an anti-Semitic war is taking hold, by Omar Youssef Souleimane – L’Express

These words, like other speeches from Abou Obeida, have been circulating again on Instagram, X, and TikTok in recent weeks. They all end with this sentence: “It’s a jihad, a victory or a martyrdom.” We see videos of children repeating this quote with photos of brigade spokesperson Ezzedine al-Qassam. He constantly reminds us that this is a religious, sacred war. Following the truce announced between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist organization said: “Our hands will remain on the trigger.” For them, the project is not to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but to apply sharia law in an Islamic state, after having rid the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem of Jews. We studied this war as children at the mosque. It is part of the collective memory of the inhabitants of the Middle East. It is not only anti-Semitic, but spreads the idea that Jews are the origins of evil throughout the world.

For fanatical Muslims, Israel, as a state, must not exist. This word is just another name for Yakoub (Jacob), prophet cited in the Koran and grandson of Abraham. In the Quranic text, the descendants of Israel, the Jews, are named 43 times. They are often treated as bad people, never followed the instructions of the messengers, especially Moses. In the longest and most important surah of the Quran, “The Cow”, which addresses the Jews, we read: “(And remember) when Moses said to his people: ‘Surely Allah commands you to sacrifice a cow.” They said: “Are you mocking us?” “May Allah protect me from being among the ignorant”, he said. They said: “Ask your Lord for us that He may specifies what it should be.” He said: “Surely Allah says that it is indeed a cow, neither old nor virgin, of middle age, between the two. So do as you are commanded.”” In Islamic mythology, God commands the Jews to sacrifice a cow, any cow, but the Jews ask irrelevant questions. They complicate things and make fun of God. This is why he, in turn, complicates the description of this cow in order to punish them.

Other suras tell anecdotes about the “sons of Israel”. That of the Sabbath is the most recited and the hardest. It’s the story of a Jewish village in Egypt, on the shores of the Mediterranean. Its inhabitants practice fishing. God forbid they work on Saturday. To test their belief, he sends large fish that day towards the beach. The Jews find an idea to avoid being accused of working: they make traps for these fish and, the next day, they collect them. God punished them: “Then, when they refused (out of pride) to abandon what had been forbidden to them, we said to them: be abject monkeys.” This is the verse that inspires imams when they describe today’s Jews as children of monkeys every time they mention Palestine.

The most violent Islamic text, from which fanatics view the current war as a religious conflict, is a hadith from Muhammad: “The Muslims will fight the Jews and win against them, the latter hide behind the stones and trees that say : O Muslim, this is a Jew, come and kill him.” As a child, while studying this hadith, I imagined that this fight was a video game. During the Intifada of 2000, this text was repeated throughout the Middle East as a sign of Hamas’ victory against Israeli soldiers. On the Al-Jazeera channel, Youssef al-Qaradawi, leading theologian of the Muslim Brotherhood, explained that this hadith represents “proof that all beings and even objects will be on the side of the Muslims.” During the 2014 and 2021 clashes between Israel and Hamas, this hadith resurfaced on social media. This is being repeated today, but with more modern means. Numerous videos show Muhammad speaking next to a Hamas fighter targeting an Israeli armored vehicle in Gaza, to confirm that this is the expected sacred war.

The unbearable violence of the current conflict, the propaganda of the Muslim Brotherhood and that of Iran depicting Israel as the absolute monster, without forgetting the despair imposed by Arab dictatorships are pushing populations in the Middle East to get closer and closer to these fanatical beliefs. The voices which try to dissociate the Jews from the policies of the Israeli government, in order to avoid amalgamation, no longer find echoes in the face of a resentment fueled by poverty. Some adhere to conspiracy theories about Israel, presented as the state supported by the richest people in the world. Despite the poverty in Gaza, Hamas is gaining popularity. Influencers refer to the words of Muhammad as if they were predictions. In several hadiths it is said that the best Muslims will lead this war against the Jews before the day of judgment. In Algeria, two weeks after October 7, hundreds of demonstrators repeated: “Khaybar, Jews, Mohammed’s army is back.” This slogan, present in Islamist rallies against Israel especially in the 1990s, is back. It evokes a battle in the 7th century between Mohammed and Jews at Khaybar, an oasis located in Hejaz, Saudi Arabia. After winning, Muhammad expelled them from their lands and kept all their possessions.

These verses and religious anecdotes are increasingly brandished on social networks, where a wave of hatred against Jews is exploding. It is difficult to put them in their historical context and treat them as myths. In order for the blood to stop shedding, the Arabs will have to put themselves in the place of the Jews, and vice versa. We have only one way out before us: to concentrate on the future, far from a radicalism inherited from a past which only leads to more destruction.

* Writer and poet born in Damascus, Omar Youssef Souleimane participated in demonstrations against the regime of Bashar el-Assad, but, hunted by the secret services, had to flee Syria in 2012. Refugee in France, he published with Flammarion The Little Terrorist, The Last Syrian, A room in exile, and recently Being French.