Iran and Israel are true allies in London |
In November 2023, a mass rally in support of Israel after the October 7 massacres took place in London. Body parts were still being scraped from burnt Kibbutzim, but the news cycle had already moved on. A crowd of a few thousand Israelis and Jews stood lonely in Parliament square, clutching posters of hostages. Then, suddenly, a tall woman walked confidently on stage, accompanied by men holding an Iranian flag, with the symbol of a lion, sword and rising sun. That support from the Iranian diaspora – at a time when much of the world had little sympathy for Israel – meant a lot to British Jews and Israelis.
This weekend, British Jews were able to return the favour. A rally took place outside Downing Street in support of the brave protestors in Iran. Tens of thousands of the Iranian British community gathered, waving the same lion and sun flag that represented their homeland before the 1979 revolution. There were also many Israeli flags in the crowd, Hebrew songs were sung, and Israeli and Jewish activist groups were among the organisers and speakers at the rally.
The same woman, British-Iranian human rights activist Elaheh Djamali, known as Lily Moo, was on stage again, chanting for a free Iran, and calling for action from the UK government against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – which has for decades simultaneously been supporting Hamas and hunting down Iranian protestors.
There was a sense of fear in the air. Every Iranian I spoke to mentioned the........