PALESTINIANS ARE BEING OPPRESSED: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

BY MAHDI GARBA

Whether you are keen on foreign news or not, one can never run away from the despicable stories of the oppressed people of Palestine or argue that the news has never crossed their news bars, newspaper headlines, or now the emerging conventional social media timelines. The news ranges from detention, torture, cold-blooded murder, to unprovoked attacks by the Israeli security operatives on unarmed civilians, majorly the vulnerable — women and children.

On March 30th, the Palestinians launched a protest tagged ‘March of Return’, which was a move among series of efforts to press for the demand of their usurped land to end the inhumane treatment by the Israeli regime against them. The protests which culminated on May 15th that coincided with America’s Donald Trump ill-informed decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. A decision that, pundits maintain, would be rejected even in a world gone mad.

Out of sheer and vicious cruelty, Israeli snipers shot about 110 Palestinians including children, journalists, and medical personnel. The number of injured persons skyrocketed from 2,771 to about 12,000 between March 30th to May 15th.

While American diplomats, evangelists, and cronies were celebrating the embassy shift, the oppressed people of Palestine were burying their dead ones and attending to the injured ones. Surgeries were even carried on without anesthesia, courtesy of dwindling medical supplies. Just imagine a bullet being removed from one’s body without any anesthesia!

This has been the norm in occupied Palestine because, in May, the Palestinians still commemorated the 70th Nakbah anniversary – which means the day of catastrophe. The Nakbah was set aside to remember the ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the Palestinians exactly seven decades ago.

This remains the lone reason why the pioneer of the Iranian Islamic revolution, late Ayatollah Khomeini in 1980, a year after the 1979 revolution, set aside the last Friday of every Ramadan to mark the International Quds day to denounce Israel’s barbarism and show solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians. The late revolutionary said,

“The issue of Quds is not a private or personal issue. It is neither the exclusive problem of one country nor a present-day problem of all Muslims. Rather, it is a phenomenon concerning the monotheists and faithful people of all ages — past, present, and future.”

In 1988, the Organization of Islamic Countries endorsed the idea of Ayatollah Khomeini. Since then, the International Quds day has been recording massive turnouts with people of conscience devoid of their religious and ethnic affiliation participating annually. Turnouts in countries like Malaysia, Austria, Nigeria, South Africa, Pakistan, Britain, Canada, and the US have been captivating. In 2014 alone, the International Quds day was marked in 22 Nigerian cities, which is increasing yearly.

Another indication that myriad is heeding Imam Khomeini’s call to liberate the first Muslim qiblah, Masjid al-Aqsa (one of the three revered Mosques in Islam) and the locus of Prophet Muhammad’s ascension to the heavens in the Night Journey, popularly known as al-Isra wa al-Mi’iraj among Muslims.

This call has echoed on the ears of Muslims, Christians, and Jews who understand that Israel is ostensibly a Zionist state with no religious underpinnings. This is the reason why even Jewish Rabbis join the pro-Palestinian rallies around the world and have gone the extra mile to launch a campaign tagged “Not In My Name”, although, this is being drowned by the propaganda of Israel. Just last month, Jewish Rabbi Dovid Weiss delivered a paper on the illegal occupation of al-Quds at the New Horizon Conference in Mashhad, Iran.

Present at the conference were Russian Philosopher Alexander Dugin, Allison Weir of IfAmericansKnew.org, ex-CIA officer Phillip Giraldi, Israeli-born anti-Zionist Miko Peled, French researcher and writer Maria Poumier, and British Journalist, sister-in-law to Tony Blair, Lauren Booth who converted to Islam in 2010 after visiting the Holy city of Qom.

It is important to deconstruct the idea of complacency. There is no room for neutrality. One must be supporting the oppressed or their oppressors. Moreover, nobody should be fooled by mainstream media headlines using words like crisis or conflict or speaking about a ‘Two-State Solution’. It’s offensive against the downtrodden people of Palestine, and should leave every person with a conscience agitated.

Sequel to Imam Khomeini’s declaration, it is pertinent to understand that protesting for the people of Palestine doubles as an avenue to stand in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinians and all the oppressed people around the globe. The plight of the people of Yemen, Syria, Myanmar, Bahrain, Kashmir, etc. should be identified with. It is also important to demand the release of the champion of the Palestinian cause in Nigeria, Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky who has been under illegal detention since December 2015 and every person illegally detained.

Grim 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War

“We decided to attack him” – Menachem Begin

By Yusuf Dhia-Allah

Last month marked the 50th anniversary of Zionist Israel’s Six-Day War of aggression and conquest of the lands of three Arab states as well as the rest of Palestine that it had not hitherto occupied. Launched in the early hours of June 5, 1967, the surprise Israeli attack wiped out the entire air force fleets of Egypt and Syria. From there on, it was a cakewalk for the Zionist invaders to capture the Sinai Peninsula including Gaza from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. The Jordanian forces did not put up a fight; the putative King Husayn ordered them to withdraw abandoning al-Masjid al-Aqsa to the Zionist invaders.

The year 2017 marks another grim anniversary: the launch of the colonial enterprise to fracture the Muslim East into weak unstable nation-states to make way for the implantation of the Zionist entity in Palestine. It is the 100th anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration when then British Foreign Secretary James Balfour, in response to a letter from Walter Rothschild promised to create a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.

On what basis did Balfour, a staunch anti-Semite (he had backed the Aliens Act of 1905 prohibiting entry of Jews into Britain) make such an outrageous and blatantly unjust promise? The British did not own Palestine; they were on the verge of capturing it from the Ottomans but the land belonged to the Palestinian people. They have inhabited it for thousands of years yet one of the greatest injustices was perpetrated to dispossess them of their ancestral lands and implant an alien European colonial settler entity in their place.

Before digging deeper into the British conspiracy, let us first consider the circumstances that led to the Six-Day War. Tensions between Egypt, then ruled by the firebrand Egyptian nationalist Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir, and the Zionist entity were rising. The Zionists accused ‘Abd al-Nasir of threatening to invade Israel and “drive the Jews into the sea.” This allegation was based on the fact that ‘Abd al-Nasir had ordered two divisions of his army into the Sinai Peninsula that Israel said posed an “existential threat.”

This was a preposterous lie. Neither the Egyptian army nor a combination of Arabian armies fed on a steady diet of Arabian nationalism was capable of fighting the Zionist army. ‘Abd al-Nasir had merely moved two divisions into the Sinai Peninsula; it was a defensive move. General Ezer Weizmann, chief of the Israeli air force at the time admitted, “There was never a real danger of extermination [of Israel].” Zionist political leaders — Prime Minister Levi Eshkol among them — peddled the fiction that “the very existence of the State of Israel hung upon a thread” (June 12, 1967, speaking in the Knesset). General Yitzhak Rabin also admitted that two divisions of the Egyptian army in the Sinai posed no threat to Israel.

The Americans also jumped into the fray. The Zionists told US President Lyndon Johnson that they “feared” an invasion from Egypt or a combination of Arabian armies. Johnson contacted ‘Abd al-Nasir and assured him that the Israelis would not attack if he (‘Abd al-Nasir) were not to initiate hostilities and to show good faith by pulling his forces back from the Israeli border in the Sinai. Like a fool — or a coward — ‘Abd al-Nasir fell for the trap.

On June 5 when the Israeli air force struck, the Egyptian army was asleep; the air forces of Egypt and Syria had no clue that they were about to be wiped out. The head of the Egyptian armed forces, Field Marshal (no less) ‘Abd al-Óakim ‘Amir was not even in Cairo and his aircraft could not land as he returned from a trip because the airport had been bombed with the entire Egyptian air force wiped out on the ground. The Syrian air force suffered a similar fate.

In six days, the Arabian armies were crushed. Tens of thousands of soldiers were killed in Israeli air strikes or tank and artillery fire. Many others died of thirst in the scorching heat of the desert. Arabian nationalism suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Zionist nationalism.

On June 8, the Israeli air force attacked the USS Liberty, an American communications ship in international waters monitoring Israel’s attack on the three countries. This was a deliberate act of aggression against the US. The Israelis murdered 34 American sailors and injured 171 others in an attack that lasted nearly an hour. The ship’s markings were clearly visible and the Israeli pilots knew precisely what they were attacking, yet it did not prevent them from carrying out their war crime against their principal benefactor, the US.

Far from holding the Zionists responsible for this dastardly crime, the Americans hushed up the episode calling it a “mistake” confirming that the US was a Zionist colony. The ever-pliant US media tried to present the Zionist aggression against its Arab neighbors as a “preemptive” strike in which tiny beleaguered Israel was left with no choice but to defend itself because it was surrounded by a “sea of Arabs.”

Mythmaking is an obsession of the Zionists and their apologists in the West. They have always peddled the lie that the Jewish people faced relentless hostility and persecution in Europe — they were nearly wiped out in the Second World War — hence the need for a separate homeland for them.

In 1917, when Balfour made his illegal and infamous promise to Walter Rothschild, the Jewish people faced no such threat. True, Christian Europe had shown extreme hatred toward them but why should the Palestinians pay a price for crimes perpetrated by the Europeans? Besides, why is it fair to displace the Palestinians from their homes, villages, and towns to make way for a people being persecuted in Europe? It would be a lot fairer to create a homeland for them in Germany, the main perpetrator of such crimes against them.

The fascist Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, a one-time terrorist mastermind and on the British list of “Most Wanted Terrorists” exposed the false claim peddled by the Zionists that they had faced an existential threat from the Arabian armies in 1967. During a speech to the Israeli National Defense College on August 2, 1982, Begin said, “We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him [Egyptian President Jamal ‘Abd al-Nasir].”

General Matti Peled, an Israeli commander in the June 1967 war, also corroborated this lie. He told the Israeli newspaper Ha‘aretz (March 19, 1972), “The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only a bluff, which was born and developed after the war.” Peled, appalled by brutalities inflicted on innocent Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, later turned into a peace activist.

Zionist Israel, the only colonial settler entity, is ever expanding. In 1948, the UN allocated it 56% of Palestinian territory without even asking the Palestinians whether they agreed to the theft of their land by the Zionists. In figures released on December 31, 1922 after the British conducted census, the Jewish population of Palestine was a mere 11%. How did it burgeon to 30% by 1948? This was another treacherous act perpetrated by the British colonialists: they facilitated a massive illegal influx of Jewish people from Europe into Palestine.

The aim was to create a reasonably large population base, a core group, so that it could claim 56% of the territory. But the Zionist enterprise is based on theft; it has continued to expand. In 1948, when the Palestinians refused to accept the theft of their land, the Zionists simply launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing and grabbed 78% of the territory. In 1967, the Zionists occupied the remaining 22% as well.

Today, Palestinians are forced to live in disjointed bantustans in their own land, much like the Africans were forced to do under the apartheid regime in South Africa. But South African apartheid ended decades ago, Zionist apartheid has intensified. The chances of a Palestinian state are fast receding as the Arabian regimes have also now come out openly in support of the Zionists.

Their own leadership — the so-called Palestinian Authority and now Hamas as well — has betrayed the Palestinian people. The Arabian rulers had abandoned them a long time ago. The recent spat between Saudi Arabia and Qatar has exposed, yet again, the cowardly nature of these rulers who have abandoned even the pretence of supporting the Palestinian cause.

These rulers would rather fight — and kill — other innocent Muslims than fight the Zionist war criminals.

By Yusuf Dhia-Allah

-Yusuf Dhia-Allah

The Ummah and al-Quds

There was a time when every Muslim student instinctively knew about the significance of Masjid al-Aqsa (al-Quds), the first qiblah of Muslims. It was from there that the noble Messenger (pbuh) went on his mi‘raj in the twelfth year of his prophetic mission. Jerusalem, where Masjid al-Aqsa is located (and we must be clear that the Golden Dome we see in most pictures in not Masjid al-Aqsa; that is Dome of the Rock built many years later), was liberated by the Muslims in the year 15ah (638ce) during the khilafah of ‘Umar (d). With the Muslims in charge of the body politic, Jersualem remained free except for a short interlude from 1099–1187ce when the crusaders occupied it. During the Crusades’ occupation of al-Quds, no Arabian ruler had the courage or dignity to struggle for the liberation of Masjid al-Aqsa. It took Salahuddin al-Ayubi, a Kurd, to march against the Crusaders and banish them from Jerusalem as well as liberate Masjid al-Aqsa in 1187ce. Palestine remained free for people of all religious persuasions until the modern-day British/French crusaders arrived on the scene and occupied Palestine as well as Jerusalem in 1918. The neo-crusaders knew they could not continue their occupation of the holy lands indefinitely so they planted their agents in the form of Arabian nationalist rulers in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Their emergence facilitated the creation of Zionist Israel and its ultimate occupation of Jerusalem in the June 1967 war. The Jordanian army abandoned Jerusalem without firing a shot. This is precisely what the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan was created for: to serve Zionist-western interests in return for being allowed to remain in power.

The Zionists have sunk their claws deep into Masjid al-Aqsa undermining its foundations while the Arabian rulers continue to conspire with them against any Islamic assertion to liberate the first qiblah of Muslims. The regimes surrounding Palestine are all working in tandem with the Zionists to undermine the Islamic resistance in Palestine. The Saudis have secularized the Harams in Makkah and Madinah; it is forbidden to mention Masjid al-Aqsa or the oppression to which the people of Palestine are subjected. Muslims are told to indulge in empty rituals without raising their voices much less a finger against zulm, oppression and tyranny.

Yet not all Muslims swallow the Saudi line to remain docile. Every year, millions of Muslims participate in Quds rallies as called for by Imam Khomeini nearly 30 years ago to raise awareness about the continued Zionist occupation of Masjid al-Aqsa as well as Palestine. While such rallies scare the illegitimate Arabian rulers and their western-Zionist masters, they give hope to oppressed people everywhere. Clearly, not every Muslim is as detached from the affairs of Muslims as the Saudi-Egyptian-Jordanian and other Arabian rulers want them to be. Even as Islamic resisters in Palestine and Lebanon continue to struggle against Zionist vandalism and oppression, Muslims and other freedom-loving people elsewhere must continue to raise voices in their support.

Keeping the issue of Masjid al-Aqsa alive is a sacred duty in which every Muslim must participate to the utmost of his ability.