Many people avoid discussing Muslim antisemitism, lest they be accused of being “racist” or “Islamophobic” opines political scientist Matthias Küntzel. They feel the need to deny the problem exists, find ways to excuse it, “explain it away” or mock and confront those who recognize the danger it presents to Jews and the West. In analyzing Muslim antisemitism, so goes the narrative, one must be careful not to defame the name of Islam and attribute to Islam the singular cause of Muslim antisemitism.
Hamas, “The Most Important Palestinian jihadi Organization.”
Hamas, Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah (Islamic Resistance Movement), is the Sunni Muslim Palestinian Arab movement that has ruled the Gaza Strip since gaining power from Fatah, (a major Palestinian Arab political party that began in 1965 as the Palestinian National Liberation Movement) in January 2006. The organization is the creation of the Palestinian Arab branch of the extremist Muslim Brothers’ Society (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin), or the Muslim Brotherhood, explains Middle East expert Yehudit Barsky.
Established in Ismailia, Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood reflects the revival of Islam as the primary basis of individual and collective identity in the Middle East. The importance of the Brotherhood “to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik Party to communism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas,” explains Küntzel. They are the “most important Palestinian jihadi Organization.”
Center of Antisemitism Moved from Germany to the Middle East
Muslim Brothers’ were inspired by European fascism of the 1930s Küntzel notes. Prior to 1951, their focus was on anti-Jewish campaigns, not anti-colonialism. Anti-Jewish passages in the Koran were “fused with the antisemitic method of the struggle of the Third Reich and hatred of the Jews and acted out a jihad.”
On November 2, 1945, (Balfour Declaration Day), the Muslim Brother’s called for mass demonstrations against Zionism in the main cities of Egypt signaling the center of antisemitism had relocated from Germany to the Arab world.
The antisemitic myths that until then had flourished in the West found fertile ground in the Middle East. Among the myths are the blood libel, Jews killed Jesus and Jews control the world as exposed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion noted Menachem Milson, an expert on Arabic language and literature. Muslims added their own antisemitic traditions, especially the familiar hadith of Jews being the “descendants of apes and pigs and other animals.” Jews are described as the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, [and] the murderers of the prophets. The Jews were dehumanized in such a visceral manner, and accused of such vile acts that it becomes eminently reasonable and unquestionably mandatory to eliminate them, no matter what means must be employed to do so.
Murdering Jews is also a religious imperative Küntzel points out. He quotes the well-known hadith: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews,(killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. Then stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (the Boxthorn tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim). This means Muslim “resurrection or salvation” depends on murdering Jews.“ The combination of worldly fantasies and the promise of otherworldly salvation increases its destructive forces,” Küntzel asserts.
Article 22 of the Hamas Charter describes the diabolical and insidious nature of the Jew. “They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution, and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there ….They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.”
Where can one find the Jew’s conspiracy to control the world? Article 32 of the Hamas Charter: “Their plan is embodied in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”
Jihad and Martyrdom
Significantly, the Moslem Brothers’ transformed the concept of jihad and martyrdom, which had practically been absent from Islamic teachings, and essentially ignored or regarded as irrelevant to the beliefs of Imams and preachers, into a fundamental religious principle explained Abd Al-Fattah Muhammad El-Awaisi, a professor of international relations. The Muslim Brothers’ asserted that the Islamic umma [the entire Arab community], took precedence over all national, geographic or racial differences “to include a community of principles, beliefs and higher realities.”
Hasan al-Banna defined the Islamic territory as, “Any span of land in which there is a Muslim proclaiming that there is no God except Allah, or where the banner of God once raised becomes a trust in the hands of all Muslims to be given to God and to his prophet. They should define its freedom with their bodies and should devote their lives and money to maintaining it.”
Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a founder of Hamas, thus proclaimed ”A nation that does not wage jihad cannot exist. God is with us and Satan with them. We will fight and fight until we regain our rights and our homeland, God willing.
A Final Note
The State of Israel is a just “a practice range,” in the war against America opines Ruth Wisse. There are those who assert that if the US were less supportive of Israel, Arab belligerence and Muslim radicalism would vanish. Just the opposite is true. When Israel, which has been in the forefront of democracy’s defense, is perceived as weak, their enemies become emboldened. Israel’s appeasement of terrorism in 1993 when the government placed Arafat as head of the PA might have accounted for their audacious attack on America. If terror succeeded in pressuring Israel to make unprecedented concessions they reasoned, then America would surely lose its nerve once terror was introduced within its borders.”
