Ramadan goes out with a bang
Tens of thousands took to the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities and villages on the last Friday of Ramadan to participate in the Islamic Republic’s annual Quds [Jerusalem] Day rallies.
Palestinians wave Hamas flags outside the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during the last Friday of Ramadan, April 29, 2022. Photo by Jamal Awad/Flash90
After a two-year hiatus in the yearly hate-fest against Israel and America—due to the COVID-19 pandemic—attendees were especially itching to spew vitriol on the one hand and champion the Palestinians on the other.
“The [events] are a symbol of the unity of the Islamic ummah [nation], and God willing it will lead to the destruction of the Zionist regime,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in an interview with his state-run television station.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami expressed a similar sentiment about the fate of the State of Israel.
Orating at the main Quds Day happening in the capital, he pointed out that the Quds Force—the international arm of the IRCG—was established by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to “expand the Islamic revolution in other Islamic countries, with the aim of pressuring the Zionist regime … and in the near future, the regime’s elimination from the world’s political geography.”
The Palestinians and their Arab-Israeli brethren who’ve been rioting for the past month on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem have the same goal in mind. Their lie about Israel trying to “storm” the Al-Aqsa mosque and take it over is simply an excuse to justify their rage at the existence of the Jewish state.
Waving Hamas flags and burning Israeli ones—when they should have been praying solemnly at their cherished house of worship—these angry activists hurled rocks at Jews peacefully gathered at the Western Wall below. If there was any doubt about their true intentions, it was dispelled on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, when they chanted “Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, jaish Muhammad, sa yahud.” (“Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.”)
This is a reference to the Muslim slaughter in 628 C.E. of all the Jews of the town of Khaybar in northwestern Arabia. After the massacre, Muhammad and others took surviving Jewish women as slave wives. So much for the belief that a political gripe about a lack of independent statehood is behind Palestinian “disgruntlement.”
As if on cue, two Palestinians, Sameeh Assi and Yahya Marei, murdered 23-year-old security guard Vyacheslav Golev at the entrance to the city of Ariel in Judea and Samaria. The two terrorists in their 20s drove up to the booth where Golev and his fiancée were sharing a shift and shot him at point-blank range.
To make sure he was dead, they came back a second time and fired again. The only reason that the woman survived is that Golev shielded her with his body.
This wasn’t the kind of heroism that Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar had in mind when he hailed the attack, however. In a speech on Saturday morning to members of the Izzadin Kassam Brigades, he hailed Golev’s killers for their deed, as well as those who committed similar deadly assaults throughout the month.
He then proceeded to call on all of Israel’s Arab citizens to follow suit, telling them to get hold of weapons of any kind. “Those who don’t have a rifle should get an ax or a knife,” he urged.
He summed up his fiery oration by reassuring his audience that “to protect Al-Aqsa, we’ve already lined up 1,100 rockets” to fire on Israel, eliciting cheers of “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”).
Lebanon-based Hezbollah, too, praised the bloodshed in Ariel, which came mere hours after Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah gave a televised address in which he incited Palestinians to step up their “lone-wolf” attacks that Israel is hard-pressed to thwart.
The beauty of such acts, he said, is that they don’t involve a lot of planning or infrastructure. “All they require is an individual with a pistol or a machine gun—or a knife from his kitchen.”
What a lovely holiday message for Muslims about to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, with lots of food, festivities and gift-giving. Palestinians in Ramallah and Gaza are already gearing up for the occasion by baking sweets to distribute when the next Jews are gunned down or stabbed to death.
The Arab citizens of Israel who identify with them have been busy, as well, removing Israeli flags from poles along highways in the Galilee and replacing them with Palestinian ones. Like their counterparts in Iran, Gaza, Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East, they are preparing for Israel’s seventy-fourth birthday this week by plotting its demise.
Ruthie Blum is an Israel-based journalist and author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’”
