Iran’s Ayatollah exploits Olympian Aly Raisman for hijab propaganda

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ripped Jewish Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman’s testimony of having been sexually assaulted for a hijab propaganda video.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei presented the Islamic hijab as the answer to sexual assault by posting a video in a Wednesday tweet that featured recent cases, leading off with Jewish Olympian and gold medalist Aly Raisman.

The video flashes images related to the #MeToo movement, in which hundreds of women have come forward publicly about their sexual harassment. It then blames the harassment on the Western mentality. Khamenei offers “Islam’s proposal to resolve it” – the traditional Islamic head covering, or hijab, that only allows a woman’s face to show.

“By introducing hijab, Islam has shut the door on a path that would pull women towards such deviation,” Khamenei says in the video. “Islam does not allow” sexual abuse or violence against women, he says. Iranian women are seen in the video clad in black hijabs and chadors (the tent-like, long-sleeved robe that goes down to the feet). It ends with the assertion that such clothing gives women “freedom and identity.”

Jewish leading lady

Surprising about the video is the choice of leading lady – Aly Raisman, the American gymnast and two-time gold medal winner in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. She is also proudly Jewish, having lit the torch for the Maccabiah Games in Israel in 2013. Raisman came out in favor of  holding a moment of silence in memory of the Israeli victims in the 1972 Munich Massacre at the Olympic Games.

Raisman is seen in the video making a statement in court against Larry Nasser, the former USA team doctor, who abused her along with more than 150 other female athletes over two decades and was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison.

Recently, an Iranian billboard claimed to show Iranian soldiers on a hilltop. They were in fact Israeli soldiers. It led to great deal of ridicule on social networks before it was taken down. Some speculate that this video will disappear just as quickly from the Ayatollah’s Twitter feed when it becomes clear that Raisman is Jewish.