As a real-time Persian passion play unfolds across Iraq and Iran for the funeral ceremonies of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one question remains paramount: what gives a European settler colony the audacity, the vulgarity, the vicious gall to fly over a sovereign nation’s territory and murder its supreme leader?
The Israeli plot to assassinate Khamenei - which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tricked US President Donald Trump into joining, despite overwhelming American opposition to waging war on Iran - was just the latest move in a long and blood-soaked tradition, as chronicled in journalist Ronen Bergman’s boastful treatise Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations (2018).
Khamenei was a head of a state, and the spiritual leader of millions of Shia Muslims. But amid their vicious occupation of Palestine, the Israelis appear willing to target any head of state; any figure they deem hostile to their settler colony. What’s stopping them from going after future leaders of France, Germany, the UK or even the US?
Where is the outrage? The New York Times covered the murder of Khamenei as if reporting the weather. In fact, when there is inclement weather in the US - too hot or too cold - the country’s media uses larger and scarier fonts than those used to report on Khamenei’s assassination.
