Sheikh Abdullah Makwinja Correspondent
The last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan was designated as Quds Day by the late founder and leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the great Ayatollah Imam Khomeini. Quds is the Arabic name of Jerusalem, the holy city of Abrahamic faiths: Islam, Christianity and Judaism. As the holy month of Ramadan revives the spirit of unity, sympathy and empathy with the poor and the oppressed, it was certainly not a coincidence that Imam Khomeini chose the last Friday of this month to dedicate for this most noble purpose of joining our hands together as a unified international community, in expressing solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian nation who have been facing great trials not only now but more than 60 years under the yoke of the Zionist-Apartheid system of Israel.

The Zionists brutally occupied the Palestinian lands in 1948, and since then, the Palestinians have lived under Zionist Israeli‘s occupation. For over half a century hundreds of United Nations resolutions on Palestine have not been respected nor applied.

Failure to restore Palestine to its people, in the words of UN former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, would “continue to hurt the reputation of the United Nations and raise questions about its impartiality”.

Quds Day has underlined the Palestine issue beyond its national aspect and has granted it an international status.
For all the campaigners of truth and justice, the day has an extraordinary historical significance, lessons for the present and prophecies for the future. The same sentiments were echoed by late first post-apartheid President Nelson Mandela in December 1987, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.”

In the words of Imam Khomeini, “Quds Day is a universal day. It is not an exclusive day for Quds (Jerusalem). It is a day for the oppressed and the supporters of oppressed to rise and stand up against the arrogant oppressors.”

Today, Palestinian people continue to be robbed of their home and heritage, pushed to the margins of humanity, blamed for their miserable fate. Palestinians, who are stateless, have been denied their most basic civil, political and human rights.

They have not been permitted the right to live, and return to, the land of their birth. Families have been denied the right to live together. They are traumatised, Palestinian children are assaulted or murdered every day or burnt alive.

Palestinians are not only banished from their land of origin by the Zionists but remain a country under oppression, confined to limited territory and denied any rights based on the sophistication of the military arsenal and the support of the West.

One in three Palestinians has spent some time in an Israeli jail. Since 1967, more than 40 percent of Palestinian adult males have been imprisoned on “security grounds”.

In July 1989, a four-year-old child appeared in a Jerusalem court for the “crime of incitement”. He had raised his fingers in a V-sign. Children as young as 13 have spent up to four years in prison for throwing stones. A human rights group estimated that 85 percent of Palestinians were tortured during interrogations.

Another survey by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme on 3 000 Palestinian children, ages 8-15 revealed that 93 percent of these children had been teargassed, 85 percent had had their homes raided, 55 percent had witnessed their fathers beaten, 42 percent had been beaten themselves, 31 percent had been shot, 28 percent had had a brother imprisoned. 19 percent had been detained, 3 percent had suffered a death in the family and 69 percent had been exposed to more than four types of trauma.

Like black Africans under apartheid, Palestinians have faced the destruction of their homes and communities. An Israeli bulldozer driver was quoted in Yediot Ahronoth on May 31, 2002: “For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I [would] come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn’t wait.

“I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible….”
After visiting the occupied Palestine the South African anti-apartheid leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu told a New York synagogue in 1989: “If you changed the names, the description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would be a description of what is happening in South Africa.”

In view of the ongoing random manslaughter by Israel in Gaza, which has been intensified in the past days, leaving over 600 civilians dead and millions worth of property destroyed, we take this occasion of the International Quds Day to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine in their quest for freedom and liberation from the Zionist regime.

Sheikh Abdullah Makwinja is the Resident Imam at Fatima Zahra (A.S) Centre
In view of the ongoing random manslaughter by Israel in Gaza, which has been intensified in the past days, leaving over 600 civilians dead and millions worth of property destroyed, we take this occasion of the International Quds Day to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine in their quest for freedom and liberation from the Zionist regime.

Sheikh Abdullah Makwinja is the Resident Imam at Fatima Zahra (A.S) Centre

You Might Also Like

Comments

Take our Survey

We value your opinion! Take a moment to complete our survey