While Gaza burns, your silence speaks loudest, Mr. Barrot
By Jafar Mohammadi
Iranian journalist
Before anything else—setting aside the surrounding controversies, the film’s subject, differing interpretations, and opposing views—we extend our congratulations to Jafar Panahi for receiving one of the most prestigious awards in world cinema.
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot tweeted in reference to Jafar Panahi’s win at the Cannes Film Festival, saying the prize which was “a gesture of resistance against the oppression” of the Islamic Republic “rekindled hope for all those who fight for freedom around the globe.”
However, in regard to Barrot’s post on X, let it be stated clearly and unequivocally: Even the most ardent pro-Western individuals—those who for years romanticized your Europe—if they possess so much as a trace of human decency, have by now come to recognize that all the lofty rhetoric you and your peers have offered over the years—about freedom, human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, and so forth—has amounted to little more than a theatrical performance. For you, “humanity” applies only to the West, and the scope of “human rights” is confined to Western borders.
Mr. Minister, over the past 20 months, there has scarcely been a crime your close ally [Israel] has not committed in a place called Gaza. Under the pretext of fighting Hamas, Israel has relentlessly bombed homes, schools, hospitals, universities, mosques, churches, bakeries, farms, water sources, food and medicine warehouses, and every piece of infrastructure serving two million defenseless people—flattening it all around the clock. To date, at least 54,000 people have been killed and 40,000 children orphaned. Starvation has been weaponized, leading to the deaths of countless people—many of them children—from malnutrition.
Now tell us: in the face of this genocide—this holocaust of the 21st century—what have you done, other than remain silent or complicit?
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Islamic Republic is the “tyrannical regime” you claim it to be. What, then, shall we call your ally Israel, which murders an average of 40 children and 50 civilians each day and tortures survivors with hunger, disease, and displacement?
And you—so passionately concerned with justice, oppression, and freedom—what precisely have you done to stop these horrifying atrocities that wound the conscience of every decent human being?
No, Mr. minister, your record on crimes against humanity is not tucked away in history books—it is unfolding before our very eyes.
By the way, since you posted that bold, freedom-loving tweet, how many more children in Gaza have been blown to pieces by the bombs of your so-called civilized West?
Those innocent souls—alive just yesterday.
The article was first published in Persian on Asriran.