This post was published in 2000.
Since the dawn of Islam, in the seventh century, Palestine has occupied a paramount place as a bastion of the third monolithic faith. Consequently, countless of Muslim mosques and monuments have disseminated in the country prior to 1948, when a Jewish state was established and the Zionist expelled 800,000 Palestinians from 80% of Palestine between 1948 and 1950.
But the new invaders of the land wanted to erase all tracks of Arabs and Muslims in preparation for the establishment of a pure Jewish state.
Accordingly, a frenzy campaign of rampage and destruction swept occupied Palestine, later Israel, targeting everything the Palestinians left behind them including their rich religious heritage. The Haganah and Z’vai Leumi gangs embarked on the destruction of 418 Arab villages including its centuries-old mosques and churches. A number of Muslim mosques and sites became overnight Jewish synagogues. Others were simply turned to restaurants, coffees, and boutiques and even to gambling centers.
The few lucky mosques remained partially intact were not allowed to call to prayers using megaphones. Muslim places of worship disappeared at large scale from historic Palestine and native Palestinians were compelled large sums of money to recover parts of their mosques or relics from Jewish landlords who took over it as spoils. For example, remaining native Palestinians were able to recover part of Dahmash mosque in the city of Lod only recently, to find its interior walls bearing, even after five decades, stains of blood as a result of a gross massacre against Palestinians– a stereotype of Zionist military campaign of terror on the 1940.
The mosque of Hasan Bey in Jafa was recovered by Palestinians belatedly, following a lengthy process of litigations in the court rooms, but the mosque’s religious authority were ordered not call for prayers through megaphones or by using the minaret.
The same story was with Seedna Ali’s Mosque, in Jafa District, dating back to the early years of Islam, was opened recently to visitors.
Jafa’s Grand Mosque, has been partially recovered by native Palestinians who perform their prayers in a bizarre situation since large part of the historic building was utilized as night clubs or coffees by Israelis who demand a huge sum of money to give up their illegally owned shops.
Mosques in historic Palestine have become under the Israeli state a witness to acts of vandalism and desecration practiced by a racist state and fanatic society of immigrants who harbor ill feeling to native Palestinians.
Religious sites are revered everywhere in the civilized world except in Israel, the state of fanaticism and fundamentalists.
