From [HERE] JERUSALEM, PALESTINE – We are barely halfway into the month of Ramadan and already the toll has gone beyond 20 Palestinians dead and countless wounded. Al-Aqsa mosque has been raided and the images of militarized Israeli police storming the mosque, beating and shooting indiscriminately at worshipers, demonstrate what was clear from the beginning: Israel wants this month to be as bloody as possible for Palestinians. There must be someone among the Israeli decision-makers who believes that spilling endless amounts of Palestinian blood and desecrating Al-Aqsa will satisfy the beast of Israeli public opinion. History has shown that that person is wrong.

People will often ask what is the “end game” for Israel, or what is it that Israel really wants – assuming that the violence and shedding of Palestinian blood is just temporary, and perhaps somewhere there is a loftier goal. However, the answer is looking us right in the face: Israel wants to destroy all that is dear to Palestinians – holy places, historic monuments, Palestinian homes and institutions, the Palestinian landscape – and to take as many Palestinian lives as possible in the process. It has been more than one hundred years since the Zionists set foot in Palestine, and Zionism and its crowning achievement, the apartheid regime of Israel, demonstrate clearly what the “end game” is for Israel.

 First Palestine

The boundary between religion and nationalism was intentionally blurred by the Zionists very early on. Zionism claims that the Jewish religion is a nationality and therefore religious symbols have become symbols of national identity and importance. Starting with the concept of “the Holy Land of Israel – most of which, though not all, exists within Palestine – Zionists turned what was always a religious, spiritual yearning into a national symbol. For thousands of years, Jewish people prayed for the Messiah so that we could live in a world without wars, a world where all people worship their creator in peace. However, even though the Jewish people never made such a claim, the Zionists claim that the Jewish scriptures are proof that Palestine belongs to them.

The Zionists turned religious yearning into a national goal that has to be achieved by force. They purposefully misinterpreted the yearning to pray in Jerusalem as a desire to gain sovereignty at all cost, thus turning one of the most sacred places for both Jews and Muslims into a bloody battleground.

 Then Al-Aqsa

What almost became the Zionist national anthem, and is perhaps better known around the world than that anthem, is the song Jerusalem of Gold. This song was commissioned by Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kolek just a few weeks prior to the 1967 Israeli assault on Arab countries, an assault that became known as The Six Day War. The name “six days” is also a reference to Jewish scripture, where it is stated that the Almighty created the world in six days. [MORE]