Muslim war rhetoric against Israel – repeated

Turkey, Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi say they want to wipe out Israel and that the whole region is actually Muslim. The rhetoric is not new, every Arab/Muslim war against Israel has been preceded by vicious propaganda about eliminating the Jewish state.

Syrian President Nureddin al-Atassi (left) shakes hands with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (right), with Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad in the center. Photo: Commons Wikimedia

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a party meeting at the end of July that Turkey may enter Israel in the same way it has done in the past in Libya and Nagorno–Karabakh, Reuters reported.
– Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we can do something similar to them, he said during the meeting.
Turkey’s ally, the terrorist group Hamas, is very clear about its goal of annihilating Israel. 
– I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all borders and that the Arab world will stand with us, Hamas spokesman Taher El–Nounou told The New York Times in November.
 And already on October 24 last year, Ghazi Hamad promised in the Hamas Politburo that if Hamas gets the chance, the massacre from October 7 will be repeated many times until Israel is exterminated.
– Israel is a country that has no room… We must remove it because it represents a security, military and political disaster for the Arab and Islamic nation. We are not ashamed to say this, he told the Lebanese TV channel LBC.

Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said on May 24 that ”the divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea.”
 Hezbollah also has the elimination of the state of Israel as one of its main goals. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has explicitly stated that it wants to destroy the state of Israel and sees terrorist attacks as a way to weaken it and lay the foundation for an Islamic Arab army that can wipe Israel out. 
Even Al–Qaeda has repeatedly stated that Israel must be destroyed. The slogan of the Houthi movement reads: ”Allah is the greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam”. During Israel’s war against Hamas, the Houthi movement has said it will continue to attack until Israel disappears.
 On August 26, Syrian dictator Bashar Al–Assad spoke of ”the criminal Zionist army” and described Israel as a Western ”colonial project” that will fall when Israel falls.

This war rhetoric from Muslim terror groups and autocrats isn’t new. Similar incitement against Jews has preceded every Arab–Muslim war against Israel, as before the Six–Day War that broke out on June 5, 1967. ”Our basic goal will be to destroy Israel. The Arab people want to fight… we undertake to be ready to start a general war with Israel,” continued Nasser on May 27, 1967 who the next day pointed out that he would not accept any … coexistence with Israel.
 After signing a defence pact with King Hussein of Jordan, Nasser said on May 30, 1967, ”The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon stand ready at Israel’s borders … to meet the challenge, while we have the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the entire Arab nation behind us.”
 Egyptian state radio broadcast a statement on May 22, 1967 that ”the Arab people are firmly resolved to wipe Israel off the map” and on May 25, 1967 that ”millions of Arabs … are preparing to blow up all America’s interests, all America’s installations and your entire existence, America.”

Iraqi President Abdel Rahman Aref said on May 31, 1967, ”The existence of Israel is a mistake that must be corrected. This is our opportunity to wipe out the disgrace that has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear – to wipe Israel off the map.”
 Ahmed Shukairy, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), expressed on June 1, 1967 – in a situation where Egypt had occupied Gaza, and Jordan had annexed Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) for nearly two decades – that ”We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors—if there are any—the boats are ready to deport them.” 
Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Assad, who then took power in a military coup and is the father of Syria’s current dictator, said on May 20, 1967 that Syrian forces are ”prepared not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland… As a military man, I believe it is time to enter a war of extermination.” 
Algerian Prime Minister Houari Boumedienne, in turn, emphasized that ”the freedom of the Motherland will be completed through the destruction of the Zionist entity and the expulsion of the Americans and the British from the region.”