Eid and Gaza

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Every day when you open the news, Israel has killed 30, 40 or 50 more Palestinians in Gaza. The death toll has risen to 54,500. The UN has warned that as of now, Gaza is the "hungriest place on Earth" and its entire population is at risk of famine. WHO says, "Three quarters of Gaza's population are at IPC Scale 5 level of food deprivation labelled 'Emergency' or 'Catastrophic'."

IPC Scale5 level means extreme food insecurity and nutritional deprivation. It has been one year and eight months since the Gazans are being zigzagged from the north to the south and back again. No Gazan family has a roof on their heads, all are in make-shift tents. Food, that was always rationed to them by Israel, as they live in the world's biggest open-air prison, is now being used by Israel as a 'weapon of war'.

Trucks full of food stand across the borders, and when the least number of trucks are allowed in, the food reaches the Gazans via tight cage-ways where the desperate Palestinians scramble in only to face more abuse, more humiliation; only to return without any food; and only to be gunned down by the barbarian and brazen Israeli gunmen.

So, this was the Eid-ul-Azha celebration in Gaza; not a celebration of joy and festivity, but a celebration of pain, fear and terror. The pain of sickness and injuries, the fear of being dragged out of their tents once again, the fear of not returning to their homes ever, the fear of not having food for the children, and the terror of being bombed at from the air or their loved-ones being shot at by a sniper.

The question is, do 'we' share a responsibility? Responsibility as the Muslim Ummah, wherein Pakistan stands as the 12th most powerful military of the world and Turkey stands as the 7th; wherein Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Malaysia, Iran, Egypt and Pakistan fall in the riches top quarter of world nations by GDP.

Do we have a responsibility to reach the hungry with food, to reach the sick with medics, and to reach the terrorised with protection? Last month when Trump visited the Gulf states, everybody was expecting a breakthrough in the Gaza War. But in spite of all the peace talks in the background, what we saw was Trump securing deals totaling more than $2 trillion for the US; Qatar gifting him a $400 million luxury aircraft; and the UAE awarding him the country's highest civilian honour, the Order of Zayed.

Is that how you trophy the best friend and abettor of the nation that is inflicting apartheid, genocide and disproportional warfare, in real-time, upon the Palestinians? The Ummah is confused and anxious. Is this all a big face-saving with actually a huge plan for Palestine under the table; or is it vice versa?

And what about the rest of the humanity, what about the civilised, democratised, humanised West? Let alone their corrupt political elite that has exploited their own people and all of humanity, wherever their plundering hands could reach, what about those who raise the banner of genuine, candid, righteousness, the truth-tellers of their times, acclaimed by millions around the world!

Truth-tellers like Jordan Peterson, who tweeted on 7th Oct, 'give 'em hell @netanyahu, enough is enough'. When asked later, he made apologies about not have understood 'twitter' well enough. Imagine, a renowned psychologist and author, habitual of going into great lengths and complex depths to convince his audience upon his views, saying Twitter is complicated and difficult to use! And still after a year and a half, not being able to say that whatever atrocities were committed by Hamas, on Oct 7, were preceded by decades and decades of oppression that was being continuously inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Israelites.

Rather, later interviewing Netanyahu, he actually validated the insane Jewish narrative that in 1948 the Jews came into an empty land in which the Arabs were doing nothing, the Jews did something there, which created the "valid legal claim to the property itself". It's amazing that an avid reader and researcher, as Peterson, is unable to read through Palestinian history.

The Palestinians had started agitation against the Jewish Aliyah from the beginning in the 1880s; they were politically organised and kept writing to the Ottoman Sultan and the Arab Congress about how the Jews were buying out their lands and exploiting their situation, but the British and Jewish lobbies had penetrated the Sultan's court.

Later in 1919, they made their own Arab Palestine Congress, but the British simply did not recognise it, because they had conspired with the Jews to hand them over someone else's homeland. The Jews are habitual of lying, but what would force Peterson to do the same? Nothing could make Peterson lie! Except if he convinces himself that that lie is actually the truth!

Douglas Murray, another popular British political commentator, in a recent interview said, all the "international critics of Israel, don't know what they're talking about", and like the fanatic Zionists in Israel's cabinet, said in a repressive tone that "100% Hamas has to be put out, and when that happens the citizens of Gaza may have the opportunity to rebuild!" In spite of the interviewer's reminders of how the UN and other aid organisations are constantly pointing to a famine in Gaza, he insisted that Israel is so morally upright that it is providing more than required food into Gaza.

This was just to demonstrate that all the civil makeover and all the Oxford and Harvard degrees do not replace humanitarianism for barbarianism; nor do they change zealots into unbiased moderates.

The West has exploited and oppressed our people for centuries, and still today, their 'democratised' sages can pretend that the oppressed are the oppressors. It is time to stop looking towards the West for civilised models, rather it is time to find values in the real beacons of truth and justice.

"And those who answer the call of their Lord and establish worship, and whose affairs are a matter of counsel, and who spend of what We have bestowed on them. And those who, when great wrong is done to them, defend themselves," Ash-Shura, 42: 38, 39.

This is the true civility and moral high ground upon which the Muslim Ummah should focus. The leaders of the Ummah should reckon that progress and billion-dollar trade-deals come after justice and peace for their people not before them.