Parishad Kavyani was born in the Islamic Republic of Iran and spent most of her childhood there until she moved to Canada at 14, a reality she says shaped her nuanced view of the pro-Palestine, anti-Israel movement she once supported.
Now she says it was destroyed by “liberal intellectualism” that overly focused on the oppressor instead of the human rights of all affected.
“I have never faced the amount of homophobia, racism and sexism that I have experienced in the past nine months from the leftists, from the very people that I marched with for over two years for a free Palestine, and that is insanity,” Kavyani told Fox News Digital of leaving the cause.
Kavyani went on to reveal one of the problems she wrestled with while still supporting the Palestine movement — the absence of support for the freedom and rights of Iranian women.
“[They] advocate for liberation of people, [they] advocate for women’s rights, but when it comes to Iranian women wanting freedom, wanting the freedom to wear whatever they want, [they] suddenly are quiet — and not only quiet, but [they] support the oppressor. That’s my issue… [they] cherry-pick between oppressors,” she said.
Kavyani, who admits to being a part of pro-Palestine when the movement began to form before splitting with the cause after an array of its supporters began posting pro-Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] content, detailed the intricate view Iranians develop on advocacy for Palestinians.
“As an Iranian born and raised in Iran… you are raised with a lot of information, a lot of propaganda around what is happening in Israel, what is happening in Palestine, and you are just told this every single day by the authorities. That Palestinians need help, they’ve been oppressed, they’ve been getting killed all of these years, so we have to help them,” she added.
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“Then… you enter the society, and you see there is poverty everywhere. You see that the villages in Iran don’t have drinking water. You see that the villagers in Iran don’t have a road to a hospital… Why? Because the government doesn’t actually do anything about the people in need inside the country, and you’re always told, ‘Oh, but we have to save money to send to Palestine,’” Kavyani said.
“The more time you spend in the country you’re like, ‘Why is it my responsibility to save another nation?’” Kavyani added.
The Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was a tipping point for her.
“When October 7 happened, I had a lot of conversations with people [about it]… Like, just because someone is holding an Israeli passport doesn’t mean that they should just get killed… If there’s a war that you’re including civilians in that war, and you’re taking civilians hostage, and you’re raping civilians or torturing civilians — that’s not something that I support no matter who this person is, because I’m not somebody who thinks someone deserves to die just because of where they’re from or just because the political belief that they hold on to,” she said.
“That is, like, so ideology-driven, which we’re seeing right now on the internet and in real life… You cannot create a hierarchy of people and say this person deserves saving more than this person… That liberal intellectualism is, like, so insane,” Kavyani relayed.
After it happened, she said, she saw a fundamental flaw in the coalition to which she once considered herself connected, saying they were “cherry-picking” between killers.
“After that happened, I started separating myself… because I was like, this is not the group that I want to associate myself with because I don’t think a lot of the people within that movement are there for the human rights aspect of it,” Kavyani said.
