According to US and Canadian intelligence agencies the Shi'ite jihad terror organization Hezb'allah, supported by its patron Iran, is poised, once again, to launch a lethal attack against "Jewish targets" far removed from the battlegrounds of the Middle East. Although no substantive evidence has emerged identifying a specific target, both Canada and Latin America have been suggested as possibilities, the latter being where, in Buenos Aires, Hezb'allah struck twice during the 1990s, killing 29 at the Israeli embassy in 1992, and murdering at least 85 more in a 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre.
The ostensible reason given for this renewed jihad terror activity is "revenge" for the February (2008) assassination of Hezb'allah's murderous terror master Imad Mugniyah, killed by a car bomb in Damascus, Syria. Hezb'allah blames Israel for this assassination, an allegation rejected by Israeli officials. Ultimately, however, Hezb'allah's chronic, annihilationist jihad against Israel reflects a rigid adherence to both classical jihad theory and the ugliest elements of Islamic theology regarding Jews.
The distinguished Shi'ite theologian al-Amili (d.1622) wrote the following (p.213) about jihad war in the Jami-i-Abbasi, his seminal Persian manual of Shi'a Law:
Islamic Holy war [jihad] against followers of other religions, such as Jews, is required unless they convert to Islam or pay the poll tax.
And the Jews stubborn malevolence, portrayed in the darkest colours by Islam's sacred texts, is their defining worldly characteristic. Examples of this archetypal Jew hatred from the Koran, and hadith (traditions of the Muslim prophet Muhammad), amplified by the early Muslim biographies of Muhammad, include: Koranic verses labelling Jews as malevolent enemies of Islam (5:82); disobedient slayers of their own prophets who suffered justifiable abasement (2:61), including, for some, transformation into apes and swine (5:60); the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim Book 026, Number 5431), and accounts provided by early Muslim biographers of Muhammad (such as Ibn Saad, below), that the Jews caused Muhammad's protracted, excruciating death from poisoning:
"The Jews discussed about poisons and became united in one poison. She, a Khaybar Jewess, Zaynab Bint al-Harith, poisoned the goat putting more poison in the forelegs.. Allah's Apostle took the foreleg, a piece of which he put into his mouth...Allah'sApostle sent for Zaynab and handed her over to those who put her to death. Allah's Apostle lived after this three years, till in consequence of his pain he passed away. During his illness he used to say: I did not cease to find the effect of the poisoned morsel I took at Khaybar..."
Hezb'allah's name, The Party of Allah, derives from Koran 5:56
And whoever takes Allah and His messenger and those who believe for a guardian, then surely the party of Allah are they that shall be triumphant.
In a public statement issued February 15/16, 1986, Hezb'allah stressed its indelible links to Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini ("We obey the orders of one leader wise and just...") and conceived of itself as a "nation" linked to Muslims worldwide by"...a strong ideological and political bond, namely Islam." Expressed in the political language of the Koran, Hezb'allah's ideology encompasses, (as per the slogan adorning the party emblem, "The Party of Allah is Sure to Triumph") at least three major objectives:
We do not constitute an organized party in Lebanon, nor are we a tight political cadre. We are an umma linked to the Muslims of the whole world by the solid doctrinal and religious connection of Islam, whose message God wanted to be fulfilled by the Seal of the Prophets, i.e., Muhammad. This is why whatever touches or strikes Muslims, in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines and everywhere reverberates throughout the Muslim umma of which we are an integral part. Our behaviour is dictated to us by legal principles laid down by the light of an overall political conception defined by the leading jurist. (wilayat al-faqih)
As for our culture, it is based on the Holy Koran, the Sunna and the legal rulings of the faqih who is our source of imitation (marja' al-taqlid). Our culture is crystal clear. It is not complicated and is accessible to all.
No one can imagine the importance of our military potential, as our military apparatus is not separate from our overall social fabric. Each of us is a fighting soldier. And when it becomes necessary to carry out the Holy war (Jihad), each of us takes up his assignment in the fight in accordance with the injunctions of the Law, and that in the framework of the mission carried out under the tutelage of the Commanding Jurist. Our struggle against Israel will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease-fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.
Demonising Israel and Jews, via motifs in the Koran and hadith, Hezb'allah views the jihad against the "Zionist entity" as an annihilationist war intrinsic to broader conflicts: the struggle between the Islamic world and the non-Muslim world, and the historical struggle between Islam and Judaism.
The most senior clerical authority for Hezb'allah, Husayn Fadlalah has stated,
We find in the Koran that the Jews are the most aggressive towards the Muslims...because of their aggressive resistance to the unity of the faith.
Fadlallah repeatedly refers to anti-Jewish archetypes in the Koran, hadith, and sura: the corrupt, treacherous and aggressive nature of the Jews; their reputation as killers of prophets, who spread corruption on earth; and the notion that the Jews engaged in conspiratorial efforts against the Muslim prophet.
Fadlallah argues, ultimately,
“Either we destroy Israel or Israel destroys us” - Muhammad.
Hassan Nasrallah, current Secretary General of Hezb'allah, and a protégé of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, presently Iran's highest ranking political and religious authority (i.e., its "Guardian Jurisprudent"), has reiterated these anti-Semitic and annihilationist views with particular vehemence. Invoking motifs from Islam's foundational texts, Nasrallah has characterized Jews as the "grandsons of apes and pigs," and as "Allah's most cowardly and greedy creatures." He elaborates these themes into an annihilationist animus against all Jews, not merely Israelis.
Anyone who reads the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history...
Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment...There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel.
If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli. If they, the Jews, all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.
The Shi'ite jihadist organization Hezb'allah thus proclaims with triumphant exuberance its visceral opposition to Judaism and the existence of Israel, stressing the eternal conflict between the Jews and Islam. Eradicating Israel, and terrorizing, perhaps even destroying Jewish communities worldwide, represents an early stage of Hezballah's Pan-Islamic ambitions, and its jihad against the rest of the non-Muslim world. Blithely ignoring this reality, and allowing places such as Toronto Canada, or Dearborn Michigan to become hubs for Hezb'allah fund-raising and organizing is both morally repugnant, and destructive to our most fundamental Western values expressed with such eloquence in George Washington's 1790 letter to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island.
The Citizens of the United States ofAmerica have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess a like liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Andrew G Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus, 2005) and The Legacy of Anti-Semitism
About the Author
DR ANDREW BOSTOM is a physician specializing in Epidemiology. Since 1997 he has been part of the full-time medical faculty at one of the two major teaching hospital affiliates of Brown University, which is one of the "Ivy League" universities that is located in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. His current research focuses on the relationship between kidney and cardiovascular disease. http://www.andrewbostom.org
