Muslim Brotherhood: 'No peace as long as Israel exists'

Many officials in Western nations, including the United States, have regarded the Muslim Brotherhood as a relatively moderate movement that has eschewed violence.

But an official statement made it clear this week that as far as the Brotherhood is concerned, there will be no peace in the Middle East as long as Israel exists.

And in a revealing video report, Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the United States and abroad made it clear that their ultimate objective remains the replacement of every governmental system on earth with Islamic law.

Amid discussion of President Trump's "Deal of the Century" in Bahrain to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians and their Arab allies, the Brotherhood weighed in.

"The Muslim Brotherhood condemns all forms of normalization with the Zionist enemy, and all the actions leading up to the Zionist-American deal, and confirms that all Arab regimes involved in the 'Deal of the Century' are anti-Arab peoples, and traitors to the Palestinian cause," the Muslim Brotherhood said on its Facebook page Tuesday, reported the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

"The Arab and Islamic people's position will remain firm in support of the Palestinian cause, not recognized by the Zionist entity, and is alien to all forms of normalization," the Brotherhood said.

IPT noted the U.S. proposal would devote $27.5 billion to building up the West Bank and Gaza as part of a proposed $50 billion economic investment in the region.

Saudi Arabia, which backs the plan, contends it will lead to a fully independent Palestinian state.

The International Union of Muslim Scholars, which for years was led by Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, joined the Muslim Brotherhood in condemning the deal.

"The land of Palestine is all Islamic and not one inch of it can be given up, nor its inheritance sold," IUMS Trustee Sheikh Hassan Ould Aldo said in statement on the Muslim scholars' group's website. "This is not a deal."

On Monday, the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian offshoot, Hamas, issued a statement in Arabic describing all of Israel as "territories occupied in 1948."

The English version omitted the reference but described the U.S. plan as "dead letters, as the Palestinian people, who have been fighting for their freedom for more than 100 years, will not be lured into waving their claim to their homeland in return for the world's wealth."

IPT observed: "The statements make it clear that, to the Brotherhood and to Hamas, the problem is not Israeli government actions or policies. It is the country's existence that can never be accepted in a negotiation. They believe that Jews are the enemies of Allah, as countless videos on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV show."

A 2012 propaganda music video produced by Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades, for example, declared: "Killing the occupiers [Israelis] is worship that Allah made into law."

IPT further noted the Hamas charter quotes Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

Al-Banna called Jews and Zionists "the enemies of Allah" in his book "Fee Qaafilatil-Ikhwaan al-Muslimeen."

The Brotherhood backed the Nazis during World War II and sent Sheikh Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, then the grand mufti of Jerusalem, to Germany to meet with Adolf Hitler.

He told Hitler that Jews were the common enemy of Islam and the Nazis and served as an intermediary between the Brotherhood founder and the Nazi dictator.

Al-Husseini helped recruit Muslims from the Balkans, Egypt and elsewhere to fight for the Nazis and became an SS general. France later arrested al-Husseini as a war criminal, but the British persuaded France to release him to Egypt to prevent further violence in the Muslim world.

Islam 'the solution' for America

Jihad Watch spotlighted a video this week by investigative reporter Ami Horowitz that features interviews with Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the United States and overseas.

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer observed the Brotherhood leaders are "surprisingly candid with him, exploding the narrative of the establishment media and Islamic advocacy groups in the U.S., who claim that the Brotherhood has no presence here and is benign anyway."

Horowitz said he has been in regular correspondence with the author of the Brotherhood's "Explanatory Memorandum," Mohamed Akram. The document says the Brotherhood "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Among the Muslim Brotherhood operatives interviewed by Horowitz is Nidal Mohamed Sakr, who was personally acquainted with Osama bin Laden and now lives in condo a few blocks from the ocean in Huntington Beach, California.

In October 2017, Sakr called for the killing of President Trump.

He explained to Horowitz that in each country where Muslim Brotherhood operatives are placed, their strategy is to "work within the system."

"How successful is that approach right now?" Horowitz asked.

"Ah, it's very, very successful," Sakr replied.

In an interview with prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader Ashraf Abdel Ghaffar in Turkey, Horowitz asked whether or not democracy was a good "tool" to help achieve the Brotherhood's objective of "growing Islam around the world."

"Why not?" he replied. "Why not?"

Ghaffar said "there are no morals in America," and Islam is "the solution."

Horowitz noted that to achieve it's objective, the Muslim Brotherhood founded organizations in the United States such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American Society and the Muslim Student Association.