Jun 20 2009
‘Poem For The Rooftops Of Iran’
A non-Jewish acquaintance living near me in Bury forwarded this solemn and quite shockingly still psalmic poem. Its very title reminds me of a memoir I’ve been woefully tardy in reviewing which includes an account of the Iraqi version of Kristallnacht.
It is said that Iran’s relatively large Jewish community tends to toe the line of whoever is in power. If that appears craven - knowing the madmen with whom they have to deal - who would blame them?
In other words these experiences are not only universal, sadly they are and will continue to be timeless until someone, somewhere begins to learn the lesson of history.
The article below comes via msnbc.com and orginated in the Washington Post.com
For the past week, young members of the Iranian diaspora have been able to assume a few things about each other: They spend all day glued to the Internet, and they’re suddenly experts on a handful of bearded men they may not have cared much about before.
With huge crowds taking to Iran’s streets to protest a presidential election they say was rigged, Iranians outside the country have been staying up late into the night, watching the drama unfold online, in tweets and status updates and shaky video clips. They are jittery and excited, consumed by a passion many did not know they had, for a country some have never even visited.
Hussein Banai, 28, a graduate student at Brown University, USA, had so little faith in the Iranian system that he didn’t vote last week for the president of the country he left 13 years ago. Like many, though, he has been swept up by what followed. “I’ve never seen so many people outside the country being so viscerally engaged with the political process,” he said. “I’m hoping this will result in a major shakeup of the regime.”
Some scenes are disturbing, such as those of protesters being beaten or shot. But there are also human moments, such as demonstrators surrounding a policeman and asking whether he speaks Arabic or Farsi — evidently in response to rumors that militias were brought into Iran from Arab countries to replace police who might not fire on crowds.
“It’s amazing. It’s like watching the Berlin Wall come down,” said Nika Khanjani, 34, a filmmaker who lives in Montreal. “I really feel like something’s changing.”
Like many, she said she can hardly stand not to be in Iran now. “I feel sorry for myself that I’m alone here, and I realise that there is this incredibly strong desire to feel connected, and that is my answer to myself as to why I’m on the computer all the time,” she said. “I just need to be around people who care about this.”
That feeling has prompted many in the Iranian diaspora, which numbers about 1 million people in the United States, to join forces in a way they never have before. Almost every day since the disputed June 12 election, they have participated in vigils and marches in cities around the world.
They are taking their cues from people in Iran, said Babak Talebi, 29, of McLean, an organiser of the grass-roots group Whereismyvote.org. “We were just like, ‘Damn, the Islamic Republic did it again,’ ” he said. But then, “When it became clear that people inside Iran were not letting this go without dissent, we were just like, ‘We have to do something.’ “
Many people around the world have replaced their online photos with the words “Where Is My Vote?” against a green backdrop, the colour of defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi’s campaign. But many abroad say they are uniting not around a specific political leader so much as around their support for Iranians they see as taking huge risks in the name of democracy”.
msniw
