Documentary on Iranian Protests Released

This week, a new documentary was released called This Is Our Story by

Manoto. Uh, it's actually one of the leading

anti-Islamic Republic Persian media sources.

Um, and they painstakingly went through over

10,000

clips of footage that were sent to them, uh, or were online,

primarily were sent to them by Iranians inside Iran, uh, during

the protests and the subsequent days, uh, when they recorded footage that didn't

get out because of the internet shutdown.

Uh, a lot of this footage is just surfacing for the first time now.

A lot of it no one had seen before. Uh, they compiled this into a

four-part documentary, which is very, very difficult to watch.

It's also very long. Uh, it's about nine and a half hours long,

the whole

series. Uh, but the episode two in particular

is what I wanna focus on,

um, because my heroes this week are the people of Iran, uh, who

rose up in the streets and who fought for their

country, uh, in many cases giving their lives in the

face

of some of the most barbaric, savage behavior I have ever

seen in my life. Um, the footage, at least an hour and a

half straight of pure carnage, uh, pure barbarity

, uh, gunshot wounds to the head, to the chest, children being killed,

crowds of thousands of people, tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of

people being fired on in the middle of central Tehran.

Uh, footage from the next morning of families

going to find their

loved ones in, uh, you know, the m- mortuary, morgue center,

uh, that was so full that they can't find the bodies because

there are just

stacks upon stacks upon stacks of bodies that were killed by the Islamic

Republic forces. And one of the things

that particularly struck me

is that we also saw IRGC officials and,

um, you know, officers and Basij, which are the repressive forces that

focus primarily on the internal repression in the protests, uh,

they were enjoying this.

They were enjoying this. Uh, there's footage of some of them, like,

dancing in the streets and taunting.

Some of the footage that they obtained was picked up from a phone that

was located,

that belonged to one of the security forces, and in that footage you can

see, uh, them celebrating and mocking dead

protesters on the streets. A lot of the scenes reminded me of October

7th. Uh, you saw, uh, an entire road that's just strewn

with dead bodies that have been killed in protests.

And, uh, the reason why the Iranian people

are my heroes this week is because

you saw a lot of footage that we hadn't seen before of their

courage in the

midst of a literal war. I mean literal, and I'm not exaggerating when I say this,

hell on Earth. Hell on Earth that these people went

through. And in the midst of the protests, a lot of the footage, and you

see it's completely, unfortunately, and completely uncensor- uncensored,

but you

see friends of other protesters rushing, sometimes they didn't even know the

protester who was injured, rushing to them, trying to evacuate them,

applying a very rudimentary medical, uh,

assistance, trying to make makeshift tourniquets, uh,

taking, borrowing cars from complete strangers in

order to drive them to a

hospital. The absolute chaos of the moment.

At one point you see footage of them arguing over what to do with a body,

where to

take him. They decided to film him and photograph him so

that the family could

identify them. I mean, unimaginable situations

for most people in the world today, and this is their reality, okay?

It is not an exaggeration. It is not fake footage.

It is absolute hell that they're living through,

and they're paying for it with

their, with their lives. And they've done everything

that the international

community asked them to do. You can't say we don't know what they

want.

You can't say it's not clear that they want it.

You can't say why don't they take the streets and why don't they take back their

country? Everything we asked them to do, they did,

and they got screwed for it. And the world has done nothing to stand

with them,

and it's completely unacceptable.

Uh, and so at the same time that I wanna elevate the voices of the

Iranian people

and point out, uh, the amazing progress that's been made,

at the same time I

wanna say shame on the international community for their lack of

concern and their lack of attention, uh, that's paid to

these crimes against humanity that are being committed.

And I wanna recommend to anyone to watch this film, even though it's difficult.

Certainly don't do it while you're eating.

But it is footage that every single person should see,

and certainly every single

lawmaker that's making decisions about what's going on with the Islamic regime.

There is no future in Iran or for the 92 million people

there without an end to this regime.

So Iranian people, you're my heroes this week.

Thank you for everything you're doing. It's not gone, gone unnoticed.

And you know, I just wanna say to the people who...

Oh no, I'm gonna cry.

To the people who filmed their friend, um,

to the people who filmed their friend who had just been shot, and their primary

concern was, first, medical attention, and second,

filming it so that people on Instagram can see, we saw

and we've heard your voice, and we've heard your call

and your demand for regime

change, and we will continue to do everything we

can to raise awareness about it.

And it hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the world, even though far too

many people are oblivious, and we will do what we can to push back

against that.

The people of Israel stand with you.