AIJAC cites PMW material on religious bigotry in the PA
Religion and Bigotry in the PA
Most casual observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict know that the rejectionist Hamas, which rules Gaza, is Islamist while the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA), which rules the West Bank, is officially secular. They also probably know that Hamas has often espoused open antisemitism which it claims to derive from Islamic sources. For instance, Hamas’ openly antisemitic charter begins with a verse from the Koran which says Jews have earned “Allah’s wrath” because “they denied the signs of Allah and unjustly killed the prophets” before going on to blame the Jews for all wars and revolutions, citing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as evidence.
But what many people may not know is that the religious activities officially promoted by the ostensibly secular PA are often not much better. Here are two examples from last month.
On Oct. 5, Muhannad Abu Rumi, a judge in the Palestinian Authority’s Islamic court system had this to say in a sermon broadcast on official PA-TV:
“[This is] holy land. We know its value, and not them [Jews], the foreigners, the fabricators of history, who dance and live on the body parts of others, and on the blood of others. Read their history: There is no global corruption that they are not behind. There is no global corruption that their rabbis did not allow…There have always been two camps in history: the camp of truth and the camp of falsehood. The people of falsehood see themselves as those who rule over everything… Among the Jews we find nothing but corruption and depravity.”
In this last part of his statement, Abu Rumi seemed to be echoing his boss Mahmoud Al-Habbash, the PA’s Supreme Shari’ah Judge and PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ personal advisor on Islam. In June, Habbash stated that the world is a battle between good and evil in which the Jews represent “the culture of Satan.”
Even more recently, on Oct. 19, an unidentified preacher gave a sermon broadcast on official PA-TV in which he said that Jews are “planning and systematically working to incite wars and strife in the entire world” and spoke of “the two times that the Israelites spread corruption upon the land.” He also implied that Hitler was sent by Allah to punish them, saying, “They didn’t learn from what Hitler did to them, and the kings of Europe, and Spain – they didn’t learn…” (All quotes above are from Palestinian Media Watch).
So in just the last month, official PA-TV has broadcast at least two sermons in which Palestinians were told that Islam teaches that Jews “dance and live on the body parts of others, and on the blood of others”; are behind all “global corruption” and are “systematically working to incite wars and strife in the entire world”; are the “people of falsehood” in a global battle of good versus evil; and that the Holocaust was God’s punishment of the Jews.
And again, it is the secular PA, not Hamas, which promoted this antisemitism and gave it the imprimatur of Islam. Is it any wonder that peace seems all but impossible?
And again, it is the secular PA, not Hamas, which promoted this antisemitism and gave it the imprimatur of Islam. Is it any wonder that peace seems all but impossible?
[https://aijac.org.au/australia-israel-review/scribblings-dont-give-turkey-a-pass-in-khashoggi-affair/]