Lauren Booth – Responding to Horror
AI: Summary ©
The conflict in Israel is causing extreme suffering and cutting off electricity and food shortages, causing extreme pain and injuries. The conflict has been ongoing for 30 years, with no knowledge of the cause. The conflict has also caused people to lose their lives and their families face extreme pain. The conflict has also caused people to be perceived as a self-defense ideal and depopulate Israeli land. The conflict has also caused people to live in a garage and be crying, and is possible but not impossible.
AI: Summary ©
I get messages, I'm in touch with several
families right now.
He said instead they're seeing babies with their
skin stripped off and mothers with their arms
cut off and people burnt to death.
No water coming through and then there's no
light.
Israel has committed a war crime, cutting off
the electricity.
There's intermittent internet, they don't know if their
families are alive or dead.
As-salamu alaykum sister Lauren Booth, thank you
for accepting us.
We are going through really hard times as
an Ummah.
We know that in Palestine our brothers and
sisters are displaced from their homes, there are
babies dying, food supplies, water and electricity are
cut off, they don't know what to do.
As a journalist you have been among those
people many times.
We have the opportunity to look at the
events from both sides.
Many things are told in the media about
this issue, but can you tell us what
is really happening there right now?
What is going on now is a gameplay
that the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, have been
used to not for 50 months, not for
50 weeks, 50 years.
This is not a 10 days old conflict,
this isn't two weeks.
It hasn't just started a week ago.
That's the phrase that I'm taking out here.
This is a long extended era of pain
for the Palestinian people where their resources and
their land have been stolen deliberately and maliciously
by Zionists and Zionism and that ethical, unethical,
I should say, way of dominating a population.
So it's not a new thing.
You know, I spoke to my friend Yasser
last night and he's in Gaza City.
May Allah protect him, protect his family and
all our brothers and sisters, ameen.
And I said, where are you?
He said, we're outside our house.
And I said, how are the boys doing?
He's got two young sons.
He said, well, I, his sister, they're struggling.
They're only babies.
They're only young, less than 10 years old.
He said, and when I look at them,
I think they should be doing their homework
or playing on a beach or going on
a roundabout, you know, being pushed in a
playground, having some fun.
He said, instead, they're seeing babies with their
skin stripped off and mothers with their arms
cut off and people burnt to death.
How is this a childhood?
I want you to imagine this for a
second.
No water coming through, right?
They're going sip by sip right now.
Oh, I've had my three sips for the
day.
I've had my cup of water for today.
That's, that's it.
And then there's no light.
Israel has committed a war crime, cutting off
the electricity.
There's intermittent internet.
They don't know if their families are alive
or dead.
And then they're told to get out of
their houses.
So I know families last night who slept
in the street, even as bombings were going
on.
And do you get messages from our brothers
and sisters in Palestine right now?
Yeah, the messages I get, I get messages.
I'm in touch with several families right now.
And it's things like, pray for us, this
may be my last day.
Mohammed Azur, he's got no legs already from
an Israeli missile attack 10 years ago.
He's a basketball player, pro basketball player in
a wheelchair.
He said this may be our last day.
Pray for us.
I've got parents in the street saying, they're
leafleting our homes, we're not gonna leave.
And then I have other friends who are
trying to say, how are you?
How's your morale?
Are you okay?
And that, wallahi, that's the thing that pricks
me.
That's what pricks me, because they ask.
They have strong enough iman to say, are
you okay?
I'm sitting here in Istanbul in a luxurious
condition, but their iman cares about the ummah.
Do we, as an ummah, care about them?
Many people in the West, including celebrities such
as Justin Bieber, posted support messages for Israel.
There are also people that say Hamas has
massacred civilians and that's why Israel is attacking.
It is self-defense.
Can this be looked at like this?
Can all these bombings on Gaza be justified
like that?
Justin Bieber and people like this, shh, be
quiet.
Don't open your mouths.
Don't even say the word Palestine.
Well, you can't.
The world won't leave their lips because they
don't understand the situation.
You know, anybody who has not looked into
who the people of Palestine are and their
struggle, you have no right to even comment
about what is going on now, because you
have no idea about the pain that the
people have had to go through.
Subhanallah.
So to celebrities who don't know this inside
and out, to the people in the pubs,
to the people in the West, you know,
talking over the internet, to the trolls, shush.
This is not your time.
Be quiet.
If I come into your home, if I
come into your home, beat your wife, kill
your children, and kick you out of your
home, and years later you kick the door
in and try to get home, and you're
in the house saying, this is my house,
who is defending what here?
There is no self-defense ideal when you're
squatting on people's land, when you are deliberately
and continually killing people and starving them of
their human rights.
This is not self-defense.
This is what they've wanted all along.
Netanyahu stood just a couple of weeks ago
in the European Union or the United Nations.
Netanyahu stood at the United Nations just a
couple of weeks ago with a map that
completely erased any Palestinian presence at all.
This is their excuse to enact upon that,
but they had the plan anyway.
This is what they've wanted to do.
If you see the disgusting words coming out
from Israeli news media, from their Zionist politicians,
and from so-called supporters of Israel, you'll
see, annihilate the Palestinians, kill their kids, take
their land, make them suffer, push them into
Egypt.
Their agenda is very, very clear.
That's not self-defense.
That is ethnic cleansing.
That's depopulation.
That's a really good question.
If you can look at somebody being hurt
and have no feeling for that person, that
is called dehumanization.
And there has been a process of dehumanization
from the beginning of the Zionist state in
1948 when it was announced.
They have always referred in their spaces to
Palestinians and the Arabs generally, by the way,
as two-legged cattle.
This is from their own sources, as animals
to be herded here and herded there.
They have no concept of our people, Muslims,
Arabs, and Palestinians as real people.
This is very, very dangerous.
And it is one of the markers of
impending genocide.
There is a famous list which gives the
10 steps towards genocide.
And one of the final ones is the
utter dehumanization of the other.
So they don't see Palestinian children as children.
They see them as Hamas supporters.
I've never seen a six-month-old vote
in any election.
And while we're at it, by the way,
can we just address something?
You must've heard Gaza having been referred to
as an open prison.
Yeah, you've heard that, right?
It's not.
It's a concentration camp, right?
Let's start using the terms.
We don't mind that the other doesn't like
these terms.
We need to use what is accurate.
Can I just describe why Gaza is a
concentration camp?
It's very important.
Let's talk about prison first.
A prison is somewhere where criminals go.
So the minute you talk about prison, it's
like, oh yeah, Palestinian criminals.
They're all in that prison called Gaza.
No, men, women, and children who have committed
no crimes are not prisoners, agreed?
They can't be imprisoned by the state.
Good.
Secondly, in a prison, the one who controls
the prison has to give three meals a
day.
They have rights to healthcare.
They have to have clean water.
And here's a really important thing.
They get visitation from the outside world, from
their families, and they have a due date
to leave.
None of these apply to the people of
Gaza who have for 16 years been under
an illegal siege.
People don't seem to understand what that means.
I have been on a boat from Cyprus
to Gaza through the Israeli naval blockade.
That's the only way you can get to
Gaza.
They're fishing their sea, the Gazan area of
sea, enshrined in this useless international law, sees
their fishing men, their fishermen, regularly bombed out
of the water, regularly murdered.
So there's no way to get in or
out.
There's no airport.
There's no rail system.
There's no buses taking them here or there.
So therefore, the definition of a concentration camp,
a space where men, women, and children are
crowded into oppressive conditions by an external force
because of their, and listen to this, political
beliefs, religious beliefs, views, ethnicity, and then they
are treated harshly.
That's what the Gazan people have experienced and
are experiencing right now.
We have Zionist Jews bombing a concentration camp.
Congratulations.
These lands have been under the rule of
Jews, Christians, and Muslims in different periods throughout
history.
In which period was that land the most
peaceful and why?
You know, there's a couple of moments in
history that it's worth reflecting upon.
When we look at the possibility of Jerusalem
having peace.
And that was the first one I'll bring
up is when Umar ibn al-Din, the
conquest of Jerusalem from then the Crusader Christians
who had massacred all the Jews and all
of the people living in Jerusalem when they
took it a thousand years ago, and before,
and before.
And when Umar ibn al-Din, he arrived
there and he said, I won't pray in
the Christian church.
I'll pray outside because this has a right
to exist.
This is part of the history and I
don't want it to be taken away after
I've prayed in there.
And to this day, there is the church
of the Holy Sepulcher, one of the holiest
sites in Christianity and around the corner, a
tiny little mosque called Masjid Umar, right?
And then there followed a period where the
Jews were actually welcomed back by the friend
of the Prophet Muhammad.
Did you know that?
They were welcomed back, subhanAllah.
And then the Ottomans came and for 500
years, there was a thriving society of three
faiths, subhanAllah.
It is possible, but it is not possible
with Zionism because they do not want it.
It is not what they want.
They want a Jewish-only state, Jewish-only
Jerusalem, and they don't want Christians or Muslims
there.
And we have to be very clear about
that because they make it clear.
And I want to ask, did you experience
any unforgettable events that you, when you were
there, were there any unforgettable events you witnessed
there?
In Gaza?
Yeah.
I was in Beirut several years ago and
I was visiting a family who lived on
the barbed wire fake border that the Israeli
regime has put there.
And it was like a garage.
They were effectively living in a garage.
So whatever your garage looks like, times it
by three, that's what this family of 12
were in.
And the mother was introducing me to her
children and young Yassine, he had white phosphorus
burns all across his legs.
Terrible.
The other son, 16, he had a terrible,
you know, fresh scar from a bullet from
an Israeli sniper because he'd been collecting rubbish
to sell.
And there was a little girl and she
was just doing this.
She said, oh, she hasn't talked since the
last war.
She's got shell, you know, we'd call it
shell shock or PTSD.
And it just went on and on and
on.
And then the Adhan went, and I was
Muslim at this time, this is 2012, and
I went into a back room and I
just started to cry.
I just started to cry.
Allah, I can't do this.
Allah, I don't know what, please help them.
And the mother came in and she put
her hand on my shoulder and she said,
Habibti, why are you crying?
I said, I'm crying for you.
I'm crying because I hate this.
I hate this for you.
And I hate that I can't do anything.
And I hate that you have to live
like this.
And she said, don't cry for us.
We are so happy because we have Allah.
And we know that if we are steadfast,
He will give us Jannah.
Alhamdulillah.
As Muslims, unfortunately, we are helplessly watching these
events at home.
What would you say to a Muslim who
asks, what can I do as an individual?
As our feeds are now full of the
death of babies beheaded by Israeli rockets and
mothers screaming in grief and fathers dying, bleeding
out on the roadside because there's no more
beds.
As we see whole areas decimated and the
smoke fills the air and the people are
crying and fleeing.
Don't give up hope.
Allah is with the believers.
We remember what the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
said in a famous battle, when he was
driven up a mountain with a few of
his followers and the enemy was mocking him
and saying, look how many of your famous
fighters are dead and your friends and family.
And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said to
tell them, ah, but here's the difference.
Our dead are in Jannah and yours are
in Jahannam.
And then Allah Ta'ala tells us in
the Holy Quran, don't say the Shaheed are
dead for truly we know that they are
alive.
And I have seen this from brothers who
have reported directly to me, the Shaheed that
they've seen of their friends.
Seven years after they've been buried, fresh like
the day before, the smell of musk coming
from them.
And Wallahi brothers and sisters, the Palestinians see
angels.
In other wars, I have had friends call
me and say, sister, I wish you were
here.
And I'm saying, why would you wish me
to be under the bombs?
I love you, but, and they're like, Wallahi,
because the Sakina has descended and the angels
are amongst us.
SubhanAllah, miracles exist.
Trust Allah.
Hasbuna Allah wa ni'ma al-wakeel and shabdi
kalbi, strengthen our hearts.
This is not a time for crying.
This is a time for steadfastness.
Wallahi, in the dictionary, next to the word
for steadfast should be one word, Palestine.
So let's remember brother as well at this
time, okay?
That Shaytan wants us to feel hopeless.
Shaytan wants us like this.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no.
That's not Islam.
Put the phone down and go to your
prayer mat and sit there.
It doesn't matter if it's prayer time and
just say, Ya Rahman, Ya Rahim, Ya Qudus,
Ya Salam, Ya Allah, victory.
To the oppressed people, victory to your slaves,
victory to your servants.
Oh Allah, bless them.
Oh Allah, bless them.
Make your dhikr, strengthen your heart through the
dhikr.
Allah curse the oppressors.
Allah bless the Palestinians with victory.
Amen.