Azka's Writeups

How was the Democratic State of Israel established? When talking about Palestine and Israel most people forget to discuss a very crucial event, the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine under Ceaser in 1 CE. Jews since then believe that God has promised them a return to Jerusalem and it is their Holy right to rebuild the temple of Solomon, ruined by Nebuchadnezzar and then Ceaser. This belief and the belief that a Jewish only state should exist in Palestine is a brief summary of Zionism.  The temple of Solomon existed where the al Aqsa compound stands today. Zionists believe that rebuilding it will pave way to the arrival of their Messiah, who we call the Dajjal. And that's what they plan to do, they have been digging under the Al Aqsa compound for quite some time now in attempts to weaken its foundations- so that its fall can be blamed on the smallest of natural disasters. They also hope to find the Ark of the Covenant lost 3000 years ago which contains some miracles from the earli...

A few days ago I learnt that the people who were displaced from Palestine during the Original Nakba could never even visit their country again. But their children and grandchildren could.  The background of this story is a similar one. Yousef returns to Palestine to fulfill his father's dying wish... 'It should be right here,' I whisper to myself. I can feel hope and raw emotion filling up my chest as I turn the corner.  The hope is the first to go away, the raw emotion stays, grows, claws at my heart.  I run, down the street and back up again. Could I have made a wrong turn, could I be in the wrong block?  But the tree is there, that tree I'd recognize anywhere, the tree I had seen many a times when my father had shown me pictures of his neighborhood. 'This is our local graveyard Yousef, this is where my parents are buried, this is where I want to buried, with them,close to them,' he had whispered, as his hand traced the edges of the picture in his lap.  And th...