On October 7, the terrorist group Hamas initiated deadly attacks against Israel.
Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, near the Gaza Strip. They murdered hundreds of civilians, took hostages (including children and the elderly), beheaded babies, burned people alive, shot children in front of their parents, shot parents in front of their children, and fired thousands rockets and missiles into a country smaller than New Jersey (roughly 22,000 km2). As of this writing, Hamas has killed more than 1,200 people in Israel since October 7; wounded more than 4,200 people, and abducted 199 hostages who were taken to unknown locations in Gaza. Hundreds remain missing.
Hamas, a jihadist organization, has a charter that calls for the obliteration of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people. The US, EU and many other countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organization.
Hamas governs Gaza, where it forcibly expelled the marginally less-extremist Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 2007. Since Israel's unconditional withdrawal in 2005 from Gaza, where Jews had resided for millennia, Israel has suffered significant violence and terrorism by Palestinian Arabs. Less than two years after the Israeli withdrawal, Hamas in 2007 violently seized control of the Gaza Strip, at times tossing PLO members from the top floors of high buildings.
Even though there are now no Jews left in the Gaza Strip, that is not enough for Hamas. Backed by Iran, Turkey and Qatar, Hamas is now the main organization perpetrating terrorist attacks on civilian targets throughout Israel. On October 7, Hamas breached Israel's security barrier at the Gaza border with explosives and bulldozers, and thousands of Hamas terrorists poured into Israel, launching a massive war.
Hamas's aggression against Israel is not a squabble over land or "settlements." To Hamas and many Palestinians, the whole of Israel is one big settlement that needs to be ripped out by the roots and eradicated. Hamas's attacks against Israelis are simply an expression of genocidal hate and violent jihad towards the Jewish people. Dr. Meir Litvak, a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Department of Middle Eastern and African History, noted:
"In many of its publications Hamas employs harsh derogatory descriptions of the Jews, often taken from the Koran, such as 'blood suckers,' 'brothers of apes,' 'killers of the prophets,' 'human pigs,' and warmongers 'the descendants of treachery and deceit,' 'butchers.' They are a 'cancer expanding' in the land of Palestine, 'threatening the entire Islamic world.' They are 'spreading corruption' in the land of Islam. 'Deceit and usury are stamped in their nature,' and they are all 'thieves, monopolists, and usurers.'
"Almost every issue of the Hamas organ, Filastin al-Muslima contains articles enumerating the evil deeds and character of the Jews based on an analysis and exegetes of specific suras (chapters) from the Koran...
"The perception of the conflict as a religious one brings Hamas to advocate jihad (holy war) as the only way to combat the Jews. "
Meanwhile, the Palestinian-Arab leadership has rejected offers for a Palestinian state at least six times in the past 90 years, without so much as a counter-offer: in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000, 2008 and in 2020. All the offers were made by or accepted by the Jews. Many Palestinians do not really want a state at all: they just want to destroy Israel.
The United Nations, in 1947, proposed a plan to partition the western part of the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine into two sections: an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state. While Jewish leaders accepted the plan, Arab leaders vehemently opposed it. The day that Israel declared its independence, May 15, 1948, five Arab countries invaded it to try to kill it at its birth: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
The reason for the current Palestinian-Arab statelessness is their own political leaders who have rejected all these offers and instead chosen war and terrorism over peaceful coexistence.
Seventy-five years after the establishment of the State of Israel, Muslim fanatics still hope to destroy it. The Center for the Study of Political Islam International notes:
"Regardless of the name of the group -- Hamas, Boko Haram, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State (IS), etc. -- the source for their ideas, including Jew Hatred, and the manual for their actions, is always the same and has been for the last 1400 years - the primary Islamic doctrine, taken from the Koran, Hadith (Mohammed's traditions), and the Sira (Mohammed's biography)."
Here are a few examples from these texts:
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled." (Koran 9:29 Sahih International Translation)
"Verily, those who disbelieved [in the religion of Islam, the Quran and Prophet Muhammad] from among the people of the Scripture [Jews and Christians] and Al-Mushrikun will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are the worst of creatures." (Koran 98:6 Sahih International Translation)
"(Remember) when your Lord inspired the angels... "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them." (Koran 8:12)
Islamists across the world do not even hide their jihadist aspirations, which, in their view, are divinely sanctioned. According to Robert Spencer:
"One survivor of a Muslim rape gang in the UK said that her rapists would quote Quran to her, and believed their actions justified by Islam.
"The Qur'an teaches that Infidel women can be lawfully taken for sexual use (cf. its allowance for a man to take 'captives of the right hand,' 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30)."
On October 7, when a massive pro-Hamas demonstration was held in Istanbul, the participants shouted "Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud". It is the first verse of a jihadist chant and refers to a Muslim massacre of Jews in 628 CE, in the town of Khaybar in northwestern Arabia (now Saudi Arabia), where the army of Islam's prophet Muhammad massacred Khaybar's Jewish population.
The full verse is: "Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud, jaish Muhammad soufa ya'oud." It translates to "Khaybar Khaybar oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return."
Meanwhile, a jihadist preacher in Turkey, Abu Hanzala (aka Halis Bayancuk), endorsed Hamas's attacks and called for the destruction of the Jews, while referring to them as "apes" and "pigs." The Islamic scriptures do the same.
This murderous hate does not solely target Jewish people. Islamic religious sources largely refer to all non-Muslims (kafirs/infidels) with hate and dehumanization.
Dr. Bill Warner details how Islamic scriptures refer to the "kafir":
"The Koran defines the kafir and says that the kafir is hated (40:35), mocked (83:34), punished (25:77), beheaded (47:4), confused (6:25), plotted against (86:15), terrorized (8:12), annihilated (6:45), killed (4:91), crucified (5:33), made war on (9:29), ignorant (6:111), evil (23:97), disgraced (37:18), cursed (33:60), stolen from (Bukhari 5,59,537), raped (Ishaq 759) and a Muslim is not the friend of a kafir (3:28).
"Christians and Jews are infidels, but infidels are kafirs, too. Polytheists are Hindus, but they are also kafirs. The terms infidel and polytheist are religious words. Only the word 'kafir' shows the common political treatment of Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, animist, atheist and humanist."
Meanwhile, Turkey's Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has endorsed jihad multiple times. After Friday prayers at an Istanbul mosque in October 2019, for instance, Erdogan told the congregants:
"Our God commands us to be violent towards the kuffar [infidels/unbelievers]. Who are we? The ummah [nation] of Mohammed. So [Allah] also commands us to be merciful to each other. So we will be merciful to each other. And we will be violent to the kuffar."
In 2018, Erdogan wrote on Twitter:
"Reminder to Netanyahu: Hamas is not a terrorist organization and Palestinians are not terrorists."
After then US President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2017, Erdogan said during a Human Rights Day event in Ankara:
"Those who think they are the owners of Jerusalem today will not even be able to find trees to hide behind tomorrow."
Erdogan was referring to a hadith (a supposedly reported saying by Islam's prophet, Mohammed) about Judgement Day:
"Abu Huraira reported Allaah's Messenger (sall Allaahua layhiwa sallam) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews."
Nazif Yılmaz, Deputy Minister of National Education, wrote on Twitter on October 11, threatening Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu: "One day they will shoot you too. You will die."
Turkey's Islamist government -- and Iran's and Qatar's -- have for years been a lifeline for the Hamas jihadists.
This author reported in January:
"The government of Turkey proudly enables Hamas in its military and financial endeavors. Its terrorists then go on to plot attacks and kill Israelis in an attempt to destroy the Jewish state. Those terrorists enjoy the privilege of Turkish citizenship, adopting Turkish names, traveling internationally with their Turkish passports, opening Turkish bank accounts, operating under the cover of Turkish companies or offices, and laundering millions of dollars. Hamas leaders are received by Turkey's president in official meetings before the eyes of the whole world and speak at congresses of Turkey's ruling party."
Islamists cannot seem to stomach the fact that Jews, who according to Islamic scriptures are supposed to be dhimmis (second class, "tolerated" subjects of an Islamic state) only, now once again have a sovereign state in their ancestral homeland of Israel and are capable of self-defense.
That is the main stance of political Islam towards Jewish statehood and sovereignty. Political Islam has the same supremacist and hateful view towards other non-Muslims. It is thus of vital significance to address and speak about the source of violent jihad: the Islamic political doctrine.
As the Center for the Study of Political Islam International also points out, once it is understood, potential future attacks and massacres can be predicted, and effective measures taken to ensure everyone's safety. At this time, however, the doctrine is not yet known by enough people. Perhaps many people think it must be similar to other religions, only in Arabic.
The main problem, therefore, is that until the root cause of the jihadi slaughters and abuses against non-Muslims is understood, these attacks are likely to continue and be justified by people who may not know what they are talking about, but do not know that they do not know.
Iran, Qatar and Turkey -- the "heads of the snake" -- must not be allowed to get a pass. They all have to be held accountable. The US should relocate its airbase in Qatar to its real ally, the United Arab Emirates.
Hamas is a problem not only for Israelis and Jews. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks said: "The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews." Hamas is part of a problem of global jihad that threatens innocent human lives everywhere, as well as civilization's cultural and intellectual diversity.
As Andrew McCarthy, author and prosecutor of the "Blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel Rahman, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, put it: "Jihadist war against Israel: It is the reason Hamas exists."
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, a research fellow for the Philos Project, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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