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American rabbis, wrestling with Israel’s behavior, weigh different approaches from the pulpit
(JTA) — Rabbi Sharon Brous began a sermon at her Los Angeles synagogue last month with a content warning. “I have to say some things today that I know will upset some of you,” she began.
That same morning, across the country in New York City, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl was confessing something to her congregants, too: The sermon they were about to hear “kept me up at night.”
Both women — among the most prominent and influential Jewish clergy in the United States — went on to sharply criticize Israel’s new right-wing government, which includes far-right parties that aim to curb the rights of LGBTQ Israelis, Arabs and non-Orthodox Jews.
In taking aim at Israel’s government from the pulpit, the rabbis were veering close to what many in their field consider a third rail. “You have a wonderful community and you love them and they love you, until the moment you stand up and you give your Israel sermon,” Brous told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The phenomenon even has an informal name, she said: “Death by Israel sermon.”
Brous would know: A decade ago, she was the target of sharp criticism after she encouraged her congregants at IKAR, a nondenominational congregation, to pray for Palestinians as well as Jews during a period of conflict in Israel. The incident didn’t end her pulpit, but she has come to understand why many rabbis choose what she called “the path of silence” when it comes to Israel.
Now, she said, American Jews must depart from that path. “I want you to hear me,” she said in her sermon. “There is a revolution that is happening, and this moment demands an awakening on both sides of the sea, an honest reckoning.”
All over the country, non-Orthodox rabbis are making similar calculations in response to Israel’s new governing coalition, which has drawn widespread protests over its policy moves. (Orthodox communities, including their rabbis, tend to be more politically conservative and skew to the right of non-Orthodox communities on Israel issues.) Israel’s government is advancing an overhaul of the legal system that would sap the power of the Supreme Court, and is also contending with an escalating wave of violence.
Some rabbis feel more emboldened to speak aloud what they have long believed. Others are finding themselves reconsidering their own relationship to Israel — and bringing their congregants along on their journey. A few still feel that criticizing Israel from the pulpit is a misguided and even dangerous venture, one that could splinter American Jewish communities.
What cuts across the spectrum is a belief that Israel has been discussed too little from the synagogue pulpit. Brous said the tendency of liberal rabbis not to talk about Israel lest they anger their more conservative congregants has resulted in a painful reality: “American Jews have not developed the muscle that we now need to respond to this regime.”
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City launched a new program called Amplify Israel, which he hopes will encourage Reform movement leaders to embrace Zionism even as they navigate a “deeply problematic and even offensive” new Israeli government. (Shahar Azran/Stephen Wise Free Synagogue)
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, meanwhile, believes today’s rabbis must be vocal in fending off the influence of “competing values” about Zionism from “various organizations that are either cool on Israel or don’t like Israel or just downright anti-Zionist.”
Last year, angered by a letter signed by dozens of rabbinical students denouncing Israel’s actions during its 2021 conflict with Hamas in Gaza, Hirsch launched an initiative based at his New York City Reform synagogue to equip rabbis with tools to counter what he said was “the growing influence of an anti-Zionist element” in the next generation of Jewish clergy.
The initiative, Amplify Israel, is housed at his Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, and employs another rabbi, Tracy Kaplowitz, to work full-time to galvanize leaders from across the Reform movement to support Israel. Kaplowitz jokes that her new job won’t be complete “until every Reform Jew is a Zionist.”
Hirsch knows the new coalition is complicating his task. “The new government is going to make our promotion of Israel more difficult in the United States,” he said, noting that the government “has elements in it that are deeply problematic and even offensive to most American Jews.”
He and Kaplowitz contend that it is possible, in their view, for rabbis to criticize aspects of the Israeli government from the pulpit while still remaining broadly supportive of the Jewish state and encouraging their congregants to be the same. They also say the need to build Zionist sentiment within the American rabbinate transcends any particular moment, including this one.
“If we have to transform how we connect to Israel each time there’s an election, we’ll be driving ourselves a little bit batty,” Kaplowitz said.
Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz is a full-time Israel Fellow at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York City. She jokes that her job won’t be finished “until every Reform Jew is a Zionist.” (Ryen Greiss/Stephen Wise Free Synagogue)
Hirsch sits on the advisory board of another new pro-Israel initiative, the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition. Helmed by Stuart Weinblatt, senior rabbi at Conservative Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Maryland, the group is an interdenominational network of more than 200 rabbis who advocate to ”strengthen the ties between American Jewry and the State of Israel.”
Weinblatt hews to an early generation’s view of how rabbis should approach Israel from the pulpit. He told JTA that he believes his colleagues should always be supportive of Israel in public, even if they choose to pressure the Israeli government and advocate against certain policies in private — which, he says, is “the appropriate vehicle” for voicing concerns. “My position has always been that support for Israel should be unconditional,” he said.
“If we as rabbis are sharply critical of Israel, the result can often lead to a distancing from Israel, which ultimately may diminish the connection people feel to Judaism and the Jewish people,” he added. “People do not always distinguish and differentiate between opposition to a particular policy and broader criticisms of Israel which can do lasting damage.”
Asked whether the Israeli government could ever conceivably take a step that would necessitate a public response from American rabbis, Weinblatt ruminated for days. He ultimately told JTA that the current debate around proposed changes to the Law of Return, the Israeli policy that allows anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent to claim citizenship, would be such an example, as that is a policy that would have a direct effect on Diaspora Jews.
Tightening who is eligible under the Law of Return is in fact a goal of some elements of Israel’s governing coalition, although the Diaspora minister assured an audience in the United States that, unlike with the proposed changes to the government’s judicial system — which have earned criticism across the political spectrum — there would be an effort to build consensus and no changes would happen overnight.
Still, the prospect of such a change so alarmed Rabbi Hillel Skolnick of Congregation Tifereth Israel in Columbus, Ohio, that he traveled to Jerusalem to address the Knesset, Israel’s lawmaking body.
“The members of my congregation and my movement have a spiritual connection with Judaism and also a political connection because we live in a democracy, so they see a Jewish democracy as an ideal that they can look to as a light unto the nations,” he said, in a speech he delivered as a representative of the Conservative/Masorti movement.
“By even questioning the idea of the Law of Return,” he went on, Israel “takes away from both the Jewish connection and the democratic connection they have with this country.”
Skolnick suggested that he was unsure of how to speak to his congregation about the new government and its agenda. “My question to you is, what message can I go home with?” he asked.
Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, founder and chair of the Zionist Rabbinic Coalition, shown with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Weinblatt believes American rabbis’ “support for Israel should be unconditional,” and that disagreements with its government should be hashed out in private. (Courtesy of Stuart Weinblatt)
This week, hundreds of American rabbis will be returning to their congregations with messages honed by a week in Israel. The Reform movement just concluded its biennial convention, which was held there for the first time since before the pandemic. Their visit coincided with major developments in the country’s twin crises: The Knesset advanced the judicial reform legislation, and three people were killed in a Palestinian shooting and subsequent settler riot in the West Bank.
In a sign of the balancing act that American rabbis are navigating, the Reform movement’s leader, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who has been among the earliest and most outspoken critics of the new Israeli government, will also be a featured speaker at Amplify Israel’s conference this May aiming to encourage Zionist sentiment among Reform Jews.
At the convention, the leader of the Central Conference of American Rabbis called for Reform clergy to move away from defining Israel in stark black-and-white terms — an apparent reference to Jews who speak of “pro-Israel” and “anti-Israel” forces.
“In order to connect better with those in our communities around Israel in a nuanced and meaningful way, we must be able to move beyond the pro/con dichotomy which only serves to divide us in ways that are a distraction to the actual issues at hand,” Rabbi Hara Person told the attendees. During the conference, the rabbis attended and voiced support for Israeli protests against their government.
“We are seeing a shift for the better, in my opinion, about how Jews are feeling comfortable critiquing Israel’s policies,” Rabbi Sarah Brammer-Shlay told JTA last fall, before the Israeli elections. Brammer-Shlay was a signer of the 2021 rabbinical students’ letter who graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and today is a rabbi and chaplain at Grinnell College.
That kind of shift has Weinblatt worried. “Sometimes, rabbis are actually out of sync and out of touch with their congregations, who do want to hear messages of support of Israel,” he said.
That may well be the case, particularly at synagogues with aging populations, but survey data suggests that American Jews are moving to the left on Israel at the same time that Israel itself has shifted to the right. The most recent Pew Research Center survey of American Jews, in 2021, found that most have a negative opinion of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; only one-third think Israel is making a sincere effort to achieve peace with Palestinians; and 10% support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel.
While rabbis typically consider what they think their congregants want to hear, they aren’t bound to say it. And some rabbis say this moment is a time to take a stand, even if there is blowback.
Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of Congregation Ansche Chesed, a Conservative congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, announced in December that his congregation would no longer recite the Prayer for the State of Israel, part of most congregations’ Shabbat morning liturgy since 1948. He said the extremism of Israel’s leadership meant the words no longer applied, and replaced the prayer with the more generally worded Prayer for Peace in Jerusalem.
”I couldn’t just say, ‘God, please guide our leaders well,’” Kalmanofsky said, pointing specifically to the fact that extremist politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were now government ministers who would be the beneficiaries of such prayer. “The things that they’re saying cannot possibly represent the Israel that I want to support.”
Kalmanofsky had not previously been outspoken as a critic of Israeli policy. He said he has faced some tough feedback from some in his community, including from those who believe this is a moment that demands more, not less, prayer for Israel — “not an unreasonable response,” he said. But a month into the liturgy change, he said he is confident he has made the right decision.
“Something really meaningful had changed in the public life of the state of Israel,” he said. “That deserved real recognition, and a real response.”
Continuing to focus on preserving a Jewish connection with Israel without “dealing like grown-ups” with its “very serious problems” would render the rabbinical voice irrelevant, Kalmanofsky said. “At best, we’re kind of like, ‘blind love, blind loyalty.’ And at worst, we’re totally obtuse, and have nothing meaningful to say about the real world.”
“If you’re going to have a pulpit,” Kalmanofsky added, “you’re going to have to use it once in a while.”
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The post American rabbis, wrestling with Israel’s behavior, weigh different approaches from the pulpit appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Does Israel Hater Hasan Piker Have More Chutzpah Than American Jews?
Hasan Piker. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Any article about Hasan Piker should start by explaining that he said “America deserved 9/11,” according to Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY). It should then say that Piker referred to Ultra-Orthodox Jews as “inbred.”
Piker is one of the most popular streamers on Twitch and just did a major interview with a Jewish outlet, speaking with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Andrew Lapin.
Lapin’s article left it up to the reader to keep score, as good articles do. It’s worth a read.
Hasan Piker is a major force in pushing Democrats to turn against Israel. He is calculating. He knows that people care about status and charisma. They care about looking smart, not actually being intelligent.
Piker is physically attractive, and has been the subject of glowing articles in outlets like People and The New York Times.
So why did Piker pick this time to give an interview to a Jewish media outlet? Because he sees he has the backing of influential people to downplay his evil. He knows that politics is about power, and he has more chutzpah than many American Jews do — he’ll go to a Jewish outlet, and claim to support Jews.
He can go to Yale and other colleges like he is someone to be admired and get applause. According to Congressman Torres, in addition to supporting terrorist groups like Hezbollah and championing “resistance” against Israel, “Piker has even gone as far as to incite violence, telling his followers to ‘kill’ and ‘murder’ people ‘in the streets’ and ‘let the streets soak in their red-capitalist blood.’”
In an Opinion article for The Forward, Emily Tamkin writes: “If pushing back against antisemitism is the top priority for our community, I suspect that writing Piker off as an antisemite with whom engagement simply can’t be countenanced will do more harm than good.”
She says that his statements and attitudes are different than Nick Fuentes, and that “this distinction matters. Fuentes’ antisemitism is so extreme and all-encompassing that his fans and followers will never be allies to American Jews. There is little evidence to believe the same is true for Piker. To successfully fight antisemitism, American Jews need a broad base of allies. In that context, Piker’s audience — including nearly 3 million followers on the streaming platform Twitch — is one that it would be a mistake for us to wholly write off.”
While I don’t know if it’s a good use of time to worry if Fuentes or Piker is worse, it is important to note that Fuentes will not be joining any major candidates on the political stage, while Piker will. I also would not be surprised if Piker eventually decides to run for office himself.
Many Democrats like Torres and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) realize how dangerous and extreme Piker is. But many more Democrats are ready to embrace him.
Piker is anti-American — and also obviously hates Israel.
A failure to protest the normalization of Piker into mainstream politics signifies that Jews are not only okay with being America’s punching bag, but we prefer the bully sit next to us at the table, so we can tell ourselves we are cool. Ezra Klein is a disgrace to try to give Piker a positive profile — as are many other progressives of all stripes (Jewish and non-Jewish alike). We are way past mental gymnastics. We are at the point where fools have broken the balance beam.
Piker has calculated that many Jews are stupid, afraid, or don’t have the chutzpah to protest him, because so many are like Thomas Friedman and will do anything to stay relevant. The sad thing is that Piker may be right.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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What Has the War Against Iran Revealed About the Status of Countries Around the World?
United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United Nations Barbara Woodward, accompanied by other E3 members German Ambassador Ricklef Beutin and Deputy French Ambassador Jay Dharmadhikari, speaks to members of the press about Iran and nuclear weapons outside the UN Security Council chamber at UN Headquarters in New York City, US, Aug. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Angelina Katsanis
The Epic Fury/Roaring Lion War cast a spotlight on the power index of many countries and the global and regional balance of power. For the purposes of this paper, a country’s power is defined as its security and economic posture. A country may have additional supporting strengths (once called “soft”), such as diplomacy, influence, and internal resilience. For the weaker player, such strengths provide power, but their effectiveness is limited. Ultimately, they are embodied in two main ones: strategic-security posture and economic dominance.
There is a gap between a country’s self-perception and its actual power, as Russia learned after its decision to invade Ukraine. This paper assesses “objective” power rather than a country’s self-perception.
One country in the world today is considerably more powerful than all others: the United States. There are weak countries in the world. In fact, out of about 200 countries, a significant portion of them are either weak or have small yet sufficient power relative to their surroundings. A new member of the latter club is Spain, which was once a global empire but which is now weak in terms of both security and economy.
The other countries rest on a continuum. They can be divided into two types: those that strive for power and those that flee from weakness. The Epic Fury War held up a mirror to the global and regional arena, allowing for a recalibration of the position of various countries on the continuum.
There are several reasons why Epic Fury is a better indicator of countries’ strength than the war in Ukraine or the situation in the China Sea:
- It is the first global war crisis during the presidency of Donald Trump, who has placed the issue of power at the center of his strategy;
- it transformed from a regional crisis into a global one due to the energy issue and the supply chain challenges, which have intensified in recent years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic; and
- it puts key geostrategic arenas to the test, such as Russia-Europe, India-Pakistan, and, in the Pacific, from China to Australia.
Estimating change in the power index of key countries
The description below is intended to provide initial directions for the professional and academic discourse on the issue.
Iran: The Islamic Republic has returned to fleeing from weakness. In the first two decades of its existence, the regime fled from weakness, with the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War playing a central role. However, in the last two decades, it changed course and moved toward striving for power. The Iranians decided that security power was more important than economic, and were willing to pay the painful price of sanctions in exchange for it. The main milestones of this shift seem to have been the regime’s success in suppressing the “Green Movement” protest in 2009; the absence of restrictions on its behavior in the missile field and in the regional arena in the JCPOA in 2015; its ability to supply advanced missile capabilities to proxies; and the victories of its axis in aiding the Assad regime in Syria and in the Houthis’ fight against the Saudis and the UAE. Unlike Qassem Soleimani, who strove for regional power in a calculated manner while managing risk, his successors were less rigorous, as evidenced by their inability to control Hamas on October 7. The current war, even if the Islamic regime does not yet fully understand it as such, is a severe blow to its striving after power. During the process of internalizing the results of the war, the regime will likely grasp that it has to return to the approach of fleeing from weakness.
United States: The US has strengthened its pursuit of power. Epic Fury was a purposeful display of the Americans’ absolute military superiority, especially as it was supported by an ally who is a “running horse,” not a “lazy donkey.” It experienced a slight backlash in the area of economic power, because it is still internally sensitive to energy price fluctuations, but this negative is insignificant relative to its achievements.
China and the Pacific: The Chinese have come out ahead in their pursuit of power. On the one hand, an ostensible ally of Beijing has been severely damaged and isolated. But on the economic level, through the strength it has built in recent years in the field of supply chains, China has demonstrated clear superiority over its Japanese, South Korean and Australian neighbors. On the military side, what happened in the Persian Gulf hardly whet the world’s appetite for further conflict in the China Sea, which strengthens China’s bargaining power.
Russia and Europe: The Russian balance sheet for the pursuit of power, especially vis-à-vis Europe, is positive. In economic terms, the war boosted its ability to profit from energy sales and balance the economic difficulties resulting from the long war and sanctions. In the security sphere, Europe’s weakness strengthens Russian power. Like Russia, Ukraine – a country that is by definition fleeing from weakness, especially in the current war – also managed to strengthen its position in the form of security and economic gains. On the other hand, Europe, fleeing from weakness, suffered another blow to its security power: the practical disintegration of the NATO alliance and the distancing from Europe of the United States, NATO’s critical component.
India and Pakistan: India’s quest for power has been negatively affected. Pakistan succeeded – in a process that has been going on for more than a year – in positioning itself as an asset to the United States, but was exposed for its weakness as a military partner of Saudi Arabia. However, this development should be analyzed more in the context of India, since the rapprochement between the United States and Pakistan is an American challenge to the independent strategy that India is pursuing, among other areas, in the Russian context. In addition, the war revealed weaknesses in the Indian supply chain. These developments reflect the fact that India still faces significant challenges in its quest for global power.
Germany, Great Britain and France: Here we see a reversal of roles. Germany is the one striving after power, while Britain and France, which, in recent decades, have exercised security power in various arenas, have been revealed as unable to exert power, mainly for internal reasons. They are now deep along the continuum among those fleeing from weakness, while Germany appears to have passed through another stage in its complex return to being a security power.
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf: Epic Fury posed a challenge to the Saudi approach of striving for power and fleeing from the weakness of the other Gulf countries. For decades, Saudi Arabia positioned itself as the key regional player striving for power through its enormous economic capabilities. The current de facto ruler, Muhammad bin Salman, attempted to regulate this effort through Vision 2030. In this pursuit, Saudi Arabia prioritized economic power over security power, and this resulted in painful military losses to the Houthis over the past decade. The Iranian decision to militarily attack the Gulf states and oil exports as a central strategic approach (albeit with no choice) represented a security challenge to the Gulf states’ economic power. Saudi Arabia will now have to reexamine whether it can continue to strive for power or must shift to the more realistic approach of fleeing from weakness.
In the other Gulf states, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait, the situation is even clearer. Their basic strategy is to flee from weakness. The war proved to them that they need to improve their capabilities, mainly in the security field and in alternatives to oil and gas flows.
Turkey‘s approach also retreated somewhat as a result of the war. It has shifted from a country that strives more and more after power to one that flees from weakness.
Israel: Epic Fury/Roaring Lion constituted a significant achievement in Israel’s pursuit of power – with an asterisk.
David Ben-Gurion’s national security strategy was designed as a flight from inherent weakness. It created a durable force with five components: a qualitative conventional military advantage, an image of nuclear deterrence, special relations with a superpower, economic and technological superiority, and national resilience.
Over a long process, Israel’s approach transformed from a flight from weakness to the pursuit of power. A number of key events can be highlighted: the Six-Day War, which confirmed Israel’s military power in the region and ultimately led to the peace agreement with Egypt; the leap to a hi-tech, free-market economy that manifested from 1992; and the process, resulting from the shock of the October 7, 2023 attack, of releasing itself from the constraints it had placed upon itself on its use of military force. That unshackling manifested in the operation in Khan Yunis in early 2024, the beeper operation and elimination of Nasrallah at the end of that year, and Operation Rising Lion in 2025. The State of Israel today is, as a result of the current war, a country with military and economic power much greater than its objective geo-political posture. However, when we look forward, we see that its position is unbalanced. Israel must re-strengthen the other elements of its power (see Perspective Paper No. 2347, June 3, 2025): an advanced, resilient society and economy, with improved long-term positioning of its relations with the United States and other powers.
Col. (res.) Shay Shabtai is a senior researcher at the BESA Center and an expert in national security, strategic planning, and strategic communication. He is a cyber security strategist and a consultant to leading companies in Israel. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Shocking: How Palestinian Propaganda Mirrors Language Directly From the Nazis
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, meets with Adolf Hitler in 1941. Photo: German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons.
How similar are narratives presented in Palestinian society, and the words spewed by the Nazis? Read for yourself below and decide:
Hitler:
“The Jews are the eternal archenemy of the human race. They manipulate, corrupt, and destroy societies.”[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chap. 11]
Palestinian Writers’ Union General Secretariat member Talal Abu Afifa:
“The Jews, wherever they settle, they try to take control of the country’s economy and wealth… They did this not just in Britain, but in most of the European states…”
Official PA TV host: “Indeed, wherever they arrived, destruction followed.”
[Official PA TV, In Memory, Nov. 2, 2024]
Hitler:
“The Jews … are a race of parasites… systematically undermining the fabric of societies”[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chap. 10]
PA TV religious lesson:
Palestinian researcher Muhammad Al-Yahya: “Jews are by nature arrogant, do not accept the other… Their [Jewish] thinking is based on racism that caused them to be hated everywhere. The Zionist thinking is based on them being ‘God’s chosen people.’ [as written] In the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”[Official PA TV, Returning, Jan. 17, 2023 and Feb. 27, 2023, May 14, 2023]
Hitler:
“If the Jew, with the help of his Marxist creed, is victorious over the peoples of this world, then his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity”[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chap.11]
Abbas’ advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash:
“The occupation (i.e., Israel) is the cause of all evils… of all crises and disasters that everyone … even possibly the whole world, experiences.”[PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, Jan. 19, 2025]
Hitler:
“The Jewish people, by virtue of their innate characteristics, were driven to world domination.”[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chap. 11]
PA Daily:
“They [Jews] want to subjugate the entire world”[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec. 15, 2024]
Hitler:
“The danger represented by the Jews today finds expression in the undeniable dislike of them felt by a large section of our people.”[Letter from Hitler to Adolf Gimlich, 1919]
Fatah leader Tayseer Nasrallah:
“What happened in the Netherlands [attack on Jewish sports fans] is the best proof that the world is sick of the Jews.”TV host: “Right.”
[Official PA TV, Nov. 10, 2024]
Hitler:
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”[Mein Kampf, Vol. 1, Chap. 11]
Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash:
“Satan does not have to be in the form of a demon, hidden, he can also be in your form, but he is Satan. In the form of man, but he is Satan. And they (i.e., Satan-Jews) are still fighting us until they turn us back from our religion.”
[Official PA TV, July 7, 2023]
Hitler:
“The Jew’s existence is a crime against humanity, and the only solution is his removal from our midst.”[Mein Kampf, Vol. 2, Chap. 13]
PA Ministry of Religious Affairs:
“The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, and the rock or a tree will say: ‘Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him’”
[PA Ministry of Religious Affairs, Facebook page, Oct. 18, 2023]
Facebook page of the PA Ministry of Religious Affairs, Oct. 18, 2023
Hitler:
“The result will not be the … victory of Jewry but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”[Hitler to Reichstag, January 30, 1939]
PA Shari’ah Judge Abdallah Harb: “Allah, strike the aggressive Jews, count them and kill them one by one, and do not leave even one.”
[Official PA TV Live, July 5, 2024]
Hitler:
“I defend myself against the Jew.”[Mein Kampf, 1,2]
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas:
“They said that Hitler killed the Jews because they were Jews, and Europe hates the Jews because they are Jews. No!… They fought [the Jews] because of their social role…“Hitler … fought the Jews because they worked based on usury and money. In other words, they caused ruin in his opinion, and therefore he hated them”
[Official PA TV, August 24, 2023]
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.