By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer
 
On Friday, June 23, Iranians and Muslims across globe once again took to the streets to raise their voice in support of the Palestinian people.
Quds Day is held annually on the last Friday of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan during which demonstrators call for the liberation of Palestine and an end to the Israeli occupation and apartheid. It was proclaimed in 1979 by the late Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Revolution, as a religious duty for all Muslims to rally in solidarity against Israel and for the liberation of Al-Quds.
This year the protesters took to the streets to name and shame Israel and its cohorts; bring the world’s attention to the endless sufferings in occupied Palestine; reiterate Palestinians can and will liberate the Holy Land; and denounce politicians for not supporting the Palestinian cause.
The key message here is that the Quds Day is not about hate speech or anti-Semitism, and certainly not an attempt to demonize Jewish people. This is about condemning an apartheid regime that refuses to end occupation and state terrorism. The widespread rallies send several other messages to the world community, in particular the United States and its allies, which continue to support Israel and its crimes against humanity in breach of international protocols:
-It is lawful to tell Washington to stop supporting the bloody occupation of Palestine as it only brings further trouble and disgrace for the White House.
-It is lawful to tell the Arab officialdom to stop seeking help from Israel and the West to remain in power or put pressure on resistance groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Ansarullah.
-It is lawful to advise the war party in Washington to leave the Middle East. Besides the Palestinians, the people of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan are also suffering from the U.S.-led bloodletting, terrorism, proxy wars, sectarian warfare, general mayhem, as well as bungled experiment with democracy.
-It is lawful to reaffirm that public participation in political affairs is still the most effective tool for Muslims to stop foreign powers from sowing discord, occupying and destroying communities.
-It is lawful to raise awareness that it is as a consequence of discord and complicity in the Arab world that Palestinians are still paying a heavy price under occupation. The Israeli aggressors, backed by Western powers and propagandist media outlets, continue to harass and kill Palestinians or steal their lands under the nose of the United Nations.
By extension, this is not hatred propaganda at all. The worldwide rallies are aimed at creating awareness about the fact that pro-Israel currents and lobbies in the West give a bad name to Islam, create a false image that Islam is a religion that provokes violence and hate against Jews, that the rallies are a clear exhibit of Antisemitism, and that Israel represents the Jewish community the world over.
Far from it, Israel is a cadence of falsehood and falsehood is bound to perish. And this is the reason why it is important to make on the International Quds Day very strong appeals to the international community. These strong appeals are absolutely necessary for the right of Palestinians for freedom and self-determination to be again fully respected.
UN member states are not doing it, to re-establish the integrity of the international protection for Palestinians, which means to have the right, obviously, to have a country of their own and manage their own affairs in a responsible way, but managing them also in a protection-sensitive way, and not refusing entry to it seeking recognition and protection.
Recognizing that there is no two-state solution for the Palestinian plight, the solution is political and through referendum, and it is related to the solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; to ask all parties to the conflict and all countries that have an influence on the parties to the conflict to come together and understand that it is causing tremendous suffering in which nobody is winning, everybody is losing, that it is becoming a threat not only to the Palestinians themselves but a threat to the whole world.