ISTANBUL
Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the highest seat of Sunni Islamic learning, condemned renewed Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on Tuesday as “black terrorism”, criticizing world powers for greenlighting Tel Aviv to kill Palestinians.
The statement followed intensive Israeli airstrikes across Gaza at dawn, coordinated fully with the US, which killed over 400 people and wounded hundreds despite a ceasefire agreement.
The Cairo-based institution denounced “the treacherous terrorist aggression unleashed by the Zionist entity on innocents in Gaza as they slept in their tents.”
It called the assault proof of Israel’s “deceptive nature and betrayal of covenants,” aimed at forcing Palestinians off their land despite widespread international rejection.
Al-Azhar accused Israel of stripping itself of “all traces of humanity and honor,” exposing its “bloody face and historic pattern of breaking pacts” to commit further “crimes and massacres.”
The statement warned that Israel “won’t take a genuine step toward halting aggression” as long as “global powers support it, remain silent to its crimes, and shield it from accountability for genocide and ethnic cleansing too horrific to describe.”
Al-Azhar labeled support for the “occupying aggressor” a “civilizational and moral regression” and complicity in its acts. It branded the Israeli onslaught “black terrorism added to this entity’s criminal record,” which has “violated the blood, dignity, land, and rights of innocents.”
It urged the international community to act swiftly to stop “the Zionist killing machine” and prosecute Israel’s leaders for their “crimes and massacres.”
More than 48,500 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and over 112,000 others injured in a brutal Israeli military campaign in Gaza since October 2023.
In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.