Death, carnage and war have enveloped Occupied Palestine in an escalation of violence that has killed more than 1,400 people and injured many more. The occupier Zionist State of Israel has declared war on the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” on the Zionist State in an early morning attack on Oct. 7. The move was announced by Muhammad Al-Deif, leader of Hamas’ military wing after it sent 5,000 missiles and shells in the first stage of strikes and orchestrated incursions into Israeli settlements.
“This is your day to make the enemy understand that its time has ended,” said Mr. Al-Deif, while addressing his group, reported Al Mayadeen, the Arab independent media channel. He reasoned the move was in response to Israeli settlers illegally storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque and third holiest site of Islam, during the Jewish Yom Kippur observances days earlier.
Media reports said the Israeli military forcefully prevented Palestinians’ access to the mosque in what is widely seen by some observers and analysts as deliberate provocation.
›A culmination of decades of colonialism
While Israel plays the victim and some are framing the war as Israel defending itself from Palestinian aggression, justice advocates argue the recent strife did not begin on Oct. 7 with Hamas’ missiles.
It is rooted in the 1948 usurping of Palestinian land, the concoction of the Zionist-settler state called Israel, its illegal occupations, and the brutal subjugation of Palestinians. Observers said everything that transpired every decade after that are really iterations of the response to that root issue of injustice.
“The best way to describe it is a people who have been oppressed … faced apartheid … ethnic cleansing … stuck in the largest open-air prison in the world, not allowed access to their own water, land, air, nothing,” said Muhammad Sankari, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN).
The Chicago-based activist said what the world is witnessing is the Palestinian people saying, they refuse to die silently. “It’s as simple as that, and this is the culmination of 75 years of Israeli colonialism,” Mr. Sankari added. The Palestinians are saying they will not lie down or go away. “And they’re showing the world what that means,” he said.
“We must remember that the founding of Israel, like most settler colonies, is founded on ethnic cleansing, like the settler colony we’re living in now, right in the United States,” said Mr. Sankari. “It started with the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands, and they have yet to be able to return,” he explained.
Mr. Sankari said the Palestinians are refugees in their own land such as in Gaza where some pockets of people are from originally, but a majority are actually refugees who were pushed out from some of the same areas where Israel established settlements. Areas that have come under resistance attack.
“It’s truly the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the people who were ethnically cleansed going back to where they are originally from,” said Mr. Sankari.
Question of justice and wider war
The tension and fighting in Israel are part of that which will ultimately help ignite the region. While the United States stands with the Zionist state, rights experts, progressive movements and many nations are condemning human rights violations in Israel.
The Holy Qur’an, the Islamic book of scripture, warns that those who do not heed good advice are doomed. The law of Moses condemns the unjust taking of lives.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan along with his teacher, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam warns that no individual nor nation can escape the law of justice today. We are living in the day of God’s Judgment and a time when the consequences of deeds, individual deeds and national deeds, cannot be averted except that repentance quickly sets in.
“Every human being wants full and complete freedom, and anything that deprives us of that which God desires for us, puts itself in a position opposite God,” Min. Farrakhan said in a November 2010 article called, “Justice is the Joy of Freedom.”
“Ultimately every oppressed people, every enslaved people, every people not free finds the way to become free. Everyone who takes the road of The Oppressor, The Enslaver, The Exploiter is ultimately set down.”
The Minister continued, “The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that Justice is the Principle of Fair Dealing. According to Webster’s Dictionary, justice is ‘fairness, fair play, fair mindedness.’ Justice is ‘evenhandedness, impartiality, objectivity;’ it’s a ‘lack of bias, a lack of prejudice.’ ”
Justice is not the order of the day in this world. Might makes right and power over media twists and manipulates truth to justify the acts of those with money, power and influence—and to shut down the voices of those who object.
The resistance’s operation comes in the context of sustained unchecked Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the West Bank and al-Quds, as well as a suffocating siege on the Gaza Strip.
The 2.3 million Palestinians who live in the besieged Gaza Strip spent nights in terror and darkness as Israel relentlessly bombarded the 140 square-mile area with air strikes and power cuts. Israeli officials announced on Oct. 9 a total blockade of Gaza.
The air attacks and shelling destroyed, infrastructure, including mosques and leveled houses and apartment buildings displacing 123,538 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the UN humanitarian relief agency. Al Mayadeen reported in the first 72 hours of the war, the occupation forces bombed 10 mosques resulting in multiple fatalities after renewing its siege on Gaza.
The conflict has brought in other Palestinian resistance forces. Resistance groups reportedly captured over 150 Israelis—both military and civilians. Ziad al-Nakhala, leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group said they captured more than 30 Israelis seized in Gaza. He said they would not be released “till all of our prisoners are released,” referring to 5,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Each side accuses the other of targeting innocent civilians.
As the fighting intensified, at Final Call presstime fears grew it could degenerate into a regional and multinational war if not contained. Added to those fears were allegations circulating that the Islamic Republic of Iran was involved in the planning, which Tehran refutes.
Besides the U.S. standard response that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced added equipment, and resources, munitions, and positioning of a carrier strike group near Israel, which includes an aircraft carrier, with 5,000 U.S. soldiers. The Pentagon also plans to add fighter jets in the region.
The U.S. decision to send an aircraft carrier is a “major escalation” said Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.
“I do not understand in strategic military terms why the U.S. would send aircraft carriers—with some 5,000 sailors on it—and the most sophisticated aircraft in the world when Israel is more than capable of dealing with Hamas in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
“The idea of this arms build-up in the Middle East at this point in time, it’s dangerous.”
Worldwide Palestinian solidarity grows
Pro-Palestinian solidarity was demonstrated worldwide in condemnation of ongoing Israeli aggression. The anti-war A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition website listed U.S. cities where solidarity rallies were organized by different organizations.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations were held after the unprecedented attack on Israel in Gaza, Istanbul, Tehran, Damascus and other Middle Eastern capitals. Solidarity demonstrations were held in cities across the U.S. and Europe.
An email from the Act Now to End War and Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.) coalition that organized cities across the U.S. said, the “unrelenting oppression” and “occupation” carried out by Israel as an “apartheid regime” precipitated the counter-offensive by Palestinian resistance forces.
“The Israeli war machine, and its attendant systems of oppression, are bought and paid for by U.S. imperialism,” said the email. American tax dollars fund the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people with $4 billion each year, the group noted.
The nationwide protests demanded the U.S. immediately end all aid to Israel, the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners and an end to the blockade of Gaza.
“Many of the actions today were slandered and vilified by politicians who shamefully stand with the apartheid government in Israel,” said A.N.S.W.E.R. “Protesters refused to be silenced and proudly took to the streets. We know that we are on the right side of history.”
