Originally published in the Spring 2022 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 68, printed April 21. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Spring 2022 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

By Sanaz Ghodsi

On April 15, Israel carried out a violent assault on Palestinians congregating at the al-Aqsa masjid in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site for followers of Islam. It was a Friday, the Muslim day of worship, in the holy month of Ramadan.

In a deliberate attempt to provoke Palestinians, extremist Israeli settlers had planned to carry out a sacrificial ritual in the mosque compound that day, which was the first day of Passover. Heeding calls by religious leaders to defend al-Aqsa, hundreds of Palestinians gathered at the mosque and its courtyard to perform evening prayers to demonstrate their opposition to settler violence at their holy site.

Israeli occupation forces responded by storming the masjid and shattering the windows of the 1,000-year-old masjid to target worshippers inside with rubber bullets, teargas grenades, sound grenades and live ammunition.

Elders and children were beaten in the mosque courtyard by the Israeli forces. According to Mohammed el-Kurd, a Jerusalem-based correspondent for The Nation magazine, the occupation forces prevented ambulances from reaching the injured.

More than 400 Palestinians were arrested. These raids were coordinated by settlers with the protection of occupation forces in order to clear the al-Aqsa compound of any Palestinian presence and leave the masjid undefended.

Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since the 1967 war. In 1980, the entire city was annexed, in violation of international law. The assaults on al-Aqsa serve as a form of population transfer whereby native Palestinians are depopulated from the area in order to secure a Jewish majority.

On April 17, busloads of settlers wearing sacrificial garb arrived at the compound. More than 500 Israeli soldiers stormed the compound to clear the grounds for the settlers, who announced plans to continue the raids every day for the following week.

The settlers filmed themselves chanting “nakba” and “Abu Khdeir,” referencing the mass displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 and 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, whom settlers abducted and burned to death in 2014. The occupation forces threatened that anyone who recorded evidence of the assault would be arrested.

More casualties are expected as settlers continue to storm the al-Aqsa compound. The Palestinian uprising in May 2021 began in response to evictions of Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem, most notably in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. A defensive military operation was carried out by resistance factions in Gaza in response to the brutalization of Palestinians who had gathered at al-Aqsa to commemorate International al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day and protest the violent dispossession of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

In the event that Palestinian resistance forces carry out another defensive military operation in response to this new Israeli violence, it will be crucial for people in the West to understand that the oppressed indigenous people of Palestine have the right to defend themselves and the sanctity of their sacred grounds, by any means necessary.