By Abdool Aziz Shaikh
What is Al-Nakba?
It started with the abuse, derision, killing and forceful expulsion of more than 800,000 human beings from their homes and lands by marauding zionist gangs.
The perpetrators of these war crimes were aided and abetted by the colonialist powers of the time.
The Palestinians had lived on this land for thousands of years. The land itself takes its name from this.
Some 600 villages were wiped out or badly damaged by the zionists who killed thousands of Palestinians and raped their women.
This was part of a deliberate campaign to sow terror among them Palestinians to ethnically cleanse them from their lands.
The tide is now turning. The Nakba has reached an important breaking point.
The racist apartheid regime is now faced with the onslaught of the mazloomeen (the downtrodden) against the oppressors (the zalims) who have murdered and maimed thousands.
This murderous campaign has gone on for 74 years goaded by the fanciful, evil and illegal Balfour declaration.
This continuous catastrophe must stop and will be stopped by the youth and women of today.
It is not only the suffering of the people of Palestine that has gone on but also the plunder and rape of the resources of the country by the zionists.
This was their ultimate goal so that the colonialists could reap the benefits of occupation.
The 74 years of hell culminated in barbaric attacks against Palestinian worshippers this past Ramadan.
The world witnessed the atrocities in Al Aqsa Masjid and its compound.
Palestinian worshippers—men, women and children—were attacked for no other reason than that they wanted to remember their Creator.
The resistance is now led by the youth and women who have had enough of zionist brutality.
The Nakba remembers the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh whose only crime was to present the truth of the agonies of the Palestinians to the world as a sincere and honest journalist.
Reflecting the depravity and barbarity of the zionist occupiers, heavily-armed Israeli police attacked even her funeral procession.
Even her bullet shattered body could not be buried in peace.
She was assassinated by an Israeli sniper on May 11 just outside Jenin refugee camp despite wearing a clearly-marked PRESS vest.
It does not matter whether one is a Christian or Muslim.
The sadistic zionist regime and its armed thugs want to block the presentation of truth to the world.
At the protest gathering of Dirco, Dr Firoz Osman, the fearless advocate of the Palestinians’ cause, presented three succinct messages:
* To the zionists: Your end is near. As apartheid was buried by its people in South Africa so will the zionist apartheid be buried by the Palestinians. The zionist edifice is now collapsing.
* Collaborators of the zionist regime must also be aware that not only Israel will meet its doom but the likes of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and all those who want to bring ‘normalisation’ in Palestine who are part of the zionist regime, and Egypt that is strangling the life-blood of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians in Gaza, including the Saudis will sink in the quick-sand of hell around them. The world is now waking up.
* All those who are staying quiet, including the South African regime should wake up and fulfill their legal and moral obligation toward the Palestinian people.
The plight of the Palestinian people has been neglected for far too long.
This must end now.
Abdool Aziz Shaikh is with the Media Review Network in Johannesburg, South Africa