International Quds Day

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International Quds Day

Introduction

International Quds Day, which falls on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan every year, was initiated in 1979 by Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to express solidarity with Palestinians who have been under the Zionist regime’s occupation for more than seven decades.

Imam Khomeini did this to emphasize the issue of Quds and make it a concern in the minds and conscience of Muslims and to remind them that concentrating efforts and forming a united resistance front is the only way to confront the aggression against Quds and to liberate the land and people who own it from the seven decades long genocidal occupation that has been going on by the Zionists.

The International Quds Day is a Palestinian day with a distinction of support for the Palestinian Cause in the Islamic world. Quds Day stresses the need that it is the central issue of the Islamic world. It reminds the Islamic countries as well as all the freedom seekers of the world of the need to mobilize their energies and capabilities towards the liberation of Al-Quds Al-Sharif.

Imam Khomeini’s intelligent initiative united Muslims on the issue of Holy Quds and has led to mass demonstrations and gatherings every year in constant voicing and defending the legitimate rights of the oppressed people of Palestine. Nations welcomed Quds Day and considered it to be a religious obligation to hold up the flag for Palestine’s liberation. This Day has become a significant symbol of resistance movement against occupation, terrorism, apartheid and injustice in the global order.

History

The term Zionism refers to creating a Jewish state. Yet, it is not necessarily supported by all the Jews across the world, rather opposed by many of them who find it against the teachings of the Torah and participate in Quds Day demonstrations every year alongside Muslims and Christians. But Zionists have somehow, majorly through the power of mass media and propaganda, manipulated it so that people confuse it with anti-Semitism which refers to the hostility directed against the Jewish people which was common in Europe years before the concept of an Israeli state ever came up. Zionists have frequently used it to justify their crimes and aggressions against the Palestinians whom they have slaughtered throughout years of occupation.

It all started when Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist brought up the idea of a Jewish state in 1898 after years of European anti-Semitism. The problem was that they didn’t have a country. Aside with historical facts, as a prerequisite and per Montevideo Convention (1933), to become a state, there must be a permanent population and a defined territory none of which did Jewish people scattered around the globe possess. seeking for a stronghold to guarantee their hegemony for European countries over the middle east and expanding colonialism over Muslim nations after defeating Ottoman empire, the British promised to create a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine as per the Balfour Declaration of November 1917, Getting themselves and indeed the larger European community rid of their historical Jewish problem. In 1948 the bogus Zionist entity was eventually implanted in Palestine, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians including Muslims and Christians were either killed or driven from their homes by the Zionists who flooded into Palestine from Europe and Russia.

Recent years

Over the past seven decades, Palestine has endured countless crimes of massacre, ethnic cleansing, population change, systematic torture, arbitrary murder, detention, genocide and all forms of war crimes.

A report published by Amnesty International in 2022 entitled “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity” revealed the true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime. It states that Palestinians, whether living in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or even within the occupied territories, are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights and that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid.

The insane actions of this apartheid regime includes the siege of Gaza or let’s say what’s left for the true natives of palatine who sacrificed their lives but stood their ground, the completion of the barrier wall, destruction of homes, expulsion and forced relocation of Palestinians from their homes under the project of Judaization of Jerusalem with the continuation of settlements, assassination of Palestinian activists, politicians and military commanders, destruction of fertile agricultural lands in the Gaza Strip, increasing military-security presence and surveillance in East Jerusalem, Prohibition of the movement of Palestinian citizens living in Jerusalem and revocation of their identity cards and permanent residence permits to live in Jerusalem, separation of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza and so on. The Zionist regime commits persistent and systematic violations of human rights on a daily basis. The Israeli apartheid regime has arbitrarily and unjustifiably made hundreds of thousands of temporary and long-term detentions from which more than one million Palestinians have suffered since 1967.

As for 2022, till now more than 39 Palestinians have been killed by the occupying forces of the Israeli regime. Eleven of them were martyred in April, only few days after Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called on his troops to shoot Palestinians regardless of any rules or restrictions.

Also, according to a report by the National Assembly of the Families of the Palestinian Martyrs in 2021, the occupying Zionist troops killed a total of 357 Palestinians 67 of which were women and 78 children in the West Bank and Gaza.

Outlook

After years of groundwork, the process of normalization of relations between some Arab countries and Israeli regime finally reached the final stage during Former United States president Donald Trump’s administration.  Few Arab countries declared their normalization of relations with Israel. While it seems to be more of a trade of interests between state leader, the move has drawn widespread condemnation from Palestinians and all Muslim nations around the world. Such rejection has rendered normalization, just like all previous attempts to legitimizing the state of Israel, a bogus one as it doesn’t address the rights of the Palestinian nation who see their country occupied for more than seven decades now.

Fortunately, there are peaceful solutions that can substantially resolve the conflict although it requires global support.  Just like any other nation, the Palestinian people have the right to determine their own destiny and to elect their own government. One general referendum that takes in to account the will of original people of Palestine – including Muslims, Christians and Jews whether they live inside Palestine or in camps or in any other place they were driven to by the force of Israeli tanks and guns – would shape a future free of conflict.

The Palestinian people are still suffering from the fallout of Nakba (catastrophe) Day, the day in which the Israeli takeover of Palestinian lands began in 1948. Until now, the Palestinian story is alive. The Palestinians have never forgotten their right of return to their own land. To Palestinians, every day is considered to be Quds Day.