Low turnout as Quds Day protesters drive over US and Israel flags in Iraq
It came out again amid the 2019 Quds Day Iranian-backed protests which seek to highlight the importance of Jerusalem and are generally a festival of anti-US and anti-Israel hatred.
By SETH J. FRANTZMANIraqi Shi'ite Muslims march during a parade marking the annual al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day) on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Baghdad, Iraq May 31, 2019(photo credit: REUTERS/THAIER AL-SUDANI)
rotesters on al-Quds Day over the weekend rode US-made Harley Davidson motorcycles over US and Israeli flags in Iraq, according to locals in Mosul.“How ungrateful,” wrote one man on Twitter. “They are driving over the American flag with Harley Davidson bikes.” Commentators, however, pointed out the bikes were actually made by Honda.The photos posted online were taken by Ali Alathary and showed motorcycles driving over US flags and several Israeli flags. In another city in Iraq, an undated photo also showed a Chevy driving over a US flag. That photo, which resurfaced this year, appeared to actually be from Kirkuk’s al-Quds Day events in 2018.It came out again amid the 2019 al-Quds Day Iranian-backed protests which seek to highlight the importance of Jerusalem and are generally a festival of anti-US and anti-Israel hatred. The message is clear: Iran uses Iraq and its supporters in Iraq to support anti-Americanism.Photos from Basra in southern Iraq by Hussein Faleh Raheem showed similar scenes of Iraqi militia members parading while stomping on and riding over US flags. The parades included members of the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces or Hashd al-Shaabi, a series of armed groups, some affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Some of the militia members performed stunts, such as building human pyramids. Somewhere near by a motorcycle parade also drove over US and Israeli flags. It is difficult to find Israeli flags in Iraq, so the locals had to make them from scratch.
