Ziyad Abu al-Hajj, Hamas-affiliated preacher
Ehud Olmert as Adolf Hitler
Ziyad Abu al-Hajj, Hamas-affiliated preacher, repeating myths taken from
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and calling for the genocide of the Jews
(Al-Aqsa TV, April 3, courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch).
Overview
1. The battle for hearts and minds, which Hamas is rigorously waging, includes crude anti-Semitism with roots in classic European anti-Semitism, combined with themes taken from Islam. Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV recently broadcast a play put on at the Islamic University in Gaza City which claimed that Jews drink and wash their hands in the blood of Arabs and Muslims as part of their religious rituals 1 (Al-Aqsa TV, March 31, 2009 ). In addition, during Operation Cast Lead a book was seized which was printed by Hamas in 2008 called The Zionist Holocaust , rife with anti-Semitic themes, including Holocaust denial and incitement to hatred of the Jewish people.
2. To that can be added a sermon recently given by Ziyad Abu al-Hajj , a Hamas-affiliated preacher. The sermon he gave in the Izz al-Din mosque in the Nuseirat refugee camp (south of Gaza City ) was full of anti-Semitic Islamic themes and myths taken from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion . He ended the sermon by saying that "the time will come, if Allah so allows, when their property [of the Jews] will be destroyed and their children will be exterminated, until not one single Jew or Zionist remains on earth ” (Al-Aqsa TV, April 3, 2009 ). 2
3. Ziyad Abu al-Hajj is an imam and preacher in the Gaza Strip and affiliated with Hamas. This was not the first time Abu al-Hajj blatantly incited his listeners against Israel and the Jewish people, advocating. In a sermon he gave in a mosque in the Nuseirat refugee camp on January 23, 2009 , he said: "We will never lower the jihad flag in the Gaza Strip. All Gaza is [made up of] jihad fighters. Whom did the Jews conquer? The trees and the rocks, they killed children, they destroyed houses, they killed women and old men, destroyed agricultural lands, all those the Jews conquered… Israel is a cobweb, and pure souls are needed to make it disappear .” 3)
Selected quotations from Abu al-Hajj’s sermon
4. "Today, who leads the cruel, unbridled war against Islam and Muslims? The answer is as clear as day: the Jewish nation [i.e., the Jews]… We Muslims know the Jewish character better than any other group in the world, because the holy Qur’an gives witness to that. In addition, the Sunnah of pure prophecy [the Islamic tradition of the prophet Muhammad] has many true things to say about the Jews… The war [of the Jews] and their hatred for the prophet Muhammad and his religion, prayers to Allah and his blessing for peace, is deep within Jewish souls… Today Israel exists within Muslim Arab borders, but it is a cancer which seeks to rule the world …The expansionism of the Jews today is an ancient ideology. They argued with Moses, the prophet of Allah, the wanted to kill Jesus, the prophet of Allah, and they wanted to assassinate Muhammad, the prophet of Allah…
" Perhaps their [most] famous book is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , whose [authenticity] their leaders and scholars deny. We call it The Protocols of the Fools of Zion . According to the book, my brothers, the Jews planned to take over the world, the land, the air and the sea, and the ideological sphere, as well as the economy and the media, as is happening today … Today the Jews are spinning their spider webs to encircle our [Islamic] nation, as a bracelet encircles the wrist. They spread their corruption all over the world.
"Today the greatness of the Jews and their rise to the throne of power is because of America , which, despite all its might, is controlled by the Senate, which I call the Jewish Senate and not the American Senate… The time will come, if Allah so allows, then their property will be destroyed, their children will be exterminated, until not one Jew or Zionist is left on earth …
"Once there was a dog whose barking annoyed everyone in the neighborhood. The dog had a puppy whose barking annoyed everyone even more. The Jews are [the same] Jews [they always were]. Both the dogs and the puppies bite, and both are unclean. That is the truth about the Jews.”
5. The target audience for this particular sermon, and for others like it, is not limited to the Gaza Strip. Al-Aqsa TV’s anti-Semitic broadcasts are transmitted by the Arab communications satellites Arabsat (owned primarily by Saudi Arabia ) and Nilesat (owned by Egypt ) throughout the Middle East , North Africa and even southern Europe . Thus the Arab satellites support the spread of Hamas’s anti-Semitism, hatred and terrorist brainwashing (as does Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV).
Anti-Semitic Hamas book called The Zionist Holocaust, seized in the Gaza Strip
The Zionist Holocaust , 212 pages, published by Hamas, seized by the IDF
during Operation Cast Lead. 4 It is rife with hatred for the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
6. The IDF activity referred to in the book was Operation Hot Winter , which was undertaken in the northern Gaza Strip because of the significant escalation in Hamas rocket fire from the Gaza Strip attacking the southern part of Israel (2,000 identified rocket hits, including 23 standard Grad rockets which landed in Ashqelon during a period which lasted from February 27, 2008, to March 3, 2009). During that round of escalation 120 Palestinians were killed, most of them terrorist operatives, especially those belonging to Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Several dozen civilians were accidentally killed when Hamas and the other terrorist organizations fought from inside their homes and used them as human shields.
7. The IDF’s counterterrorism activities in the northern Gaza Strip and the events which occurred at that time are described in the Hamas book as a confrontation between Islam and Judaism . The same ideology is expressed in the Hamas charter, ratified in 1988, 5 which regards the "Palestinian problem” as a Muslim religious problem, and the conflict with Israel as a conflict between Islam and Jewish "heresy.” Calling the book The Zionist Holocaust is an expression of Hamas propaganda and part of Holocaust denial, and makes the false claim that the IDF’s counterterrorism activities in the Gaza Strip are a "holocaust” against the Palestinian people (at the bottom of the front cover the English word " holocaust ” appears, transliterated into Arabic). During Operation Cast Lead the popular Qatari channel Al-Jazeera TV was also pressed into service, and broadcast the term "holocaust” day and night to the Arab-Muslim world (and to Israeli Arabs as well), comparing Israel to the Nazi regime. 6
Ehud Olmert as Adolf Hitler
(Home page, Al-Jazeera TV’s website, March 4, 2008).
8. The introduction (pp. 5-6) was written by Ismail Haniya , head of the Hamas de-facto administration. He notes the courage of the Palestinian jihad fighters who prevented Israel from realizing a "holocaust” of the Palestinian people. He notes that the battle between the two sides was in fact a "milestone which determined the struggle between the truth [an epithet for Islam] and the lie [an epithet for other religions, including Judaism].” He also notes that German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Israel ["the Zionist entity”] and that during her visit "she welcomed the holocaust against our people” but "at the same time expressed sorrow at the false holocaust experienced by the Jews .”
9. Other examples of anti-Semitism can be found in the continuation of the introduction, written by Hamas’s "information ministry,” which published the book. It says, among other things, that "that country, the one called " Israel ” [quotation marks in the original]…believes only in killing and destruction…some of its principles are endless fighting, shedding blood and corruption. For the Jews, all men are flocks of lambs [i.e., fit for slaughter], while only they [the Jews] are fit to live …” (p. 10). At the end of the book (p. 221) the Palestinians are presented with two options: "to raise a white flag” or " the one the Jews understand, because of their nature, based on racism, isolation and throwing the other into the corner ,” [i.e., violence and terrorism].
1 For further information see our April 8, 2009 bulletin "The hate industry: Hamas incorporates crude anti-Semitism into its battle for hearts and minds” at http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e069.htm .
2 According to one of the most famous Islamic traditions, on Judgment Day the trees and stones will tell the Muslims where the Jews are hiding and the Muslims will kill them.
3 A MEMRI clip, April 3, 2009 . According to Palestinian Media Watch reports, in March 2006 he participated in an international conference in Seville , Spain , for an inter-faith dialogue ("Imams and Rabbis for Peace”).
4 The full title is The Zionist Holocaust Carried out by the Forces of Zionist Treason within the Borders of Jabaliya and the Al-Tufah neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip between February 27, 2008 and March 5, 2008 . It was published in June 2008 by Hamas’s "information ministry” in the northern Gaza Strip.
5 The Hamas charter can be accessed at http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/hamas_charter.pdf
6 The false horror stories spread by Hamas and Al-Jazeera TV are liable to have had practical influence. For example, the young Bedouin woman who carried out the terrorist attack near the Border Police base at the Shoket Junction on April 4, 2009 , wrote in her diary that she wanted to be a martyr for the sake of Allah because of what the Israelis had done in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead
