Former Hamas Chief Asks Muslims Around the World To Take To the Streets Friday To Join War Against Israel
While the incendiary language is hardly new, the call to arms could find more receptive audiences given the events underway in Israel.
A founding Hamas member and currently the leader of the terror organization in Qatar, Khaled Meshal, is calling on Muslims around the world, particularly those in countries surrounding Israel, to join the groupâs struggle against âthe Jewsâ by taking to the streets Friday and sacrificing their own lives if necessary to regain control of Jerusalem.
â[We must] head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world on Friday,â Mr. Meshal said in a recorded statement sent to Reuters and other press outlets in the Muslim world. âTribes of Jordan, sons of Jordan, brothers and sisters of Jordan ⊠This is a moment of truth and the borders are close to you, you all know your responsibility.â
He said Friday would mark the âFriday of Al-Aqsa flood,â a reference to the mosque in Jerusalem and the name attached to last weekendâs massacre of Israeli civilians by terrorists from the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. He called on Muslims in the countries surrounding Israel to march to the border and attempt to infiltrate the country and those elsewhere to take to the streets in a âJihadâ against Israel and its international supporters.
While the incendiary language is hardly new for Mr. Meshal, the call to arms could find more receptive audiences given the events of last weekend and the worldâs reaction. Muslims sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and their allies have marched in several Western cities in recent days â often spouting virulently antisemitic slogans â to protest Israelâs response to the atrocities and its campaign to rid Gaza of the Hamas terrorists.
In his speech, Mr. Meshal asked for financial help from Muslims across the globe, asking them to embark on what he called a âfinancial Jihadâ to reward the families of the terrorists who carried out last weekendâs attacks and compensate Palestinians in Gaza for the destruction caused by the war.
âThis is the time for Jihad to be applied on the ground rather than just in theory,â he said. âFunds are important but today we are asking for your blood and souls [to be sacrificed for Palestine].â
âThis is the hour of testing,â he said. âThis is the day and the moment we talked about all the time: The Zionists played with fire when they hit the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And I call on everyone at this time to take responsibility and do everything in their power for this war.â
Mr. Meshal became chief of Hamas in 1992 and survived an assassination attempt several years later by Mossad agents in Jordan. He stepped down as the groupâs leader in 2012 and now is nominally in charge of its diaspora office in Doha.
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War against Israel is what the former leader of Hamas was calling on Muslims to join. The point was misstated in the bulldog edition.