Palestinian preacher: If you give advice to a Jew, you’re an anti-Semite
During the same sermon, he accused the Jews of masterminding the September 11, 2001, attacks and controlling Hollywood.
By SAM SOKOLA view of al-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Trying to help a Jew will result in accusations of anti-Semitism, a prominent Palestinian preacher declared during a recent sermon on the Temple Mount.“If you give advice to a Jew, he immediately says, ‘You’re inciting to racism, you’re an anti-Semite,’” Sheikh Khaled al-Mughrabi told worshipers at al-Aksa Mosque, according to a translation by NGO Palestinian Media Watch.“It has become a cliché for them...which they stick on every person who gives them advice,” he went on. “There is no doubt that we don’t deny that the Children of Israel cause great damage to all people in the world, we don’t deny that.”Mughrabi was responding to Jewish condemnation of one of his previous sermons, in which he asserted that the Holocaust was a result of resentment toward European Jews’ use of the blood of gentile children in baking their Passover matzot.During the same sermon, he accused the Jews of masterminding the September 11, 2001, attacks and controlling Hollywood.In response to a demand by the Simon Wiesenthal Center that the Palestinian Authority sack him, Mughrabi told The Jerusalem Post that the criticism “doesn’t matter.”“It doesn’t matter what they said.What I said, it’s recorded. Everything that I said is recorded. What I said is that story happened in Europe and many countries in Europe, and I still say that,” he declared.The condemnations seem to have prompted his follow-up sermon, however, in which he explained that “when we talk about the Children of Israel, we talk about them because we are trying to save them from the punishment they inflict on themselves in the fire of Hell.We give advice in order to save the person we are advising, whoever he may be, whether Jew or Christian or Buddhist, or of any religion. What is our goal? To save him from the fire of Hell. To get him into the Garden of Eden.”
Reminding his audience that the sermon was being recorded, Mughrabi claimed that he did “not talk about the Children of Israel because we hate the Children of Israel, [but] rather the opposite. It is the Children of Israel who hate all the nations, but we [Muslims] don’t hate anyone, praise Allah. It is not in our hearts; we, the nation of Muhammad – He [Allah] did not put hatred of other nations in our hearts.”According to a 2014 survey by the Anti-Defamation League, the West Bank and Gaza have the highest rates of anti-Semitic sentiments globally.“The Palestinian Authority uses libels and anti-Semitism as the foundations of its systematic hate campaign against Israel,” charged Palestinian Media Watch’s Itamar Marcus. “The PA spreads the lie that Israel does Nazi-type medical experiments on prisoners, and they teach children that Jews are ‘barbaric monkeys and wretched pigs’ and the ‘enemies of Allah.’ Tragically, teaching that Jews make matza from the blood of non-Jewish children is merely another horrific component of the PA anti-Semitism and libel campaign designed to assure that Palestinians do not develop positive feelings for Jews or desire to live in peace.”The Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed outrage at the sheikh’s follow-up sermon as well.“Centuries of anti-Semitism were fueled by such lame excuses such as those expressed by Sheikh Mughrabi in his latest hateful lesson about the Jewish people. The sooner religious leaders like Mughrabi are sent to jail rather than to mosques and classrooms, the closer we will be to achieving better understanding and more tolerance between Muslims and Jews here and elsewhere in the world,” said the center’s Jerusalem head, Dr. Efraim Zuroff.Meanwhile, YouTube removed Palestinian Media Watch’s subtitled video of Mughrabi’s comments after the online video service received a copyright takedown notice. The organization said it was contesting the takedown under the doctrine of fair use and expects to see the clip back online within 10 days.
