CROSSFIREARABIA – With confirmed reports of hundreds of mosques destroyed by the Israeli occupation army in Gaza, a female Israeli soldier poses for a picture inside a severally damaged mosque in the war-torn region.
The Israeli army is called the “most moral army” in the world, yet the social media images of soldiers desecrating mosque after mosque, shows that Jewish soldiers as the most uncouth and disrespectful.
But you can’t destroy faith. Gazans are considered as the most religious among the Palestinians. Online images abound websites of people praying and listening to the Imam in ramshackle and half-destroyed mosques.
Israel began to target and destroy mosques soon after 7 October 2023 when it waged war on the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army has flattened 814 of Gaza’s 1,245 mosques and severely damaged another 148 during its intensified bombardment, the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Gaza revealed. It further stated that these represent 79% of mosques in the Gaza Strip.
Some of these mosques go back to centuries and are ancient, like the Great Omari Mosque that go back to the seventh century and named after Omar Ibn Al Khatab, Islam’s second caliph, and destroyed on 8 December, 2023. It represented a true symbol of Islamic architecture, culture and religion. But no more.
https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1849840858167689608
The destruction of these mosques are heartbreaking stories; it’s as if Israeli warplanes and missiles aim at eradicating Islam from the heart of the people but this will never be so.