by Editor (Editorials, Crescent International Vol. 53, No. 4, Dhu al-Qa'dah, 1444)
Zionism is a racist ideology that uses Judaism as a cover to camouflage its colonial-settler identity. The zionist monstrosity has illegally occupied the land of the Palestinian people through a campaign of terror, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Its genocidal policy continues as the almost daily killings of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza show.
Palestinians not only face daily humiliations at the ubiquitous check-points but are also shot and killed by the heavily-armed zionist soldiers and squatters (aka ‘settlers’). The zionists also regularly barge onto the Aqsa Compound as part of their creeping annexation of the noble sanctuary. These raids are aimed at normalizing such trespassing for its eventual annexation.
By now, the world has become quite familiar with zionist tactics even if rulers of western regimes continue to support the crimes of this illegitimate entity. The west’s support of Israel is not surprising. The zionists are Europeans and, therefore, blood relatives. It would be comical, were it not so cynical for the zionists to claim that they are Semites. They are not. In fact, this is one of the ploys they use to stifle criticism of zionist Israel’s crimes against the hapless Palestinian people.
Let us briefly recall how this monstrosity was planted in the heartland of Islam. It was the British who planned this criminal conspiracy by promising to create a ‘homeland for the Jewish people’ in Palestine. Arthur James Balfour, then British Foreign Secretary, will forever be remembered as the architect of this infamous plan.
Balfour had no love for the Jewish people. The British like all Europeans, have a long gory history of anti-Semitism. Balfour’s promise, contained in a letter dated November 2, 1917, to Lord Rothschild, was meant to transfer Europe’s ‘Jewish problem’ to Palestine. This dastardly crime was ultimately facilitated through the United Nations. In flagrant violation of its own charter, the UN decided to hand over 56 percent of Palestinian territory to the 30 percent of the Jewish population in Palestine. The vast majority of Jews were smuggled into Palestine illegally after the Balfour declaration. Thus, the vast majority of Jews had no organic link to Palestine that they claimed as their own. The Palestinians were never consulted by the UN, nor did they give consent to the theft of their land.
The UN General Assembly vote in November 1947 was postponed three times for the US to pressure a number of countries into supporting the resolution to obtain a two-thirds majority for the partition of Palestine. Then US Defence Secretary James Forrestal described America’s conduct as “bordering on the scandalous”. He was opposed to Jewish influence on US domestic as well as foreign policy. The zionists killed him and described his murder as ‘suicide’.
Forrestal was not the only one murdered by the zionists. Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish diplomat who was serving as UN Special Envoy for Israel-Arab conflict, was murdered by the zionists in September 1948. The zionists had already launched their campaign of terror to drive the Palestinians out of their homes and villages in what came to be called the Nakba (Catastrophe). Last month, the Palestinians commemorated 75 years of the Nakba.
For Palestinians the Nakba continues as the zionists indulge in their customary brutality of demolishing homes and schools to drive the Palestinians out. Olive trees are uprooted as part of the zionists’ economic warfare against the Palestinians. More than 600,000 zionist squatters occupy the choicest land in the West Bank and usurp 90 percent of its water resources leaving only 10 percent of water for some 2.8 million Palestinians. The zionists also flush their sewage onto Palestinian lands and villages. Only they are capable of such filthy practice.
Killing Palestinian children is another favourite zionist tactic. They brand all Palestinians as terrorists. After all, anyone who opposes zionist criminal conduct has to be a terrorist. Thus, killing Palestinian children, while giving the zionists’ sadistic pleasure, also fulfills their desire to kill ‘terrorists’. This was again evident in the five-day bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip last month in which the zionists deliberately targeted apartment buildings. A total of 33 Palestinians among them many children were killed.
“It must be admitted. Killing children is the most heinous of crimes. There is no crime that is more contemptible. In that lies its despicableness and its power. It acts as a deterrent, it’s effective, and streams fresh, new blood to flow into our arteries,” wrote Yossi Klein in the Ha‘aretz.
In the first two weeks of May, the zionist occupiers also demolished 42 Palestinian-owned buildings in occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the occupied West Bank, including 17 homes, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its latest report. This displaced 50 Palestinians, including 23 children. The livelihoods of more than 600 others were affected, said OCHA.
Israel’s killing spree has continued unabated; in fact, it has intensified, as the OCHA report confirmed. In the period January 1 – May 15, 2023, Israeli occupation forces killed 108 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. This was more than double the death toll of 51 in the same period last year.
East Jerusalem that houses the Masjid al-Aqsa, and the West Bank were occupied through zionist aggression in what came to be called the June 1967 Six Day War. The Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and Syria’s Golan Heights were occupied in the zionist blitzkrieg. Within the first hour of the war, the entire Egyptian air force was wiped out. The incompetent Arab rulers that are strong on rhetoric, were found completely incapable of confronting the zionist enemy. Instead, most of them have now surrendered to zionist occupiers under what they call “peace treaties” or “normalization”.
Despite facing enormous odds, the Palestinians have not surrendered. Thousands have been imprisoned in horrible conditions in Israeli dungeons where physical and sexual abuse is rampant. Children and women are among the prisoners. Zionist Israel uses the illegal ‘administrative detention’ ploy to keep Palestinians locked up indefinitely, without charge or trial. Hundreds of Palestinians have gone on hunger strike to protest their illegal incarceration. One such prisoner—Khader Adnan—died on May 2, 2023 after being on a hunger strike for 87 days. He found freedom in death from zionist occupation. The zionists, in their customary brutality, are refusing to hand over his body to the family for proper burial and closure of grief. There are bodies of other Palestinian strugglers that the zionists refuse to hand over to their families. They want to use such bodies as bargaining chips to advance their nefarious agenda.
The question facing all freedom-loving people is this: how to deal with the zionist menace? Neither protest rallies, petitions to politicians or UN resolutions will force the zionists to vacate the land they have illegally occupied. What they have taken by force must be taken back from them by force. This has been repeatedly demonstrated by people in different parts of the world including Hizbullah in Lebanon and indeed the Palestinians in Gaza Strip. It was the Palestinians’ determined resistance that drove the zionists out of Gaza in 2005.
Today, the Resistance Front comprising Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria, Iraq and Ansarallah in Yemen form a formidable bloc. Their combined efforts will, insha’Allah, consign the racist ideology of zionism to the dustbin of history, where it rightly belongs.