Israel: A Racist Bully

 

Israel & U.S under Fire 

Israel’s attempt to justify its recent brutal assault on Gaza rings hollow to anybody familiar with events in Israel, where the government of Israel, backed by anti-Arab racists, has systematically, cruelly, and persistently violated the basic human rights of the Arab population. Like I told you last week in my sermon, Human Rights Watch, a global NGO with many Jewish leaders, has condemned Israel for crimes against humanity. 

Israel behaviour puts US President Joe Biden’s administration, which professes a foreign policy based on human rights, under the spotlight. If that commitment is genuine, the administration should support an independent UN investigation of Israeli human rights violations against the Arab population and suspend military aid to Israel until the inquiry is completed and the human rights of the Palestinians are secured. 

The antecedents of Israel’s most recent airstrikes and artillery attacks on Gaza were Israeli threats to expel Palestinians from their home and the Israeli-provoked violence at the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites [After the Holy Ka’aba and the Mosque of the Prophet (pbuh)]. Right-wings Israelis marched through East Jerusalem chanting “death to Arabs”. Rocket fire from Gaza soon followed, which may well have been the ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s objective. Now, the new elected Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett [as of 13 June 2021] is no exception. He is known to be a hard-core anti-Islam and propagator of the interest of the sole state of Israel, and not that of a Palestinian state. He once said in an interview back in February 2021: “As long as I have any power and control, I won’t hand over one centimeter of land of the Land of Israel. Period.” He had also taken a hard line towards dealing with the threat from Palestinian militants, for whom he has said he supports the death penalty. 

His predecessor fought to exploit anti-Arab hatred and to pursue and hold on to power. Now, a new, more dangerous thought is controlling Israel and represents danger for the Arab Muslims of Palestine. 

As the Khalifatullah of this era, I am deeply troubled by Israel’s reckless anti-Arab violence, which runs against the very core of Jewish ethics. Prophet Moses (as) as well as all the prophets of Israel never preached violence. The Talmud [like the Holy Quran] says that, “Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world.” Therefore, that which is despicable to you, you should never do that to your fellow human being. Israel’s ruthless bombing of Gaza, causing mass suffering and killing innocent people, including children, violates both principles. Corrupt and self-serving politicians like Netanyahu, Bennett and Atid often wrap themselves in religious garb to cover their malevolent deeds. They gravely wound religion in the process. Bennett, like his predecessor Netanyahu claims to be acting in the name of the Jewish people. He certainly is not. Many people, including Jews around the world hate racist politics.

The US government’s has lent its unflinching support to Israel and this has angered not only the Muslims, but the Jews as well and other people. Indeed a growing number of people from the various faiths, including the Jews have called on the United States to stop supporting Israel’s lawlessness. 

Moreover, the blank check that former President Donald Trump gave to Israel in recent years has encouraged extreme racism within parts of Israeli society, along with a sense among Israeli leaders that no abuse they commit or condone will shake US government support. The language of hate, racial exclusion, and massacres is invoked all too easily among the Israeli extreme right. The Palestinian’s pain and loss is greatly ignored by the people in power but their call to God Almighty is powerful and genuine, and Insha-Allah, all those injustice and persecutions against them shall transform into extreme pain for the persecutors. It is for us, humanity – not just Muslims – to act upon and foster the righteous thoughts into the future generations so that love and caring spread instead of hatred, jealousy and the thirst for power and worldly gains. 

The Human Rights Watch report on Israeli policy toward the Arabs of Israel and occupied Palestine reaches a stark and telling conclusion: Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. [Inset: A Palestinian boy runs near Israel’s separation barrier in the city of Qalqilya in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The barrier entirely encircles the city, which is home to more than 55,000 Palestinians. © 2018 AFP/Getty Images].

If the Biden administration is to abide by international human rights law, it can’t point fingers at China and then give a free pass to Israel, which indeed depends on US-provided munitions and financial support. Human rights are human rights, and they are part of international law under the UN charter. Whether the case is Xinjiang and the Uighurs, Myanmar and the Rohingya, or Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, the correct secular way to implement international law is through the United Nations, starting with an independent investigation under the auspices of an unbiased and genuine UN Human Rights Council. There should not be any bias. 

Rebuilding Gaza

In the meantime, I will also offer a bit of simple economic advice: a powerful way to stop bad behaviour in the future is to raise the cost. Instead of yet another donor conference at which the US, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and other countries pledge funds to pay for Gaza’s reconstruction, it is time to compel Israel to pay for rebuilding Gaza. International donor funds should be used to help the world’s poorest people, not to finance, tolerate or repair the wrongs of a wrongful state [or country] to blindly destroy and persecute an innocent people. 

It is time the U.S stop its unjustified and pompous funding of wrong causes and support the innocent. The U.S like any country inhabits people of different colours and faiths. It should not crush Islam and the feelings of the Muslims to support its own ideology of a total control of the world population. Each major country in this world is striving to have some control over this temporal world but their reign of terror is only for a limited time only. The label given to Islam and the Muslims, that is, “Islam is a religion of terror” is an absolute lie. Terrorists are those who funds so-called Muslims and pitch them against their own faith and brothers and provide them with all amenities to destroy themselves. The U.S and the other onlookers are making as if they have no hand in the matter. They want to see the Muslims suffer and Islam eradicated from the surface of this earth. That’s why they make everything in their power to attract the Muslims to their way of life, whereas Allah and His Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) had warned us since long that we should never follow the people of the Book [i.e. the Jews and the Christians] as well as the people of other faiths in their way of living for these people will lead us, Muslims to Hell whereas Allah and His Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) wants to lead to such Paradise which shall be eternal for us. 

The suffering of the Palestinian people should touch our heart, the heart of Islam, and we should feel that pain. To feel that pain we should be Muslim in every way. We should be humane and feel the sorrows of the innocents. We should feel the pain of our Muslim brothers, sisters and children and humanity at large for we are all humans and belong to one same race: the human race. And this entire human race belongs exclusively to Allah!  

We need to combat evil and establish justice and righteousness. For that, we should educate ourselves and our families in Islam, give them the right teachings, that of love and not hatred, and to strive to help mankind in whatever way we can. Service to man is service to God. We are all one family, but unfortunately there are many who have chosen the wrong path and we should pray for them as well so that God Almighty might change their hearts or rid the world from their atrocities. May Allah have mercy on us all. Ameen. Summa Ameen, Ya Rabbul Aalameen.

----Friday Sermon of 16 July 2021~05 Dhul-Hijjah 1442 AH delivered by Imam-Jamaat Ul Sahih Al Islam Hazrat Khalifatullah Munir A. Azim (aba) of Mauritius.