How dire is the need to send Qurbani sacrifices to Palestine?
The Qurbani (also known as Udhiyah) sacrifices that you send this Eid al-Adha to our beleaguered brothers and sisters in Palestine could not be more urgent.
It will be lifesaving, health-giving, and happiness-inspiriting, God willing, for the children, women, and elderly in Palestine — a land God has forever blessed all around His Holy House, Bayt Al-Maqdis, Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Palestinians — not only Muslims, but Christians, as well (who number 5.2 million in Pre-1948 lands, the West Bank, where Jerusalem is, and in the Mediterranean coastal strip of Gaza) — suffer one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the world. This means they cannot reliably and regularly access quality, nutritious food to eat on a daily basis because of severe impoverishment and externally imposed resource restrictions.
This Ḥajj season, their need has become even more acute after the massive and unprecedented Ramadan military assault on Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa and killing of worshippers praying nightly Taraweeh prayers in it, followed by mass shootings and arrests of protesters throughout Palestine, and a sustained, unprecedentedly destructive bombing of Gaza.
How do you ensure the quality of Qurbani sacrifices?
Your Qurbani (also known as Udhiyah) sacrifice will be fresh, locally sourced, healthy and ethically raised sheep, goats, or other livestock. Zakat Foundation of America team members are there on site.
Our experts have already selected and secured the best animals for Qurbani, locally sourced, ethically raised, expertly supervised and vetted, and fed an excellent, nutritious diet, all in accordance with the guidelines set by Allah and His Messenger, on him be peace:
They are the right kinds of livestock animals sanctioned for sacrifice (sheep, goats, cows, and so on).
They are of properly mature age, free of defect, healthy, with high-quality meat.
They will be slaughtered after the Eid Salah (Prayer) on the proper days — a requirement — and butchered by Muslim professionals.
Their meat will be hand-delivered fresh (never frozen) to the neediest families on the days of Eid by our own Zakat Foundation of America relief workers.
Why are Palestinians unable to afford and access food?
The men, women, and children of Palestine have endured an unrelenting, often violent occupation and forced expulsion from their homes since 1948. This has sadly turned them into the largest refugee population in the world.
Near constant military assault, a deliberately strangulated economy, externally restricted trade, extremely confined personal mobility, and an intentionally imposed throttling of access to resources has created and sustained extraordinarily high unemployment and poverty rates among the people of Palestine for decades — now rising even more dramatically.
The 2 million Palestinians in Gaza — a staggering 1.4 million of whom are UN-registered refugees — have endured a total land, air, and sea blockade since June 2007, now entering its 15th year.
How widespread is Palestinian food insecurity?
Food insecurity among Palestinians is very extensive and the norm in Gaza. Before the Ramadan 2021 (1442 Hijri) Al-Aqsa Mosque invasion, all-Palestine protest, and 11-day devastation of Gaza by bombing (and prior to the COVID-19 pandemic) a third of all Palestinians 32.7% (1.7 million) were food insecure, with that percentage more than doubling to 68.5% in Gaza.
Palestinian women suffer the highest rates of food insecurity of all, with 32% of Palestinian families headed by women — including 54% of women-led families in Gaza — classified by the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) as such.
Surveys of Palestinians consistently show that almost half of all Palestinians assessed for nutrition had “very low levels of essential minerals and vitamins, according to WFP.
What causes Palestinian food insecurity?
Deep and pervasive Palestinian poverty are a result of an aggressive multi-generational, settler-colonialist occupation and draconian restrictions. This includes ethnically and racially specific targeted Palestinian expulsion from their homes; systematic destruction of groves, orchards, and crops; and categorical prohibitions imposed on Palestinians regarding the right to farm, keep land, build, and import and export their wares. These cruel practices ensure the Palestinians’ continuous, fettered destitution.
In Gaza particularly, where WFP reports “all productive services, basic social services, and infrastructures” have collapsed, 53% of the population suffers debilitating poverty. Some 80% of people require food assistance to survive.
No surprise, since Gaza’s unemployment rate hit a startling 49% — one of the highest levels in the world — in 2020, before this Ramadan’s unparalleled aerial demolition. At the same time, the tiny, teeming Strip’s per capita total wealth share dropped a precipitous 27%, according to Suffocation and Isolation, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor’s annual report on Gaza.
Predictably but no less horrifically, its poverty percentage reached 56% in 2020, while its poverty gap — the ratio that shows the average shortfall between a whole population and the poverty line, the minimum income needed to buy the basic necessities of survival — increased to 20%, from an already unsustainable 14% in 2005.
What about food prices and the cost of Qurbani in Palestine?
Food costs in Palestine have exploded with the imposed constriction of its supply. So while peoples’ poverty plummets, their cost of living skyrockets. Many Palestinians cannot afford meat.
The Qurbani (also known as Udhiyah) cost of a sheep in Palestine has risen to $450 — by far the highest of the nearly 50 countries in which Zakat Foundation provides qurbani/udhiyah services to the blessed poor. This clearly shows how grave the need for your Eid sacrifice is for the Palestinian people, the ones whom Allah has chosen to be ever at the ready and the guardians of His Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa and the Holy Land.
How great must be the blessings of those who will provide for these suffering, persecuted, and hungry champions of Islam in the land of the miraculous Al-Isra’ wa’l-Mi‘raj, the Night Journey and the Heavenly Ascension of our beloved Prophet Muhammad, on him be peace!
Has the Ramadan massacre increased the need for Qurbani in Palestine?
Absolutely.
Not only did indiscriminate bombings and shootings of worshippers and protesters kill at least 278 Palestinians, but the savage assault seriously wounded some 9,000 others, and internally displaced well over 77,000 people, while destroying about 30 hospitals and medical clinics amid the deadly COVID-19 contagion.
Such massive destruction has disrupted the lives and sustenance of hundreds of thousands of already impoverished families.
Zakat Foundation’s extensive Qurbani program for Palestine provides an utterly vital, essential nutritional supplement for countless oppressed and stricken families — malnourished children, chronically underfed women sacrificing their own food for their children, incapacitated elderly, and others in severe need of sustenance.
The suffering of Palestine stands in critical need of your compassion and generosity this Eid al-Adha with the most basic kind of support: Food. And this, on the day in which we “remembrance” that cosmic moment in human history when Allah saved the life of Prophet Ismail by providing his Prophet-father Abraham a magnificent sacrifice, a ram.
Upon these traces are we to follow. And what better way to observe this, celebrate it — gain Allah’s forgiveness and favor through it — than with our own “magnificent offering in Allah’s Name to draw near Him” — Qurbani — seeking to save the tyrannized deprived in Palestine.
Please rush your direly needed Qurbani to your hungry and persecuted brothers and sisters in the blessed precincts of Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa now.
