Major US protests against Israel outnumber demonstrations over Iranian crackdown 100-to-1, report finds

Some reports put the death toll in Iran at upward of 36,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were killed on Jan. 8 and 9, the two bloodiest days of the protests.

By Dinah Bucholz, Jewish Breaking News

If you noticed that there weren’t a lot of protests against the Iranian regime’s brutal treatment of its own people compared with protests against Israel for its conduct of the Gaza war, you weren’t imagining things.

A new report released last week from the Jewish People Policy Institute shows a 100 to one ratio of pro-Gaza to pro-Iran protests.

The study compared a 22-day window of time covering the protests in Iran and the ensuing crackdown with a 22-day period of Israel’s invasion into Rafah and found that during the Rafah invasion, the United States saw 2,120 protests against Israel versus 25 protests during the Iranian crackdown.

Not all of those 25 protests were in support of Iran, either: Some of them protested U.S. involvement in the conflict.

In addition, the report found twice as much media coverage in the Rafah window as in the Iranian window.

During the Rafah invasion, which lasted for months, dozens to hundreds of people were killed.

In contrast, the Iranian government killed at least 100 times more people — possibly 1,000 times more people, according to some estimates — in a single two-day period.

According to the JPPI website, the president of the institute, Yedidia Stern, “said the research aimed primarily to demonstrate that when Israel conducts a ‘defensive war against armed terrorist organizations that attacked it, it is judged harshly.’”

“By contrast, Stern noted that when the Islamic regime massacred its own citizens, who are defenseless,’ the response from the international community was relatively modest,” the website noted.

For context, it’s important to review what happened in Iran.

On Dec. 28, the shopkeepers at major bazaars in Iran went on strike. This is unusual in itself, since the merchant class tends to be supportive of the government.

But soaring inflation (over 40 percent) and a plummeting currency (1.4 million rial to the U.S. dollar) ignited a wave of fury that inspired store owners to close up shop.

The protests took on a life of their own, as thousands of Iranians joined and made the regime, more than the economy, the target of their frustration, chanting “Death to the dictator” and “Long live the king,” referring to the crown prince in exile Reza Pahlavi, son of the shah who was deposed in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The Iranian regime cracked down on the protesters in their usual charming manner: by shooting them.

In one particularly grisly incident, protesters fled into the twisting alleyways of a bazaar to escape the gunfire of security forces; but one of the stores caught fire, and hot winds spread the fire quickly.

The protesters had no choice but to run back out, straight into a hail of bullets, as a ring of gunmen had surrounded the perimeter and shot them to death when they broke out of the raging inferno.

The authorities also shut down the internet, plunging the country into a communications blackout that served two purposes: to prevent the protesters from organizing and to hide their murderous activities from the rest of the world.

The regime succeeded on both counts. The protests quickly fizzled out, and we still don’t know how many were killed.

However, some reports put the death toll at upward of 36,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom were killed on Jan. 8 and 9, the two bloodiest days of the protests.

In two days, the Iranian regime, with the cooperation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij (a volunteer paramilitary group that serves as an arm of the IRGC) and other security forces, shot and killed more civilians than the IDF killed in one year of war with airstrike