Less than five years ago during the post-election protests of 2009, on the last Friday of Ramadan, known as Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), hundreds of thousands of followers of the Green Movement took to the streets of Tehran following a call to participate by the movement's political leaders, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. The protest included slogans criticizing the Iranian government’s foreign policy toward Palestine and Lebanon, the most famous being: “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, my life for Iran.”

The political establishment, which had controlled the Quds Day demonstrations for the past three decades, was clearly shocked by the fact that the opposition had managed to completely take over the streets. At the time, the establishment tried very hard to accuse the supporters of the Green Movement, and their leaders, of being indifferent toward the Palestinian issue or even being pro-Israeli.

However, supporters of the Green Movement and civil society in Iran did not react to the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza with indifference. Instead, this year, they were in the front line of support for Gaza citizens. But most importantly, they made a concerted effort to separate their conservative protests from protests that favor the radical and ideological policies of the conservative faction in Iran.

Iranian users of social networks such as Facebook posted thousands of pictures with hashtags in support of Palestinians on a daily basis. Many showed their support for Gaza by publishing pictures of murdered children, women and civilian men along with a poem or a sad sentence. In addition, there have also been a few demonstrations organized by the civil rights activists in front of the United Nations office in the relatively posh Pasdaran Street in Tehran.