GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – The Crusades have not ended!

Beautiful building isn’t it! What a romantic site for a night club, restaurant , bar and events hall.

It looks ancient! It must have a history, don’t you suppose!

It has a history all right.

It was a mosque, Al Ahmar Mosque, The Red Mosque, the name derived  from its red stones. Built around 1276 AD, it was an important spiritual centre for the Palestinian community of Safed.

After forcing out most of the  Palestinian inhabitants in 1948, the Zionists renamed Safed. The northern Israeli town is now Tzfat.

The Zionists took over the mosque, using it for a Jewish seminary  , a Likud campaign centre, a clothes warehouse

For years, Khair Tabari, secretary of the Safed and Tiberias Islamic Endowment Society , has been  pleading in the government court of Nazareth, for the mosque to be evacuated and returned to the Islamic Endowment. Tabari has shown the court documents that prove Islamic ownership of the mosque.

His efforts have been in vain. The mosque is now officially a nightclub. Its name has been altered, with the intention of  erasing knowledge of its past.

This is a very recent example of a process of destroying, eradicating, evidence of the presence of the Palestinian people, that has been going on since 1948. Villages have been destroyed or renamed, even landscape features renamed. Al Ahmar Mosque is not the first mosque to be turned into a venue serving alcohol. It just happens to be the most recent.

The Zionist goal has always been not only  to take over as much of the land and resources, including water , and to exclude as many of the indigenous as possible, but also to erase any evidence that a people with a culture, a way of life,  and a history ever lived there.

George Orwell said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

The Israeli historial Ilan Pappé coined the word ‘memoricide’.

The Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said was aware of what was happening, “Part of the main plan of imperialism… is that we will give you your history, we will write it for you, we will re-order the past…What’s more truly frightening is the defacement, the mutilation, and ultimately the eradication of history…”

Israelis and Zionist supporters , maybe here in New Zealand too, will soon be celebrating, commemorating Israeli Independence Day, remembering the day, May 15, 1948, that Israel became a State. From what I have read, the actual day of celebration depends on the Jewish lunar calendar.This year, 2019,  it will be May 09.

For Palestinians May 15, the same date every year, is  Nakba Day, Catastrophe Day.

Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel hoped that , “The old will die and the young will forget.”  After all, as journalist and author Ramzy Baroud points out,  “when Israel was established, Palestine was erased. “ That was the Nakba.

The journalist adds, “That blood-stained birth callously required the destruction of an entire nation; people with a unique history, language, culture and collective memory. It was thus absolutely necessary for the Palestinians to be wiped out to quell any possible sense of Israeli guilt, shame and legal and moral responsibility for what has befallen millions of dispossessed people.”

But Palestinians haven’t forgotten their past.

At more or less the same time of the year, Israelis celebrate the day Israel became a State, and Palestinians including Palestinian-Israelis remember the Nakba.

But there is an important difference. The Nakba isn’t a fixed historical date. It is an ongoing process of oppression.

As Ramzy Baroud, of Palestine Chronicle explains,

“. The Nakba is not merely a question of history, but an ongoing reality that has affected several generations of Palestinians. It is not a celebration of victimhood, but the impetus for an ongoing resistance. It is not an “event” assigned a specific political context and analysis, but is now a state of mind; the Palestinian people’s strongest rapport between them and their past, present and future.”

Maybe then, the  title of this blog  should be THE NAKBA HAS NOT ENDED.

But no, I’ll stick to the original title. One could see what is being done, as a Western Crusade. Israel has just elected its most extreme government ever. The Israelis know that the West is behind them, or at least will turn a blind eye to anything it does: stealing more land, destroying more schools , killing more Palestinians, including children. And yes, destroying holy sites.

With its silence New Zealand too is supporting Israeli oppression. Silence is complicity.

New Zealand could provide the international moral leadership needed for the Crusades to truly end. We could have a better world.

As for the Nakba? That will come to an end when Palestinians deservedly receive freedom and justice, including freedom of movement, when they and their culture, including  holy sites, are treated with respect and dignity.

Yet why should New Zealand be expected to take a braver more moral stand than any other country?

Why should anyone expect New Zealand to be first?

Maybe second?

South Africa has essentially severed diplomatic relations with Israel. Gideon Levy has written in Haaretz that South Africa  “plans to continue battling racism and apartheid everywhere in the world; it isn’t prepared to cooperate with regimes that are racist or apartheid under any circumstances, even if there’s a price to pay.”

New Zealand could follow South Africa’s example. Here in New Zealand citizens are making efforts to get to know their Muslim neighbours. Mosques are treated with respect, as all holy sites everywhere should be.

Just imagine the reaction from  Western media and politicians, if an ancient revered synogogue or church  were to be taken over and desecrated, with full approval of the State. It would be an international scandal.

Israelis Dancing Inside the Former Mosque

 

 

Lois Griffiths is a human rights activist.