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A Time We Yearned For: The End of the Pandemic

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Three covid-19 masks hanging on a stand

As it appears, we may be finally reaching the end of the pandemic. But this is only what appears; and of course, the pandemic has taught us that what “appears to be” is not always what will occur. 

Two years ago, at the onset of this global pandemic, many of us thought it was an event that would last a few weeks, or perhaps a couple of months. But as time went on and we followed both global and local news updates, we found ourselves on a rollercoaster of a ride. When the numbers escalated, we grew nervous and worried. When they began to dwindle, we saw the cup half full. Only to find the scenario repeating itself multiple times. 

Also Read: Despite Omicron Will 2022 be the End of the Pandemic?

Through this ride, we had to adjust. We had to adjust individually, as families, as colleagues and as companies. We had to adjust emotionally, socially, spiritually and economically. 

While the pandemic has not yet officially ended, the WHO has started discussing when the pandemic could possibly be declared as ended.

While we wait for an official declaration regarding the conclusion of the pandemic, it would be naive to proceed with our lives without reflecting on a few of the many valuable lessons learned from this pandemic.

Our Limited Scope and Knowledge as Humans

Regardless of how quickly science and technology continues to evolve, it would be foolish to say that our knowledge as humans is limitless. We simply have no idea what the future holds. At the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, many of us had plans. Maybe some had their calendars filled with events. But life, almost suddenly, came to a halt. The days passed and filled agendas and calendars suddenly were useless.   

Also Read: Uncertain Future: What Would the Pandemic Look Like in 2022?

An evident display of our human weakness was vividly portrayed before our very eyes. If we truthfully acknowledged the fact that no matter how carefully we plan, we still do not know what tomorrow holds, we would lead more peaceful lives. We would practice the concept of complete trust in God in a more genuine manner. Only He holds knowledge of the future and only His Plan is good for us; we just have to wholeheartedly believe that. 

Life is Not Constant

Life is continuously changing. Good times do not last forever and difficult times also do not last forever. Adapting to those times is one of the keys to getting through them. But adapting with strong faith takes adaptation to a whole new level. A person who tries to adapt with faith, patience, gratitude and hope in God is more likely to be able to come out of the pandemic either a better person, or with better ideas on how to lead the rest of their life. 

Also Read: Bike of Life: How to ride, survive, and Cheer!

Don’t Wait to do Good

During the pandemic lockdowns and closed borders, a thought always came to mind. There are  virtuous deeds that may require movement or travel. Like volunteering to help the less fortunate or physically helping weaker people. One of the main virtuous Islamic obligations that requires travel is the Hajj pilgrimage. I increasingly thought of the remorse that must have been felt by any Muslim who had the physical and financial means to embark on this journey in 2019, but were overcome by procrastination. The following two years, the doors of Hajj were internationally closed only opening for a few locals. It is definitely a heart wrenching feeling to have the means to go, but suddenly be blocked from doing so. The pandemic taught is that in doing good, hastiness should be our motto, simply because it is not always up to us to decide when we will be able to do it. 

Also Read: Top Virtues Muslims Preferred to Do in the First 10 Days of Dhul-Hijjah

Appreciate Family

The Pandemic taught us to get closer to our family. This may seem ironic, given that we were locked up with our families until we were tap dancing on one another’s nerves. But surprisingly, many busy parents and kids realized that they did not know one another very well on a deeper level.

Also Read: Work in 2022: What Will the ‘New Normal’ Look Like?

Being forced to remain under one roof for months allowed families to spend more time together and understand one another more. Through online schooling for example, parents got to see their children as students. Their strengths were evident, as well as their vulnerabilities. As life continues, we should especially pay attention to those living with us and make an effort to give them the support they need. 

Give Kids Some Credit

The younger generations around us were among the most affected by the pandemic. When schools were suddenly shut down, they were glued to screens (and chairs) for the most part of their day. Their holidays and religious celebrations became virtual and they almost forgot what it means to have friends. But children do deserve recognition for how smoothly they adjusted during the pandemic. Of course every family experienced bumps along the way, but both parents and educators alike expressed awe for how quickly children were able to adjust their lives according to the new pandemic lifestyle.

Also Read: Entering the “Fourth Wave” of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mental Health Edition

They sported masks through long school days and learned not to get too close to others. They went from being told to stay home, go to school and stay home again. Based on this, it is safe to conclude that sometimes the role of children in society is underestimated. They have amazing abilities to adjust to the environment and even bring about the best in every situation. Going forward beyond the pandemic, they should be permitted to engage in decision making, even on a minimal level and given more responsibilities. 

“A pandemic is caused by a pathogen but is experienced as a social, cultural, political and psychological event. As such it can intensify or wane somewhat independently of what the virus is doing.”Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post

A Pandemic without the Internet?

A concluding thought that never ceases to make one think is how people who went through other pandemics did so without the internet. The value of the world wide web was one of the greatest lessons gained from this pandemic. Due to this blessing, education and a great deal of jobs were able to proceed. We were able to keep in touch with loved ones who were distanced by land or glass barriers. At times when we were locked indoors for consecutive days and nights, the presence of the internet became our window  in the world. As we realize it’s value through this pandemic, let us learn to use it in a manner that is effective, truthful, honest and beneficial to ourselves and our communities. Abusive usage of the internet through dishonesty and trolling has psychologically and financially hurt many lives. 

Also Read: Pandemic & Suicide: How is Japan’s Spiking Suicide Rate Warning the World

The pandemic taught us that we as humans need one another to thrive and live on this earth. And while the WHO determines if we have reached the end or not, we acknowledge that only God knows exactly when the end is. He also has hidden countless blessings and lessons in the  past couple of years; we just have to make an effort to extract them, brush ourselves off and continue living with stronger faith in Him.

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Jewish Nazism is reality not fiction

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Jewish Nazism

I realize that the title of this article might offend and provoke many people, especially those adhering to the Judaic faith. I do know that Jews, like everyone else, are not carbon copies of each other. There are many conscientious Jews who believe in fairness and basic human equality regardless of color, race and faith, and strongly reject racism and chauvinism in any form. Also, I will no longer be using euphemistic language in reference to Jewish Nazism especially in light of the latest Dresden-like bombing of Gaza by the Judeo-Nazi state also known as Israel.

Read Also: No forgiveness for Jewish Nazism

These people I salute for their rectitude, humanity and morality. They are our natural partners for peace and a better tomorrow for our children and their children.

But there are numerous other Jews who don’t believe in human equality and justice for all. Indeed, there are many Jews, e.g. followers of the hateful Chabad sect, who don’t even ascribe full humanity to people who are not members of the Jewish faith.

Needless to say, the venomous ideology adopted by these racist fanatics has much in common with Aryan Nazism.

Read Also: The futility of counting on the U.S. to pressure Israel

What else can be said to describe an ideology that teaches adherents that the life of a non-Jew has no sanctity and that goyem can be murdered without the slightest compunction or feeling of guilt?

The shocking reactions by the Israeli government, rabbis, and community leaders to the latest abduction, murder and subsequent burning of a Palestinian kids in Gaza are very telling.

In a certain sense, these reactions and attitudes can be compared to the reactions and attitudes of many Germans to the pogroms carried out against Jews by the Nazis prior to and during the Second World War.

The gleefully despicable embrace of the brashly hideous crime by the bulk of the Israeli Jewish society underscores the fact that millions of Jews in Israel and abroad do harbor certain Nazi tendencies, especially against the Palestinian people. These tendencies are too real and too tangible to be overstated.

However, we must call the spade a spade, even at the expense of upsetting the huge Zionist propaganda machine which habitually alters the black into white and the blatant big lie into a “truth” glorified by sheepish westerners who have long been brainwashed into believing that Israel is a modern, civilized and democratic state.

In the final analysis, when Jews (or anyone else) think, behave and act like the Nazis thought, behaved and acted, they simply become Nazis. Pure and simple.

Today, there are numerous Jews who openly call for the physical annihilation of Palestinians as retaliation for the abduction and killing of three Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Saber-rattling rabbis speak menacingly of the need to adopt “the Biblical way” to combat the Palestinians.

For those not versed in Jewish phraseology, “Biblical way” is euphemism for genocide.

Today, the Israeli media reported that some army personnel openly appealed to the government to “give us the green light to annihilate them.”!!!

Just read what thousands of Jewish youths have been writing on their Facebook pages! It is outrageous, disgusting and sheer evil.

To put it in a nutshell, Nazism is being regurgitated and exuded all over Israel. This is happening in broad daylight while professional liars like Binyamin Netanyahu are filling the ether with all sorts of shameless lies about Israel being victimized by the Palestinians.

Seventy-six years have passed since Kristalnacht. Today Jewish settlers in the west Bank, in close cooperation and coordination, with the Israeli army could very well carry out a huge pogrom against an innocent and helpless community which really finds itself very much in the same precarious and vulnerable position that European Jewry experienced prior to WWII.

I am not a prophet of doom and gloom, but the signs are unmistakably bleak.

A final point, the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are surviving thanks to the good-will of the international public opinion. Should the international community go into a brief slumber, God forbid, Israel and its own Wehrmacht, SS, Gestapo and Hitler Youth might embark on the unthinkable. Don’t you ever say Jews can’t carry out a holocaust against their victims, the Palestinians?

Words can kill; words do kill.

Unfortunately, the chilling words we are hearing from many Israeli Jews these days leave no room for optimism.

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine

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I’m most definitely Palestinian!

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Palestinian

In-your-face brutality, unending genocide, unending atrocities, mass slaughter directed against one’s people, one’s brethren, causes the most strong and unimaginable reaction, in response to the oppressor’s horrendous and barbaric deeds. The autocratic, despotic, tyrannical Israeli-hand systematically and with pre-planned engineered precision, massacres, annihilates, eliminates the young and the old Palestinian alike – in the most inhumane and most despicable of ways. Slaughters men, women and children in broad daylight. Bares its blood-thirsty intentions, its monstrous objectives in the most unashamed of ways. Mercy to none – not to the living, not to the severely wounded and dying; no mercy even on the dead or their lifeless remains.

The constant fear of being bombed anytime, rained down with missiles and all manner of munitions from within the vast arsenal of the Israeli side; definitely stockpiled high, with enough buffer inventory of munitions, deadly and lethal stockpile, to blow the receiving side multiple times over; so as not to leave a “shred” of evidence of your original physical-self on the surface of the land, which your people, generations and generations of your ancestors, since time immemorial have dwelt on.

Read Also: The age-old Palestinian-fear (of the Israeli thirst)

The inexplicable terror of seeing Israeli drones constantly “floating about” unopposed, in the skies above your unsheltered head. Drones with eyes like that of a greedy dog. Electronic pixels wanting to cast an evil eye, an evil-spell upon your very being. Eyeing upon your existence, wanting to blow-up, tear-up your physical being, seemingly wanting to devour your flesh and body; all by way of a few computer clicks / even the manual computer-clicks now, seemingly, are being replaced by more automated ways of executing these most evil deeds. Software, coded software, written programs to execute on the most Evil-intentions. Evil-intentions of the most evil amongst the human race.

Everybody knows, the Israelis have exterminated with their weaponry, uncountable numbers of Palestinians across a 40, 50km stretch of land, in front of the whole world, over the past so many weeks and months. And retain the capacity, the ability, the power, the means to slaughter, devour many, many more innocent ones, day in, day out.

The Israelis possess American technology, American weapons – the bedrock of their faith, the foundation stone of their belief in their never-ending invincibility. The Palestinians have their faith in Allah; that Allah will redeem his faithful people, from the clutches of these war-mongers, who rain down terror, day and night on the most innocent, the most vulnerable.

Most definitely, the Moslem spirit in me, the Palestinian spirit in me is not defeated; quite to the contrary, it’s rekindled, stronger than ever.

I’m definitely Palestinian, in every sense of the word, and Allah will save us, Allah will have mercy on us, Allah will guide us.

(Note: Azhaar Amayreh is a marketer stuck in war-ravaged Rafah with her child.)The following article is part of a campaign to raise money to help MZEMO contributor Azhaar Amayreh and her family leave Gaza. Please give what you can.

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The futility of counting on the U.S. to pressure Israel

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It is really ludicrous to see how dishonest the U.S “mediators” constantly demand that the Palestinians display more “good will” toward Israel at a time when Israel continues to perpetrate a real Holocaust against the hapless and helpless Palestinaians and steal Palestinian land in broad daylight.

It seems amply clear that the current Palestinian leadership, i.e. the Palestinian Authority (PA)  led by Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, neither learns from its own blunders nor from other people’s blunders. This is really a gigantic disaster befalling the Palestinian people and their enduring just cause.

How else can one relate to the unrelenting illogical insistence of the the whole world on accepting the U.S., Israel’s guardian-ally, as “mediator and honest broker” between us and our murderous tormentors and grave-diggers, Israel?

Read Also: The US and IsraelThe dog versus the wagging tail.

Indeed, one doesn’t have to be an expert on American foreign policy in the Middle East to know that the U.S represents the problem, not the solution, given its long-standing embrace of Israeli fascism and expansion.  After all, it is the US that not only enabled Israel to actively pursue its lebensraum policy at the expense of its neighbors but consistently shield it from any accountability or international condemnation.

Today, the U.S. administration is criticizing Palestinian “unilateralism” in reference to desperate PA efforts to get the UN Security Council to recognize Palestinian statehood and agree on a deadline for ending Israel’s Nazi-like occupation.

Well, we all know that the U.S. is being pornographically hypocritical when it accuses the virtually vanquished Palestinians of acting unilaterally as if its spoilt nefarious daughter, Israel, were ever acting in full conformity with international law.

Well, Mr. Abbas and Mr. Ereikat: Don’t be too gullible, too sheepish. Ask your American interlocutors, e.g. Mr. John Kerry, the following questions:

Since when did Israel ever behave bilaterally rather than unilaterally?

Was the usurpation of Palestine and expulsion of its indigenous people at the hands of Jewish terrorist gangs hailing from Eastern Europe, a bilateral or unilateral act?

Was the annexation by Israel of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights a bilateral or a unilateral act?

Was the building of hundreds of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as the transfer of 600,000 Jewish settlers to live on a land that belongs not to them a bilateral or unilateral act?

Was the wanton demolition of some 30,000 Palestinian homes by Israel a bilateral or a unilateral act?

Was the annexation of the bulk of the West Bank and East Jerusalem a bilateral or a unilateral act?

And what about this ugly structure, called Separation wall, which resulted in the theft of thousands of acres of private Palestinian land? Was it a bilateral or a unilateral act?

I could go on and on and on listing America’s hypocritical and duplicitous stands on Palestinian grievances and Israeli crimes. Indeed, the U.S dishonest stand on the Palestinian plight has only been consistent in its moral depravity. Indeed, hypocrisy in its most brazen form has always been and continues to be the modus operandi of American policy toward the Palestinian issue. I know it is politically incorrect to speak in this tone. However, truth must not be another victim of the dark evil embrace between the U.S. and Israel.

But morality is not and has never been part of American politics or policies, especially foreign policy. This is why the world looks so ugly, so gloomy and so unjust.

The U.S. is insisting that only a “negotiated” settlement to the Palestinian issue would be acceptable to the U.S.

Read Also: The Palestinian Authority: confused, frustrated and corrupt

In other words, Israel must always have the final say as to any possible peace deal with the Palestinians.

But since Israel would never ever end its occupation or dismantle the settlements, let alone allow for the repatriation of the refugees, it means there can be no negotiated settlement unless the Palestinians agree to surrender to Jewish Nazism. But that will never happen as Muslims, including the Palestinian people, would never allow the Ramallah leadership or any other leadership to commit adultery with the honorable Palestinian cause.

Let’s be honest. The purportedly honest American broker or mediator is neither honest nor a broker or mediator. The proverbial American judge is simply telling the insolent rapist (Israel) and the vanquished rape victim (the Palestinians) to sort it out amongst yourselves. Do we have to be the smartest humans on earth to understand the implications of this brutal ugliness?

It is tantamount to a total American embrace of Israeli fascism. It means that the American stance is actually Israel’s stance. It also means that that the U.S. would never accept or condone any settlement that Israel doesn’t accept.

That is why the Palestinians need to have a moment of truth with themselves.
And the message they need to internalize is that they would have to wait ages if they continued to put their trust in the U.S. to pressure Israel to walk in the path of peace.

Let us face it. Israel will never walk in the path of peace unless it is pressured and bullied to do so. However, Israel would never ever walk in the path of peace as long as it continues to receive nuclear submarines from Germany and the most advanced fighter jets from the U.S.

In a nut shell, America can’t and won’t exert any meaningful pressure on Israel to end its N-a-z-i-like occupation. We all know that Israel controls the American government or at least controls those who control the American government. Israel is intoxicated by its arrogance of power and Talmudic insolence. And the U.S., Israel’s guardian-ally, is not in a position to be an honest mediator and to impose a deal on Israel or even convince her to allow for one that would give the Palestinian a semblance of justice.

What should be done?

We must go ahead with our efforts at the U.N. Security Council, irrespective of American threats to veto any resolution favorable to the Palestinian cause. At least casting the veto would embarrass America itself and its treacherous Arab allies (they are not actually allies but cheap slaves and puppets as we all know).

We Palestinians must be confident of our inevitable triumph over Zionism and its evils. Yes, it may take time, but eventually Zionism won’t live forever in a sea where hundreds of millions live.

Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and political commentator , we lost him on account of natural reasons on 12th of July last year in the Occupied Palestine

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