Zafar Bangash
Without Palestinian resistance, the Zionists would have usurped the entire land of Palestine and stubbornly maintained that Palestinians are quite happy under Zionist occupation. Zafar Bangash, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), and the author of Diplomacy and Just Peace in the Seerah of the Great Messenger that translated by IWPF, a suburb of Toronto, made the remark in an interview with IQNA on the Zionist regime's offensives against the oppressed Palestinians. Following is excerpts from the interview.
Q: The Israeli regime claims that Hamas and rocket firings are the causes of its offensive against Gaza and killing of Palestinian people. Do you think that it is the real reason?
A: The Zionist regime advances outrageous excuses for launching its wars of aggression. The latest bloodletting was predicated on the excuse that Hamas had kidnapped three Israeli settlers in the West Bank on June 12. Their bodies were 'discovered' in a shallow grave on June 30.
Hamas denied any involvement in the kidnappings but the Zionist regime immediately launched attacks against Palestinians, especially those linked with Hamas. At least 10 Palestinians among them two children were killed in the two-week period. Dozens of homes were destroyed and hundreds of Palestinians were arrested including those that had been released as part of an agreement for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2012.
Writing in the Electronic Intifada (July 9), Max Blumenthal, a non-Zionist Jewish writer, said that Israeli intelligence, the police and the government knew on the first day that the three settlers were killed the day of the kidnapping (June 12) but the regime deliberately lied to the people to whip-up anti-Palestinian hatred to prepare the ground for an attack on Gaza with the aim of eliminating Hamas altogether.
The Zionist regime had launched attacks on Gaza almost immediately despite the fact that Hamas had adhered to the ceasefire agreement of November 2012 by not firing any rockets into Israel. The Zionist regime refused to abide by its agreement to lift the illegal siege of Gaza.
There were three specific reasons for the Zionist regime's attack on Gaza:
1. The unity agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA); Israel does not want Palestinian unity;
2. Israel wanted to divert attention from its refusal to accept the peace terms negotiated by US Secretary of State John Kerry in April 2014 including a halt to Israeli settlements;
3. Israel refused to release the last batch of Palestinian prisoners as it had agreed to do for the PA to sit and negotiate with it.
Q: Do you think if there were no resistance groups like Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the situation would be different for people of Gaza and other parts of Palestine?
A: If there were no resistance groups in Gaza or any other part of Palestine, the Zionists would have usurped the entire land of Palestine and stubbornly maintained that Palestinians are quite happy under Zionist occupation.
Q: If anyone were in Palestinians’ place, even the Zionists, could they decide to stay silent and not to try to save their land and fight for their rights against occupiers?
A: People under occupation have an inalienable right to resist their occupiers to secure their freedom. Any people, including the Zionists would have fought to save their land and lives. This is what the Jews did in the Warsaw ghettoes during the Second World War. Many people and countries formed resistance groups during the Second World War to fight the Nazi occupiers. The Zionists are acting like the Nazis today and those resisting them have every moral, legal and political right to do so.
Q: Considering the size of Israel, why the whole Muslim World cannot do anything against it to help Palestine?
A: The tragedy of the Muslim world is that it is ruled by people that have no illegitimacy. Most of them are puppets of the US as well as Zionist Israel. It is not resources that are lacking but political and moral courage to confront Zionist atrocities. As the late Imam Khomeini (RA) once said, if each Muslim were to pour a glass of water over Israel, it would drown. If the Muslim regimes (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc) imprison tens of thousands of their own citizens simply because they demand their basic rights, why should they care about the Palestinian people?
Q: Why the Israeli regime has always had the upper hand in this plight?
A: The Zionist regime has the upper hand because of the limitless resources--money, military equipment and political as well as diplomatic support it gets from the US and European countries. There is also massive propaganda through the media to protect Israel from criticism.
Q: What is the solution to end this nightmare?
A: A number of steps need to be taken to end this nightmare. First, every kind of help must be extended to the Palestinian people to enable them to resist Zionist aggression. The recent Israeli war on Gaza has shown that the Palestinians can improvise in order to develop better techniques to confront Zionist aggression.
Second, in countries surrounding Israel, effort must be made to establish representative governments that would offer genuine help to the Palestinian people.
Third, greater effort must be made to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people in order to arouse the world's conscience against Zionist crimes.
Fourth, a campaign to boycott Israel in every way possible must be strengthened. It must be isolated in global forums to put pressure on it. The Zionist regime must be delegitimized in every possible way.
Q: What can we do as Muslim individuals who do not have any particular power, to help Palestinian brothers and sisters?
A: We must not underestimate our potential even as individuals. The first thing to do is to offer material and moral support to our Palestinian brothers and sisters. Second, we can speak out on their behalf wherever we may be. We should expose those supporting the Zionists by holding protest rallies against the embassies of governments that are financing Zionist war crimes. Those living in western countries must link up with other peace and justice loving people to bring an end to Zionist crime.
Q: Do you think the Zionist regime would stop its offensives against Muslims if Palestinians did not resist?
A: No, the Zionist regime will never stop its offensive against Muslims even if the Palestinians abandoned all resistance. The Zionist regime wants a docile population whose land it wants to steal and use for the exclusive use of Zionist settlers. After all, on the occupied West Bank, 500,000 Zionist settlers use 90 percent of the water while the 3 million Palestinians are left with only 10 percent.
Q: What goals do you think the Zionist regime seeks in the region?
A: We need to understand the nature of the Zionist regime clearly to answer this question. It is a western colonial beachhead in the heartland of Islam. Its purpose is to dominate the entire regime to serve western interests. It wants to keep the region in turmoil so that Muslims will not be able to regain their rights.
The Zionist regime exists as a dagger in the heart of the Muslim world. Its purpose is to keep the region destabilized as we are witnessing in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. It will not succeed in this criminal enterprise but innocent Muslims will have to pay a very high price before the Zionist colonial settler entity is effectively dealt with.
There is one final point that we must understand. The Zionist regime's ultimate objective is to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran because the revolutionary people of Iran have shown how to regain their freedom and dignity guided by sincere and committed leadership. Should this example be emulated in other parts of the Muslim world, the Zionist entity could not survive for too long.
Courtesy: Islamic World Peace Forum
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