Ayatollah Khamenei addressed the thousands-strong students, who have been rallying and setting up tents across their schools’ campuses in protest at the Israeli regime’s ongoing genocidal war against the Gaza Strip and the US’s untrammeled support for the brutal military onslaught.
“This is our message of empathy and solidarity with you. You are standing on the right side of history — whose pages are being turned,” the letter read.
“You have now formed part of the resistance movement, and have begun an honorable struggle [despite being] under the cruel pressure of your government — which openly defends the usurping and ruthless Zionist regime,” it added.
“The great resistance movement has been waging [a similar] struggle at a distant spot for years [while being affected] with the same understanding and emotions as those of yours today.”
The Leader specified the purpose behind this struggle to be cessation of the “blatant oppression” that a “terrorist and cruel network titled ‘Zionists’” has been imposing on Palestinians for decades.
The oppression has seen Zionists seizing Palestinians’ country and then subjecting them to “the harshest of pressures and tortures,” Ayatollah Khamenei noted.
“The genocide [that is being exercised] by the apartheid Zionist regime today serves as the continuation of [the same] severely oppressive behavior,” the Leader stated, referring to the Israeli regime’s genocidal war against Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 36,000 Palestinians since its onset in October last year.
Describing the process of usurpation of the Palestinian land, Ayatollah Khamenei noted how Zionist capitalists, who were being aided by the British government, gradually transferred “thousands of terrorists” to Palestine following the World War. Those, the Leader added, killed and displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians before forming the Israeli regime there.
Ayatollah Khamenei, however, described the United States as “the greatest supporter of the usurping regime” following the initial patronage that was provided for the regime by the British.
The American administration, the Leader said, had been providing the regime with continual political, economic, and arms support, and had even “recklessly” paved the way for its production of nuclear weapons.
“The American administration and its partners have not even as much as frowned upon this state terrorism and incessant oppression,” the letter read.
“The ‘resistance front,” it added, “rose amid this dark and bleak atmosphere, and the formation of ‘the Islamic Republic’ in Iran contributed to its expansion and strength.”
Nevertheless, American and European media agencies, which were being influenced by Zionist money and bribery, have been introducing this “human and courageous resistance as terrorism,” the Leader stressed.
Ayatollah Khamenei then asked whether a nation, which was fending for itself against Zionist occupiers inside its own land, was to be considered as “terrorist”.
This situation, though, was changing and a different fate awaited the sensitive West Asia region, the Leader asserted.
“Many consciences have been awakened on the international scale and the truth is being revealed. The resistance front too has become strong and will become [even] stronger,” read the letter by Ayatollah Khamenei.
“The pages of history are being turned,” it added, noting how universities and peoples had joined the protest campaign throughout other countries too.
“I sympathize with you, youths, and value your steadfastness,” the Leader said, and urged the American students to acquaint themselves with the Holy Qur’an, which has promoted steadfastness and discouraged oppression.
