
International public pressure initially forced senior Iranian government officials in the Islamic regime to make promises to conduct state reviews into Mahsa Amini’s death. Unfortunately, Iran’s religious leaders and police forces knew that despite the punishing economic penalties the United States and their allies have been imposing on their country since 1979, Americans and Western European citizens have notoriously short attention spans concerning human rights violations across the globe.
Iran’s religious and security authorities waited about a month before they began a violent and comprehensive national plan to shut down public demonstrations and silence protesters on social media.
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Supreme Leader of Iran Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei. The photo image is courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris officially became the US Democratic Party’s nominee to protect her administration’s incumbency in the American White House.
After current President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign in July because of age and rapidly advancing mental infirmity, VP Harris has somehow engineered a miraculous month-long rise in public support and statistical polling success against former President Donald Trump. Yet, Kamala Harris is now pivoting toward Biden’s support for Israel while giving only symbolic support for imposing a ceasefire upon Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Pro-Palestinian protesters in the US are very upset that Harris and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) would not consent to a speaker during the convention who could address the dire humanitarian emergencies happening in Gaza. Human rights agencies reporting from the region say that the conditions for civilians are now so bad that polio is starting to spread. There are also reports that some children are even resorting to drinking water from ground puddles due to dehydration and starvation.
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The DNC rightly gave Jon Polin and his wife, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, a prime-time speaking slot on Wednesday, August 21st, 2024, a day before the closing ceremonies at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
Their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was kidnapped and lost part of his left arm during the horrific October 7th, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists. Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin received a warm welcome from the crowd at the DNC as they spoke about their son and pleaded for the release of the hostages still held by Hamas. “This is a political convention. But needing our only son and all of the cherished hostages, home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” said Jon Polin.
The crowd gave the two Polins an extended ovation and chanted, “Bring them home,” as they ended their moving speech Wednesday night. However, anti-Israel protesters intensified their efforts to demonstrate on Chicago streets as it became clear that the DNC would snub progressive efforts to have a speaker on stage during convention festivities.
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Gaza ceasefire activists are so upset that a national group called Muslim Women for Harris disbanded and pulled their support for the Vice President at the end of the convention.
The group wrote in a statement posted on Instagram, “We cannot, in good conscience, continue Muslim Women for Harris-Walz – in light of this new information from the Uncommitted movement, that VP Harris’ team declined their request to have a Palestinian American speaker take the stage at the DNC.”
Unless Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can secure a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the hostages very soon, Harris and Tim Walz will struggle to defeat Donald Trump in the northern “swing states” where there are large Uncommitted Muslim voting movements – like Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. Vice President Harris has earned a political history of being a “flip-flopper” on policy issues when donors and centrist Democratic Party interest groups hold her feet to the fire on her commitment to her stated positions.
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A photo image of a 2022 Mahsa Amini protest in Iran by Artin Bakhan on Unsplash.
As mentioned earlier in this essay, we Americans are notorious for our short attention spans.
We can make convincing arguments that Kamala Harris’ reputation as a “flip-flopper” is consistent with the history of incompetent US diplomatic and military policies in the Middle East since Bill Clinton’s administration from 1993 through 2001. Aside from the Iran Nuclear Deal, former US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policies from 2009 through 2017 magnified the region’s problems.
The Syrian Civil War began in 2011, under the “watch” of the Obama administration. The tragic depths of the conflict in Syria happened in April 2013. That was when Bashar Assad, the dictator who has ruled over Syria since 2000, crossed President Obama’s “weapons of mass destruction red line” and used poison gas against the rebels and civilians in Syria.
The horror of ethnic cleansing also happened in Syria. It took the form of Turkish military forces against the Kurdish migrants and Shiite Muslims against Sunni Muslims.
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The Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) flag. The photo image is courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Conservative estimates of the death toll in Syria because of the civil war is over 500,000 people.
The conflict displaced millions more or forced migration to other regions and countries. The US and the United Nations impotently observed as Iran and repressive Islamic governments in other Middle Eastern countries also cracked down on the “Arab Spring” protests across the region in 2011 and 2012.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) also conquered large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The Obama administration ignored intelligence assessments that the group posed severe threats to regional stability. Instead, Obama carelessly referred to ISIS as the “JV team” of Islamic radicals.
The process repeated itself in 2019 during Iran’s brutal efforts to crack down on protesters in November of that year. Over 200,000 demonstrators took to the streets to protest drastic spikes in consumer fuel prices. According to Amnesty International, the Iranian police killed over 321 people engaged in the 2019 protests.
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Mahsa Jina Amini.
It is now clear that absent a miraculous ceasefire deal between Israel and Gaza over the next few days, Vice President Kamala Harris will maintain Joe Biden’s zealous support for Israel.
The 2024-2025 US college school year will start on campuses across America very soon. Student protesters are ready to continue their raucous protest against Israel’s actions in Gaza despite current efforts and aggressive promises from university administrators to crack down on First Amendment-protected free speech and freedom of assembly at various campuses this fall.
Kamala Harris will experience a deserved and significant drop off in public support and statistical polling if students and faculty begin protesting the Biden administration’s unabashed support for Israel over the next few weeks.
"The crowd gave the two Polins an extended ovation and chanted, 'Bring them home,' as they ended their moving speech Wednesday night." But obviously they'd never get into the details of HOW. A top Israeli military official said they'd have to pull out of Gaza within 5 days if the US pulled support of memory serves, yet this genocide has gone on for almost a year now and shows no signs of ending until the ethnic cleansing is complete. The only way to get hostages back safely and stop the genocide is through a lasting ceasefire, something they could force at any time but they refuse. You're 100% right on the rhetoric and the Iran nuclear deal. With that and other deals the US could force Iran and, for that matter, governments like the Taliban (with their most recent degradation back to their former draconian laws) to actually improve the living conditions in those countries. Things were awful before, but after Kamala's speech talking about being unwilling to work with countries like Iran (which has just put in a, at least nominally, better government that's more willing to work with the US), condemning the actions of Hamas on Oct7 with specific claims while saying "what's happening in Gaza is horrible." Refusing to talk about children having their heads blown open in UN schools during morning prayers and acting like Israel is a natural disaster and no one can stop it. Also, bafflingly still keeping up the bellicosity towards China (not implying China is devoid of criticism, just that aggression is an actively harmful policy). Her speech in conjunction with the treatment of the uncommitted movement, Palestinians at large at the convention, and the deplatforming of pre-eminent leftist streamer Hasan right after he made a negative tweet about the DNC apropos of its treatment of the uncommitted movement, have made it clear, like you said, that nothing has changed with foreign policy. Honestly, Biden may have handled it better I'm astounded to say. It is a good reminder bringing up school protests starting back up in the same breath, perhaps there's still some hope that we can make a change and hold our government accountable. Great article! Keep up the good work!