In PJ Media this morning I discuss the rise in antisemitism that the world community has missed in all its anxiety over “Islamophobia”:
“Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive for the
annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the way for world
justice and freedom.” So said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
to an audience of ambassadors from Muslim countries last Thursday. The
ambassadors had convened in Tehran for Quds Day “” Jerusalem Day “” an
annual airing of Islamic supremacist Jew-hatred and Zionist
conspiracy-mongering begun by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.The world has grown used to the spectacle of a head of government,
Ahmadinejad, calling for the destruction of a nation-state that poses no
threat to his regime “” after all, he has done it so many times before.
But Islamic anti-Semitism is also on the rise around the world. Indeed,
so many Muslim leaders around the world so routinely call for the
destruction of Israel and a new genocide of the Jews (which would almost
certainly go hand-in-hand with that destruction, if it ever actually
came about), that such calls are becoming as dull with familiarity as
Ahmadinejad’s repeated predictions of Israel’s imminent demise.Last June, a Pakistani Muslim cleric named Pirzada Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai said the
following in a YouTube video titled “Jews Are the Real Enemy of Islam
and Peace”: “And all the troubles that exist around the world are
because of the Jews. When the Jews are wiped out, then the world would
be purified and the sun of peace would begin to rise on the entire
world.”Such clerics are not obscure eccentrics enunciating a twisted,
hijacked version of Islam. In January 2009, the most popular Islamic
preacher in the world, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, said on al-Jazeera:
“Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would
punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out
by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them — even though they
exaggerated this issue — he managed to put them in their place. This was
divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the
hand of the believers”¦.”Qaradawi continued: “I’d like to say that the only thing I hope for
is that as my life approaches its end, Allah will give me an opportunity
to go to the land of Jihad and resistance, even if in a wheelchair. I
will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me,
and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom.”This hatred increasingly plays out in attacks on individuals. A few weeks ago, Shasta Khan, a Muslim woman in Britain, received an eight-year prison sentence for her role in plots to target Jews in bomb attacks. During her trial, she stated that her husband had forced her to drive through Jewish areas looking for likely targets. Last week, police in India indicted a Muslim journalist,
Syed Mohammad Kazmi, for his role in the bombing of an Israeli
diplomat’s car. Also last week, when the Lebanese Olympic judo team
discovered that it was training in sight of the Israeli team, it
demanded that a barrier be constructed so that they could not see the
Jews; the International Olympic Committee complied. Several days ago in
the German town of Stein, a Muslim sprayed two women with tear gas
because one of them was wearing a Star of David. And last week in Santa
Monica, California, the trial began of Tehmina Adaya, the Muslim owner
of the Shangri-La resort hotel. Adaya is charged with discrimination
against Jewish hotel guests: she allegedly told hotel staff to “Get the
[expletive deleted] Jews out of my pool.”