American Muslim groups denounce night of terror at Al-Aqsa Mosque

Al Aqsa Mosque

American Muslim civil advocacy groups have denounced what they called Israeli aggression on unarmed Palestinians at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the largest coalition of major national, regional, and local Muslim organizations and Islamic institutions, strongly condemned the ongoing Israeli violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan that Friday night (7 May / 25 Ramadan) alone seriously injured more than 200 Palestinian worshippers.

The USCMO includes 33 organizations and institutions. It was established in 2014 by eight major civil advocacy groups: the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLF), Muslim Uma of North America (MUNA) and The Mosque Cares of Imam W. Deen Mohammed.

In a statement, the USCMO said it denounced the relentless Palestinian holocaust and genocide at the hands of their internationally unlawful apartheid-imposing Israeli persecutors and occupiers as well as

the nighttime storming and desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli forces at the Gate of Mercy Prayer Hall in the holy month of Ramadan.

It said the firing of blinding, deafening, potentially lethal stun grenades at worshippers in Ramadan prayer vigil at the Noble Sanctuary while the Israeli militias’ use of rubber-coated metal bullets deliberately aimed at the eyes, faces, and heads of rightful Palestinian protestors to blind them, or maim them with debilitating head injuries

The USCMO pointed out that the Israeli courts’ continued apartheid sanctioning of armed Jewish colonizers forcibly dispossessing Palestinians of their ancestral homes in the Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Bustan neighborhoods of Jerusalem – as well as in other Palestinian communities in and around Jerusalem and the West Bank – and their gun-wielding, public intimidation and threat to massacre Palestinian residents of Jerusalem if they do not vacate their homes for these foreign intruders – acts recognized by the international community as illegal, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The USCMO called upon President Joseph Biden and the United States Congress to cease this direct U.S, abetting of these clear crimes against humanity with tens of millions of dollars of American tax-payer funds paid yearly to Israeli governments and institutions by law without any oversight or auditing of its actual uses.

It also call for the United States government to desist from its indirect collaboration with the Israeli authorities in what Human Rights Watch documented in their recent report.

The USCMO supported US Congresswoman Betty McCollum’s recent bill, HR2590, guaranteeing that US aid will no longer go to documented, systematic Israeli abuses against Palestinian children, destroying Palestinian property, removing Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, or further annexation of Palestinian lands.

The USCMO called on President Biden and Congress to insist that Israeli authorities, the international community, carry out immediately the Human Rights Watch reports and abandon obfuscating U.S. diplomatic language that pretends there are “two parties” equal in perpetrating aggression and violence when the Israelis hold absolute lethal power over an egregiously occupied and besieged Palestinian population, relentlessly instigate asymmetric violence on that subjugated population, and carry out continuously indefensibly provocative acts of repression and dispossession against the captive Palestinians. Pretensions to equivalence abet this persecution.

Israeli Attacks on Palestinians Protesting Ethnic Cleansing are not ‘Clashes’

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on media outlets and journalists in the United States and worldwide to stop referring to Israeli attacks on Palestinians protesting ethnic cleansing as “clashes.”

In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad, whose family was ethnically-cleansed from Palestine, said: “The Palestinian people – Muslim and Christian — are continuing their decades-long struggle to resist both ongoing ethnic cleansing and the apartheid system that has been so-named by respected international groups like Human Rights Watch. To term this resistance and the brutal Israeli response as ‘clashes’ falsely indicates a moral equivalency between the oppressor and the oppressed, between the occupier and the occupied.”

Our nation’s thought leaders and policymakers must finally give up the ‘human rights and justice everywhere – except Palestine’ attitude that has resulted in so much suffering and injustice over so many years, Awad concluded.

ICNA Condemns a Night of Terror at Masjid-al Aqsa

The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) strongly condemned Israel’s heavy-handed tactics against Palestinian demonstrators after plans are made to evict them from their homes on land claimed by Jewish occupiers. In a statement the ICNA said:

“Israeli police fired “rubber bullets” and so-called stun grenades injuring almost 200 Palestinians at Islam’s third holiest Mosque in this Blessed Month of Ramadan while in prayer.

“Such brutal and barbaric actions violate every international agreement and accord. Let alone this violation has taken place at a venerable place of worship and especially on the 27th Night of Blessed Month of Ramadan.

“For too long Israeli forces have provoked Palestinians only to fire at them in the name of rock-throwing. But the bottom line is evicting Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and imposing illegitimate Israeli sovereignty over them has been the reason for the struggle of oppressed Palestinian people for many decades.”

Palestinians must be guaranteed their fundamental human rights to practice their religion in peace and not to be uprooted from their homes that are owned by them for centuries. ICNA stands in complete solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters and calls on our elected officials and the international community to categorically condemn practices that violate the sanctity of the Holy Al-Aqsa Mosque and uprooting Palestinians from their homes. We call on the world to stop practicing double standards and stand for justice for the Palestinian people, ICNA concluded.

MAS stands in solidarity with Palestinians

The Muslim American Society condemned the Israeli forces attack on worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque. In a statement MAS said:

“In the blessed month of Ramadan, as worshippers prayed the night prayers in Masjid Al-Aqsa, Israeli soldiers reportedly stormed and attacked women, men, children and elderly engaged in worship. Israeli forces used skunk water, rubber bullets, grenades and tear gas against worshippers, injuring over 205 Palestinians.

“The residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem face the real threat of displacement and forced evictions by armed settlers and Israeli forces. 58 Palestinians including 17 children are being forced to leave their homes due to the Jerusalem District Court ruling that makes way for settlers to further occupy homes of Palestinians who lived there for generations.

“In the past few weeks, Human Rights Watch published a report detailing Israeli human rights abuses and crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution of Palestinians. Our tax dollars continue to support and fund such atrocities, which must stop immediately.”

MAS called on the Biden administration to take action to prevent these forced and illegal evictions and the attacks against worshippers in a holy mosque. “We must safeguard the human rights of Palestinians and stand against the violence and persecutions they face under Israeli apartheid.”

MPAC Denounces Israeli Aggression Against Palestinians

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) said the ongoing attacks on al-Aqsa Mosque and evictions in Sheikh Jarrah are a gross violation of international law, human rights, and religious freedom. Historically, America has upheld these values and led the world in its pursuit. The conditions in Jerusalem require the same degree of attention and intervention we have focused in other regions, as the rights, lives, and well-being of a people are under attack physically, spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically.

This is an unfortunate pattern of behavior against Palestinians during their most sacred nights of the year. This level of escalation, however, has not occurred in over a decade. The assaults violate our principles, values, and according to American and international law, amount to war crimes. When our American allies violate our values, laws, and international accords, we cannot afford inaction.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council called on the Biden Administration to Intervene with the Israeli government to cease all settlement activity and to pull back its occupying forces from Palestinian land in the West Bank, particularly East Jerusalem.

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofmaerica.net) email: [email protected]


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