For me, the utmost revelatory moment of the Gaza war – as I write, in shaky recess on account of another doubtful ceasefire — came during the interview that Osama Hamdan, the official press spokesman for Hamas, gave to Lebanon’s Al-Quds television July 28 and that was picked up by CNN on August 4, just as terms were being announced for that earlier ceasefire. Hamdan proudly asserted that, among other accomplishments, Hamas had finally got the world to understand that Israeli’s new war, like all its previous ones, was patently for the purpose of replenishing low supplies of the blood of Christian children — which, “as everyone knows,” the Rabbis need for constant levels of production of ritual matzoh. Asked to repeat the statement Hamdan did not flinch: “This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film …. the Israelis concentrate on killing children.” (www.algemeriner.com, August 5.)
Hamdam’s words visibly shook the Western TV broadcasters, who imagine themselves enlightened above the generality of viewers in the deeper causes of all things. But this thinking is not news to Israelis. Warnings about the Israeli blood-harvesting is visited daily on the heads of Palestinian-Arab children via the Palestine Authority’s televised children’s shows and is a central component in the authorized curriculum in its schools.
Meanwhile, the cause for which Hamas has set up its citizens for slaughter before the world’s cameras is being colorfully demonstrated as Hamas’ allies, founders of the new Islamic State, make available over social media their video records of the death marches of their enemies — Christians, Yazidis and various segments of the Muslim community who imagine that they are true servants of Allah but are not so in the eyes of the newly-proclaimed Caliph of All Muslims. These ceremonies end in literal rivers of blood (www.dailymail.co.uk, July 29, 2014.)
Every day, it seems, experts trot out new graphs demonstrating the latest connections among the ever-proliferating terrorist groups, noting arcane differences in their recent histories and their game-plans, but only hinting at their financial sources. Fascinating though this all may be, the bottom line for the rest of us is that this ever-ramifying menace arises out of the ever-growing need of Muslim young men to fulfill the letter of Allah’s command:
Judgment day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill the Jews, and then the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and Allah will make the stones and trees speak, saying, “Oh Muslim, the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’…
The irreducible message of authentic Islam is that strife cannot end anywhere in the world until all have submitted to Islam. Meanwhile, our politicians, echoing their foreign policy experts, tell us that Arab unhappiness is only incidentally about religious matters, and will go away once a proper port has been built along the Gaza strip.
(Paul Merkley is a CIJR Academic Fellow)
