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THE MINAB SCHOOLGIRL MASSACRE IN IRAN.  AN ISLAMOPHOBIC FEMICIDE OF UNIMAGINABLE HORRORS

By Iqbal Suleiman

Little Zaynab walks with her mother Fatima to the school gate. Fatima bends down to hug her 7-year-old daughter, she kisses Zaynab on both her cheeks and hugs her tight. Zaynab’s little finger touches the wetness of her cheeks, smiles broadly with sparkling dark brown eyes and says “ I love you mama”. Fatima smiles as she walks away and replies “I love you too my darling”. The tenderness of a mother’s love and the angelic innocence of a little 7-year-old girl. The beautiful relationship between a mother and a daughter that every mother and daughter everywhere in the world cherishes.

Hours later on the morning of the 28th February, America and Israel launched the war on Iran and missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls primary school in Minab, Southern Iran killing at least 165 girls aged between 7 and 12 years of age. Little Zaynab is no more.

The Israeli’s, Americans and their propagandists tried to link the school to military facilities in the vicinity of the school but this is debunked by satellite imagery and historical analysis which show that the school had operated independently as a civilian educational institution for over ten years with distinctive school entrances, children’s playgrounds, colourful murals and classrooms. It was therefore plainly visible that this was a primary girl school and not a military facility. Al Jazeera’s digital lab data analysis reveals that the massacre fits a documented pattern in Israeli and U.S military operations against other Muslim countries from Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine where schools, hospitals and shelters have repeatedly been hit followed by silence, immediate denials and blaming the resistance by the killers. This attack was clearly deliberate and designed to be atrocious. The little girls were bombed and crushed to death. Their little bodies were ripped into smithereens’.

Did you hear about names of the Minab girls killed in the BBC, CNN, Sky, Fox or any corporate media? Did you see the mothers weep and cry? Did you hear the voices of the 165 Muslim mothers whose little girls were killed? Did you see the faces of the 165 Iranian little girls who were slaughtered by America and Israel? Did you hear any outrage and condemnation from world leaders? No! Well, why not? Why are Iranian little girls invisible? As if they never walked the earth. As if they never existed.  As if they weren’t human.

Now imagine if the 165 little girls were Jewish Israelis killed by Iran or Palestinians. Or if they were 165 blonde and blue eyed Ukrainian little girls killed by Russia? The world would stop. There would be rolling media coverage for days on end.  The anguish and suffering of the mothers will be shown. There would be condemnation from every country. The killers will be called terrorists, savages, heinous and hateful. There will be a call to military action against the child killers.

But no such response to the killing of Iranian little girls? How has the world managed to completely dehumanize these innocent Iranian Muslim girls aged between 7 and 12?

The corporate media, the American and Israeli government have consistently dehumanized Muslims, particularly Muslim girls and Muslim women.

355 Israeli bullets were pumped into the body of 6 year old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab.

Hundreds of Muslim Palestinian women were forced to witness their babies starve to death deliberately by Israel.  Israeli’s denied Palestinian women access to sanitary products.

More than 20 000 Palestinian mothers had to see their children slaughtered by Israel.

After realizing all his reasons for the War of Iran were being debunked by the American public, Trump now says that this war against Iran is a war against Terrorism. Why does Trump feels that this reason will exonerate him and the illegal war?

It is the “War on Terror” narrative led by Benjamin Netanyahu that has exclusively associated Terrorism with Muslims that has succeeded in demonizing and dehumanizing Muslims. This “War on terror” narrative was used as a means to advance the Islamophobia project. The language and the imagery used by the media was powerful and repetitive until the construct of Muslim terrorist was firmly entrenched in the public mind.  Who is the terrorist?

The medieval Muslim, primitive, dirty and bloodthirsty seeking to impose “Sharia law” in the West and destroy Western Civilization. Where does the terrorist live? In Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.  Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that the war against Gaza and the War against Iran is a war for civilization that he is leading. There is no mistaking who the terrorist is. He wears a beard. She wears a headscarf. He is Muhammad and she is Fatima. The corporate media peddles this Islamophobic trope and has in the process manufactured consent for this unlawful war on Iran. After slaughtering the school girls in Minab, the American and Israeli’s slaughtered another 40 Iranian girls who were in volleyball teams.

This “war on terror” narrative has normalized and justified the slaughter of Muslim children. So, after America and Israel slaughters more than 200 girls in one day, what does the mind conditioned by the Western Media think? “Well it’s kind of sad that hundreds of little girls had their brains splattered, but hey these Iranian kids would have grown up to be terrorists. Yeah man, look, women and children should never be butchered and more than 200 girls killed in one day in Iran is certainly an outrageous number but then again, these girls would have grown up to be women and given birth to terrorists, so the world is now a safer place because they were killed, these sand niggers procreate like animals anyway”.  

The rights of the child are entrenched in international law as an undisputed human right but the Gaza Genocide and this war in Iran has shown us that the Muslim child has no rights.

You would think that the Western Media, both print and cable after having been complicit in the Genocide in Gaza would self -correct.  But this is not so. Throughout the Gaza Genocide, the Western Media been have serving as the public relations apparatus of Israel. Repeating Israeli propaganda and lies. When Israel says its war is against Hamas and not the people of Gaza, the media parrots these words knowing fully well the fact that more than 70% of the killed in Gaza are civilians according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

When Israel said that Hamas had beheaded babies, President Joe Biden repeated the lie. When Israel bombed hospitals and killed hundreds of civilians on the pretext that Hamas was in the hospital, the Western media parroted the Zionist propaganda even though international medics who were serving in the hospitals and provided eye witness accounts unequivocally stated that they saw no evidence of Hamas combatants operating in these hospitals

Professional international medics working in Gaza have documented and attested to the fact that most of the children in Gaza that they treated received bullet wounds to the heads and chest. The report was sent to the Biden administration but it was ignored.

These war criminals Trump and Netanyahu profess to be the liberators of Iranian Muslim women but in the first act of war, they kill more than 200 Muslim girls. Why? All Muslims consider Fatima bin Muhammad (A.S) as the leader of Muslim women because of her love for the poor and oppressed. She was a model of self-sacrifice and anti-capitalism. She led the struggle for freedom, justice, truth and righteousness.  She is the school of revolution and martyrdom. From this school, Imam Hussayn and Sayyeda Zaynab were produced. Independent Muslim women have always been and always will be led by Fatima (A.S).  Trump and Netanyahu knew exactly what they were doing when they committed this Femicide in the opening salvo of the war.  Women are the heart and the nucleus of the Iranian resistance. By killing Imam Khamenei and slaughtering hundreds of little girls in the first act of the war, the Americans and Israeli’s attempted to break the morale of the Iranians. Nothing hurts and is more painful to the heart of a mother than the loss of her beloved daughter. The mother hates no one more than the killer of her daughter. History tells us that the followers of Fatima (A, S), rise up and resist after every experience of oppression, slaughter and Genocide. Have the American’s and Israeli’s not read the history of the people they intend to subjugate? Do they not know about the fearless leadership, clenched fist and rallying cry for freedom and justice of Seyyeda Zaynab immediately after the massacre at Karbala just after she witnessed the slaughter of her brother Imam Husain and the family of the Prophet by a rich egotistical despotic monarch?

People of conscience the world over are asking the question, why do these wealthy powerful elites hate poor little girls so much? Whether it be the rape of little working-class girls by the rich, powerful and wealthy Epstein class in the West or the slaughter of working-class little girls in Gaza and Iran by America and Israel? God in the Quran, expresses his anger at this gender injustice with the words “When the girl child will be asked for what crime she was killed?”

This Quranic condemnation of infanticide and femicide demands that all people of conscience take a stand against this outrage and bring the killers to justice. To a feeling human heart and a righteous mind, nothing in the world is more despicable and detestable than the oppression and killing of little girls.

Iqbal Suleiman

Suleiman is a social justice lawyer and former head of the law clinic for Lawyers for Human Rights in Pretoria and Research Associate: Media Review Network

 

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