Quds Day 2021

 When the Muslim World was busy raising awareness about the human rights of Palestinians and the Israeli settler colonialism and its brutalities, the colonialists made sure that the brutal show must go on. 

Last Friday of every Ramadan is celebrated as the International Quds Day to raise awareness about the Israeli oppression faced by the indigenous population of Palestine. The event was initiated by the Islamic republic of Iran in 1979. Since then Several Islamic organizations and the organizations fighting for the Palestinian cause conduct seminars and conferences every year. Thousands of Palestinians gather together to pray in the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque to show the resistance to the illegal occupation. This year also Palestinians gathered together to resist the forced settlements and further illegal annexations of West Bank region when faced the violence. But first let us look at the brutal timeline of illegal occupation this Ramadan. 

Israeli Occupational Forces has unleashed violence on different regions since the beginning of Ramadan. Started from 17th April the launch of air strike on Gaza Strip claiming to target the terror targets operated by the Islamist ruling party Hamas which was the second air strike on the region within a week. Moreover, on the night of 22nd an ultra-orthodox right-wing Israeli extremist group called Lehava held a march on the streets of the old Jerusalem giving an open call for the genocide of Palestinian Arabs chanting the slogans like ‘Death to Arabs’ and ‘Burn Arabs’. The settlers were also seen wielding weapons and attacking the homes of local Palestinian residents in the viral videos and stories of some renowned Palestinian activists. On retaliation to save their lives, the residents faced further brutality by the Israeli police and army officials. They used rubber coated bullets, sprayed tear gas and skunk water to target and disperse the local residents. The event was seen as a collusion of illegal settlers and the occupational forces. Several local residents were wounded. The matter was not yet sorted when Jewish settlers on 2nd May started to occupy the houses of local Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah. The illegal occupation came after the ruling of an Israeli court to forcibly replace more than 550 residents of Sheikh Jarrah by the illegal Jewish settlers. Sheikh Jarrah is a home to around 28 Palestinian refugee families who were displaced from their original homes during Nakba, the catastrophic forced expulsion that affected 700,000 Palestinians 1948. This erupted the strings of protest  in and around Sheikh Jarrah to stop the forced expulsion of local residents but got an adequate amount of attention by International media houses and organizations only after the Israeli Occupational Forces (IOF) used stun grenades, sound bombs and rubber coated bullets on the unarmed non-violent crowd of Palestinian resisting the verdict and showing the solidarity in the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The violent attack devastated the premises of the holy site and wounded more than 200 unarmed civilians. 

The physical assault was on its zenith when the Palestinians faced a virtual oppression as well. The social media platforms like twitter and Instagram soon started taking down the stories and posts and hiding the hashtags related to the region and the ongoing brutality. This was an egregious attempt to muzzle the Palestinian voices.

This article was written on 7th May 2021.