Voices from parts of the Muslim world: The worst antisemites
It would have been logical for the Israeli government to have set up an entity that sorted through this information, categorized it and separated out the most extreme items.
By MEDIA LINETHOUSANDS OF New Yorkers gather in Foley Square last week at the No Hate. No Fear. solidarity march against the rise of antisemitism(photo credit: ERIK MCGREGOR/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES/JTA)
There is a huge largely amorphous mass of news items about antisemitism and anti-Israelism. Google Alerts selects more than 3,000 antisemitic items per year. That is just one of my sources.It would have been logical for the Israeli government to have set up an entity that sorted through this information, categorized it and separated out the most extreme items. Such an entity however doesn’t exist.Yet there are shortcuts that help in gathering information about the most extreme incidents and expressions of antisemitism. Since 2010, the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) annually publishes a list of the Top 10 worst global antisemitic incidents worldwide. In some items more than one case was mentioned. Over a 10-year period the picture of who are the worst antisemites becomes clearer.The most extreme antisemitic and anti-Israel hate-mongers come out of parts of the Muslim world. The remainder – however dangerous – lags substantially behind.This is true even though right-wing antisemitism is currently growing. A prime figure in Muslim incitement is former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. In 2010, he made the SWC list for his statement: “Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettos and periodically massacred... Even after the massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world.”When going through the SWC’s annual lists, one realizes that the only calls listed for extermination of Israel or Jews come from clerics and other influential figures in the Muslim world. The following will illustrate this: In 2012 the cleric Futouh Abd Al-Nabi Mansour prayed at a nationally televised service at the Cairo el-Tenaim Mosque. It was attended by then-Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. The cleric said: “Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters – oh Allah, disperse them and rend them asunder, oh Allah, demonstrate your might and greatness upon them.” Morsi can be seen saying amen.In the same year, on August 5, then-chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Maj.-Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi said: “The Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel.”Yusuf al-Qaradawi is considered the world’s leading Sunni cleric. In 2013 he did not call for the extermination of Jews but referred to it in a positive way, declaring: “Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Adolf Hitler.”Also in the same year, Iraqi cleric Qays bin Khalil al Kalbi said during a US visit: “Allah chose you to be the most wretched of all people. Allah chose you as the best to become pigs and apes.... Allah chose Hitler to kill you, so who is better, you or him?”Furthermore in that year Saudi Iraqi cleric, lawyer and poet Muhammad al-Farraj broadcast the following poem: “Adolf Hitler had a blessed way of burning you oh rotten nation. If I were allowed to pray for a non-Muslim I would pray for the soul of the Nazi leader who barbecued you [the Russians] and the Jews throughout with gasoline.”
On November 18, 2014, two Muslim terrorists from east Jerusalem murdered four people in a Jerusalem synagogue as well as a heroic Israeli Druze policeman. The terrorists were killed. The next day, Jordanian parliamentarians held a moment of silence for the murderers and read Koran verses aloud – “to glorify their pure souls and the souls of all the martyrs in the Arab and Muslim nations.”Then-Jordanian prime minister Abdullah Ensour sent a condolence letter to the families of the terrorists stating; “I ask God to envelop them with mercy and to grant you with patience, comfort and recovery from your grief.” The Jordanian government, on the other hand, issued a statement condemning the attack, adding that all acts of violence against civilians in Jerusalem must be denounced.In 2015, a video purportedly produced by ISIS shows a knife-wielding Islamic State fighter standing near two masked gunmen. The narrator announces that the war against the Jews “will soon be launched, God willing... To all the Jews, grandsons of apes and pigs, we are coming at you from all over the world... [The war] is soon; it won’t be long, God willing, God willing.”Another video released in Hebrew threatens, “Soon, there will not be even a single Jew left in Jerusalem or the rest of the country. We will keep going until we eradicate this disease worldwide.”With the immigration of many Muslims to the US, exterminatory messages have also been broadcast there. In 2017, citing Islamic texts about the end of days, Imam Ammar Shahin of the Islamic Center in Davis, California, called from his pulpit: “Liberate al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews... annihilate them down to the very last one.”In these 10 annual publications of the SWC there isn’t a single exterminatory text by non-Muslims. But the problem goes far beyond. It’s only leaders of a number of Muslim countries inciting to the extreme against Israel and the Jews. There are no such leaders of countries elsewhere. In addition, the Global ADL study found that 49% of Muslims are antisemites while 24% of Christians and 21% of secular people identify with these hate-filled sentiments.The writer is the emeritus chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.. He has been a strategic adviser for more than 30 years to some of the Western world’s leading corporations. Among the honors he received was the 2019 International Lion of Judah Award of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, paying tribute to him as the recognized leading international authority on contemporary antisemitism.
