International Quds Day

International Quds Day

Friday June 8th the last Friday of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, is “International Quds Day” designated in solidarity with the Palestinians against the Israeli occupation by the late Iranian leader Imam Khomeini after the 1979 Iranian revolution that ousted the Shah Reza Bahlavi, who was an American/Israeli puppet. After the revolution Iran denounced the terrorist Israeli state, evicted the Israeli embassy in Tehran, and gave the building to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as a headquarter. Since then and up to today Iran has to face the enmity of both Israel and the US that has been culminated lately.

The Islamic Republic has been celebrating International Quds Day for the last 40 years calling on the Muslim and Arab worlds to unite in support for the just Palestinian cause and to liberate the Islamic as well as the Christian holy places in al-Quds from the Israeli vulgar desecration. Iranians have always considered the Palestinian cause and the liberation of the holy city; al-Quds, the “top priority of the Muslim world”.

This year the celebration has been especially intense coinciding with three other pivotal events. The first is the 11th consecutive week of the Palestinian “Great March of Return” when Palestinians have been demonstrating against Israeli occupation and demanding the lifting of the siege against Gaza Strip. The second is the 51st anniversary of June 6th 1967 Six Days War when Israel occupied the rest of Palestine. The third is Trump’s recognition of al-Quds as Jerusalem capital of Israel in defiance to international agreements concerning the legal status of the city.

On Friday millions of people across the globe rallied in the streets of major capitals of the world in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas to mark the International Quds Day expressing support for the Palestinian resistance against Israel, condemning Israeli terrorist occupation, and denouncing American unconditional and immoral support to Israeli terror including the American military interventions in the Middle East and Trump’s recognition of al-Quds as capital of Israel.

Bahrain was the first country to witness rallies with thousands of people despite all the oppression they suffered by the occupying Saudi military forces.  Millions of people; young and old, males and females, from all walks of life took to the streets of 900 Iranian cities in this event in solidarity with Palestinians. Despite the destructive Saudi war against Yemen millions of people poured in the streets of all major cities, especially Sana’a the capital, carrying Palestinian next to Yemeni flags supporting the Palestinian cause as their top priority, and calling for death to Israel and to US, who is supporting the Saudi coalition war against their country. In Lebanon, thousands of Palestinian refugees accompanied by many Lebanese walked to the town of Maroun El Ras, the closest town to the borders with occupied Palestine, where they attended a speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah stressing the fact that resistance is the only path to liberate Palestine.

Similar rallies took place in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Italy, Spain, Norway, Austria, Germany, France, UK, Canada and the Americas. Millions of people had rallied in support of Palestinians and against the Zionist Israeli occupation. Many of these participants urged that the only way to free Palestine is through resistance, Intifada and BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel) stressing the need for strong unity among different Palestinian factions so that the battle against the colonizers must continue. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is actually an existential struggle and not a mere borders struggle.

Although International Day seems initially to be an Islamic event, yet many Christians as well as authentic Jews had participated in it. Israel is persecuting Christians, black Jews as well as Muslims. This day has united millions of people; Muslims, Christians and many authentic Jews in one cause. These rallies send a strong message to the world of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israel, whose occupation and colonization are trying to wipe off Palestine from the global map. International Quds Day is an anti-colonization movement.

Palestine, represented in al-Quds, is not only a Muslim cause but also a Christian as well as a humanitarian cause. Al-Quds with al-Aqsa Mosque in its midst is the first Qiblah for the Muslim world; towards which Muslims face during their five times daily prayers. It is the third Muslim holiest place after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Zionists falsely claim that al-Aqsa Mosque had been built on the ruins of the alleged Solomon Temple. 51 years of Israeli archeological digs under and around the Mosque had failed to produce the slightest evidence of this claim. After 1967 war Israel had evacuated and totally razed the large 770 years old Maghrabi Quarters (Moroccan Quarter) adjacent to al-Aqsa retaining wall, claiming the wall as their wailing wall; part of the alleged temple. Extremist Zionist Jews have been desecrating the Mosque’s compound regularly and under the protection of the Israeli terrorist army. Praying Muslims are regularly harassed by these extremists and by Israeli soldiers preventing many Muslim believers from praying.

Palestine, and particularly al-Quds, are the holiest places for all Christians, where Jesus lived, preached the gospel, crucified and killed on the urge of Jewish Pharisees, and raised to heaven as Christians believe. Zionist Israeli Jews despise and curse the Christ in their prayers calling him a pervert and a son of a whore insulting Virgin Mary. Religiously extremist Israelis attack Christian churches with fire and vulgar graffities. They regularly spit on Christian clergy and nuns in the streets of al-Quds under the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers. Church properties are being illegally confiscated by the Israeli government who claim that it respects the freedom of religions but persecutes Christians as well as Muslim residence of al-Quds in an attempt to cleanse the city from its non-Jewish residence and to claim it as a pure Jewish city.

Palestine and al-Quds are not Israel and not Jerusalem as all the archeological digs for the last hundred years had failed to prove (I will deal with this historical fact in a coming article; al-Quds is not Jerusalem).

Palestinian cause is a global humanitarian cause since the brutal Zionist Great Israel Project had devastated the whole Arab World, is threatening world peace and will eventually adversely affect every human life on earth.

International Quds Day has re-focused the world attention onto the terrorist Zionist Israeli occupation of Palestine; the primary cause for all the wars in the Middle East throughout the last 70 years. Since 2010 with the beginning of what was wrongly called “Arab Spring” the focus of the globe was intentionally shifted away from the Palestinian cause and directed to the mayhems and wars in other Arab countries. With the focus on ISIS and the Syrian war the Palestinian cause seemed to fade away in the back burner. The International Quds Day has brought the focus back on the Palestinian cause as the core issue in the Middle East.

After the failure of ISIS terrorist project to topple the Syrian government, Israel and the American administration with their Gulf states puppets have been focusing on portraying Iran as a rogue state supporting terrorism in the region. They are trying to transform the Arab/Zionist Israel conflict into “Persian/Arab Sunni/Shi’ite” conflict and portraying Israel as an Arab ally against the Islamic Republic. International Quds Day clearly shows that this “Persian Shi’ite” Islamic Republic of Iran is a major supporter for the Sunni Arab Palestinian cause; more so than many Arab states. Persian Iran has also been a major defender of the Sunni Arab World against the many Israeli American created terrorist groups preventing them from initially destroying Syria and then moving to Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

The Islamic Republic is a great friend to the Arabs generally and to Palestinians specifically. While we see mass rallies in many parts of Iran supporting Palestine, we have not seen any similar, or even smaller, single rally in Arab Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or UAE, who are in the process of normalizing the relationship with the Zionist state and granting it fake historical and national rights to Palestine. Iranian support to the Palestinians is not politically tactical, rather it has been so far the strongest and firmest than those of Arab leaders, and have not wavered or weakened despite all the western political pressures and economic bribes that were offered to its leaders.

Dedicating the last Friday of the month of Ramadan as International Quds Day and calling on the Islamic World and the whole globe to unite against the inhumane brutal Zionist Israeli occupation is a very humane and brave act on the part of Iran, an act none of the Arab leaders had dared to do to save their Palestinian Arab brothers.

This International Quds Day is just another great event to teach the Palestinian young generations, especially those in refugee camps and in diaspora, the real history of their grandparents, the grave Zionist injustice inflicted on their own people, their legal rights of return and of preparations, and to invigorate in their minds political awareness and in their hearts the spirit of resistance to free their own homeland.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine, after the 1948 Nakba when the Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after the Zionist, again, occupied the rest of Palestine.

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