*** This year’s international Quds Day comes as Pro-Palestinian demonstrations are being held across the globe, with protesters calling for an immediate end to the massacre of Palestinians by Israel in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Over the past 17 days, Israeli warplanes have been hitting numerous sites in the Gaza Strip, demolishing houses and burying families in the rubble. Israeli tanks also began a ground offensive against the impoverished Palestinian land on July 17.
The Israeli raids have killed more than 700 Palestinians, including women and children, and injured more than 4,000 others so far.
The world’s believers and free-minded people have expressed serious concern over the growing number of casualties in the Palestinian coastal enclave.
*** From the very beginning, he introduced the Islamic aspect and the ideological dimension of the struggle with Israel as the most effective factor in the movement for mobilizing the oppressed Palestinian nation and attracting support for them from the Islamic umma.
The great Imam considered other methods of struggle, such as reliance on Arab nationalism and nationalist views along with other imported and non-Islamic ideologies, as a departure from the path of struggle for the freedom of Quds.
The world Muslim leader had a clear insight into the internal problems besetting the Islamic world, amongst them the weakness, inability or subordinate nature of some of the heads of Islamic states.
The great Imam emphasized the importance of public knowledge and awareness in the Islamic world stemming from the principles of belief and the Muslim community ‘s common faith and culture, and of avoiding sectarian differences.
Imam also urged the heads of the Muslim governments to accept this approach too, and believed that as long as the governments were of the same mind as their people and went along with Muslim public opinion and demand, they were to be entrusted with the authority of leadership and with the responsibility for guiding the struggle, otherwise the Muslim nations should do to them what the Muslim nation of Iran did to the Shah.
Imam Khomeini knew this and realized that the main buttress of the struggle would be the people's Islamic faith, he said: "Until the time that we return to Islam, the Islam of the Prophet of God, our problems will remain. Until that happens, we can solve neither the Palestinian problem nor the problems besetting Afghanistan and other places. The nations must turn to the earliest age of Islam, if their governments do so with them there is no problem, otherwise the nations should detach themselves from their governments and do to them what the nation of Iran did to its government so that the problems can be solved."
Imam Khomeini repeatedly pointed out the danger of Israeli expansionism and the fact that Israel would not be satisfied with its present borders, and he informed the people that any kind of denial or cover-up by Israel of this aim was merely done to deceive public opinion in the Islamic world and allow it to pursue its step-by-step policy to achieve its ultimate aim. If this warning of Imam's alone had been understood properly, the way for the various conciliatory plans - which naively sought to make Israel the captive of international agreements and resolutions and, at the cost of giving it most of the occupied lands, obtain a kind of limited self rule in a corner of Palestine - would have been blocked.
Imam Khomeini always considered returning to Islam and uniting as a prerequisite to saving Palestine and blocking Zionism's expansionist plans. Consequently, while stressing that the main goal of Israel is the destruction of Islam, he repeatedly called on the Muslims to put aside all their differences, including the sectarion ones.
In defending the rights of the oppressed people of Palestine and in order to mobilize support for the Palestinian uprising from the Islamic nations, Imam Khomeini believed that instead of turning to grounds, topics and issues which had no roots in the culture of the Palestinian nation, one should take advantage of the ideology of Islam and the potentials it offered.
Declaring the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan "World Quds Day" is an example of this enlightened attitude of Imam Khomeini's. The month of Ramadan provides the Muslims with an ideal opportunity; spiritually inspired by a month of fasting and attending religious and educational ceremonies, the believers gain a readiness to turn their attention to the great responsibility borne by the ummah to free the first qibla of the Muslims. Were the political and propaganda obstacles of the imperialist powers and their agents in the Islamic countries to be weakened through the efforts of the Muslims, then the World Quds Day could play a very determining role in uniting the Muslim nations as well as mobilizing and inspiring the Muslim forces for the freedom of the holy Quds.
In Imam Khomeini's view, another example of the potentials of the Islamic world was to be found through reviving the Abrahamic hajj, observing the true philosophy of hajj - which in the holy Qur'an is called "the uprising for the people".