Muslims-Ramadan-Israel-Palestine

Prof. Bouthaina Shaaban is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency, and former Minister of Expatriates. She is also a writer and professor at Damascus University since 1985. She's got Ph.D. in English Literature from Warwick University, London. She was the spokesperson for Syria. She was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She has written today about “Three Faces and a Homeland” an excellent piece well worth a read:

Three Faces and a Homeland

One of the most memorable faces which inhabit my conscience is the face of that Palestinian woman, Um Kamel, the owner of a house next to al-Aqsa mosque. The Zionists paid her $1 million per square meter of her house, but she refused to sell, although she knew very well that, as usual, they will destroy or occupy it without paying her a single dollar. They have done that for over sixty years to the houses of millions of Palestinians who have been sent to exile and to refugee camps inside and outside Palestine. They have done the same to hundreds of Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese villages, which they have erased to the ground. The Zionists destroyed Um Kamel’s home after they failed to persuade her to sell it. Then she sat on the debris refusing to leave lest this piece of the holy land gets judaized too.

Um Kamel, in this, is like the families of Hanoun and al-Ghawi and tens of other families, whose homes were destroyed by the Israeli government and who were forced by occupation forces to destroy their homes with their own hands. For the length of Ramadan, they took the naked earth as their bed and the sky as their cover, while foreign settlers coming from far away countries occupy the homes these Palestinians have inherited from their ancestors for centuries. Yet, they have not despaired despite the brutal oppression and despite the miserable condition of this nation which has done nothing in Ramadan to support their right.

Palestinian and foreign children, young people and women, who demonstrate on a daily basis in Bal’in and Na’lin against the racist separation barrier and are beaten up, arrested and tortured. They know that they are on their own, and that none of the leaders, politicians and journalists, who claim to defend peace and human rights, supports them. Nevertheless, they never tire of demonstrating. They are similar to those who go to prayer at al-Aqsa mosque. They suffer all kinds of hardship at the racist and humiliating checkpoints erected by occupation forces before the full gaze of the leaders of the ‘free’ world and its media.

These are the defenders of the holiness of al-Aqsa with their bodies, their faith and their will. They are the carriers of the torch of freedom of worship, the defenders of the dream of salvation from Zionist enslavement despite the betrayal and complicity of their brothers who are busy being lackeys to the enemy. The West claims to be promoting and spreading freedom, including the freedom of worship, but keeps a deadly and dubious silence when it comes to defending the right of the Palestinians to worship. Read the rest HERE