Hamas Top Dog Tells Israel to Deliver Ventilators, Or ‘We’ll Stop the Breathing of Six Million Israelis’
Where have we heard that number before?
By Robert Spencer
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the jihad terror group Hamas, on Thursday boasted that if Israel didn’t come across with more ventilators for “Palestinian” coronavirus victims in Gaza, the jihadis “take them by force.” As if that weren’t enough, Sinwar added: “If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis.” Of course, Sinwar wasn’t articulating any new imperative for the jihad group: a new genocide of the Jews has always been a cherished Hamas aspiration.
As The Palestinian Delusion explains, destroying Israel is, in Hamas’ view, a religious imperative — even an act of worship. In 2012, Hamas published a music video that included a lyric apparently inspired by the “drive them out from where they drove you out” command and the Hadith calling on Muslims to kill Jews in order to hasten the Last Day: “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.”
To a Gaza imam, Ahmad Okasha, the only solution to the problems of the Palestinians was decreed by Muhammad himself in his own End Times prophecy of Muslims killing Jews. On Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV on November 5, 2018, Okasha said: “The most obvious Jihad on the face of the Earth is the Jihad in Palestine. There is no doubt or dispute about it. Muslims fighting Jews who occupied their land— there is no dispute here.”
Indeed, Okasha added, Jerusalem itself “shall only be liberated in the way decreed for us by Allah: ‘Judgment Day shall not come until you fight the Jews, and the trees and the rocks will say: “Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”’”
That genocidal Hadith is a favorite motif among contemporary jihadists. On March 30, 2007, a spokesman for Hamas, Dr. Ismail Radwan, said on Palestinian Authority television:
The Hour [Resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: “Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!”
We must remind our Arab and Muslim nation, its leaders and people, its scholars and students, remind them that Palestine and the Al Aqsa mosque will not be liberated through summits nor by international resolutions, but it will be liberated through the rifle. It will not be liberated through negotiations, but through the rifle, since this occupation knows no language but the language of force…. O Allah, strengthen Islam and Muslims, and bring victory to your Jihad-fighting worshipers, in Palestine and everywhere…. Allah take the oppressor Jews and Americans and their supporters!
As for the tree that Muhammad referred to as “the tree of the Jews,” the Saudi sheikh Muhammad al-Arefe explained in 2008 that “studies conducted in Tel Aviv and in the Palestinian lands occupied by the Jews showed that they plant trees around their homes, because the Prophet Muhammad said that when the Muslims fight the Jews, each and every stone and tree will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” The Jews planted these trees, al-Arefe said, because they are “not man enough to stand and fight” the Muslims.”
On official Palestinian Authority television on January 9, 2012, Palestinian Authority mufti Muhammad Hussein invoked the genocidal Hadith as he commemorated the forty-seventh anniversary of the founding of Fatah: “Forty-seven years ago the [Fatah] revolution started. Which revolution? The modern revolution of the Palestinian people’s history. In fact, Palestine in its entirety is a revolution, since [Caliph] Umar came [to conquer Jerusalem, A.D. 637], and continuing today, and until the End of Days. The reli- able Hadith [tradition attributed to Muhammad], [found] in the two reliable collections, Bukhari and Muslim, says: ‘The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: “Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” Except the Gharqad tree [which will keep silent].’ Therefore it is no wonder that you see Gharqad [trees] surrounding the [Israeli] settlements and colonies.”
Coronavirus, and whether or not Israel supplies ventilators to Gaza, is just the latest pretext. Hamas’ genocidal jihad imperative is constant.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 19 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.