Is your stone for Israel, or for those who throw stones at Israel?

Different balance sheets of the Al-Aqsa Flood can be drawn up. After more than 70 thousand martyrs in Gaza, a city of which nearly 90 percent or more has been completely destroyed, and well over a hundred thousand people wounded and maimed, it is hard to convince some people of Hamas's victory. Perhaps those who can be persuaded are the ones we remind of the logic of speaking of the Çanakkale Victory after 250 thousand people were martyred there. It is that victory which made Mehmet Akif write the Epic of Çanakkale, and which, as if making the reader live inside it, has for a century been sowing all of that victory's meaning and awe into the hearts of those who read it.

Undoubtedly there will be many who will not be convinced even by that. This is not very important either. After all, there is no way of entirely eliminating the differences in how people look at issues and events.

What did the mujahideen of Gaza expect, and from whom, when they set out on this road? Abu Ubaida, the spokesman of the Qassam Brigades, at the very moments when Israel's barbaric, cannibalistic attacks were at their most intense and it was slaughtering children most savagely, addressed the Muslim leaders: Do not, by any means, think that we expect help from you; do not trouble your comfort. We expect help only from Allah. Whomever He deems worthy, He will in any case send His help to us through his hand. And even if no help comes at all, if He has decreed that we be martyred on this road, then He has surely willed good for us in that too. By God, we have no cause to complain about it. This is a jihad, and it will end either in victory or in martyrdom. Both are accounted for. We never expected, and will never expect, that you come and fight beside us with your armies, but at least, while the sons, children, women and elderly of your own ummah are threatened with starvation, do not show helplessness in getting aid to them!

ABU UBAIDA WAS OF COURSE AWARE THAT NOT ALL PEOPLES COULD BEAR THE HARDSHIPS OF THIS STRUGGLE WHICH HE UNDERTOOK TOGETHER WITH HIS OWN HEROIC PEOPLE

But he also presented the list of what could be done by those whose hearts were with them. Not holding back from anything that can be done on this road. If everything cannot be done, it is not the case that nothing can be done. Those who cannot repel evil with their hands can do so with their tongues, their writings, their actions, their social media posts, their presence in the squares of rallies, their slogans, their boycotts. If everything cannot be done, it is not the case that nothing can be done.

These calls did in fact find their response. Partly through the call of the people of Gaza and partly through the uprising of the consciences that witnessed the events, the Palestinian issue within a short time became the issue of the whole world. Today Palestine is not only the issue of Palestinians; it has become the keyword of all struggles for freedom and human dignity in the world. Palestine is no longer simply an oppressed, persecuted, helpless and wronged people; it has gained great prestige as the symbol of resistance against the world's colonial, murderous hegemonies. No effort, no action, no step put forth on this matter can be belittled, discredited or ignored.

BUT IT IS PRECISELY HERE THAT THE DEVIL ON THE SIDE OF THE OPPRESSORS STEPS IN

Through comparisons among the works carried out on this road, he sows discord among people who set out to strike the same target. There is a belittling, a comparing and a disparaging, by people sitting in their own homes who have no labor on this road, directed at those who rush to the actions held for Gaza. Judging by the language they use, you would think they have done far greater things for Gaza, that they go to bed with Gaza and rise with Gaza, that they burn with grief for those who die there. It has nothing to do with the truth. Their aim is not a better, more effective, more strategic struggle or performance, but only to belittle what is being done, and thereby, by rendering what is done meaningless, to dissuade people from such actions as well. Yet these actions, each adding to the other, more or less, have brought about today's result. If Palestine has become the issue of the whole world today, if Israel has been disgraced throughout the world, it has happened through the sum to which each of these actions was added. Everything came about with the waters that ants carried to put out the fire. It came about thanks to people who declared their side without hesitation on every ground. Is there anyone who does not know that even this has a value?

If the people who rush to the Gaza actions have any real sincerity, their target will never be those who are already doing something for Gaza. Whoever has done whatever on this road has made their stance and their position clear; they are on the side of the people of Gaza against that oppression, they are A FRIEND OF GAZA, and they should be approached with a feeling of friendship on the basis of Gaza.

THE SUMUD MOVEMENT IS ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL, MOST EFFECTIVE, MOST ELEGANT ACTIONS EVER CARRIED OUT ON THIS ROAD

I will not lie, it is a movement I look upon with envy. I too made an attempt at one stage to join it, and my wife, saying "you cannot go without me," began making all her preparations to be included as well. It was not granted to us; we could not go. But we believe that those who went certainly performed a great heroism on this road. While the people of Gaza and the people engaged in the struggle received this with great appreciation, there are some who find the joy that those who went and returned displayed on their return too much for themselves, who call it a show, who say it is a thing that will make people forget Gaza, "3-4 showmen," and who make this a pretext for their own disgusting show.

And what is more, is it not the case that a historian whom we had previously criticized for a strange takfirism, one that did not fit the ethics of Ahl al-Sunnah, in the name of Ahl al-Sunnah, criticizes in the most improper and most immoral way Ayçin Kantoğlu, who since 7 October has been running about on behalf of Muslims like a veritable vanguard of conscience and zeal?

IS YOUR PROBLEM WITH ISRAEL, OR WITH THOSE WHO THROW STONES AT ISRAEL?

If you have reached the point of stoning those who stone the devil, in whose neighborhood, and on behalf of what claim, are you standing, you heedless one!

Besides, how on earth will the Sumud Flotilla make people forget Gaza, my clever friend? How could a movement that, with its whole being, from A to Z, has fulfilled to the full the purpose and function of keeping Gaza on the agenda have made people forget Gaza? Is this your intellect? Is this your learning? What is your problem? With these idle words, is the Gaza front getting stronger, or the Zionists' front? If they would only look from here, they would see where they have fallen. Of course, if they have not fallen where they fell knowingly and willingly.

What I am really addressing here are those who, having lost their target in solidarity with Gaza, find themselves attacking those who "do not support Gaza enough" more than Israel and its friends do. It is a serious state of heedlessness that puts them, even if unknowingly, on the side of Israel and its friends. They need many a reckoning with themselves.

Another clever one has strained out a "religionism" analysis by comparing the wise speeches of Greta Thunberg, who joined Sumud, with the exuberant attitude of our own people. Greta, as a human being, supposedly went to expose oppression and to defend humanity, while the religionists went to market Allah and put on a show.

I had said that the term "religionist" (dinci) is a label that the infidels (gavur) in Turkey attach to Muslims. If the one doing it is someone who for years earned his bread by actually practicing "religionism" among Muslims, then his customers for what he says turn out to be precisely the infidels. Indeed, every Zionist and Kemalist hostile to Hamas, to Palestine and to Muslims swarmed beneath his post, trying to profit from it.

Yet both Greta and those who joined from Turkey went with a single purpose, and all of them did considerably more than anyone could have done for the cause of humanity in Gaza. That there are differences of personality and temperament, of style and ability among them is perfectly natural, but to draw from this some distinction of sincerity or category among them carries no meaning other than mischief and corruption in favor of genocidal Zionism.

In short, everyone who does what he can for Gaza is valuable. Peace be upon them.