TEHRAN: Iranians hit back at Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion that they were banned from wearing jeans and listening to Western music, mocking the Israeli premier’s comments on social websites yesterday.
In an interview with BBC Persian television broadcast on Saturday, Netanyahu had said “if Iranians were free, they would wear jeans and listen to Western music.”
Netanyahu has sought to portray Iranian President Hassan Rowhani — a moderate elected in June — as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” in order to maintain international pressure on Tehran over its nuclear programme.
But his comments about jeans and music brought a storm of mockery online. By Sunday a Facebook page called “Our jeans in Netanyahu’s face, Bibi watch out” had appeared, posting dozens of pictures of young Iranians wearing jeans.
Many young women in Iran wear Western clothes despite a strict Islamic dress code which requires them to cover their hair. While some Western music, such as rap, is not available in licensed music stores, many young people download foreign artists’ work.
By yesterday, the page had attracted more than 600 followers, with hundreds of comments. “He thinks he saw our bomb but he hasn’t seen our jeans,” one user wrote, referring to Netanyahu’s repeated allegations that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons, charges denied by Tehran.
“Even our ancestors wore jeans,” another netizen wrote, posting a photoshopped picture of an Achaemenid soldier from 500 BC wearing jeans. One post showed a photograph of young fighters during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war in blue jeans.
On Twitter, Iranians posted more pictures of themselves wearing the supposedly-forbidden jeans and enjoying Western music. One user uploaded a picture of himself wearing jeans and listening to an album by Australian pop star Missy Higgins. “Here are my jeans and here’s my Western music, idiot!” he tweeted. In the same BBC interview, Netanyahu said Iran’s presidential election was not free and that its people would not have elected Rowhani if they had a real choice.
Minister rejects
plan to unblock social media
TEHRAN: Iranian Telecommunications Minister Mahmoud Vaezi rejected yesterday any official plans to legalise Facebook and Twitter, although President Hassan Rouhani pledged to reduce online censorship, Isna news agency reported.
“The ban on networks such as Facebook and Twitter was not supposed to be lifted,” said Vaezi. Tehran blocks access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and numerous other sites, including blogs and pornography hubs, as it tries to stop Iranians from surfing content authorities seen as undermining the Islamic regime, or as being immoral.
Agencies
