Gideon Polya, “Anti-Arab anti-Semitism. Racist Zionist Islamophobia, Sacrilege & Palestinian Genocide”, MWC News, 7 February 2007, partly cached by Google: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/anti-arab-anti-semitism-1
[NB. For an alphabetically organized compendium of anti-racist Jewish opinion critical of racist Zionism, Apartheid Israel and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide see
“Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ ].
Anti-Arab anti-Semitism. Racist Zionist Islamophobia, Sacrilege & Palestinian Genocide
APARTHEID ISRAEL has imposed restrictions on access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site (the site of the Prophet Muhammad’s ascension) - only Muslim men who are married, over 45 years old and have a blue Israeli identity card, as well as all Muslim women, will have access to the Temple Mount. Muslim leaders have protested the restriction of religious observance and threat to the foundations of the mosque (see: HERE ).
This sacrilege and illegal prevention of Muslim worship follows a long history of Israeli abuses connected with the Al-Aqsa Mosque, most notoriously the gross violation by war criminal Ariel Sharon that deliberately precipitated the Second Intifada . A recent gross abuse was the highly offensive labelling a brand of Israeli vodka with a picture of the Dome of the Rock. According to the Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Sheikh Mohammed Hussein: "the marketing of wine bottles with a picture of the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, on them is an Israeli attempt to humiliate Muslims everywhere …putting a picture of a holy shrine on a bottle of wine which is forbidden in Islam is an insult on Islamic creed and Islamic civilization … It is a belligerence on Muslims dignity and passion ”.
However both the physical sacrilege of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the prevention of worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque are even more offensive. An analogy can illluminate this obscenity for Christians and Catholics in particular - thus imagine that the US-backed Racist Zionists (RZs) took over the Vatican City and Saint Peter’s Basilica on the basis that it was their property (as well as Jerusalem) because Saint Peter was Jewish, that Catholicism was an offshoot of Judaism and that both God and Amerika ordain that RZs can do anything they like from stealing the Holy Land and the continuing Palestinian Genocide to adumbrated nuclear devastation of remote, peaceful Iran.
The global community has International Laws and Conventions governing human rights observance and in particular the behaviour of Occupiers. The present physical sacrilege of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and prevention of Muslim worship there by the racist Zionists (RZs) is a gross violation of key Articles of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War as outlined below [the offences are succinctly described in square brackets].
Article 3 part 1(c) prohibits “Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” [sacrilege of a site sacred to 1.5 billion Muslims as well as to Palestinians; occupying Israeli soldiers preventing Muslims from worshipping at the holiest Mosque in the Holy Land and the third most holy site in the Muslim World].
Article 39 part 3 demands that “ They [conquered subjects] shall be allowed to practise their religion and to receive spiritual assistance from ministers of their faith.” [prevention of Muslims worshipping at the Al-Aqsa Mosque; about 50% of Palestinians are Children and Apartheid Israel is forcibly preventing more than 50% of Muslim Palestinians from worshipping at the Al-Aqsa Mosque].
In addition, the horrendous post-invasion avoidable mortality (0.3 million post-invasion excess deaths) and infant mortality (0.2 million post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (as estimated from UN Population Division data constitute evidence of gross Israeli violations of the implicit requirement of these Geneva Convention that any Occupier “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” must provide the life-sustaining requisites necessary for keeping the Conquered Population ALIVE.
Article 38 part 5: "Children under fifteen years, pregnant women and mothers of children under seven years shall benefit by any preferential treatment to the same extent as the nationals of the State concerned." [horrendous differential infant mortality imposed by the RZs – the “annual under-5 year old infant death rate” is 0.47% in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as compared to 0.12% in Occupier Israel ]
Article 55 demands in part that “To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate” [post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million].
Article 56 demands in part that “To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties” [post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million].
Indeed the racist policies of the anti-Arab anti-Semitic and Islamophobic Occupier Apartheid Israel offend against Muslim Palestinians practising the Five Pillars of Islam, namely Shahada (declaration of faith) [Israeli sacrilege of the holiest place in the Holy Land in relation to the Prophet Muhammed]; Salat (devotional worship or prayer) [Israeli prevention of most Palestinians from worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque]; Zakat (alms giving) [Israeli imposition of horrendous unemployment and privation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory]; Sawm (the fast during the month of Ramadan) [continuous Israeli military violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is no respecter of Ramadan]; and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) [the Israelis restrict Palestinian movement within the Holy Land and within the Occupied Palestinian Territory; Palestinians leaving the Occupied Palestinian Territory may not be allowed to return).
What has been done to the Arab Palestinians by the Racist Zionists (RZs) is genocidal disempowerment, dispossession, deprivation, devastation and displacement on a massive scale: 0.7 million Palestinians expelled in 1948; half the UN-allotted Palestinian lands seized by the RZs in 1948; 6 million Palestinian refugees (4 million registered with the UN); 80,000 Palestinians fleeing their homeland each year; 85% of West Bank Christians ethnically cleansed by the RZs; 80% of Bethlehem Christians have fled; and as estimated from UN Population Division data (see: HERE ), post-1967 excess deaths and under-5 infant deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million and 0.2 million, respectively - a Palestinian Genocide (as defined by the Internationally-agreed UN Genocide Convention ).
Three quarters of the Palestinians are Women and Children. The RZs are still effectively saying after 40 years of running the Occupied Palestinian Territory “Prison” or Concentration Camp – “leave or your Children may die” (the "annual death rate" for Palestinian infants is an appalling 4 times higher than that in Israel - indicative of gross violation by Apartheid Israel of the UN Charter and the Geneva, Universal Human Rights, Rights of the Child and Genocide Conventions) (see MWC News: HERE and HERE ).
The world’s 1.5 billion Muslims and 2.0 million Christians should urgently act in response to the persecution of their co-religionists by the Racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory Concentration Camp. Indeed all decent people should join with them in (a) informing others about Racist Zionist (RZ) human rights abuses; and (b) urgently applying intra-national and inter-national Sanctions and Boycotts to Racist Zionists, Apartheid Israel and other Westerners complicit in the Palestinian Genocide.