Salem Zahran’s conspiracy paranoia is understandable, if nonetheless insane. It’s in the air he breathes: the Qur’an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the well-being of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); they fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); they love to listen to lies (5:41); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). They are disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more. They are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29).
“Lebanese Journalist Salem Zahran: Kuwaiti Emir Canceled Deals with China at Trump’s Order: The Jews Rule the World,” MEMRI, September 13, 2018:
Lebanese journalist Salem Zahran claimed that during a medical trip to the United States, the emir of Kuwait was forced by President Trump to cancel an $11 billion deal with the Chinese and sign a more expensive deal with American companies. He recalled Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s use of the phrase “slave of a slave” in 2005 to refer to Fouad Siniora, then prime minister of Lebanon, and said that this was an accurate description of the reality in the Arab world. Zahran said that there were “two types of Arabs: those who willingly ride the American bandwagon, clapping their hands, and those who are forced to, like Kuwait.” He further said that even though they number no more than 21 million, “the [Jews] rule the world.” Zahran’s comments, made during a September 13 interview on Lebanon’s Al-Manar TV, aroused controversy in the Arab media.
Following are excerpts:
Lebanese Journalist Salem Zahran: …Go to any European country and ask how many Jews live there. When I was in Vienna, for example, I asked how many Palestinians live there, and I was told that there are about 100,000. When I asked how many Jews, they said some 1,200. But who control the city? The Jews.
Host: Of course.
Lebanese Journalist Salem Zahran: They control the commerce, the “downtown,” the banks, the law firms, and the media. That’s it. I don’t know if the viewers know this, but the number of Jews in the world is no more than 21 million people. That equals about a quarter of the population of Egypt.
Host: It’s like Cairo…
Lebanese Journalist Salem Zahran: Right. Cairo and Shobra. Twenty million people go in and out of Cairo and Shobra every day. The [Jews] rule the world.