Anti-Arab anti-Semitism

Racist Zionist Islamophobia, Sacrilege & Palestinian Genocide
By Dr. Gideon Polya, MWC chief political editor Feb 7

APARTHEID ISRAEL has imposed restrictions on access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site (the site of the Prophet Muhammad’s ascension) - only Muslim men who are married, over 45 years old and have a blue Israeli identity card, as well as all Muslim women, will have access to the Temple Mount. Muslim leaders have protested the restriction of religious observance and threat to the foundations of the mosque (see article: below).

This sacrilege and illegal prevention of Muslim worship follows a long history of Israeli abuses connected with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, most notoriously the gross violation by war criminal Ariel Sharon that deliberately precipitated the Second Intifada . A recent gross abuse was the highly offensive labelling a brand of Israeli vodka with a picture of the Dome of the Rock. According to the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Sheikh Mohammed Hussein: "the marketing of wine bottles with a picture of the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, on them is an Israeli attempt to humiliate Muslims everywhere …putting a picture of a holy shrine on a bottle of wine which is forbidden in Islam is an insult on Islamic creed and Islamic civilization … It is a belligerence on Muslims dignity and passion ”. (see article: below)

However both the physical sacrilege of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the prevention of worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque are even more offensive. An analogy can illluminate this obscenity for Christians and Catholics in particular - thus imagine that the US-backed Racist Zionists (RZs) took over the Vatican City and Saint Peter’s Basilica on the basis that it was their property (as well as Jerusalem) because Saint Peter was Jewish, that Catholicism was an offshoot of Judaism and that both God and Amerika ordain that RZs can do anything they like from stealing the Holy Land and the continuing Palestinian Genocide to adumbrated nuclear devastation of remote, peaceful Iran.

The global community has International Laws and Conventions governing human rights observance and in particular the behaviour of Occupiers. The present physical sacrilege of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and prevention of Muslim worship there by the racist Zionists (RZs) is a gross violation of key Articles of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War as outlined below [the offences are succinctly described in square brackets].

Article 3 part 1(c) prohibits “Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” [sacrilege of a site sacred to 1.5 billion Muslims as well as to Palestinians; occupying Israeli soldiers preventing Muslims from worshipping at the holiest Mosque in the Holy Land and the third most holy site in the Muslim World].

Article 39 part 3 demands that “ They [conquered subjects] shall be allowed to practise their religion and to receive spiritual assistance from ministers of their faith.” [prevention of Muslims worshipping at the Al-Aqsa Mosque; about 50% of Palestinians are Children and Apartheid Israel is forcibly preventing more than 50% of Muslim Palestinians from worshipping at the Al-Aqsa Mosque].

In addition, the horrendous post-invasion avoidable mortality (0.3 million post-invasion excess deaths) and infant mortality (0.2 million post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (as estimated from UN Population Division data constitute evidence of gross Israeli violations of the implicit requirement of these Geneva Convention that any Occupier “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” must provide the life-sustaining requisites necessary for keeping the Conquered Population ALIVE.

Article 38 part 5: "Children under fifteen years, pregnant women and mothers of children under seven years shall benefit by any preferential treatment to the same extent as the nationals of the State concerned." [horrendous differential infant mortality imposed by the RZs – the “annual under-5 year old infant death rate” is 0.47% in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as compared to 0.12% in Occupier Israel ]

Article 55 demands in part that “To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate” [post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million].

Article 56 demands in part that “To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties” [post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million].

Indeed the racist policies of the anti-Arab anti-Semitic and Islamophobic Occupier Apartheid Israel offend against Muslim Palestinians practising the Five Pillars of Islam, namely Shahada (declaration of faith) [Israeli sacrilege of the holiest place in the Holy Land in relation to the Prophet Muhammed]; Salat (devotional worship or prayer) [Israeli prevention of most Palestinians from worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque]; Zakat (alms giving) [Israeli imposition of horrendous unemployment and privation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory]; Sawm (the fast during the month of Ramadan) [continuous Israeli military violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is no respecter of Ramadan]; and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) [the Israelis restrict Palestinian movement within the Holy Land and within the Occupied Palestinian Territory; Palestinians leaving the Occupied Palestinian Territory may not be allowed to return).

What has been done to the Arab Palestinians by the Racist Zionists (RZs) is genocidal disempowerment, dispossession, deprivation, devastation and displacement on a massive scale: 0.7 million Palestinians expelled in 1948; half the UN-allotted Palestinian lands seized by the RZs in 1948; 6 million Palestinian refugees (4 million registered with the UN); 80,000 Palestinians fleeing their homeland each year; 85% of West Bank Christians ethnically cleansed by the RZs; 80% of Bethlehem Christians have fled; and as estimated from UN Population Division data, post-1967 excess deaths and under-5 infant deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million and 0.2 million, respectively - a Palestinian Genocide (as defined by the Internationally-agreed UN Genocide Convention ).

Three quarters of the Palestinians are Women and Children. The RZs are still effectively saying after 40 years of running the Occupied Palestinian Territory “Prison” or Concentration Camp – “leave or your Children may die” (the "annual death rate" for Palestinian infants is an appalling 4 times higher than that in Israel - indicative of gross violation by Apartheid Israel of the UN Charter and the Geneva, Universal Human Rights, Rights of the Child and Genocide Conventions)

The world’s 1.5 billion Muslims and 2.0 million Christians should urgently act in response to the persecution of their co-religionists by the Racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory Concentration Camp. Indeed all decent people should join with them in (a) informing others about Racist Zionist (RZ) human rights abuses; and (b) urgently applying intra-national and inter-national Sanctions and Boycotts to Racist Zionists, Apartheid Israel and other Westerners complicit in the Palestinian Genocide.


Israel dig plan 'threatens Al-Aqsa'
Arab World By Agencies Feb 6

Taysir al-Tamimi, a senior Muslim scholar and judge, has said Israeli bulldozers are moving towards the al-Maghareba gate of the al-Aqsa mosque compound to demolish parts of a mound covering the walkway.

Speaking on Al Jazeera, Sheikh al-Tamimi called for Palestinians to immediately head to al-Aqsa mosque to "protect" the site from the Israelis.

Tensions

"The occupation bulldozers are headed to destroy the historic route from Dung [al-Maghareba] Gate," al-Tamimi said on Tuesday.

The bulldozers, he said, intended to demolish a mound next to al-Maghareba Gate, one of the entrances into Jerusalem's Old City leading to the mosque compound.

According to the Waqf religious trust, two underground rooms connected to the mosques lie under the mound. They claim that levelling the mound would threaten the foundation of the entire al-Aqsa compound.

Witnesses said Israeli police were deployed in force in the Old City to avoid any disturbances. One bulldozer was present at al-Maghareba Gate, they said.

Shmuel Ben-Ruby, a police spokesman, said security guards were stationed at entrances to the compound "to thwart any attempt to disrupt order".

The work, just outside the site known as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims and as the Temple Mount to Jews, is likely to inflame tensions.

Israeli police have already restricted access to the site, preventing tourists and Palestinian men under the age of 45 from entering.

'Salvage operation'

Israel's project entails excavating the mound to ensure that the subsequent renovation work does not damage any archaeological artifacts found at the site, officials said.

Yuval Baruch, the antiquities authority's chief archaeologist for the Jerusalem region, told Israel radio the work was a salvage operation.

"We have begun the work in preparation for the salvage dig that is supposed to start here in the coming days in the framework of the renovation of the Maghareba Bridge," he said.
Israel has been conducting excavation work near the Dome of the Rock since 1969 [AP]

The compound, which houses al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, is where the second Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 following a controversial visit by Israel's then-opposition leader, Ariel Sharon.

The site is also revered by Jews as once the site of Solomon's temple, the holiest shrine in Judaism, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD.

On Sunday, Jordan's King Abdullah II warned against "any attack on Islamic sites" in Jerusalem and condemned Israeli attempts "seeking to change the nature of these sites and erase their Muslim character".

In January 2007, Israel revealed a project to set up a synagogue next to the al-Aqsa Mosque's Dome of the Rock.

In February 2004, excavation works carried out by Israeli authorities led to the collapse of a part of the path leading to Al Maghareba Gate, one of the mosque's main entrances.

The Israeli government has been conducting exploratory excavation works underneath the al-Aqsa Mosque since 1969.



Dome of the Rock on Vodka Bottle in Israeli
2007-01-25 Asian Tribune

Ramallah: While the Muslims in Palestine were pleased by the arrival of the renovated pulpit (minbar in Arabic) of Salah Ad-Deen of Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, an Israeli import and export company distributed vodka bottles with pictures of the Dome of the Rock printed on.

Ahmed Al Abrah, citizen of Al Ramleh in Israel, told the Al Aqsa Establishment for Reconstructing the Islamic Holy Sites on Monday, January 22, 2007 that he has seen the photo of the Dome of the Rock on bottles of wine he bought from a cafeteria in Rahovot city in Israel a few days ago. "I went in a tour to check if this kind of vodka is being sold in other stores or cities in Israel and I found it in so many stores like in Ashdod", he said.

Al Abrah told them that he broke all the bottles with the photo except one as an evident. The Establishment said that the bottle contains a kind of vodka labeled "SOYUS-VICTAN EVREISKAYA". It is distributed by an Israeli company called "Bolonia for import and export company 2000 MD" in the Israeli city of Ashdod. The Establishment added that on the other side of the bottle it appears that it is originally manufactured in the Ukraine.

The Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Sheikh Mohammed Hussein condemned the behavior of the Israeli company saying that "the marketing of wine bottles with a picture of the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, on them is an Israeli attempt to humiliate Muslims everywhere". He said that "putting a picture of a holy shrine on a bottle of wine which is forbidden in Islam is an insult on Islamic creed and Islamic civilization."

"It is a belligerence on Muslims dignity and passion", he added.

*Mohammed Mar'i is a freelance Palestinian journalist based in Ramallah, Occupied Palestine.