The Islamic Movement serves as the spiritual authority guiding the Ra’am party’s political decisions.
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News
A leading cleric in Israel’s Islamic Movement, which is closely linked to coalition kingmaker Mansour Abbas’ Islamist Ra’am party, has written about a future religious war in which all Jews will be expelled from the country, according to a new report.
Independent security think tank the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs analyzed recent texts and articles written by Sheikh Ra’ad Badir, director of the Islamic Movement’s Institute for Rulings on Sharia Law and Islamic Studies.
A recent article credited to Badir referred to riots in Arab and mixed Arab-Jewish municipalities in Israel during the May 2021 Israel-Gaza clash as being “100 percent…a religious war” and a precursor to an epic battle which will see all Jews forced out of Israel.
“If the larger religious war will be caused by Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, it will be worse than anyone can imagine and it will end with the eviction of all Jews from Palestine, from all of Palestine, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea,” Badir wrote.
The violence, which lasted some 11 days and saw Jewish businesses vandalized, synagogues torched, and Jews killed at the hands of Israeli Arabs, “is just one percent of what [is to come] in the larger religious war,” he wrote.
But, Badir noted, Muslims would also suffer heavy casualties during the conflict.
“The number of Muslim martyrs will be greater than the number of Muslims who were killed in the past 1,500 years, since we are talking about Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Muslims will protect the holy Quran and their faith with their lives,” he predicted.
The Islamic Movement serves as the spiritual authority guiding the Ra’am party’s political decisions.
Abbas, Ra’am’s chairman, sought the permission of Islamic Movement leaders before agreeing to sign a historic June 2021 coalition agreement with Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party.
Former Ra’am party chief Abdulmalik Dehamshe told i24 News in July 2021 that Israel’s two million Muslim citizens should use force to prevent Jews from praying on the Temple Mount, calling upon the sector to “protect Al Aqsa Mosque with our bodies and our blood.”
Past reports have linked Ra’am to Gaza-based terror group Hamas. Razi Issa, a senior party member who is believed to have led much of the negotiations which led to Ra’am joining the coalition, visited the Gaza Strip in 2019 and attended a banquet with members of Hamas.