Mick Hartley

At the height of the Balkan troubles back in the Nineties it used to be a commonplace to talk of ancient ethnic rivalries, and to wonder in particular at the extraordinary hold that the past still had over modern-day Serbs, who would talk of the 14th Century Battle of Kosovo, against the Ottoman Empire, as though it were yesterday. Its memory was invoked as a rallying cry for Serb nationalists under Milosevic.

In the Arab world the equivalent seems to be the Battle of Khaybar, in 629 AD, when the forces of Mohammed defeated the Jews near Medina.

Here's Egyptian cleric Hazem Shuman speaking on Al-Rahma TV on October 31 (transcript here, in case you find – as you may well - that watching the man turns your stomach):

Tonight’s lecture is one of the most important lectures of this series. Tonight, we will talk about the Battle of Khaybar, about the Prophet Muhammad’s greatest battle [with the Jews], in which the Prophet eradicated the Jewish presence in Al-Madina.

On June 5, 1967, when the Jews occupied Palestine and Jerusalem and were celebrating their victory, Moshe Dayan cried: “This is our revenge for Khaybar.” How come Khaybar remained seared in their hearts for 1,400 years? After 1,400 years, their hearts are still burning because of Khaybar. The first thing that the Prophet Muhammad did after his victory in the Hudaybiyya Treaty, after he stabilized the Muslim state, and neutralized the Quraysh front, the first mission of the Prophet Muhammad, his first campaign, was against the Jews of Khaybar.

Your turn has come at last, you offspring of apes and pigs, you most accursed creatures created by Allah, you people who have harmed the Prophet again and again.

Only 20 days after the Hudaybiyya Treaty, the Prophet Muhammad decided to take the army of Islam to Khaybar. Why the Jews of all people? It has been proven that the Jews are like a cancer – if they are not removed from the body of the nation, they will kill the entire nation. Unless the Jews were dealt with, they would have brought the Persians and the Byzantines to the Arabian Peninsula. the Jews are dangerous to the whole world. They threatened the stability of the Arabian Peninsula.  […]

Jews are always the same. We are still tormented by the sights of their massacres of the Muslims, when they went into Sabra and Shatila. Sharon chopped off the limbs of children, and used them to make a necklace, so that he could boast that he dismembered the bodies of Muslim children. When the Jews entered Sabra and Shatila, a Jewish soldier took a pregnant woman and emptied a submachine gun into her neck. When she was dead, he cut open her belly, took out her nine-month-old fetus, and slaughtered it in front of the Muslims.

They took 30 Muslim men and women, including a newly-wed couple, and shot them all in Sabra and Shatila. They chased a six-year-old boy, whose mother was hugging him and calling for help. They stabbed him with knives and killed him in his mother’s lap. In the end, she went mad, because of what had happened. They shot dead an entire family, except for a baby, who screamed at the sight of the bloodbath. The moment they saw he was crying, they shot him with a machine-gun as well. At Sabra and Shatila, they raped a Muslim woman, and then killed her children in front of her. They tore off women’s ears, by pulling their earrings.

The accepted narrative of Sabra and Shatila, that the massacre was carried out by the Lebanese Forces Christian militia, must be a later Jewish fabrication, then. Well, we know how they control the media…

And so it goes.

Does the cleric have a message? Of course he has a message:

I have a message for every Jew on the face of the earth. The army of Muhammad will return. Oh offspring of apes and pigs, the day of vengeance is nearing. Oh most accursed creatures created by Allah, those who swore before the Prophet Muhammad to die are returning. Wait for us and you will see, you most accursed creatures. […]

Oh nation of Muhammad, do not be afraid to wage war against the Jews. If you do not fight for the sake of Palestine, Allah will fight you. Decide what you are more afraid of – a war with the Jews, or a war with Allah. Can you fight God? If you abandon Palestine, you will be fighting God.

Puts Milosevic to shame.