The War Against Israel is a Jihad

What is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really about? Most people will answer land and politics. While these do constitute an important role, there is another key factor which is essential in understanding the conflict, one often ignored by media and politicians. This aspect is jihad.

1948

While many view the 1948 Arab-Israeli war as strictly political, evidence shows a religious character on the Arab side. 

On Dec 2, 1947, the ulama (chief scholar) of Al-Azhar University in Cairo (the most respected Sunni educational institution) declared a worldwide jihad in defence of Palestine.

The Ulama pronounced in 1948:

“The liberation of Palestine [is] a religious duty for all Muslims without exception, great and small. The Islamic and Arab governments should without delay take effective and radical measures, military or otherwise.”

When the Egyptian Army was preparing to invade Palestine, Muhammed Mamun Shinawi, the rector of Al-Azhar, declared:

“The hour of “jihad” has struck … A hundred of you will defeat a thousand of the infidels… This is the hour in which …. Allah promised paradise …”

In 1948 the mufti of Egypt issued a fatwa calling on all Muslims to wage jihad for Palestine. While one may argue that many Arabs helped the Palestinian Arabs due to a brotherly Arab love, it is hard to understand why volunteers from nations like Pakistan would volunteer on the Arab side if it weren’t for religious motives (p. 79).

As such, the leading historian on the 1948 war, Benny Morris, says:

“…from the Arab side…the war had a religious character, that the central element in the war was an imperative to launch jihad. There were other imperatives of course, political and others—but the most important from the enemy’s perspective was the element of the infidels who had the nerve to take control over sacred Muslim lands and the need to uproot them from there. The decisive majority in the Arab world saw the war first and foremost as a holy war, but until today historians have not examined the documentation that proves this. In my view, they have also ignored Arab rhetoric of the day, which universally included religious hatred against the Jews, because they thought the Arabs adopted this as normal speech that did not emanate from deep mental resources. They thought this was something superficial, that everyone talked like this. But I am positive the Arab spokesmen in 1948 did go beyond this and clearly and explicitly talked about jihad.”

Pre-1948

Even before 1948, there was much jihadist rhetoric used among the Arabs. 

For example, in 1943 the Saudi King Ibn Saud explained to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt:

“[that there was] religious hostility…between the Moslems and the Jews from the beginning of Islam… which arose from the treacherous conduct of the Jews toward Islam and the Moslems and their prophet.” (pp. 79-80)

In March of 1936, the speaker of Iraq’s Parliament visited Palestine and called upon local Muslims to wage jihad against the Jews multiple times (p. 79).

During the Neba Musa riots, in which many Jews were slaughtered, Islamic rhetoric could be heard.

Khalil al-Sakakini, a Christian Arab eyewitness, described the scene [emphasis mine]:

“[A] riot broke out, the people began to run about and stones were thrown at the Jews. The shops were closed and there were screams…I saw a Zionist [that is, Jewish British] soldier covered in dust and blood…Afterwards, I saw one Hebronite approach a Jewish shoeshine boy, who hid behind a sack in one of the [Old City] wall’s corners next to Jaffa Gate, and take his box and beat him [the shoeshine boy] over the head. He screamed and began to run, his head bleeding and the Hebronite left him and returned to the procession…The riot reached its zenith. All shouted, “Muhammad’s religions was born with the sword”…I immediately walked to the municipal garden…my soul is nauseated and depressed by the madness of humankind.” (p. 95)

In 1921, Palestinian leader Hajj Amin al-Husseini organised more violent riots against Jews in Palestine, resulting in the murders and rapes of dozens of Jews.

Of the 1921 riot, the leading contemporary Zionist journalist Itamar Ben-Avi says:

“The Islamic wave and stormy seas will eventually break loose and if we don’t set a dike… they will flood us with their wrath… Tel Aviv, in all her splendour…..will be wiped out.”

The Grand Mufti

In fact, Husseini, the future Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, constantly invoked jihad against the Jews. 

At a conference in Syria in 1937, al-Husseini contributed an address called “Islam and the Jews” in which he explained:

“The battle between Jews and Islam began when Mohammed fled from Mecca to Medina….In those days the Jewish methods were exactly the same as they are today. Then as now, slander was their weapon. They said Mohammed was a swindler….They tried to undermine his honor….They began to pose senseless and unanswerable questions to Mohammed…and then they tried to annihilate the Muslims. Just as the Jews were able to betray Mohammed, so they will betray the Muslims…the verses of the Koran and the Hadith assert that the Jews were Islam’s most bitter enemy and moreover try to destroy it.” (p. 302)

Husseini also once exclaimed:

“I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!” (p. 307)

The Muslim Brotherhood

Further, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was amongst those calling for Muslims to wage jihad against the newly born State of Israel. Hasan al-Banna, founder of the MB, declared:

“All Arabs shall arise and annihilate the Jews. We shall fill the sea with their corpses.” (p. 307)

More information of the MB’s preparation against Israel comes from journalist Arthur Derounian, who visited Cairo and met al-Banna and MB members. While there an imam told Derounian:

“I pray to Allah to destroy the Jews. I pray to Allah to punish President Truman because he has been on the Zionist side. I used to pray against President Roosevelt, a very bad man….May Balfour and Roosevelt take the first place in hell. Allah, Allah, may this be done.” (p. 309)

Hamas

As bad as the history may be, Hamas takes it to another level, displaying jihadist terror much more than other Palestinian factions. The word “Hamas” in Arabic means “zeal,” but also is an acronym from “harakat al-muqawamah al-islamiyyah” (the Islamic Resistance Movement). The group emerged from the MB, and is primarily focused on the destruction of Israel.

The group’s founding charter from 1988, filled with quotations of Quranic verses and hadiths (Islamic sources), makes it clear that it is an Islamic group primarily.

Hamas’ charter declares:

“By adopting Islam as its way of life, the Movement goes back to the time of the birth of the Islamic message, of the righteous ancestor, for Allah is its target, the Prophet is its example and the Koran is its constitution.”

The charter also affirms that Palestine is waqf (Islamic land) that Muslims must rule and establish Sharia (Islamic law) on. On top of that, Hamas quotes the infamous hadith in which Muhammad prophesied that Muslims would slaughter Jews in the end times in a genocidal fashion:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).”

Further, while many westerns ignorantly view Hamas as anti-colonial resistance, the group has expressed ambitions for a global caliphate, showing that it is primarily motivated by jihadist ideology.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a Hamas founder, puts it:

“If you ask Hamas’ people, what is your goal? A political goal of establishing a Palestinian state on part of the land and would you be satisfied after that, the answer is going to be no. And if they say anything else, they are lying, because their main goal is not establishing a political or secular state…Their main goal is to establish an Islamic state.”

Conclusion

There are more examples I can give, such as the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Republic of Iran, but what I’ve provided should illustrate the point. To clarify, this article does not attempt to say there are not other non-religious factors that drive the Israel-Palestine conflict; there are. However, Islam plays a major role.

As political scientist Mordechai Kedar says:

“For both religious and nationalist reasons, the Arabs and Muslims are incapable of accepting Israel as the Jewish State that it is.” 

Despite this, policy makers have treated the conflict as if the jihadist element does not exist. As such, with the root causes ignored, the conflict is destined to go on for the foreseeable future.