HOW WOULD YOU FEEL
(START) Bism’Allah al-Rahman al-Rahim, “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful” Asalamu Alaykum Jamean, “May peace be upon you all”.
“HOW WOULD YOU FEEL”
Let’s rewind to May 10th of 2021, in the heart of Jerusalem, which is the third most holy place to more than 1.8 billion Muslims around the globe. At Al-Aqsa Mosque, Muslims have been praying and worshiping their Creator over there for more than a millennium. Full of intricate and glittering work of Islamic architecture, this site has witnessed the prayers and pleas of Muslims for hundreds of years! Sadly, reaching Al-Aqsa mosque has become just a dream for many Muslims because of the Israeli Apartheid. However, this came to disperse into violence and inhumane acts as many of us here today have witnessed the forced explusions and dispossessions on our brothers and sisters in Palestine.
As the days are mounting up this apartheid government against the Palestinian people living in the occupied land of ’48 is not a conflict or has anything to do with religion of any sort. Before the Palestinian occupation, there was a Palestine that had exsisted where Muslims, Jews, and Christians coexisted. Where did that go? The Israeli apartheid has been on a continuous path of ethnic cleansing since its foundation. It started with wars but continues daily by expelling the Palestinians, building settlements, and appropriating the culture. Better known as the brutal unjust reality of an occupying power exercising the Zionists’ power over our beloved people who are stripped and desensitized of their basic human rights for up to 73 years!
Once again dear audience, as I a Palestinian from the small village called Yibna as this village was taken by Israeli forces on June 4th of 1948, and was depopulated during the military assault and expulsion. This history and reality is nothing new to the people of Palestine, as this occupation has been existing for decades now it seems to unravel within time. It did not just start when Western media decided to start covering it! When the Israeli apartheid continue their acts of aggression, barbarism, and impunity to kill and displace Palestinian people from their own homes free of consequences yet are given the right to defend themselves as the oppressors! As we all know by now when a system is further used and abused specifically when policies encompass expansionism and segregations inflicted upon our Palestinian families and their settlements.
It’s world leaders and their governments that are showcasing a facade in which they continue their atrocities, arm trades, and lavishing money from our taxpayers money funding a 735 million arms sale to an apartheid government that is forcefully killing and displacing Palestinians every day! Dear audience, as you may have seen and posted on your social media accounts as we stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine it is yet the frustration and anger on the images that are encircling destroyed buildings, dead children under the rubbles, wounded unarmed Palestinians, and grieving families in Gaza and the West Bank.
A mother and school teacher from the Gaza strip, Eman Basher , tweeted on Wednesday, “Tonight, I put the kids to sleep in our bedroom. So that when we die, we die together and no one would live to mourn the loss of one another,” Alongside, 13 year-old SARAH AL SHARIF TOLD CNN, “(Israel’s military) told us to leave our homes immediately because they wanted to strike it,” “I couldn’t take anything with me. I was running, crying and terrified and was praying to God because I thought for sure we all will die soon, as the airstrikes rained on our heads.”
“I saw shreds of bodies, buildings falling down, people were screaming everywhere and mothers were carrying their babies and running.”
As we are witnessing this whether it’s online or on live news streams there is a sense of powerlessness and hopelessness which seems to be inevitable, however, dear brothers and sisters your voice and posts channel and allow the outsiders and the unknowledgeable to be aware and learn about this occupation which instills ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism, and forced expulsions and dispossessions at a bigoted extent! They say that, “HUMANS AREN’T STATISTICS” does this apply to the Palestinians living in the occupied land of ’48, NO!! not when Israel’s bombardment on Gaza killed 248 Palestinians including 66 children, 39 women and 1710 injuries within a two weeks time frame! Palestinians are not asking for much all they want is CHANGE, ACTION, FREEDOM, AND JUSTICE! Enough is enough
it is time to open up Gaza’s crossings,
it time to lift restrictions on the imports and exports,
it is time for the Palestinians in the Gaza strip to have more than six hours of electricity a day,
it is time to lift the lethal system of violence on our families in Palestine
it is time to put a stop to halting production and trade
it is time to put an end to the use of the mathematical formulas that restirct the amount of food entering Gaza!
As I’m stood up here, I ask myself how much more must the Palestinian people endure and how many more years must the Palestinian people endure living in a partial, iron-fisted, and belligerent environment being put through Israel’s apartheid system!
Dear audience Palestine is a human- rights cause!! let this serve as a reminder that if you’re using this cause to menace the Jewish community who have done you no harm it’s unacceptable and you are foiling the purpose of our cause!!!
Last but not least I would like to make an end to this speech from quoting the Palestinian poet and author Mahmoud Darwish, “السلام على أرض خُلقت من أجل السلام ولم تشهد يومًا سلميًا “peace to a land that was created for peace and never saw a peaceful day.” شكرا لك على الاستماع ووجودك هنا اليوم (thank you all for listening and being here today)
I hope we all are aware and inspired not only today, yet everyday!
