AS IRANIANS DIE, WHERE IS THE WORLD?

We're living in turbulent times, so fast-paced and unsettling that it's hard to keep up with everything.

And yet ...

As the Iranian people have risen in extraordinary numbers to challenge the authoritarian theocracy imposed upon them by the mullahs, there has been an eerie silence. It is as if those who normally expend endless energy calling out humanitarian crises have decided to ignore an uprising that is simultaneously horrifying and awe-inspiring. That silence is mystifying.

Where are the institutions that claim to speak in the name of human rights? Where is the sustained attention of the international press, the urgency of global diplomacy, the moral clarity so readily summoned for other causes? An entire population is demanding liberty from a brutal theocratic regime, and most of the world seems to be responding with little more than a shrug.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which props up the Islamic Republic, is the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It funds and directs proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others, leaving few targets beyond its reach. And now, in the latest demonstration of the lengths they will go to sustain their theocratic rule through terror, they have turned their guns en masse against Iranian citizens. Reports are emerging of hundreds, perhaps thousands killed or wounded. The government has turned off the internet and phone communications, but there are still ways to get news out and what we are learning should shock us. But what we hear are...crickets.

There are many important reasons for Jews to speak out. Among these is our people's ancient and distinctive relationship with Persia. Some 2,400 years ago, it was the Persian king Cyrus the Great who enabled Jewish exiles in Babylon to return to Israel. This was but the beginning of a long and intertwined history, a relationship between our two peoples more often marked by coexistence than by enmity.

In the three weeks since the uprising began, we have heard so little from the world's leaders and opinion shapers. Their response (or lack thereof) illustrates how adept they have become at expressing selective outrage. Over in England, the BBC has claimed that they just don't have the necessary presence in Iran to accurately report on what is happening there. This from the once-respected news outlet that, even as they whined endlessly about their lack of presence in Gaza, did not hesitate to report as fact every outrageous claim made by Hamas. (Which cost them no small number of forced retractions.)

If human rights are truly universal, then Iranians fighting their Islamist dictatorship deserve the same attention, solidarity, and urgency as anyone else. And yet we hear of no campus protests and no celebrity indignation (not one word was uttered at Sunday's big awards show). There has been little to no attention to what is happening from the U.N., the International Criminal Court, or the world's diplomatic corps. The NGOs are silent, too. As writer Eve Barlow asks, where are the human rights groups, women's groups, the antiracists, the queers for Iran? Why are feminist groups silent while the most misogynistic regime on earth slaughters its women for demanding equality and freedom?

I realize that it may be confusing for some "humanitarians" to oppose the Iranian patrons of Hamas' "resistance." I understand that it's befuddling to those who promote the narrative that all evil flows from the West to see the true face of the most truly depraved regime on the planet. I comprehend all of this because I spent more than two years watching Israel defamed as the pinnacle of villainy while the true monsters, disciples of the IRGC, had their brutality celebrated by so many who now pretend that Iran is of no consequence.

Should their revolution come to fruition—and if I were a praying man I'd pray for that all day—the world will soon hear stories of oppression the likes of which we have not heard in many years. When they are free to tell their story, much of the world will have reason to hang their heads in shame. I hope those who looked away will learn something from their duplicity.

But I fear that they will not.

Long live the Iranian Revolution. The real one happening right now.

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THE MISSISSIPPI SYNAGOGUE ARSON

As Jew-hatred continues to spread abroad and here at home,

members of Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson awoke this week to discover that their synagogue had been targeted in an arson attack (and not for the first time). Our thoughts are with them as they recover from this violence.

In the two coming Shabbats, I will be speaking about the long history of Jew-hatred and the unsettling reality in which Jews find ourselves today.