As countries around the world get ready to mark the occasion of International Quds Day on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank continue to relive the horrors of the Nakba.
The sheer brutality of Zionist war criminals heading the settler colonial regime's genocide and ethnic cleansing project, backed by an equally ruthless US administration, will in all likelihood define public anger at this annual event.
More than four decades later, commemorations during this day have grown in numbers.
More importantly, sectarianism, which historically has been associated with "divide and rule" policies of the British Raj, has receded dramatically, thanks to the wisdom and foresight of the Iranian nation and the Iranian leadership.
International Quds Day, which commenced shortly after the fall of America's Tehran-based "Peacock Throne" in 1979, has seen unprecedented growth of solidarity for Palestine's freedom struggle against Zionism's illegal settler colonial regime.
In addition, it has succeeded in remaining an ironclad pillar of Iran's foreign policy - earning the wrath of Israel but the respect and admiration of the Palestinian people and their genuine supporters globally.
What is lesser known is that during the notorious era of the self-imposed Pahlavi dynasty, the American empire had full control of it. Via a pliant Shah, the US enjoyed privileges to the point of being legally untouchable, while such rights and freedoms were denied to ordinary Iranians.
The repression met its response when Imam Khomeini opposed it, sparking a movement that culminated in the Islamic Revolution.
Palestinians, who have endured decades of Zionist occupation and barbaric terrorism, are subject to horrors worse than those of the ex-Shah and of the old South African apartheid regime.
The period following the historic revolutionary changes in Iran - before the formation of Hamas - was dominated by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), which he led.
An iconic picture of Arafat and Imam Khomeini at a time when the Islamic Republic was going through early phases of its establishment signified the ruptuous break in ties with the Zionist regime.
Instead of the Israeli regime flag at its embassy in Tehran, Iran's revolutionary leadership handed the premises over to Arafat and the PLO - from which the flag of Palestine was hoisted.
Far from being a symbolic gesture that extended also to a total break with South Africa's apartheid regime, Iran chose the path to the liberation of Al Quds to which it remains firmly committed.
To the utter shame of the Arab world, whose unelected leaders stand aside while Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank are facing a calculated and deliberate US-Israeli policy of annihilation, Iran has not given up.
Palestine's resistance movements, from Hamas to Islamic Jihad, as well as the Axis of Resistance stretching across Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, are deeply indebted to the only Muslim country that, at great cost, has not sacrificed its commitment.
International Quds Day is not meant to be an isolated one-day event of speeches and commemorations. It is a manifestation of a movement that has inspired generations of youth to mobilize in every possible way to struggle against Zionism's illegal colony.
Mandla Mandela, the grandson of the anti-apartheid hero in South Africa, Nelson Mandela, captured it well when he spoke at a solidarity event in Yemen a few days ago:
"This year, we mobilise for the 46th International Al Quds Day. Despite the continued genocide in Gaza and all of Occupied Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, we continue unabated in our struggle and fight for peace and justice. Just as we fought for our freedom against white domination, so too must we fight against domination by a minority of elitist and racist countries."
Trump and Netanyahu may have joined to ethnically cleanse Palestinians with weapons and funds from the USA, UK, France and Germany, but as Mandela assured his audience in Sanaa, "this evil, immoral, hateful, criminal apartheid state they call Israel cannot tame or extinguish the fire and hope of the Palestinians".
(The article by Iqbal Jassat, an executive member of Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa. was origninaly published on Presstv Website)