Meet the Iranians supporting Israel
by Nicole Lampert, UnHerd:
Citizens of the Islamic republic weren’t surprised by October 7.
Lily Moo is used to death threats: in the past 14 months, 19 against her have been reported to the police. An Iranian in London, she has been leading Woman, Life, Freedom marches in her adopted home — calling for a feminist revolution in the Islamic republic — for more than a year. But right now, she is in hiding. After her defiant speech at the pro-Israel vigil earlier this month went viral, a man came up to her in the street and told her that, now she was speaking up for Jewish people, killing her would be justified within Islam. “He said my blood was halal which means they believe they have divine permission to take my life,” she tell me. “My sin is Zionism.”
Lily Moo is a pseudonym; she is too worried to use her real name. When she leaves the house, she wears a disguise, covers her hair and even changes the way she walks. The police have been advising her about how to stay safe. Most recently, she attended a joint Jewish and Iranian event for peace. Since then, she has been “in a kind of prison”.
“It is really horrible to be in London and having to hide from extremist Islamic groups,” she says. “It feels like it was in the days before my family left Iran, when women couldn’t leave the house. I knew the Iranian secret services were already keeping an eye on me — making the odd threat.” But now, other Islamic groups seem to be watching her, which “makes it twice as scary”.
Lily Moo is not the only Iranian who is in danger for speaking up for Israel. In Iran itself, supporters of Israel communicate using secret social-media accounts because they know others have been “vanished” for doing the same. Closer to home, another dissident, Vahid Beheshti, has been protesting outside the Foreign Office for 10 months, in an effort to get the British government to prescribe the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation. Recently, he started flying an Israeli flag alongside his Persian one. One Saturday, as a pro-Palestinian demonstration marched past, someone took his Israeli flag — and as he gave chase he was warned he would be beheaded. The man who is alleged to have made the threat was later arrested by police and found to have a knife on him.
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