Muhammad H. al-'Asi
The war on terror has been used by the US as a means to justify the steady erosion of rights and freedoms of the American people as witness through the Patriot Act, the admission of secret evidence into courts, the profiling of suspect. These measures are justified on the basis of “National Security”; the logic implies that national rights take precedence over individual rights. But if the erosion of individual rights is justified on the basis of persevering the larger society, it begins to discriminate and segregate that individual, his ethnicity race or religion from the larger society. This has a serious corroding influence on the fabric of a multi-ethnic, trans-racial and equal opportunity driven society.
Moreover, the violation of an individual and/or ethnic minority’s right in one country set a dangerous precedence, potentially leading to even greater reactionary consequences in another country. The absence of God as a legitimising concept in all human socio-political arrangements has created an increasingly volatile and violent world. Palestine, the Holy Land or Israel presents one the most intractable problem of human history. Firstly the problem presented is the exclusive claims of two separate peoples to one common land. Secondly is the asymmetry between the unparalleled military might on the side of the Zionists and the undiminished will to fight on the side of the Palestinians. Thirdly is the hyped up but false Judaization on the Israeli side and the systematic de-Islamization on the side of the Palestinian (although in recent years the latter trend has been in slow reverse). The author argues for a new approach to rediscover the religious component of the Palestinian issue.
Justice and equity are central concepts to be found in the scripture of all three of the monotheistic faith tradition. The corresponding lack of these concepts in public discourse is contributing to, not solving the issue of Palestine.
The genesis of liberation theology gives justification for the combination of people and land on the basis of justice and equity. The absence of justice fortifies the group rights to the holy land regardless of religious claims.
Human relations and human rights are a complex web of issues if we are to go by the current political and economic requirements of today’s world order. One particular cornerstone of today’s international standards is The Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is a charter of civil and political rights drawn up by the United Nations in 1948. They include the right to life, liberty, education, and equality before the law; to freedom of movement, religion, association, and information; and to a nationality. Under the European Convention of Human Rights (1950), the Council of Europe established the European Commission of Human Rights (headquarters in Strasbourg, France), which investigates complaints by states or individuals, and its findings are examined by the European Court of Human Rights (established 1959), whose compulsory jurisdiction has been recognized by a number of states, including the United Kingdom (UK). And as far as the nation-state system in Europe and North America is concerned these legalisms and legalities seem to be in a state of homeostasis. Outside this geopolitical area the world is in an uneasy and potentially volatile state of existence. The general “state of the world” is tense, seemingly irreconcilable, and characterized by military flare-ups from generation to generation and from country to country. We, who live in Euro-American societies and “enjoy” the fruits of “modernity”, have been exposed to an “education” about the rights and freedoms of society. This can be traced to post-renaissance Europe and its accompanying political philosophies. The American war of “independence” also ushered in theoretical and liberal ideas about freedom and liberty as well as the French Revolution in the last thirty years of the 18th century.
Nowadays human rights are the catchwords in our post-modern politics and social discourse. The theoretical flowery discourse on human rights and freedoms is one thing and the practice is sometimes altogether another thing. Authoritarians and totalitarians have discovered that human freedoms and rights become a “threat” or a diminishment of their excessive and concentrated power. There can never be a legitimate and permanent valid argument for the violation or the alteration of inalienable human rights. But autocratic and monarchic establishments will try to rationalize their anti-human rights position with whatever is at their disposal. One of the public relations arguments for the curtailment of God-given human freedoms inalienable human rights is that national rights are a priority over individual rights. This is often used to justify a particular state’s military budget and military strategy when in a state of war with another state. A similar argument now is taking shape in the United States as the government proceeds to justify its international war against terrorism by diminishing the rights and freedoms of its own citizens.Witness the Patriot Act and the rolling back of certain liberties and freedoms: the admission of secret evidence into courts of law, security agencies profiling of “suspect” individuals at airports, and a host of other procedures and acts that in the absence of a “national security threat” would be unthinkable. The general argument here is that for the security of the American people some American individuals will have to forego their privacy rights, their civic rights, the human rights, and their legal rights.
This may seem, on the surface of it, quite acceptable. After all, there will be no individual freedom if the citizenry that individual belongs to is threatened and potentially ruined. But if the erosion of individual rights is justified on the basis of preserving the larger society it begins to discriminate and segregate that individual and his ethnicity or race or religion from the larger society it belongs to. This is a serious wearing away at the multi-ethnic and trans-racial and equal opportunity society that belongs to everyone regardless of their individuality. Besides, the world itself is shrinking into a global village and peoples are dispersed into a more strongly felt international society. And the violation of an “individual’s” or an “ethnic” minority’s human rights in one country can have equal if not more reactionary consequences on others in another country.
The other argument for human “inequality” is to say that not everyone should enjoy the equal position in a particular legal system because some people are not as equal as others. This argument is concentrated in racist communities and states. Sometimes this argument confuses equality with uniformity. It is true that people are not homogenized and harmonious in cultural ways. But this does not give a political system and an established government the right to treat its subjects unequally in a society’s market of opportunities or in a government’s court of law. Another corrosive effect on human rights is their interpretation in a way that causes some classes or segments of society to enjoy certain rights when those same rights feed on the depravation or the discrimination allotted to the “other.”
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The overall pool of social norms and laws that have come to dominate our world are, by and large, secular. Human rights in the contemporaneous world, although they sound reasonable and practical, have not had a very positive impact on global society and have not deterred civil wars, regional wars, and world wars. The underlying reason for this undesirable and increasingly volatile human strain is the absence of God’s concepts and codes in the arrangement of social issues, affairs, and events. As far as this paper goes, I will concentrate on some of the major issues that have converged to give us one of the most intractable problems in human history:
Palestine, the Holy Land, or Israel. The first anomaly that feeds this problem is the exclusive claim of two separate peoples to one common land. The second snarl and snag is the symmetry between the unparallel military might of one side (the Zionists) and the undiminished will to fight on the other (the Palestinians). And the third conundrum is a hyped up (but false) Judaization of the Israeli side of this problem throughout the past years which corresponds to a systemic de-Islamization of the Palestinian side of this problem since 1947; with this trend being in slow reverse as of recent years. The “Christian” component of this complex polarization has been roughly split into the “Christians” with an Islamic culture who have been “lumped” with the Palestinians, and the “Christians” with a “Euro-American” political affinity who have been either passively or actively on the “Israeli” side of this clash. For purposes of brevity, we shall steer clear of the “Christian” component of this historical and contemporary encounter with its ideological and military expressions.
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Our approach here is to rediscover the “religious” component of the Palestinian issue without, as much as possible, becoming drawn into the fossilized presentation of this two-sided Judeo-Islamic controversy.
It is our understanding that God centered His Scriptures and Revelations on the issue of justice. Justice has always been foremost, central, and enduring in the lives of Old Testament, New Testament, and Qur’anic prophets and apostles (i).
This presence of the meaning of justice and equity in Scripture and its lack from public discourse (political, social, economic, religious, etc...) is contributing to, not solving, the issue of Palestine. If the Jews and the Muslims could come to a common concentration on the cardinal issue of justice they will begin to discover that work has to be done to alleviate the injustice that has been simmering in and around the Holy Land. Along these lines the two religious communities [Jews and Muslims] will have to address the issue of belonging to the Holy Land. And they will discover that what is called Palestine (in the geographical and historical usage of the word) is a land of the powerful meant for a people without power, or a land without justice meant for a people with justice. The historical formula has always been that powerless people will bring God’s justice to that land.
This becomes the genesis of the Liberation Theology that gives justification for the combination of people and land on the basis of justice and equality. Any failure to stand for and live up to the principles of justice and equity forfeits the right of any political orientation of people regardless of their religious professions to the Holy Land.
The Islamic approach to this issue takes into consideration the fundamental issue of justice which knows no discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, race, or “social” class. Mature Muslims who have de-fossilized their Islam are keenly aware of the relationship between belonging to God’s Covenant and belonging to His land. As much as the secular world would like to ignore or obfuscate this issue, the fact of the matter is that countries are run by civic societies or national blocs of people, with justice being a function or a feature of that nationality, and with lesser justice or no justice to others who are not thoroughly or “exclusively” of that particular nationality (ii).
It transpires from this reading of history with justice as its key component that the land of Palestine is meant for powerless people who are worried about and possessed with justice. In the course of history there were prophet clustered people who were given the responsibility of carrying out justice after having to fight to prove their qualities and their dedication. The Mosaic congregation [pertaining to Moses (P)] at one time failed this power-test for justice (iii). No amount of self-piety or religious symbolism was going to substitute for their abandoning the cause of justice. The Roman occupation of that same land could be viewed from the same perspective. It was the mission of Jesus (P) to reinvigorate man’s relationship with God to eventually accumulate with a keen sense of justice that will in time bring down the power-structure that hides behind a facade of justice but in reality is the administrator of injustice there and in other places. The “break-through” came with the advent of the justice-centered Muslims who left the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century AD to finally sweep in an era of social, political, and economic justice that was inclusive of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
But as the centuries went by, the justice character of the “Muslims” themselves began to erode. This Muslim “justice failure” gave way to the “Crusades” and their century long occupation of that same land. In time, the Muslims regrouped, mustered their will-power, and refocused on the issue of justice; the result was to last until WWI when justice was no longer a crucial feature of Islamic governance.
The post-WWI world had entered into its new secular phase. Justice now was no longer a divine responsibility, a Scriptural requirement for social emancipation, or a legal standard with its “Jewish”, “Christian,” or “Islamic” origins. Colonialism and Imperialism had run amok in the Islamic hemisphere of the world. Countries were carved out of stochastic formulas; regions were torn apart through colonialist and imperialist rivalries. And in a matter of a couple of generations the Muslim populations had to endure a long night of mis-representative governments, governments having no popular support and no legitimacy. In this dark political era when Muslims the world over lost their “ummah” – their united homeland, the Zionists were traveling in the opposite direction, trying to regain their Eretz Israel via a movement of Jewish people undergoing their alia.
Centuries upon centuries of a particular diaspora propelled many Jews out of their sub-national ghettoes throughout Europe in particular to settle in what they dreamed of as the land of return. There was and there is no universal or Scriptural standard or justice that can define this movement of Jews who were tricked by Zionist propaganda into believing that a nationalist-cum-racist state of Israel will become their refuge and their native land. In the absence of the God-given principle and standard of justice the long awaited “Israel” turned out to be what it is today: a multinational ghetto! Prime Minister Sharon is hemming in the fact by the seven hundred mile barrier that separates the Semitic peoples of the Holy Land! Zionism had become the convenient instrument that rode the tide of nationalism from Europe into Palestine. A Gentile European inflicted diaspora of Jews, henceforth created a diaspora of Semitic Palestinians, all in the name of a Zionism devoid of justice. Power became paramount and justice was junked. It is this theatre of injustice which began its final chapter in 1947 that begs for a solution. Preceding this final Zionist solution were the immediate and earlier increments that set the stage for a Holy Land without justice and the Zionist military occupation of Palestine. The issue that has to be emphasized here is the corrupt, one-sided, unjust, and nefarious nature of the Zionist Israeli governments from beginning to end. In 1869 the Jewish Colonization Association begins in Palestine.
Theodore Herzl iv, a journalist, publishes Der Judenstaat, advocating establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine or elsewhere.
Today there are over four million (4,000,000) Palestinian refugees. Around 8,500 Palestinians are imprisoned by the intolerant anti-Semitic Israeli government. If anything, the government in Tel Aviv has established its superior record in violation of all standards of fairness and all principles of justice. Israel’s treacherous and seditious policies extend to other parts of the world.
“In 1981 Leo Gleser, “co-owner” of International Security and Defense Systems (ISDS) – a leading Israeli “security” firm identified repeatedly as an Israeli entity – began building Battalion 316, a unit of Honduran military intelligence which disappeared, tortured, then killed its victims.”(viii)
“1986-91. Israrel trained members of Inkatha hit squads aimed at the African National Congress, a disillusioned former leader of Zulu organization has revealed.”(ix)
“1970-87. Violence by security forces organized by the CIA, trained in torte by advisors from Argentina and Chile and supported by weapon/computer experts from Israel.”(x)
“Israel has also been involved with the Mozambican “contras.” The South African-backed MNR (Mozambique National Resistance or “Renamo”), which has brought great economic and social distress to Mozambique.”(xi)
“It was no surprise. Noriega had undergone military and intelligence training in Israel, jumped five times with Israeli paratroopers, and – like Uganda’s deposed dictator Idi Amin – proudly wore his Israeli paratrooper wings on his uniform for many years afterwards. Although critics say America “bought and paid” for Noriega, he was also an Israeli creation and a great admirer of the ruthless Israeli way, as was Amin, the most brutal despot in 20th century African history(xii).
The Israeli Likud and Labor parties have never tired of perfecting their record of despotism and racism. The structured and systematic injustice has become legend. Testimonies about this come from multiple sources.
“Israel’s policy of destruction of Palestinian homes, coupled with tight restrictions and discriminatory practices against Palestinians applying for building permits has resulted in losses of homes for over 16,700 Palestinians (including 7,300 children) since 1987.”(xiii)
“Since 1967, Israel has confiscated an estimated 60% of the West Bank, 33% of the Ghazzah Strip and 33% of the Palestinian land in Jerusalem is for public, semi-public and private use in order to create Israeli military zones, settlements, industrial areas, elaborate ‘bypass’ roads, and quarries, as well as to hold ‘State land’ for exclusive Israeli use.”(xiv)
“...around 70 percent of children in the Ghazzah Strip have been exposed to 4 or 5 traumatic events such as tear-gas inhalation, night raids on the home, humiliation and/or beating of parents in front of them by Israeli forces and imprisonment.”(xv)
“...furthermore, during the past ten years 46,000 kids under the age of 18 have become disabled due to the use of live ammunition and metal coated rubber bullets by the Israeli army. An additional 34,000 adults over the age of 18 have also become disabled by the Israeli army.”(xvi)
“Israel’s methods of extracting information from detainees include abuses such as position abuse, hooding, prolonged sleep deprivation, exposure to immensely loud music, violent shaking, threats, and chilling by cold air which are in breach of the Convention against Torture.”(xvii)
And if further testimony is needed for the travesty of justice called Israel, the following statements come from the “horse’s mouth”.
“I don’t know something called international principles. I vow that I’ll burn every Palestinian child [that] will be born in this area.”(xviii)
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”(xix)
“What you don’t understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.”(xx)
“In a report released earlier this week by the B’tselem Human Rights Organization, the term ‘rubber bullets’ used by Israeli forces is misleading, explaining that the rubber-coated metallic bullets are deadly despite their name.”(xxi)
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There have been and continue to be a stream of statements about political or radical Islam; some of them coming from friends others coming from foes. Not many of them though are able to formulate a strategic and all-inclusive response to the challenge of Zionism and Israel. We hope that the non-exhaustive facts above give a clear picture of the violent, ruthless, and expansionist nature of Zionism and Israel, because that is necessary to understand the Islamic revolutionary and theological answer to the Zionist occupation of a people’s country and the Zionist oppression of a country’s population. If we could neutralize all highbrow and pejorative projections of “Islamic Fundamentalism” for a moment and begin with fresh statements we would put it this way.
Islam is a theological ideology and an ideological theology compressed into one Scripture. Its primary and principal concern is with justice.(xxii) Injustice is anathema to dedicated and devout Muslims (xxiii) . The historical covenant of God’s relationship with people is not defined by a people’s race but rather by people’s convictions and principles (xxiv) . And these convictions and principles are rooted in social justice, equity, and equality.(xxv) Therefore, this lifelong struggle for justice against injustice becomes the “religious” character of sincere and wholehearted Muslims.
For Muslims the nation-state of Israel is evil, without any second question or doubt. The fact that Israel is capable of camouflaging its nature by hiding behind a system of nation states around it has not been thoroughly developed in the contemporary Islamic liberation discourse. The fact that has still to dawn on many Islamic activists is that the majority of Muslim peoples have been enthralled to a nation-state system in the Islamic East that has more in common with Zionist Israel than it has with the very peoples it purports to represent! Correspondingly, there are Jews who have been drawn into this scheme and in a very odd way; they too, have become [willing] victims in this grand political and governmental overarching of regimes. The difference between the two blocs of people is that there is a minority of Jews who are in opposition to Zionism and who do not venture out to oppose the nation-state superstructure around Israel that is supportive of it. While there is a majority of Muslims who are in opposition to Zionism currently, and show every indication that sooner rather than later they will also be able to turn their attention on the larger nation-state superstructure around Israel which is working in tandem with the Zionists in Tel Aviv. The principles of justice necessitate that the whole infrastructure of injustice in the Islamic East be dismantled and discarded for once and for all. The military fortress referred to as “Israel” has scrapped virtually all United Nations resolutions and Security Council votes against it. The Zionist divines in Tel Aviv do not answer to any goyim institutions; and self-righteously so, as their Zionist ideology bars them from equality, coexistence, and fairness to the other!
The Palestinians (Muslims and Christians and a small minority of Jews) have endured more than what human nature can. The horrible daily details of discrimination and prejudice, the cycles of military clampdown and wars, and the slow and gradual legal procedures that have made life a living hell for non-Jews in the Holy Land begs for a justice centered solution. Without sounding melodramatic, there remains no workable and sustainable solution to the Israeli Zionist menace except the divine justice that is outlined in the Qur’an and the Prophet’s framework of social and military action.
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The displaced Palestinian population has the right to return to their homes and homeland; and this is guaranteed to them by divine words and Scriptural justice (xxvi) .
The will to fight against oppression – Israeli style – has been fermenting now for a few generations. This will is finally finding its mode of expression in an Islamic Jihad that will bring justice to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. There is always the issue bordering on paranoia that if Muslims were to remake and remodel the whole Islamic East these Jews will be once again thrown back into their historic diaspora. This need not be the case. If current Zionist- centered Jews were to abdicate their support for the Israeli nation state they would find themselves in agreement with their Islamic and Christian brethren who share in the necessity of remaking a justice centered Palestine and Islamic East. The problem will arise when some or many “Jews” begin to defend Zionist Israel as it begins its military counter-climax with the Islamic forces of liberation, justice, and equality. It will be the “Israeli/Jewish” military mobilization and its conscripts and functionaries who will risk the likelihood of finding themselves back in the international ghettoes of the world. Islamic history, with all its faults and shortcomings has never been as cruel and inhumane towards the Jewish population as other societies, especially some European ones. It would be a serious miscalculation and another human tragedy if the Zionist Jews were able to provoke Islamic justice to the extent that forces the justice-centered Muslims to be unaccommodating of Jews who want to feel at home in the Holy Land but who permit themselves to support in a passive or active sense an Israel that has proven its profanity and sacrilegious character to Muslim, Christian, and Jew alike.
Zionist Israel has managed to survive because of two sources of support: a “Jewish” bottom-up or grassroots base. These are the Jews (one third of world Jewry) who are the backbone of the Israeli regime and citizenry. The other source is an “Islamic” elite or ruling class. These are the regimes in Muslim countries that have also been active and passive in their direct and indirect support of Tel Aviv’s Zionists. The Israeli official position is quickly eroding because there are Muslims for justice who can see the overall picture who are no longer fooled by false images and historical inaccuracies concerning this whole issue. Hizbullah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad are the avant guard of this new wave of the future.
i.Indeed, [even aforetime] did We send forth Our apostles with all evidence of [this] truth; and through them We bestowed revelation from on high, and [thus gave you] a balance [wherewith to weigh social rights
and wrongs], so that men might acquire a social behavior of equity... 57:25
ii.Said the great ones among his people, who gloried in their hubris:
“Most certainly, O Shu‘ayb, we shall expel you and your fellow-covenant bearers from our land, unless you indeed return to our civil society.” 7:88
But they who denied God[‘s power presence in human affairs] spoke [thus] to their prophets: “We shall most certainly expel you from our land, unless you return forthwith to our civil society.” 14:13
iii. And, Lo, Moses said unto his people: “O my people! Remember the blessings which God bestowed upon you when He raised up prophets among you, and made you your own masters, and granted unto you [favors] such as He had not granted to anyone else in the world. O my people! Enter the holy land which God has promised you; but do not turn back [on your faith], for then you will be lost!” They answered: “O Moses! Behold, furious and fiery people dwell in that land, and we will surely not enter it unless they depart therefrom; but if they depart therefrom, then, behold, we will enter it.” [Whereupon] two men from among those who feared [the power of God, and] whom God had blessed, said: “Infiltrate upon them through the entryway – for as soon as you accede to it, behold, you shall be victorious! And in God you must place your trust if you are [truly] covenant bearers!” [But] they said: “O Moses! Behold, never shall we move into that [land] so long as those others are in it. Go forth, then, you and your Sustainer, and fight, both of you! We, behold, shall remain here!” Prayed [Moses]: “O my Sustainer! Of none am I master but of myself and my brother [Aaron]: draw You, then a dividing-line between us and these iniquitous folk!” Answered He: “Then, verily, this [land] shall be forbidden to them for forty years, while they wander on earth, bewildered, to and fro; and sorrow you not over these iniquitous folk.” 5:20-26.
iv.Theodor Herzl (1860-1904. Austrian Jew, founder of the Zionist movement. He was born in Budapest and became a successful playwright and journalist, mainly in Vienna. The Dreyfus case convinced him that the only solution to the problem of ‘anti-Semitism’ was the resettlement of the Jews in a state of their own. His book Jewish State 1896 launched political Zionism, and he became the first president of theWorld Zionist Organization 1897.
v.Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour 1848-1930. British Conservative politician, prime minister 1902-05 and foreign secretary 1916-19, when he issued the Balfour Declaration 1917 and was involved in peace negotiations after World War I, signing the Treaty of Versailles.
vi.Balfour Declaration letter, dated Nov 2, 1917, from the British foreign secretary A J Balfour to Lord Rothschild (chair, British Zionist Federation) stating: “HM government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It led to the occupation of Palestine and the institutionalization of Israel in 1948.
vii.Vladimir Jabotinsky (Ze’ev; 1880-1940): Writer, orator, and Zionist leader. Of Russian birth, he served as Rome correspondent for Odessa newspapers under the pen-name “Altalena,” 1898-1901. Beginning his Zionist activities in Russia in 1903, he became a leading force in the scramble for what was called Jewish self-defense units, civic and minority rights, and the revival of Hebrew. In World War I, he advocated the recruiting of Jewish regiments to fight on the Palestine front; this led to the establishment of the Zion Mule Corps (1915). In 1917, the British government consented to the formation of Jewish battalions, in one of which Jabotinsky served. He organized the first Jewish ‘self-defense’ in Jerusalem and led it during the Arab revolt outpouring in 1920. For this he was sentenced by the British Military Tribunal to 15 years imprisonment but was soon reprieved. In 1921, Jabotinsky joined the Zionist Executive but resigned in 1923, accusing it of failing to oppose British policy with sufficient vigor. In 1925, he formed theWorld Union of Zionist Revisionists in opposition to official Zionism (later also the youth organization Berit Trumpeldor – Betar). When the Zionist Organization co-opted non-Zionists into the Jewish Agency (1929) and refused to define the aim of Zionism as a Jewish State (1931), Jabotinsky began to advocate secession; the “discipline clause,” introduced in 1935 precipitated the formation by Jabotinsky of a dissident “New Zionist Organization.” From 1936, he urged the speedy evacuation of East European Jewry to Palestine. Jabotinsky is considered the spiritual father and nominal head of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi. When World War II broke out, he again demanded a Jewish army.
viii.Israeli Foreign Affairs, 4/1989
ix.Israeli Foreign Affairs, 2/20/1992
x.Marshal, J., Scott P.D, and Hunter, J., The Iran-Contra Connection, 1987
xi.Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy, 1987
xii.Richard H. Curtiss, What You Won’t Read About Michael Harari, Washington Report, February 1, 1990
xiii.United Nations, Special Committee Report into Investigations of Israeli Human Rights Practices Against Palestinians and other Arabs in Occupied Territories.
xiv.Submitted by Giorgio Giocamelli, pursuant to the Commission on Human, United Nations
xv.Submitted by Giorgio Giacomelli, Special Rapporteur pursuant to Commission on Human Rights, United Nations.
xvi.Islamic Association of Palestine, 1998
xvii.United Nations, Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices affecting Human Rights of Palestinian People and other Arabs of Occupied Territories.
xviii.Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, in an interview with General Ouze Merham, 1956.
xix.Golda Meir, Former Israeli Prime Minister, in a statement to the Sunday Times, June 15, 1969.
xx.Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel to Amos Oz, editor of Davar, Dec. 17, 1982.
xxi.Israel Wire, 1997
xxii. “O you who are committed [to God]! Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves or your parents and kinsfolk. Whether the party concerned be rich or poor, God’s claim takes precedence over [the claims of ] either of them. Do not, then, follow your own desires, lest you serve from justice: for if you distort [the truth], behold, God is indeed aware of all that you do!” 4:135
xxiii. “And, withal, God does not will any oppression for His [human] subjects.” 40:31
xxiv “O people!We have created you from male and female and rendered you into derivative stocks [of people] and corresponding ethnic bloodlines so that you may become familiar with each other, knowing [in the process of racial interaction] that the most honorable of you as far as God is concerned are those of you who ward off God[’s corrective power in human affairs]. 49:13.
xxv “God [Himself ] proffers evidence – and [so do] the angels and all who are endowed with knowledge – that there is no divine authority save Him, the Upholder of Equity: there is no divine authority save Him, the Almighty, the Truly Wise. 3:18
xxvi “God only forbids you to turn in friendly relationship towards such as fight against you because of [your civic, social, and urban expression of ] faith, and drive you forth from your homelands, or aid [others] in driving you out: and as for those [from among you] who turn towards them in friendly [political and military] relations, it is they, they who are truly oppressive.” 60:9
Courtersy: IHRC
