Palestinian journalist: We have always hated the evil Jews

An Arab writer admits the truth.

By Hugh Fitzgerald, Front Page Magazine

A Palestinian journalist, Radwan Abdullah, does not mince words: We Muslims do not merely hate Israelis; we hate all the Jews, who have been our enemies since the beginning of Islam. It’s useful to have such an explosion of candor, since so many in the West keep thinking that the enmity of the Palestinians and other Arabs can be solved by territorial concessions from Israel. But there is nothing the Israelis can do to end that Muslim Arab hate, except by disappearing. More on Abdullah’s article can be found here: “Palestinian Writer Says the Antisemitism Part Out Loud,” by Elder of Ziyon, Algemeiner, August 10, 2023:

Radwan Abdullah, a well-known Palestinian writer, has an article in Nidaal al-Watan, where he freely admits that he makes no distinction between Jews and Israelis. According to him, Jews are just as despicable today as they were in Mohammed’s time:

“It is noted in many of the writings of media figures, and Arab intellectuals in general, that the hostility of the Jews to the Arabs and Muslims is limited to the occupation of Palestine. They ignore or forget the Jewish history of hostility to Islam and Muslims since the first cradle of Islam in Medina.”

“This thing, the enmity of course, which the Messenger of God Muhammad, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, suffered from continued, even at intermittent periods, between the Jewish plots of the Prophet’s time, to their multiple misfortunes in more than one Arab country, with the incitement of states and emirates against other states and emirates, as Arab history has proven in several previous stages up to the catastrophe of Palestine and the subsequent massacres and calamities that they perpetrated in Palestine, Syria, Egypt and in several other Arab countries. They take advantage of their multiple nationalities and use their hateful malice and cunning to corrupt the land, starting from the areas of their presence in the Arab and regional countries and even the rest of the world. The Jewish hostility to Arabs and Muslims began since the dawn of Islam and was completed at the collapse of the Ottoman Sultanate, leading to the occupation of our dear homeland, Palestine….”

It is the Jews of Israel who have had to fight three wars for their very survival, in 1948, 1967, and 1973, as well as a dozen lesser campaigns against the terror groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Israel never wanted war with the Arabs, but had it repeatedly thrust upon them. The “Jewish hostility” to “Arabs and Muslims” was always, in fact, a justified reaction to the hatred of Jews that the texts and teachings of Islam encourage. Radwan Abdullah has things backwards.

It is not the texts and teachings of the Jews that are full of hatred for Muslims, but the texts and teachings of Islam that preach murderous hatred of the Jews.

It was Muhammad’s Muslims who waged war on the Jewish tribes of Medina; Muhammad himself took part in decapitating between 600 and 900 members of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe.

In his useful compilation Robert Spencer notes that “the Qur’an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the wellbeing of the Muslims.

They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); as fabricating things and falsely ascribing them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); claiming that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); loving to listen to lies (5:41); disobeying Allah and never observing his commands (5:13); disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more.”

The classic Qur’anic commentators do not soften the Qur’an’s words against Jews, but only add fuel to the fire. Ibn Kathir explained Qur’an 2:61 (“They were covered with humiliation and misery; they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah”) this way: “This Ayah [verse] indicates that the Children of Israel were plagued with humiliation, and that this will continue, meaning that it will never cease. They will continue to suffer humiliation at the hands of all who interact with them, along with the disgrace that they feel inwardly.” Another Middle Ages commentator of influence, Abdallah ibn Umar al-Baidawi, explains the same verse this way: “The Jews are mostly humiliated and wretched either of their own accord, or out of coercion of the fear of having their jizya [punitive tax] doubled.”

Ibn Kathir notes Islamic traditions that predict that at the end of the world, “the Jews will support the Dajjal (False Messiah), and the Muslims, along with ‘Isa [Jesus], son of Mary, will kill the Jews.” The idea in Islam that the end times will be marked by Muslims killing Jews comes from the prophet Muhammad himself, who said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’” This is, not unexpectedly, a favorite motif among contemporary jihadists.

Radwan Abdullah continues:

Despite this, many Arabs and Muslims think and may believe that limiting the hostility to the Jews to the occupation of Palestine makes the occupation of Palestine a Palestinian issue only, as if the Palestinians alone are concerned with defending Palestine and perhaps all Arabs and Muslims. This is contrary to the truth.. Since we all know that the occupation of Palestine is intended to strike our Arab unity and our Islamic nation, in addition to displacing our people and stealing their homeland and its Christian and Islamic sanctities, and that the occupation of Palestine is nothing but an extension of the crusaders’ fierce campaigns against the Arab nation and Islam together, and it is actually an extension of the hostility of {the]Banu Qurayza…

From the very earliest years of Islam, the Jews were subject to the malevolent hatred of Muslims. The Jewish tribe of the Banu Qurayza in Medina was unwilling to submit to the early Muslims; the Muslims, therefore, felt justified in attacking them — murdering the men and enslaving the women. Muhammad always found the Jews the most steadfast in their opposition to him. Among the three most famous mockers of Muhammad whom his followers murdered — Asma bint Marwan, Abu ‘Afak, and Ka’b ibn-Al-Ashraf — the latter two were Jews.

As the Muslims saw it, the Prophet had offered the Jewish tribes the truth of Islam, and they had turned him down. The Jews under Muslim rule had only three options: to convert to Islam, to be put to death, or to accept the permanent onerous status of dhimmis, who had a host of economic, political, and social disabilities imposed on them, of which the most crushing was the jizyah, a capitation tax which allowed Jews to practice their religion without being subject to attack by Muslims — in essence, a form of extortion.

Those Arab propagandists who attempt to convince us that “if only” Israel were to make territorial concessions to the “Palestinians” that the Muslim Arabs would live in peace with the Jews in their much reduced state, are hoping we will ignore the contents of the Quran and hadith, ignore the 1400-year history of Muslim violence against the Jews who, as Infidels, are described in the Qur’an as “the most vile of created beings.”

Radwan Abdullah is perfectly willing not to deny, but to openly state, the truth: the Muslim Arabs have hated Jews, and not merely Zionists, since the very beginning of Islam. As far as the Believers are concerned, the Jews have always been been evil, scheming thieves of Arab lands, intent on spreading “corruption” in the land. And the Muslim war against them must continue until they are everywhere overcome.

It is good to have an Arab writer who admits the truth.

AntisemitismIsraeli-Palestinian conflictMedia BiasPalestinian incitement