Under the Jewish occupation, the whole of Palestine has turned into an open-air prison. The Palestinians are terribly suffering for more than 70 years. The Israelis have taken their water, have burnt their olive trees, destroyed their houses, evicted them from their villages, stolen their land, imprisoned their father, brothers and sons, bombed their cities, made walls on their land and humiliated them at hundreds of checkpoints. More than 6 million Palestinians have left their homes and live in a global diaspora. The Israelis expect that the Palestinians must submit to every atrocity in silence like lame ducks. If they protest, they call it terrorism. If they shoot a tiny rocket, they call it a war crime. Whereas, the crime of Israel is huge.
Since its creation, the Israelis had many killing campaigns against Palestinians. For a common Israeli, it is extremely difficult to be poor. But for a Palestinian, it is difficult to survive; death may come at any time. This time, for more than a week, Israeli bomber planes, missiles and artillery gun are pounding on the defenseless civilians of Gaza. They have already killed about 200 Palestinians; of them, more than 80 are children. Many more are injured. The Israeli Army is also destroying the infrastructure: high-rise residential buildings, government offices, electricity installations and even media offices are now being razed to the ground. They are not discriminating militants from children. They have also bombed the refugee camps and have killed many children there.
Moral death of the West
A brutal crime exposes not only the moral death of the criminal but also the immorality of those who support it. A crime thus causes huge polarization among people. Because of Israel, the whole world is now deeply polarized. The criminal Israelis and their supporters stand in one pole. And those who condemn the crime stand in another pole. There is no third pole. To condemn the killing, one does not need to be a saint. Even an illiterate man with an iota of morality can do it. In fact, such a crime presents a moral test; it exposes the real moral content of the people.
The western leaders like President Biden of the USA, President Macron of France, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the UK, Chancellor Markel of German and many others have proved that they do not possess the minimum morality to condemn even the terrible crimes. In the past, such people could lead the colonial occupation, genocidal massacres, imperialistic arson and ethnic cleansing across the world. And today, in the name of self-defenses, they give Israel an unlimited license to kill Palestinians and destroy their houses and occupy their land. They blame Palestinians for being anti-Semitic, hence assume them unworthy of any human rights.
In the whole span of human history, no land has proven more fertile than Europe to give birth to evil ideologies and evil people. The evil ideologies like colonialism, imperialism, racism, Nazism, fascism, communism and ethnic cleansing could take birth only in this part of the globe. To run the worldwide show of these evil ideologies, The West could also produce enough imperialists, colonialists, fascists, racists, nuclear bombers and other criminals. Manufacturing colonial wars, World Wars, cold wars, gas chambers and dropping nuclear bombs, chemical bombs, and barrel bombs are the distinctive Western savagery for mankind. The Jews were the problems of the West. They kept them initially in ghettoes and then tried to finish them by putting them in gas chambers. In the end, they solved the Jewish problem by implanting them in the heartland of Islam. Now the Palestinians bear the burden.
The leaders who love the Israeli killers from the bottom of their hearts are in abundance in the EU and the USA. The President of France not only supports the Israeli killing of Palestinians, he also put a ban on condemning the killing. On the 16th of May 2021, while people were protesting all over the world against Israeli barbarity, such protest was not allowed to happen in Paris. The Chancellor of Austria flew the Israeli flag on his office to show solidarity with Israel. And President Biden of the USA finds Israeli killing as the exercise of its defense rights. Former US Vice President Mike Pence questioned why the US government is not standing even closer to Israel.
The death of the UNO
The UNO has died a moral death long ago. It is now a useless forum for talk shows. In the last 70 years, it couldn’t solve the Palestinian problem. Nor could it solve the Kashmir problem. Neither could it stop the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. The UNO is under the full occupation of imperialists like the USA, the UK and France; hence it has lost its own independence. It was created to protect the imperialists’ own interest and not to serve the interests of the weaker people of Asia, Africa and Latin America. These imperialists created Israel and now do everything to defend it. Hence to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, it first needs to stop serving the imperialists’ wishes. In fact, those who think that the UNO and the USA will solve the Palestinians’ problems are indeed living in a fools’ paradise.
The current crisis in Palestine didn’t start with Hamas and its rockets but with the occupation. The occupation of Palestinian land is the worst crime that took place in the modern age. The US, the EU and the UK are complicit in the crime and now support Israel. The UNO had 70 years to solve the problem, but couldn’t solve it. It will not be able to solve it even in the next 100 years.
But, if there is a will, there is a way. The key stakeholders do not have the wish to solve it. For the resolution of the problem, there is the necessity to the end of the Israeli occupation. In fact, it is the only key that can open the door to any meaningful solution. But Israel does not want to end its occupation, rather, it wants to expand it and fortify it. The steady expansion of the Israeli settlement in the West Bank is indeed part of the greater Israel project. The US, the UK and France do not want the end of the occupation, either. They want that the Palestinians must accept the Israeli occupation and seek peace through unconditional surrender. They label any resistance against the occupation as “terrorism”, while calling the Israeli killings a part of its rightful self-defense.
The genocidal motive
The Indian Hindutva Hindus destroyed the historic Babri mosque in Ayodhya on the pretext that it was built on a Hindu temple. They manufactured a myth that the Hindu deity Ram was born there. The mosque is razed to the ground, but they couldn’t show any structure of a temple underneath. Their only aim was to dismantle a Muslim icon. The Jews also want to dismantle Muslims’ third most holy site called the Al-Aqsa mosque. To justify the destruction, like the Hindus, they have manufactured a myth that King Suleiman’s temple lies underneath the mosque. So they want to occupy the site of the mosque. A British archaeologist carried out some archaeological excavation in the site. Since she could not find any evidence to support the Jewish claim, she was prohibited to proceed with her research. The Israeli agenda is clear. It is to dismantle an important Islamic icon from their so-called Jewish land. They are following exactly the Indian Hindutva line of thinking.
The Israeli police invaded the Al-Aqsa mosque on the 27th day of Ramadan while thousands of people were in tarabih prayers. The police used tear gas, sound grenades and sticks. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, 295 people were injured. A total of 88 were taken to hospitals in Jerusalem, while others were treated as outpatients. The Israeli authority crossed the red line. Such aggression on a holy site ignited the flame of spontaneous protests in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Hamas started firing a barrage of rockets to avenge the aggression. Now the whole of Palestine has entered into another intifada.
The Jews exposed their incompatibility with the Muslims since day one of Israel’s creation. Thus, killing and evicting Muslims and grabbing their lands become their state policy. Because of such a motive, even the Muslim babies are not spared in their killing spree operation.
Even some top political leaders don’t keep hidden their anti-Muslim genocidal motive. The far-right Yamina party lawmaker Ayelet Shaked’s remarks urging the killing of all Palestinians resurfaced on Twitter after a post by The Empire Files on May 16, 2021. She is not an ordinary person. She was the Minister of Justice. She wrote, “They (the Palestinians) have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists.”
Recently on the streets of Israel, there were anti-Muslim riots; the Muslims were beaten and their shops were shattered. The Jewish people raised the slogan “down with Arabs”. Conversely, the Jewish people enjoyed safe sanctities for hundreds of years in the Muslim cities like Cordova, Granada, Baghdad, Morocco, Istanbul, Cairo, Tehran and many others and never faced any ghetto life as they faced in the European cities.
The incapacitated Muslims
The Palestinian men, women and children are being killed. Their houses are being destroyed. The sanctity of the Al-Aqsa mosque was repeatedly violated. As per the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) narrative, the Muslim Ummah is like one body; if one part gets hurt, other parts instantly feel the pain and try jointly to overcome it. But for the Palestinians, the Muslims all over the world could not do anything. They look highly incapacitated.
However, there is a reason for such inaction. Like the Palestinians, the other Muslims –with few exceptions, also live under brutal occupation. The fascist rulers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Oman and many other Muslim countries are no less brutal than the Israelis. The Palestinians at least can go to the streets to protest and can throw stones at the Israeli soldiers. But if such protest and stone-throwing are done in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Syria, Bahrain or Bangladesh, protestors will face a genocidal massacre. Only in one evening, more than a thousand innocent people were killed on August 14 in 2013 in Rabaa Al Adawiya square in Cairo by General Sisi’s brutal military forces. These peaceful people were protesting against the military coup that removed their elected President Mohammad Morsi.
Hundreds of innocent Islamists were killed in Dhaka in the night of May 5 in 2013 by the fascist Sheikh Hasina’s military forces. They were peacefully protesting against the anti-Islamic policy of the government and did not even throw a stone against the security forces. The families could not even get their dead bodies, which were buried in some unknown hiding places. Such cruelty does not happen even in Israel. The worldwide protest rallies were held against the Israeli brutalities on May 16, 2021. It was held in occupied Palestine, London, Washington, New York, Toronto, Sydney and many cities all over the world, but none were held in Cairo, Riyadh, Dubai and Bahrain. This says a lot about the level of evil occupation in those Muslim countries.
However, despite all the hurdles, the Muslims cannot stay silent. Silence is not an option for a Muslim. Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la has given everyone the power to think, the ability to write and the strength in arms to fight. It is an obligation to make full use of these endowments. Staying weak and inactive is indeed a heavy crime. It is khiana with his niyamah and such khiana brings enemy occupation as a punishment. To stay all-time war-ready is a Qur’anic command of Allah Sub’han wa Ta’la -as revealed in Sura Anfal verse 60.
The Muslims must understand that Al-Aqsa doesn’t belong to the Palestinians, it belongs only to Allah Sub’hana wa Ta’la. Every Muslim of the world –as the viceroy (khalifa) of the Almighty Lord must take the responsibility to protect this holy mosque which has been the first kibla of the Muslim Ummah. The Palestinians are the defenseless people and the worst victims of Israeli terrorism. It is the responsibility of the Muslims to help them and enhance their defensive abilities. Mere prayers and tears will not work. But the Muslims can only be able to help them if they help themselves first. For that, they need to free themselves from the occupation of evil forces in their own countries. A great leader like Salah Uddin Ayubi needed to free the Muslim lands of Syria, Iraq and Hejaz from the occupation of the evil forces before freeing Jerusalem.
Hence, occupation under the enemies is not only the problem of mere Palestinians, it is the most incapacitating problem of the whole Muslim ummah. Ending such occupation must receive the highest priority in the lives of Muslims.
*The writer is a medical doctor and a freelance columnist.
May 17, 2021
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
