American Activist Chants ‘Death to America! Death To Israel!’ At Tehran Rally

An American anti-Israel activist called for “death to America” and “death to Israel” earlier this month while speaking at a rally in Iran.

“Thank you for welcoming us to your beautiful country,” Calla Walsh said at a “martyr’s ceremony” in Tehran. “We do not deserve such kindness, and such strength,” Walsh began.

“We all have a duty, when we go back to the countries we come from, to share the truth we saw here, and to struggle against Zionism and imperialism. Glory to all the martyrs. Glory to the Axis of Resistance. May we see victory within our lifetime.”

She concluded by chanting in Farsi: “Death to America! Death to Israel!”

The ceremony, which took place on July 20, was intended to “honor the memory of martyrs from the realms of culture, art, and media who were killed tragically during the 12-day resistance against the Zionist regime.”

It was part of a multi-day “Condemning Terrorism Against Media” event organized by the World Service of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the state’s official broadcasting network. Walsh was one of 15 international “journalists” invited to attend.

Walsh called the trip “the greatest honor of my life” and praised Iran for their “indigenously produced drones and missiles.”

After the event, Walsh wrote on X that she was heading back to “the Great Satan,” the United States, where “zionists are campaigning for my passport to be canceled and me to be charged with treason and sedition upon my return, for traveling on a press visa on a perfectly legal trip to Iran.”

She later posted that she was detained and questioned for a few hours by a “Gestapo agent” but that it was “nothing that I didn’t expect.”

The 21-year-old Boston native and former Disney Channel actress has 58,000 followers on X, including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Her father, Chris Walsh, is an English professor at Boston University and her mother, Mary Sullivan Walsh, works at Harvard Extension School.

Walsh has been active in politics since her teenage years. In 2019, she organized a climate protest at Boston City Hall. In 2020, she worked on Senator Ed Markey’s (D-MA) campaign, helping him appeal to younger voters by establishing an “online cult of personality.” In 2021, she wrote a piece for Teen Vogue encouraging her fellow Gen Zers to join the Democratic Socialists of America because “there is no future for us under capitalism.”

She later left the DSA over its “support for zionist Jamaal Bowman”, a former congressman from New York.

“I phased out of that shit in high school. How embarrassing and shameful it is to be in a zionist organization with AOC and other genocidaires,” she posted on July 21.

Now, she identifies as a communist and works as an organizer with Palestine Action USA, which describes itself as a “network dismantling zionism & US imperialism” through “direct action.” The UK branch was recently designated by its government as a terrorist organization.

Walsh spent 60 days in jail for vandalizing the Elbit Systems facility in New York, and is currently facing charges for a similar attack in Massachusetts. Elbit Systems is an Israeli international defense company and a particular target of Palestine Action.

“If you still say the answer is to email Congress / do police-permitted parades / repeat the same lib tactics for years to no avail, you are woefully misunderstanding the nature of our enemy & lying to the people about what resistance means in order to exempt yourselves from it,” Walsh said on the subject in May.

Walsh was featured in a 2021 New York Times piece that hailed her as “an influential new force in Democratic politics.” NPR promoted her as a “good citizen” and a model for youth.

Legacy media outlets have yet to respond to Walsh’s more recent antics.