Jerusalem is NOT the Capital of Israel

Zafar Bangash Even in a world gone mad, President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem is not only illegal, it proves beyond any doubt that he is a raving lunatic. It has already increased hatred for the US and Zionist Israel. To show how little regard Israel has for human life, especially Palestinian lives, its occupation forces slaughtered more than 60 Palestinians and injured thousands of others in Gaza the same day as the US “ceremony” to move the embassy was underway in Jerusalem. Here is why Jerusalem can never be the capital of Zionist Israel that claims to be a “Jewish” State. The overwhelming majority of Jewish people reject Israel’s claim to being a Jewish State, and for very good reason. The Jewish people are a religious not a national group, even though the Zionists insist on an ethnic identity. While Jerusalem is sacred to the Jewish people — as it is to Muslims and Christians — it is only in the religious and spiritual sense. People who have even limited knowledge of the Torah will confirm that by turning Jerusalem into a political issue, the Zionists are violating the teachings of the Torah. Observant Jews have stated this repeatedly although their voices are drowned out by the vulgar propaganda of the Zionists that has brainwashed or blackmailed many people into swallowing these nonsensical claims. Non-Jews are forced into silence by allegations of anti-Semitism if they criticize Israeli barbarism.

The time has come to state loud and clear that Zionist Israel and its backer, the US, are terrorist states. They are a threat to the entire world and need to be checked before they blow it up in smoke. Stopping them will not be easy but those with a conscience are left with no choice. The only thing America knows is how to kill innocent people. Since 9/11, it has slaughtered more than four million people worldwide. Even at home, some 36–40,000 Americans are killed each year in gun-related violence. That adds up to nearly 600,000 murdered at home in the same period. One would be hard-pressed to find a more accurate description for barbarism. And Zionist Israel has kept pace by slaughtering unarmed Palestinians with weapons provided by the US. It is revealing that on the day the Palestinians were observing the Nakbah, Israeli snipers perpetrated another blood bath of unarmed Palestinians. The Nakbah (Catastrophe) befell the Palestinians 70 years ago when Zionist terrorist gangs killed and ethnically cleansed them from their homes and villages. Zionist Israel was created in blood and Trump’s embassy move shed more innocent blood even while American officials and evangelical priests were blessing the opening of the US’ new embassy in Jerusalem as “God’s work.” One wonders what God do these demons worship that would take pleasure in the slaughter of innocents! Zionist Israel is an illegitimate entity; it has stolen the land of the Palestinians for settlement by illegal squatters from Europe, Russia, and North America. Like the European settlers in North America several centuries earlier, the same mentality is at work in colonized Palestine. The indigenous population has to be slaughtered, terrorized, and ethnically cleansed to make room for the marauders. This is being crowned by taking over Jerusalem to convey the message that the Palestinians have been totally defeated. But the Palestinians refuse to be defeated or go away silently to live on their Bantustan-type reservations. They are standing up and fighting back with their bare hands, like little Davids against the Zionist Goliath, and that day is not far when they will reclaim every inch of their land from the clutches of the Zionists.

This is the internal situation in Palestine. There is also another dimension to this tragedy: the external environment surrounding colonized Palestine. All Arabian regimes surrounding Palestine except Lebanon and Syria are in league with the Zionist colonizers, referred to as Israel’s “first line of defence” by David Ben Gurion. These regimes have to be dealt with in the same manner as Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi did more than 930 years ago when he confronted the Crusaders in Palestine. The great Muslim warrior first liberated the lands surrounding Palestine from the clutches of the tyrannical regime that had aligned itself with the usurpers before taking on the Crusaders. Before the liberation of Palestine can be realized, the Arabian regimes surrounding Palestine have to be reclaimed. Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia top this list of traitors. The latter two are artificial entities carved out by European colonialists from the remains of the Ottoman Sultanate. These regimes have aligned themselves with the enemies of Islam and are acting as their praetorian guards against struggling Muslims. The situation is not as bleak as it may appear. The Palestinians have not surrendered; Syria has joined the resistance front after surviving the mercenary onslaught orchestrated by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and their henchmen. Zionist Israel is beginning to feel the heat in the colonized Golan Heights. How long will it be before these colonizers are driven out of there, opening the way for the liberation of the rest of Palestine? Zafar Bangash is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT).