The team went to lunch and the terrorist came in through the window under the direction of Hussam. When the police came 'Alaa, the extremeist' told them 'i ask him to remodel.' He took all our personal items, musical instruments, camera equipment, and many computers. They burnt our bibles and made huge fires with our personal items from the church.
They have been digging tunnels in this area of Damascus Gate for awhile. We witnessed them digging under the Nuseibah home at the bus station. When we caught them digging outside- under the church they threatened to kill us all. The chopped up floor as you can see- the militants may use this to access their tunnels. Over the past years we took pictures of them- while in the church they put a board over my window so i would quit watching them in the night hours. a couple years ago they beat me up and left me for dead in front of the church. I was a prisoner inside the church for 5 1/2 months.
Presently, no matter what we do the police appear to be more afraid of Hussam than we are. Even last tribulation when i got a retraining order against him - his men beat me for getting the order. Even to bring a court order when you hand it over to those in lawlessness- they are not going to respond to it.
The property is owned by ten owners in the Dajani family. Hussam won in court 3% and has violently taken over the property. We as Living Bread International Church have a 20 year lease and have paid our rent by bank wire in advance. Sorry, to say being a Christian- makes your case of little value to men in this land. As we know- when our case reaches the courts of heaven our God will fight for us and HE has never lost a battle. We wait on the Lord - what next Lord?
It seems to be a dispute over who has rights to the building.
I have a feeling we are not hearing the full story, but no matter what, this was a major attack that for some reason went below the radar of virtually every media outlet until yesterday.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Video: Niece of top Arafat aide tattooed "Israel" on her backThe story is from October: The niece of a top official in the Palestinian Fatah party and a close confidant of the late leader Yasser Arafat says she loves the State of Israel so much, she had the word “Israel” in Hebrew t…Read More
Mahmoud Abbas pays tribute to terrorists by name in Fatah speechMahmoud Abbas gave a three-hour long speech the the seventh Fatah conference in Ramallah on Wednesday. Although he mentioned many times that he only supports "peaceful and popular resistance" he did say "at this stage," …Read More
The Arab world and Leftists would have you believe Gaza is a living hell, with every commodity and necessity of life absent.
When one looks however, it is a whole different scenario.
Gaza City
Peter Hitchens in the Mail Online writes:
”It is lunchtime in the world’s biggest prison camp, and I am enjoying a rather good café latte in an elegant beachfront cafe. Later I will visit the sparkling new Gaza Mall, and then eat an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant. “
This piece started out as a ‘sort of’ fun-cum-sarcastic piece being aware of the quantity of 5-star hotels, the nightclubs, shopping malls, restaurants and more in Gaza. However, as I searched for images and information, I came across a whole other side of Gaza which I don’t think many people know exists.
Gaza City
Roots Club is an up-market restaurant and catering company in Gaza. Critics said at its opening they expect the restaurant to bring “a new era of hospitality and dining experience”
The club is located on Cairo Street in the Gaza district of Rimal. It features three different dining venues, the informal, outdoor Green Terrace Café, the Ambassadorcatering hall and the air-conditioned Roots Restaurant. One restaurant reviewer described the atmosphere as “vaguely reminiscent of the Anglo-Indian country-clubs of the colonial era.”
A reviewer called the menu, which features twelve different meat dishes, chicken prepared thirteen different ways, and eight pasta preparations in addition to an array of salads, appetizers, desserts, and nine kinds of soup served “only in winter,” truly staggering.
Lonely Planet calls the Roots Club, “the best” restaurant in Gaza
There is now also a ‘Roots Hotel’ facebook here: Check out the photos
There is plethora of restaurants and coffee shops, too numerous to list and most with their own facebook pages.
The Mazaj – Restaurant – Coffee shop – Express (take away) has an extensive menu and is a splendid example of what one would never expect to see in Gaza.
Something which certainly surprised me were the horse riding establishments in Gaza.
Palestina Jaber, 15, from Gaza, thinks that riding horses provides her with courage and a positive attitude for studying. (Photo: Sami Abu Salem/WAFA)
The Faisal Equestrian Club (نادي الفيصل للفروسية) is an equestrian club and upscale restaurant in Gaza. According to the Australian newspaper ‘The Age’, the Club’s restaurant is
“The place to be seen for Gaza’s teenage elite.”
The Club serves non-alcoholic Bavarian beer to a wealthy, young, secular crowd, among whom
“Headscarves are frowned upon.”
Inside the Jabaliya riding club in the north of Gaza, there are neat lawns and stalls for 40 to 50 horses, many of which are privately owned. Like the villas and luxury cars, they are proof that not everyone in Gaza is poverty-stricken.
And yet, the only images brought to us by the international media are those of death and destruction by the ‘Zionists’ read ‘Jews.’
Call it a wealthy side, call it an elite side. It certainly is a privileged side and certainly not the ordinary image. The side which the media presents is no doubt in existence, but choose for propaganda reasons only to show the bad.
Luxury hotel overlooking Gaza Beach
This brings something back a friend told me after a visit to Israel a few years ago. She had been staying with a family member in Jerusalem. Late one afternoon, he told her that he had invited his foreman with his wife to dinner. She was however surprised when the foreman turned out to be an Arab, complete with hijabbed wife. Still no issue. She speaks no Hebrew, but being raised in Egypt, she speaks Arabic and so was able to converse with him.
The conversation was quite an eye opener. For lack of a name, let’s call him Malik. Malik told her how proud he was to be an Israeli, what a good life he and his family have. How his children have free education, free medical needs and the chance for further education, though not before completing their IDF service. Malik however became quite angry when he spoke about ‘do-gooders & leftists’ from the West who interfered. He told her about Gaza. He told her how parts of Gaza are deliberately left in ruins, so that when the ‘do-gooders & leftists’ come to look at the shocking condition people live in thanks to the ‘Zionist entity’, they can take home the negative images we see in the west.
What we hear about the misuse of international aid fits in here very nicely.
Admittedly this is not new, 2002, but “Paying for Terrorism” by Rachel Ehrenfeld says plenty and there is no reason to believe anything has changed since the Arafat days, who left quite a money trail behind him.
Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the international community has donated approximately $5 billion to the Palestinian Authority. The European Union alone has donated approximately €1.4 billion during that time, including grants to United Nations Relief and Work Agency. Since the start of the Palestinian Authority’s campaign of violence against Israel in September 2000, the EU has transferred at least €330 million to the Palestinian territories.
This article from 2012 “How Many Millionaires Live in the “Impoverished” Gaza Strip?” byKhaled Abu Toameh throws a good deal of light on Gaza.
The world often thinks of the Gaza Strip, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, as one of the poorest places on earth, where people live in misery and squalor.
But according to an investigative report published in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, there are at least 1,700 millionaires living in the Gaza Strip. The newspaper report also refutes the claim that the Gaza Strip has been facing a humanitarian crisis because of an Israeli blockade.
And
The Palestinian millionaires, according to the report, have made their wealth thanks to the hundreds of underground tunnels along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.
Informed Palestinian sources revealed that every day, in addition to weapons, thousands of tons of fuel, medicine, various types of merchandise, vehicles, electrical appliances, drugs, medicine and cigarettes are smuggled into the Gaza Strip through more than 400 tunnels. A former Sudanese government official who visited the Gaza Strip lately was quoted as saying that he found basic goods that were not available in Sudan. Almost all the tunnels are controlled by the Hamas government, which has established a special commission to oversee the smuggling business, which makes the Hamas government the biggest benefactor of the smuggling industry.
Gaza City
Gaza boasts some eight universities as well as other institutes of learning all having curriculums equivalent to any international university.
The beaches in Gaza are some of the finest in that part of the world, where according toynet newswe have a definite class distinction issue. Those with money clearly having an advantage regarding luxury
A new class division has emerged with the adoption of the Israeli model of closed beaches, which have turned into status symbols
A Beit Hanoun resident told Ynet that he and his family spend the afternoon on the beach, bringing with them food, drinks, and blankets and paying only for the travel fare. However, he noted that his wife’s dream is to spend one day in the newly-introduced beach cabins.
As a way of tackling the financial state, the Strip has begun renting out beaches to private owners for up to thousands of dollars.
Parasols and chairs. Beach for the middle-class.
The Beit Hanoun resident explained that there are a variety of closed beaches, the cheapest of which charge NIS 10 ($ 2.63) upon entry and provide parasols and chairs. Others charge NIS 15 ($3.94) per person, while all other services are subject to payment.
“You would have to pray to get away with less than NIS 200 ($ 52.53) for such an evening and that’s something that few can afford,” he noted.
Finally, there are the expensive canopied beaches which offer giant TV screens and a waiter serving food and drinks.
Consequently, three groups emerged on Gaza’s beaches:
“The poor ones who sit on blankets with food from home; those who can afford renting out chairs and parasols; and the very few, the spoiled rich, who sit in roofed cabins with giant screens and a waiter serving food and drinks.”
Gaza – Festival of the kites
Then for the wealthy, we have luxurious beach side hotels catching the beautiful ocean views, far, far superior to the image the Leftists would have us see of Gaza.
The hotel has received a number of very positive reviews in Time magazine, by British journalist Alan Johnston and by Lonely Planet which describes the Al Deira as “swish, stylish and tightly run,” and “without question the best hotel in town.”
“it brimmed over with members of haute Palestine, that small clique of Gazans who earned more than negligible incomes. The men smoked apple-flavored tobacco from water pipes; the women, their heads covered, drank strong coffee and kept quiet.”
Grand Palace Hotel
Then there is the Olympic Swimming Pool in Gaza. Given that Gaza supposedly has no building materials and no funds, the obvious questions are where did they get the money and where did they get the building materials?
To cap it off what about one of the Water Parks? I might add newly refurbished, because some time ago Hamas, in its infinite wisdom, caused massive damage to it as they didn’t like the fact men and women were associating with one another. The mind boggles.!
We hear about the food shortages and yet the markets appear to have ample supply of fresh produce……
… with no shortage of food in the shops either.
The Other Side of Gaza is a writing programme that provides students with an opportunity to showcase their own personal view of Gaza.
Abdallah El-Khoudary describes the best things a good restaurant can give you, and nowhere is better for him in Gaza than the Avenue Restaurant. From the delicious scallopini and the wonderful waiters to the free internet and complimentary chocolate; the Avenue is a perfect retreat.
I’m proud to be in my country, and to rise the Palestinian flag, and to give the real image of Gaza to the people who visit it. Gaza is not just the damage and the shelters we see in the media. Gaza is a city, like any city in the world, with its own landmarks and places, it just needs its freedom.
The evolution of Turkey in the early 1900s is one of the most baffling cultural and social changes in Islamic history. In a few short years, the Ottoman Empire was brought down from within, stripped of its Islamic history, and devolved into a new secular nation known as Turkey. The consequences of this change are still being felt today throughout the Muslim world, and especially in a very polarized and ideologically segmented Turkey.
What caused this monumental change in Turkish government and society? At the center of it all is Mustafa Kemal, better known as Atatürk. Through his leadership in the 1920s and 1930s, modern secular Turkey was born, and Islam took a backseat in Turkish society.
The Rise of Atatürk
The decision of the Ottoman Empire to enter the First World War in 1914 turned out to be a horrible mistake. The empire was run by a dictatorship led by the “Three Pashas” who unilaterally entered the war on the German side, against the British, French, and Russians. The Ottoman Empire was invaded from the south by the British, from the East by the Russians, and by the Greeks in the West. By 1918 when the war ended, the empire was divided and occupied by the victorious allies, leaving only the central Anatolian highlands under native Turkish control.
Mustafa Kemal in 1918
It was in central Anatolia where Mustafa Kemal would rise to become a national hero for the Turks. As an Ottoman army officer, he displayed great leadership in battle, especially at Gallipoli, where the Ottomans managed to turn back a British invasion aimed at the capital, Istanbul. After the war, however, Kemal made clear what his priorities were. His main goal was the establishment of Turkish nationalism as the unifying force of the Turkish people. Unlike the multi-ethnic and diverse Ottoman Empire, Kemal aimed to create a monolithic state based on Turkish identity.
In Mustafa Kemal’s own words, he describes the importance of Turkish identity and the insignificance of Islam as he sees it:
“Even before accepting the religion of the Arabs [Islam], the Turks were a great nation. After accepting the religion of the Arabs, this religion, didn’t effect to combine the Arabs, the Persians and Egyptians with the Turks to constitute a nation. (This religion) rather, loosened the national nexus of Turkish nation, got national excitement numb. This was very natural. Because the purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag to an including Arab national politics.”
– Mustafa Kemal, Medenî Bilgiler
Mustafa Kemal’s skewed [and quite frankly, factually incorrect] views of Islamic history helped push his nationalist agenda. Using Turkish identity as a rallying point, he managed to unite former Ottoman officers under his command in the Turkish War of Independence in the early 1920s and expel the occupying forces of the Greeks, British, and French, who had encroached on Turkish land after WWI. By 1922, Kemal managed to completely free the Turks of foreign occupation and used the opportunity to establish the modern Republic of Turkey, led by the Grand National Assembly, the GNA, in Ankara. At the head of the new Turkish government was a president, elected by the GNA. The natural choice was Mustafa Kemal, the hero of the War of Independence, who now took on the title of “Atatürk”, meaning “Father of the Turks”.
Abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate and the Caliphate
At first, the new Turkish government seemed to inherit the role of the Ottoman government as the upholder of Islam. A new constitution drawn up by the GNA declared that Islam was the official state religion of Turkey and that all laws had to be vetted by a panel of Islamic law experts, to make sure they do not contradict the Shari’ah.
This new system of government could not work, however, so long as there continued to be a rival government in Istanbul, led by the Ottoman sultan. The Ankara and Istanbul governments both claimed sovereignty over Turkey, and had frankly conflicting goals. Atatürk eliminated this problem on November 1, 1922, when he abolished the Ottoman sultanate, which had existed since 1299, and officially transferred its power to the GNA. He did not immediately abolish the caliphate, however. Although the sultanate was no more, he allowed the Ottoman caliphate to continue to exist, although with no official powers, only as a symbolic figurehead.
Abdülmecid II, the last caliph who held the office from 1922 to 1924.
Knowing that this move would be very unpopular among the Turkish people, Atatürk justified it by claiming he was simply going back to a traditional Islamic form of government. From the 900s to the 1500s, the Abbasid caliphs were mostly figureheads, with real power being in the hands of viziers or warlords. Atatürk used this example to justify his creation of a powerless caliphate.
The caliphate had existed since the days following the death of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, when Abu Bakr was elected as the first leader of the Muslim world. For Muslims outside of Turkey, Atatürk’s actions clearly put the office of the caliphate itself in danger. In India especially, Muslims expressed outrage at Atatürk’s actions and organized the Khilafat Movement, which sought to protect the caliphate from danger, whether by foreign invaders or the Turkish government itself.
For Atatürk, the expressions of support for the caliphate from Muslims outside Turkey were seen as interference in internal Turkish affairs. Citing this supposed international interference, on March 3rd, 1924, Atatürk and the Grand National Assembly abolished the caliphate itself and sent all remaining members of the Ottoman family into exile.
Attacks on Islam
With the caliphate out of the way, the Turkish government had more freedom to pursue policies that attacked Islamic institutions. Under the guise of “cleansing Islam of political interference”, the educational system was completely overhauled. Islamic education was banned in favor of secular, non-dogmatic schools. Other aspects of religious infrastructure were also torn down. The Shari’ah council to approve laws that the GNA had established just two years earlier was abolished. Religious endowments were seized and put under government control. Sufi lodges were forcefully shut down. All judges of Islamic law in the country were immediately fired, as all Shari’ah courts were closed.
Atatürk’s attacks on Islam were not limited to the government, however. Everyday life for Turks was also dictated by Atatürk’s secular ideas:
Traditional Islamic forms of headdress such as turbans and the fez were outlawed in favor of Western-style hats.
The hijaab for women was ridiculed as a “ridiculous object” and banned in public buildings.
The calendar was officially changed, from the traditional Islamic calendar, based on the hijrah – Prophet Muhammad ﷺ’s flight to Madinah – to the Gregorian calendar, based on the birth of Jesus Christ.
In 1932, the adhan – the Muslim call to prayer – was outlawed in Arabic. Instead, it was rewritten using Turkish words and forced upon the country’s thousands of mosques.
Friday was no longer considered part of the weekend. Instead, Turkey was forced to follow European norms of Saturday and Sunday being days off from work.
After all of these changes, the GNA gave up the charade in 1928 and deleted the clause in the constitution that declared Islam as the official state religion. Islam had been replaced with Atatürk’s secular ideologies.
Language Reform
Atatürk knew these secular reforms would be futile if the Turkish people could manage to rally together to oppose them. The biggest danger to this new order was the history of the Turks, which since the 900s had been intertwined with Islam. In order to distance the new generations of Turks from their past, Atatürk had to make the past unreadable to them.
Atatürk introducing the new Latin script in 1928.
With the excuse of increasing literacy among Turks (which was indeed very low in the 1920s), Atatürk advocated the replacement of Arabic letters with Latin letters. Much like Persian, Turkish was written in Arabic letters for hundreds of years after the conversion of the Turks to Islam in the 900s. Because Turkish was written in the Arabic script, Turks could read the Qur’an, and other Islamic texts with relative ease, connecting them to an Islamic identity – which Atatürk saw as a threat.
In addition to the introduction of the Latin letters, Atatürk created a commission charged with the replacement of Arabic and Persian loanwords in Turkish. In keeping with his nationalist agenda, Atatürk wanted a language that was purely Turkish, which meant old Turkish words, that had become obsolete during the Ottoman era, came back into use instead of Arabic words. For example, the Turkish War of Independence, formerly know as the Istiklal Harbi, is now known as Kurtuluş Savaşı, because “istiklal” and “harb” are Arabic loanwords in Turkish.
From Atatürk’s perspective, the language reform was wildly successful. Within a few decades, the old Ottoman Turkish was effectively extinct. The newer generations of Turks were completely cut off from the older generations, with whom simple conversations were difficult. With the Turkish people illiterate to their past, the Turkish government was able to feed them a version of history that they deemed acceptable, one that promoted the Turkish nationalistic ideas of Atatürk himself.
Secular Turkey
All of these reforms worked together to effectively erase Islam from the lives of the everyday Turks. Despite the best efforts of religious-minded Turks (such as Said Nursi) to preserve their heritage, language, and religion, the government’s pressure to adopt secular ideas was too much. For over 80 years, Turkish government remained vehemently secular. Attempts to bring back Islamic values into government have been met with resistance by the military, which views itself as the protector of Atatürk’s secularism.
In 1950, Adnan Menderes was democratically elected prime minister of Turkey on a platform of bringing back the Arabic adhan. Although he was successful, he was overthrown by a military coup in 1960 and executed after a hasty trial. More recently, in 1996, Necmettin Erbakan was elected prime minister, while remarkably openly declaring himself an “Islamist”. Once again, the military stepped in, and overthrew him from power after just one year in office.
Modern Turkey’s relations with Islam and its own history are complicated. Portions of the society strongly support Atatürk’s ideology and believe Islam should have no role in public life. Other segments of society envision a return to a more Islam-oriented society and government, and closer relations with the rest of the Muslim world. Most troubling, however, is that the ideological conflict between these two opposing sides shows no signs of subsiding anytime soon.
Bibliography:
Hiro, Dilip. Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran. 9. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2011. Print.
Ochsenwald, William, and Sydney Fisher. The Middle East: A History. 6th. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. Print.
