"We are not sub-humans. Let me repeat: We are not sub-humans," said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority's representative to the United Nations, after the sub-human atrocities inflicted on innocent civilians in Israel by his fellow Palestinian Arabs. He felt the need to repeat the claim twice last month at an emergency session of the of the UN General Assembly, possibly to try to convince anyone he could. Hamas and Iran reportedly masterminded the murderous invasion. Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to hold at least 240 Israeli hostages in Gaza.
It was not long before media commentators, after the October 7 mass murder in Israeli towns and villages near Gaza, began to air pro-Hamas demonstrators on college campuses and in the streets of US cities. Many of these demonstrators openly rationalized and even defended the actions of Hamas.
Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi gave a supposed history lesson about Israel's 1948 War of Independence during which, he claimed, Jews ethnically cleansed Palestinian Arabs from their land. In reality, five Arab armies attacked Israel a few hours after its birth on May 15 1948, and then lost. Some of the Arabs who lived in the area that became Israel left of their own volition during the war, at the request of Arab leader that they "get out of the way" of the invading Arab armies. Israel did not allow them to return after the war, stating that they had not been loyal. Thus the "Palestinians" were born – between 472,000 and 650,000 people who found themselves stateless when the country they had refused to defend refused to let them back. Approximately 160,000 Arabs remained in Israel through the war and were granted full citizenship in the new state.
The Palestinians' rich Arab "brothers" would not grant them citizenship in their countries and instead dumped them into often squalid refugee camps – for which they blamed Israel.
By contrast, nearly 1 million Jews were expelled or forced to flee from Arab and Muslim countries beginning in 1948, and they were welcomed into tiny, impoverished Israel and granted citizenship.
Arabs have since referred to a war that they started and lost as the nakba (catastrophe), and continue to blame Israel for not cooperating in its own elimination. Perhaps they should have thought of that before starting the war.
Gazans are now apparently calling their situation of being bombarded by Israel a "new nakba." Left unmentioned is that this new so-called nakba is a direct response to the October 7 Arab invasion and murder of 1,200 Jews in a single day, including babies beheaded and burned alive. Other commentators referred to the 16 year blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt to justify their current anger – again "forgetting" the sickening assault on October 7. The Arabs are also "forgetting" that the blockade was established because the Gazans were smuggling in vast quantities of weapons and ammunition with which to murder Jews. Why won't those irritating Jews just let themselves be killed?
The "elephant in the room," which few commentators have had the courage to explore, is that for many Muslims, "Jew-hatred" is dogma. For them, the Koran, every word of it, is the dictated word of Allah (God) as told by the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) to Allah's prophet Muhammad. The Koran does not, like much of the Bible, consist of descriptive stories that can be believed or not as the reader wished. It is more proscriptive, like the Ten Commandments. One cannot say, "Oh, He didn't really mean the one about adultery."
Like it or not, this "divine" word of Allah, compiled in the 114 sura (chapters) of the Koran, is replete with passages of Jew-hatred, such as the verse:
"So when you meet those who disbelieve [in battle], strike [their] necks until, when you have inflicted slaughter upon them, then secure their bonds, and either [confer] favor afterwards or ransom [them] until the war lays down its burdens. That [is the command]." — Koran 47:4, Sahih International translation
Beheading "infidels" is a centuries-long tradition in Islam, and still used today: a teacher, Samuel Paty, in France who showed his students "controversial" Mohammad cartoons ; a British soldier, Lee Rigby, in the United Kingdom, and, this month, babies in Israel (here and here).
Hamas includes this command in its original charter -- in particular Article 7 -- which advocates not only destroying Israel but killing Jews worldwide. In 2014 Hamas had planned a similar assault on the villages and towns near the border with Gaza. Hamas terrorists, at least 200 of them, had planned to invade through their Gaza-based tunnel system around the Jewish New Year holiday of Rosh Hashanah (that year, September 24). Israeli security services noted that Hamas had plans to kidnap Israeli citizens in this earlier plan as well.
In the Koran, Allah has cursed the Jews for the unseemly manner in which the Koran described the Hebrews treating and disobeying the prophets of God. This "divine" curse includes scattering the Jews throughout the globe, forever exiling them from their ancient homeland.
Some "true believer" Muslims therefore feel they have the right to murder Jews anywhere at any time. They believe there is no credence in the historically reality of a biblical Israel, no legitimacy in the geopolitical areas of Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank). Those they call "Zionists" (meaning Israelis and Jews), despite having lived in the land continuously for nearly 4,000 years, are falsely labelled "occupiers" and "colonialists" who must be made to disappear. There is to be no "Jewish National Home" as guaranteed by post-World War II international agreements and the UN.
The real dispute from that brand of Islamic Jew-hatred is not about land, or "refugees" or a "two-state solution." It is about the refusal by many Muslims to co-exist with Jews. The anti-Israel chant of pro-Palestinian protestors is: "From the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, Palestine will be free" -- meaning "free" of Jews. This hoped-for Islamist outcome is reinforced in Arab school textbooks, maps that omit Israel, and even crossword puzzles. Ten years ago, U.S. soldiers being deployed to the Middle East who flew to Qatar or Kuwait on the United Arab Emirates airline, before the UAE's supreme leadership in spearheading the Abraham Accords, reported that on maps in flight brochures, a country named Israel did not exist. Many seem to be working now to make that a reality, not just on a map.
Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
Paolo