Ali Al Hadi Ismail | Staff Writer
At the age of seven, Muhammad Abu Saada was in a class with his brother. While he was
sitting in class, his teacher gave a lesson about a martyr and asked the students to say
who the martyr was. Muhammad Abu Saada stood up to be recognized and said, “I am Muhammad Abu Saada, the martyr.” The teacher told him, “You are a martyr?!” Muhammad Abu Saada was only 15 when he proved his answer was valid. He and his brother were the last two people in their family who passed away in the battle after their house was destroyed and most of the villagers were killed. His father died fighting in the Battle of Gaza. Muhammad Abu Saada knew that his life would be dedicated to retaining his land. He was martyred for his faith in freedom and his brother was martyred for his faith in humanity.
Muhammad Abu Saada is one of the most important figures of Palestinian resistance, yet his name gets barely mentioned, just like the thousands of young Palestinians who play a great role in demonstrating the true meaning of freedom and fighting for human rights. He had the courage and commitment to resist the occupation, and until his last breath, he fought for the freedom of his people. Woefully, neither broadcasting channels nor newspapers showed interest in mentioning his name or writing about him. Even Arabic media channels were too busy condemning the Russian interference in Ukraine.
The Israeli occupation of Palestine has been going on for the past 74 years. Every year,
Israel’s occupying government comes up with a bolstered strategy to colonize the Palestinian people through the use of force and to control their land and lives through military rule and apartheid. Palestinians in Gaza have been living in an open-air prison for almost 15 years. Aren’t all these human rights violations, which constitute crimes against humanity, an affront to the entire international community and to the principles of justice that the United Nations was designed to uphold? Perhaps, we are asking the wrong organizations…
The roots of Israel stretch back to the Balfour Declaration, which was made in 1917. After World War I, the British government was forced to make peace with the fledgling Zionist movement. The Zionist leadership was determined to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine and would have settled for nothing less. The League of Nations, the organization that would have given the Jewish people independence in Palestine, was not to the Zionist movement’s liking. The Zionists were happy to accept the Balfour Declaration and the British decision to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, but they were not satisfied with the League of Nations’s decision to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. The Zionists wanted a single state with a Jewish majority. They rejected the Arab demand for self-rule within the context of an independent Palestine, and this led to a conflict that has never ended.
“A land without a people for a people without a land” is a term that brought Palestinians to the
brink of extinction. For 70 years, the lands of historic Palestine have been governed by an occupying power, Israel, while the indigenous population has been denied even the most basic
human rights and forced to live as second-class citizens. The Palestinian people, to this day, are being forcibly driven out of their homes, dispersed, and deprived of basic rights. The result is a people without a land and a land without people. This has created an existential crisis for the Palestinian people.
The Oslo Accords, the Oslo II Agreement, and the so-called Oslo Peace Process compounded the issue. At their core, all these processes were about the transfer of the Palestinian people and their lands from Arab to Jewish hands. The Oslo Accords even went so far as to establish a Palestinian National Authority that was, in practice, an entity with limited jurisdiction under Israeli military occupation. The Palestinian National Authority was meant to be a transitional body that would lead to Palestinian statehood and sovereignty, but after decades of occupation, it has become clear that the Palestinian Authority will never be an independent state since it is an entity that is completely under the control of its occupier and can do nothing without the latter’s permission. In other words, the Palestinian Authority is a façade.
It is idiotic to believe that Israel is satisfied with its current occupied territory.
The promised land or “the Greater Israel” is on its way to include Lebanon, Syria, Jordan,
and Egypt. This is very clear from the book of Genesis and Joshua. The boundaries of
“Greater Israel” are the Mediterranean Sea in the west, Northern Syria to its north, the Euphrates River to the east, and Egypt in the south. The promised land is very large, much
bigger than any of the Arab countries. The Zionist movement has already reached Egypt,
Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
Zionism and terrorism are two terms encoding the same meaning. However, the term “terrorism” has been appropriated by the Israeli political establishment and media and used as a tool for suppressing the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Zionists are defined as Jewish political activists committed to the establishment of the State of Israel, a Jewish State, in Palestine. They have been involved in a series of violent campaigns, including terrorism, massacres, and land theft against Palestinian civilians. Did we forget their massacres in 1982 Lebanon where they invaded West Beirut and Southern Lebanon? Did we forget the massacres of Sabra and Shatila in September 1982 in which thousands of Palestinians were brutally killed? Did we forget the 2008 war in Gaza in which Israeli soldiers invaded and killed almost 1,500 Palestinians? Did we forget the massacres of civilians in Jenin and Nablus?
Israel is a modern project, created and supported by the British, to facilitate their domination of the Near East. Israel is anything but a democracy. In a democracy, all citizens are equal and can freely exercise their universal rights. Israel is a country of occupation and apartheid, a state with no borders. Resisting Israel is a sacred right for Arabs, an obligation even. In the last decade, the world has witnessed unprecedented efforts by the Zionist regime to dominate the Middle East through the back door. The right of resistance against this apartheid regime is
enshrined in the law of ethics. Israel is not a country- it is a colony and a racist one at that.
Israel is the leading threat to the peace and security of the globe. How can it be stopped? Perhaps by combining education, research, discoveries, and fire? Let us start with a pencil to design a pistol.