Non­fic­tion

Death to the Infi­dels: Rad­i­cal Islam’s War Against the Jews

  • Review
By – May 22, 2014

Pub­lished pri­or to the recent Israel-Hamas con­flict and the rise of ISIS, Mitchell Bard’s study of rad­i­cal Islam’s war against the Jews is, nev­er­the­less, very time­ly. Those who have close­ly fol­lowed the media’s treat­ment of the ongo­ing con­flict between Israel and Hamas may have not­ed how so-called experts” have min­i­mized the sig­nif­i­cance of the Hamas char­ter call­ing for the destruc­tion of the Jew­ish state. Bard, the author of twen­ty-two books on the Mid­dle East, and the cre­ator and direc­tor of the Jew­ish Vir­tu­al Library,” among many schol­ar­ly accom­plish­ments, has pro­vid­ed a com­pre­hen­sive his­to­ry of how the growth of rad­i­cal Islam’s call for Jihad against the Jew­ish state also pits Islamists against Jews around the world. 

Bard notes that Israel’s ene­mies out­side the Mid­dle East, includ­ing the so-called Ara­bists” in the British for­eign ser­vice and the U.S. State Depart­ment, have argued over the years that the root of all prob­lems in the Mid­dle East is the con­flict between Israelis and the Palestin­ians which was, at first, over the cre­ation of Israel and now Israel’s occu­pa­tion of the dis­put­ed ter­ri­to­ries. (It is also true that those who accept this view of the con­flict includes many on the Jew­ish left.) Bard argues that if Israel with­drew from 100 per­cent of the Golan Heights and depart­ed from the West Bank, this would not alter the Jihadists’ belief that Jews occu­py land that was giv­en to them by Allah as promised in the Koran. The real­i­ty, as Bard per­ceives it, is that even if Israel with­drew to the 1948 lines, the Jihadists would inten­si­fy their ter­ror­ist cam­paign, in their belief that if they could force Israel to with­draw that far, more vio­lence would even­tu­al­ly force the Jews into the sea. This is one rea­son the Islam­ic- Jew­ish con­flict will nev­er end.” Fur­ther­more, Bard states that the destruc­tion of Israel is only a small part of the Islamist plan as wit­nessed by the mur­der­ous advance of ISIS, whose objec­tive is to recon­sti­tute the Islam­ic empire high­light­ed by the restora­tion of the Caliphate. 

Just as West­ern lead­ers refused to take seri­ous­ly Adolf Hitler’s pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion to anni­hi­late the Jews, Bard notes, the threats made by rad­i­cal Mus­lims to destroy Israel and mur­der Jews world­wide are typ­i­cal­ly brushed aside. He also warns that the long-term dan­ger fac­ing Jews and Israel is the con­tin­ued Islamiza­tion of Europe and the Mid­dle East, made pos­si­ble by the acqui­si­tion by Mus­lim extrem­ists of weapons of mass destruction.

Relat­ed content:

Jack Fis­chel is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of his­to­ry at Millersville Uni­ver­si­ty, Millersville, PA and author of The Holo­caust (Green­wood Press) and His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Holo­caust (Row­man and Littlefield).

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