Quds Day Participants Call for an End to War with Iran

SAN FRANCISCO (03-14) – For the past 46 years, on the last Friday of the Islamic Holy month of Ramadan people around the world have taken to the streets to stand for justice in support of Palestinians and all oppressed people across the globe. International Quds Day (Jerusalem Day) is a day of solidarity and unity against “imperialist and Zionist war and aggression in Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, and beyond by uplifting the people’s right to liberation, sovereignty, and self-determination.”

Honored by both Muslims and non-Muslims alike, Quds Day was initially observed by Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, in 1979 in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution.

This year on Friday, March 13, Quds Day across the globe included the Israeli and US illegal war in Iran that continues into its third week with widespread damage across the region along with resultant negative global economic effects.

So far, US missile strikes have hit an elementary school, killing more than 189 girls, contributed to the region’s destabilization and caused environmental damage from fires at several oil facilities. This, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth openly boasted without reference to the above, that Iran exposed “who they really are and what they are all about” in the war through their “indiscriminate targeting and flailing recklessly.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon set aside its concern for the war by barring press photographers from its press briefing room for having taken “unflattering” photos of Hegseth during a recent news conference.

Despite Mr. Hegseth’s photos controversy, this war to control oil and regional dominance of the Middle East that according to Trump was over before it even began because “We won in the first hour” has instead morphed into an uncontrollable and growing regional albatross which he and Netanyahu are unable to control. “Winning” has cost US taxpayers more than $11.3 billion in the first six days. Money that could have been better used in helping American taxpayers in the downward spiraling economy brought about by the present administration.

Several speakers at the Quds Day rally discussed the “US and Israel warmongering” along with the genocide in Gaza by addressing these injustices. Michael Yoshii, Sr. Pastor at the Buena Vista United Methodist Church of Alameda, spoke of solidarity with Palestinians and other oppressed people around the globe by relating his own family’s experience of forced displacement during WWII in 1942 through Executive Order 9066.

The order forced Japanese American citizens into inland concentration camps, resulting in the loss of all their personal and businesses property and their civil rights.

Likening the Japanese American experience of that displacement to that of Palestinians, Yoshii went on to speak of the solidarity both groups shared saying “One of the things that our community went through was that they were the face of the enemy. Being the face of the enemy meant that we could be dehumanized. We could be demonized because of who we were perceived to be. But the fact is that we were the children of God just like anybody else.”

“Demonization is cast upon others” and Christians need to “speak up in solidarity on behalf of our Muslim brothers and sisters,” Yoshii said. He further noted that the Christian community around the world is “complicit and responsible” for much of what is happening today in Palestine and to Palestinians through “the vile theology of Christan Zionism which justifies the takeover of land” using “false theology for colonization…We need to speak of a theology that speaks of liberation and justice for all people. The Palestinian issue is the moral compass of the world in which we are living.”

Dr. Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian-American professor at the University of California at Berkeley, spoke of the historical connections between India, Iran and Palestine saying that to understand the connection you had to reference the British Empire and colonialism that saw them deplete the wealth of India during its presence from the 17th c. to 1943 when British colonial rule ended.

Respective to Iran and Palestine, he reflected on the colonization of what the British referred to as “The Middle East.” In ravaging those colonies, they worked with the French to open the Suez Canal to transport the riches they robbed back to Europe. In 1908 when oil was discovered in Iran, the British determined that they would not let go of the country. “Palestine was given to the Zionists as a homeland to secure the Suez Canal, which Zionists accepted in order to become a junior partner in the British colonial enterprise.”

The colonization in the region is due to its resources, especially the oil wealth that they hold. “So that when we say free Palestine, we are saying, free an end to colonization, an end to settler colonization, an end to continuous intervention and wars, and an end to continuous dismantling of countries.”

Bazian pointed out that since 1979, 13 million Muslims have been killed “and they have the audacity to call us violent. Martin Luther King once said that this country is the most violent country in the world. Our countries have been born into structural violence and in dismantling our countries so that people end leaving their countries and our people become refugees and immigrants.”

“If you meet someone who doesn’t like immigrants and refugees then tell them that if you don’t want us to be here, then don’t go over there and bomb the countries to make us come over here,” he said, reflecting that no one wakes up in the morning and decides to come here to work in a kitchen, to clean streets, and to clean homes for minimum wages.”

He finished his comments by saying that we must hold those accountable for a war that the vast majority of Americans overwhelmingly oppose — calling it what it is, the “Epstein war by the Epstein administration” for trying to cover up the files.

Zahra Billoo, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the San Francisco Bay Area, reflected on the killing of the 189 children at the girls’ school by questioning “What is it about regime change that happens at a little girls’ school? What is it about democracy that happens at a little girls’ school? And if this is really simply about protecting Israel, what threat did those little girls pose to the Zionist state of Israel?”

Expressing continued resistance to this latest war, she told the crowd: “For our brothers and sisters on the front lines against Zionism and US Imperialism whose lives have been cut short without their permission, they leave us behind to continue to advocate, to continue to march, to continue to chant, and to continue to look evil in the eye and say not on my watch, not on my time. I will do everything possible to confront you and stop you.”

Report and photos by Phil Pasquini

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