Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim.

We must know the roots of the Occupation if we are to ever
free Filastin.

And its roots, unfortunately, run deep.

Before 1948, Filastin was ruled by a series of empires.
“Palestine” was the name given to southern Bilad al-Sham (Greater
Syria) in the second century by the Romans, in an attempt to break the Jewish
adherence to the land. This was a century after the Temple (Beit al-Maqdis) was
destroyed and more than a million Jews massacred.

The Jews stopped fighting the Romans only after they had no
more fighting men standing. Conservative Christian attitudes toward the Jews
and Filastin can be epitomized by the words of Evangelist William Eugene
Blackstone, who proclaimed in 1891 that “the Jews never gave up their title to
Palestine… They never abandoned the land. They made no treaty, they did not
even surrender. They simply succumbed, after the most desperate conflict, to
the overwhelming power of the Romans.”

This is what we are up against.

The Jews persisted through the centuries under the various
empires, after the Arab invasion of 635AD (which the Jews fought alongside the
Byzantines), and after the Crusade massacres of the 11th Century,
which decimated much of their population.

Few in the Muslim Ummah know that Jewish customs, religion,
prayers, poetry, holidays, and virtually every walk of life, documented for
thousands of years—all revolve around Filastin and al-Quds. They pray for
al-Quds in every prayer, after every meal, in every holiday, at every wedding,
in every celebration. The whole Jewish religion is about Filastin and al-Quds.
Western expressions such as “The Promised Land,” and “The Holy Land,” did not
pop out of void. They have been part of Western knowledge and tradition dating
back to the beginning of Christianity and earlier.

After the Crusades, the Jews lived peacefully with Arabs,
often in the very same villages, as in Pki’in, in the Jalil, until the Zionist immigration
of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Article 6 of the PLO Charter calls for the
acceptance of all Jews present in Filastin prior to the Zionist immigration.
These Jews were simply another ethnic group in a region composed of Sunnis,
Shiites, Jews, Druz, Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Circassians, Samarians, and
more. Some of these groups, like the Druz, Circassians, Samarians, and an
increasing number of Christians, are actually loyal to the Zionist Entity.

Incidentally, genetic studies show that the Zionist
immigrants are closely related to groups like the Samarians who have lived in Filastin
for thousands of years—a fact that Zionists view as a moral stamp of approval
on their presence in Filastin.

Few in the Muslim Ummah realize it, but it will take a lot to
free Filastin, and, as brilliantly described in Jonathan Bloomfield’s
award-winning book, “Palestine,” knowing the occupier is an integral part of
planning the struggle.