Describing the Israeli attacks as “collective punishment”, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safedi said: “There is no justification for this war. This is a war crime according to international law, international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.” When Israel looks at itself in the mirror of its history today, does it see Gaza and the Palestinians in the mirror? While a genocide-victim society is now committing the same crime in its history, the world is stuttering in silent and speechless objections.
Neither Jews nor Christians will ever be pleased with you unless you follow their religion. The Eastern Mediterranean has warmed up again with recent events. US and British ships are flocking to the region. Concerns about whether a new engineering and balance of violence is being envisaged in the region are circulating in the minds.
Questions are again circulating as to whether Israel has turned the pretext of victimisation into an engineering process and is seeking an expansion in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and whether waves that will affect Syria, Iran and even Turkey in the wider plan may hit the shores of the region.
While an unbalanced and unjust bombardment is cruelly destroying Gaza under the pretext of Hamas, those whose religion we do not follow have become united. The pretext of fighting terrorism is again causing oppression in the region, acting arrogantly with the robe of cruelty. Were the babies from Gaza related to Hamas? The anti-terrorist rhetoric turns into wholesale extermination and once again embarks on the genocide of justice. The concept of humanity is once again being destroyed in our region.
As long as the concept/definition of terrorism is determined by those in power, it seems that the oppression of the oppressor will persist. What does Israel understand terrorism in this sense? Netanyahu is currently acting with the image of a united Israel that has solved all its problems against terrorism and has received public support with its anti-Hamas image.
In the Eastern Mediterranean, large fleets of aircraft from all the regional states have begun to circulate. Every ideological authoritarian in the region is rejoicing. All civilisational agendas are cancelled! Are the Crusader structures, which have not been able to enter the coast throughout history, trying to create a spring to realise the great promises by legitimising terrorist discourses? What is law? What is the law of war?
Will the opposing states of the region be able to establish an international status quo and create a situation against Israel? In the history where civilian deaths were manifested with Hitler, in a struggle where evil has become commonplace, is Israel not now being examined in the mirror of history? In an environment where evil is facilitated and dehumanised, where respect and sympathy for victims is legitimised through the discourse of terrorism and violence is rationalised, is Israel not now the addressee of Jewish Hanna Arendt’s discourses on the banalisation of evil?
Is the image of the state and soldiers obeying the order and doing their duty under the pretext of fighting terrorism different in content from what is happening in Gaza, which is a modern Auschwitz? Isn’t the structure fighting against terrorism acting in the region with the expectation of absolute obedience and zero criticism? Where is the world that can remain moral under immoral conditions? If Hanna Arendt were alive today and looking at Gaaze, would she make the same call and be an autonomous individual and remain moral against immorality or would she show the famous ambivalent attitude over sacred exceptions like Levinas, but it seems like it would be good to look at the issue from here.
War and resistance are tactical parts of a strategic goal and become meaningful and valuable when they contribute to the creation of a final situation suitable for the purpose. In the recent history of our country, there are many incidents of war and defence in this way.
Although the actions that give excitement to the excitement and emotions provide momentary pleasantness, relaxation and discharge to the human soul, isn’t it a bit unfair to the victims and oppressed people who are fighting that struggle? Isn’t it helpless to shout at a ruin from a distance from the warm house where you are sitting? Israel is the last Crusader State that emerged after the defence shield was broken in the lands where Devlet-i Aliye was swept away.
With its existence, it is like a machine that constantly produces cruelty, let alone being a centre of civilisation in the region. Muslims are helpless in the face of this machine in the modern-day status quo and Israel is even the most valuable source of reference and power for many local people who are interested in their future.
In our opinion, Israel’s greatest influence in the region lies in its ability to have this deep influence. Let no one forgive us, we have the hook in ourselves. Civilisationalist nationalism is not a self-Muslim idea. The one who seeks order must be honest with himself most of all.
What is being against Israel? What would you think if you were a child living in Gaza today and bombs continued to fall on you while you were being babbled at your father, your brother, your relatives were killed the “Muslim world” looked sadly at your oppression and shouted periodically from afar, but in the end you were left without a future and a homeland? I don’t understand why it is considered strange why people choose to become suicide bombers, even though we never approve of it.
What would you do if you realised that you are part of an ominous drama in a game in which all sides play win-win with the artificial tensions that the Zionist ideology has with some natives in the region? Israel is not our other because it is Jewish/Muslim. It is our other because of its cruel actions. Prophet Moses, Judaism and the Torah are our principles of faith as Muslims.
We cannot be foreign and hostile to a people of the Book in this respect. But our Book says O you who believe! Do not make the Jews and Christians your friends. Some of them are the friends of others. And whoever among you takes them as friends, surely he is one of them.
Surely Allah does not guide the wrongdoers to the right path. The events in Gaza today have become a commentary on this verse. If the US Secretary of State says that he is in Israel as a Jew, there is no need to discuss the issue much. However, the problem here is not theological but practical for Muslims.
The word “do not make friends” does not necessarily mean do not establish relations or do business according to your interests. This would be against the nature of existence. However, the issue of those who are from them and who appear to be from us is in our opinion, the main reason for the persecution in Palestine.
All the audacity that exists in Jerusalem or Gaza is powered by this, not by the great wealth, media dominance and big companies around the world. If the history of the Crusades is read correctly, it will be seen that the region has this experience.
An ongoing strategic goal has continued unchanged over Jerusalem, even though periods and eras, states and actors have changed. Even if some made alliances with the Crusaders among the Muslims, this continuity did not harm the main goal as the great plan was carried out. If we cannot protect Jerusalem with our present, we have to protect it with history.
Since the current Muslims cannot have faith in tawhid are divided and dispersed with the disaster of disunity, are exploited by incompetent ambitions, remain ignorant, poor and cannot be civilised and become modern subcontractors, it seems difficult to help Gaza through the present. Let us be silent now and let Aliyamız from Tehran in 1997 speak: “Forgive me for being so blunt. Beautiful lies do not help us, but bitter truths can be healing. The West has neither degenerated nor degenerated. The rotten West… This lie (self-deception) was paid dearly by the communist system. The West is not rotten; it is strong, educated and organised. Its schools are better than ours and its cities cleaner than ours. The level of human rights is higher in the West and social care for the poor and less able is better organised.
Westerners are mostly responsible and punctual people. This has been my experience with them. I also know the dark side of their progress and I don’t lose sight of it. Islam is the best. That is true, but we (Muslims) are not the best. These are two different things that we often confuse. Instead of hating the West, let us compete with it! Didn’t the Qur’an command us: ‘Compete for good…’ With faith and science, we can create the power we need. True, it is a long and arduous path.
It is a difficult climb to the mountain and hill mentioned by the Qur’an, but there is no other way.” No offence to anyone, Israel is cruel, yes it is cruel, yes but this cruelty is sustained thanks to the state of Muslims. Just as the Armenian issue keeps a society alive as a matter of identity, the Israeli issue ensures the continuation of a status quo in the world. Unique opportunities continue to arise for the barons of genocide. With our sense of humanity, we would never say yes to the murder of an innocent Jewish child.
However, for the thousands of children killed in Palestine, I would say that we should look at what we are doing with strategic determination as taught by our Cyprus and Karabakh experiences.
The experience of the Crusades and the resistance of the Turkish-Islamic world against the attacks (let us refer here to our work that emphasises this: Altan Çetin, Crusades, Istanbul, 2021) can tell us a lot in this regard. When we come to modern times, if Turkey had only condemned and watched what the Greek Eokists did against the Turks on the island with a similar idea of Israel in the Cyprus incident, there would be no Turks left on the island today. Turkey, which went to the island, paid the price and protected the Turks despite the Johnson letter, has a great experience in diplomacy and military. If you say that we were guarantors in that matter, then look at the last Karabakh incident.
The same mind worked in the Karabakh issue, where our generation saw both occupation and liberation. I do not want to say anything negative to the Arabs here. They fought for this cause, but they could not do it yet. They are already divided into a thousand pieces.
Jerusalem is not a matter to be entrusted to them alone. The friends of the Arabs also seem to be a bit confused. The Iranian issue, on the other hand is more chaotic than the Israeli and Palestinian issues. Doesn’t the ideological and sectarian approach to the issue only lead to the view of forces carrying wood for each other’s fire? How did categorical opposition contribute to the practical outcome?
We will see what the missiles fired in the latest incident will change in Israel in the short and medium term and what the consequences will be in terms of domestic politics. We will see in the future whether Netenyahu is in profit or loss. However, in our opinion, these situations can be very productive for minds that feed on such violence. However, the main question is whether this situation serves a great strategy for the future of Palestine and the region.
How will this situation contribute to Palestine and the state that is expected to be established here, that is, the order and borders? Yes to resistance but if the result of this is a giant aircraft carrier in the Eastern Mediterranean, new status quo, new irregularities, new territorial losses, shouldn’t we sit down and think? Isn’t the same approach in the case of the conclusion of the 3-year-long Serbian persecution in Bosnia? Even if it is not as desired, even if it does not provide the expected civilised life to Bosnia, a power that arbitrarily blocks Bosnians cannot vomit blood into their lives. Then let Aliya take the floor again: Jerusalem was a free city for all three religions during the Islamic rule. The lack of freedom in it corresponds to the absence of Muslim rule.
This happened twice: the first time when the Crusaders captured it (1099-1187), and the second time today, when it is in the hands of Israel. (94) Aliya has been a prominent figure in the history of Jerusalem since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Aliya states that Jerusalem has been ruled with the meaning he puts forward since the time of Umar and when Sultan Saladin recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders (1187) he allowed the Jews to return to the city and established a unique relationship between Muslims and Jewish children between two different peoples, (95-96), he justifies his claims by recalling the incidents such as the destruction of the Syrian Catholic Church, the raid on the Orthodox Church of St John the Baptist, the looting of the Coptic Church and the burning of the Aqsa Mosque after the Jews completely dominated Jerusalem after 1967, revealing the common distress experienced by all religions in this period. These observations also give us an idea about the ultimate goal.
It is difficult to be a child in Palestine, it is very difficult to stay human, and friends. It is easy to write wishes, condemnations, objections and objectionable articles like ours against a mentality that manages the status quo in the world among Muslims who have confused their friends and enemies, but as a result, it is not so easy to take steps to provide an order that will bring order to the streets of Palestine! Or are we making the easy difficult?
In the final analysis, everything that international law criminalises has been committed in Israel and continues to be committed with the recent Gaza attacks. Israel’s discriminatory and exclusionary laws, policies and practices against Palestinians constitute a violation of public international law, a serious violation of human rights and a crime against humanity. Israel’s institutionalised and systematic discrimination against Palestinians within the framework of this situation, which is briefly defined as ‘apartheid’, has been documented by Amnesty International and reflected in its reports. Israel continues to build Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories it has occupied since 1967.
Governments that have come to power in Israel in the intervening period have uninterruptedly pursued the policy of using settlements as a means of Judaising Palestinian land. According to Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to property and this right is exceptional. According to this fundamental declaration, which regulates human rights and inspires other secondary texts, the house demolition penalty imposed by Israel is unlawful and disproportionate. The punishment of house demolition has no place in international law.
On the contrary, such a method of punishment is prohibited in all international legal texts. However, the Israeli government considers this practice as a right arising from its domestic law and continues to apply it.
According to Israeli law, the provision of Section 119 of the 1945 Emergency Defence Regulations, which is still in force, authorises the local military authority to demolish houses based on a court order if terrorism and violence become widespread and difficult to prevent.
In 1989, a paragraph was added to this section, giving the family residing in the house ordered to be demolished the right to file an appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court for the cancellation of the demolition. Since then, approximately 150 appeal petitions have been filed, and the Israeli Supreme Court has generally upheld the demolition decisions in favour of the administration’s arguments.
Article thirty-three of the Geneva Convention prohibits reprisals against persons who have committed offences and their property and collective punishment for offences committed. Article forty-nine prohibits the forcible transfer and deportation of persons and communities. Article Seventy-eight permits the occupying power to change the residence and “eterne” persons in case of force majeure, subject to an appropriate court decision, but stipulates that the appeal against these decisions must be open and that the decisions must be reviewed every six months.
Israel must be confronted by the international community with the fact that it has set up Auschwitz in its own country. No one is an enemy of Jews because of their religion. Nor is it a friend. However, in the face of the atrocities and lawlessness committed, there are many situations within the scope of human rights offences. Ignoring these, just as evil became commonplace and dehumanisation was justified against the Jews who were subjected to genocide yesterday, the same situation in Gaza today should be put forward in a merciful, non-hostile language.
Just as in Auschwitz, there was a moral evil perpetrated by human beings as intelligent and free beings with their own hands, today in Gaza a similar moral evil, the same evil that has become commonplace, is working under its terrorist pretexts. We do not have the simple idea of likening anyone to Hitler. However, when the mentality becomes the same, the deeds suggest similar results in history.
We wish justice to Palestine, mercy to the martyrs, unity and peace to the rest. As evil becomes ordinary, humanity continues to migrate from the region.
