Andrew Bostom: Understanding the Jihad Against Israel and America

The following is from a transcript of a speech last week by Andrew Bostom at the national meeting of ACT for America.

Understanding the Jihad Against
Israel and America

The late Southern Sudanese leader John Garang, in 1999, posed the following dual-part existential question for our era:

Is the call for jihad against a particular people a religious right of those calling for it, or is it a human rights violation against the people upon whom jihad is declared and waged?

As I hope to make plain, the answer to both parts of John Garang’s query is “Yes!”

Hamas cleric Muhsen Abu ‘Ita was interviewed July 13, 2008, on Al-Aqsa TV. After reminding listeners that the Koran’s opening prayer itself, the Fatiha, which pious Muslims repeat 17 times daily, declares that the Jews are “those who incur Allah’s wrath,” specifically in the 7th verse of the Fatiha, re-affirming the verse’s standard exegesis, or interpretation, for over 13 centuries, he declared:

The annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings forPalestine. This will be followed by a greater blessing, Allah be praised, with the establishment of a Caliphate that will rule the land and will be pleasing to men and God.

Three months earlier Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal had made these more elaborate remarks during a speech which aired on Palestinian Al-Aqsa TV April 11, 2008:

Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs [i.e., Jews, Koran 2:65, 5:60, and 7:166, and other foundational Muslim texts] in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam — this capital of theirs [Rome] will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and evenEastern Europe. I believe that our children or our grandchildren will inherit our Jihad …

These words debunk widely accepted tropes that Hamas is merely a nationalist movement, albeit religious, desiring a “Palestinian homeland” in the territories of Gaza (which it already possesses), Judea, and Samaria. Hamas’ blatantly annihilationist rhetoric towards Jews andIsrael within the 1949 armistice borders indicates that the jihadist organization wishes to replace Israel. Why then, in addition to the monotonous rhetoric of Jew-hatred (which isIslamic, and specifically Koranic, in origin), the unabashed expression of Hamas’ will to wage global jihad?

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