Since the Oct. 7 jihad massacre in Israel, we have seen Muslims, along with their leftist allies and useful idiots, demonstrating in favor of Hamas all over the world. We have not seen Muslims demonstrating in favor of Israel, or even just against Hamas. Now, however, a major head of state has denounced the Hamas atrocities and declared that they do not represent Islam. Is he the head of state of Iran? Pakistan? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Alas, no: he is the president of Israel.
The largely ceremonial Israeli head of state, President Isaac Herzog, said it Thursday and emphasized that his statement was not meant just for his audience in the town of Rahat in southern Israel, but for everyone. “I tell the world,” he proclaimed, “that this is not a war of Jews against Muslims. It is a war between the people of light and the people of darkness, between good and evil, between doing good and doing bad, this is the war.”
Inspiring words, but the more one ponders them, the less they signify. Herzog is right on the face of it: this is indeed a war between good and evil, but it’s also important to remember that the evil side doesn’t think of itself as such, but believes it is right and righteous. Hamas, and its Palestinian and Muslim supporters in general, are engaging in a practice that no less a luminary than the prophet Isaiah warned about: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” (Isaiah 5:20) The people who carried out the massacre in Israel on Oct. 7 believe that the creator of the universe has ordered them to “kill them wherever you find them,” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, cf. 9:5), even if you have to paraglide into a music festival to do it.
Herzog is right in another way: this is not a war of Jews against Muslims, but it is certainly a war of Muslims against Jews. Obviously, not all Muslims are fighting this war or are even interested in it, but those who are fighting it consistently explain the conflict in Islamic terms. Hamas top dog Ghazi Hamad said last week that Israel “constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe” not just for Palestinian Arabs, but for the “Islamic nation.” The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Religious Affairs recently published guidelines for preachers in mosques that included the notorious Islamic tradition in which Muhammad tells Muslims that they can hasten the onset of the end times by murdering Jews: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim 2922)
Taking no notice of that or other statements from Muslim leaders linking Islam to the conflict, Herzog added, “We sincerely sympathize with the grief of the entire Arab public and the Bedouin society in particular.“ Grief over what? The massacre of Oct. 7? And did he ask anyone in Rahat if the Arab public and Bedouin society in particular sympathize with the grief of Israeli Jews? No, he did not.
Continuing in the same cloudy vein of fantasies and platitudes, Herzog also said, “We must remember that the struggle is not really a struggle of a political nature, it is about our ability to live here in a Middle East of peace, as opposed to a Middle East of bloodshed and war.” He asserted that the slaughter of Oct. 7 “made no sense,” while continuing to ignore the sense it unfortunately does make as a fulfillment of what are perceived to be divine commands written in the Qur’an to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89, cf. 9:5).
Related: Rabbi Claims That Hamas Has ‘Perverted Islam.’ Alas, No.
Yet still Herzog wasn’t finished. Piling more wishful thinking on what he had already delivered, he concluded: “I will make another comment that you will accept with love. What we saw on October 7th does not represent Islam. Islam is a religion with a lot of respect and sensitivity and love and brotherhood. This represents an unimaginable evil that must be eliminated.“
If this is true, why is it that we do not see Muslim leaders condemning Hamas’ attacks? Why is it always non-Muslim leaders such as Isaac Herzog who constantly assure us that Islam is peaceful? The unfortunate answer is that those leaders are speaking out of ignorance and political calculation. And insofar as that political calculation is based on ignorance, it has no chance whatsoever of accomplishing anything.
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