Screenshot, Fox News, Cropped by Resist the Mainstream

Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist and women’s rights activist, strongly criticized progressive Americans for their perceived lack of support for Iranian women’s struggles during an appearance on Fox News on Friday.

During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Alinejad discussed the context of anti-Israel protests on college campuses and related incidents, including the arrest of Representative Ilhan Omar’s daughter Isra Hirsi at Columbia University for participating in a pro-Palestinian demonstration.

“I really don’t know whether I have to cry or laugh or be angry, because those who say, ‘I am Hamas,’ they’re clearly saying that, ‘I am a terrorist, I am capable of raping people, I am capable of killing people,’” Alinejad told “Fox & Friends.” “I am coming from a country where I was told that if I don’t cover my hair, I will be hanged… I am coming from a country where my women are being raped and face sexual harassment. In my country, when you say, ‘Death to the Islamic Republic, death to terrorists,’ you never get released from prison. You get killed.”

Alinejad further highlighted the plight of Dina Qalibaf, a student at Tehran’s Beheshti University, who was reportedly harassed by Iran’s Morality Police. She lamented the lack of action from American feminists, questioning their allegiance to the values they profess to hold.

“I’m trying to actually get the attention of the schoolgirls, university students, college campuses in America,” Alinejad told Fox. “Where are you when Iranian people, like women, being killed… those that say they are actually supporting Islamic Republic, you’re more than welcomed to go to my beloved country Iran where women get killed for clearly wanting to have the same freedom, walking unveiled in the street, to ride a bicycle, to sing.”

Alinejad further criticized the silence from high-profile American figures like Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey, whom she believes should use their influence to help Iranian women.

“Let me be very clear. The anti-war activists, the real war being waged against women in Iran—Israeli strikes and attacks on Iran left no casualty, but the war being declared against Iranian women by the Islamic Republic caused hundreds of deaths, caused thousands of imprisonments, caused dozens of executions,” she said, per Fox News.

Alinejad made a direct appeal: “There was no pro-Iranian women protest taking place in America by progressive women like Ilhan Omar. I’m calling Michelle Obama, I’m calling Oprah, I’m calling all women here, now be united with Iranian women to end gender apartheid regime.”

This last phrase appears to be an attempt to invert the rhetoric of critics of Israel, who often accuse Israel of being an “apartheid” regime, borrowing the Afrikaans term for the system of de jure legal discrimination which occurred until the early 1990s as a pejorative against the nation of Israel. Ironically, blacks under apartheid in South Africa enjoyed many de jure legal rights which are not provided by Israel to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, including citizenship, limited self-governance, some labor organizing rights, and access to the national judicial system. Notwithstanding the Arab Israeli citizens, Palestinians receive none of these rights which were provided to black South Africans under apartheid.

Alinejad’s comparison, referring to the Islamic Republic’s system as “gender apartheid,” while more apt inasmuch as it refers to a system of de jure legal discrimination among full citizens, is similarly ill-suited, as the necessities of marriage and human familial relations do not permit the same type of residential and social segregation between the sexes as existed between ethnic groups in 20th century South Africa.