The savage attack against Israeli civilians on October 7 reminds us that the Palestinian conflict against Israel is part of an age-old Muslim religious war against the Jews.

It is "Allah’s will" to destroy the Jewish state.

According to Islam scholar Mordechai Kedar, "The existence of a living Jewish people in a functioning Jewish state threatens the very raison d’être of Islam, which came into being to render Judaism obsolete."

A Jewish state on what Muslims believe is their land is an affront to Islam.

A 2014 ADL worldwide survey revealed that countries which are primarily Muslim harbor vastly more antisemitic views than countries with smaller percentages of Muslims.

In the Middle East and North Africa, 74% of respondents hate Jews and a whopping 93% of Palestinians are antisemitic — religious fundamentalists promoting a fanatical, Jew-hating Islamic culture.

Religious leaders preach unquestioned obedience to Allah and the duty of men to sacrifice their lives in his name. Saudi columnist Mozammel Haque explained, "The sacrifice of life and wealth in the way of Allah is the zenith of a man's belief."

The Quran curses the Jews for disobeying the prophets of God, calling them "corrupters," "exploiters" and "distorters” — a divine indictment.

Hatred of the world’s 15 million Jews is fundamental to Islam, the religion of 1.8 billion people.

According to noted scholar of Islamic antisemitism Dr. Andrew Bostom, the Quran’s central anti-Jewish motif is in Surah 2:61, accusing Jews of slaying the Prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah, actions which curse them eternally.

Surah 5:60 talks about the Jews being transformed into "apes and pigs."

The Hadith declares that Judgement Day (salvation) will arrive only after Muslims exterminate the Jews. Extrapolating from the ADL survey, more than 900 million Muslims believe this. This directive is in the 1988 Hamas Charter and is repeated every Friday in mosques throughout the Islamic world.

On October 7, when Palestinians, screaming "Allahu Akbar" (God is greater), slaughtered Jews with uncontrollable religious zeal, in the primitive manner of Muhammad, beheading, raping, mutilating corpses and taking sex slaves, they were clearly on a religious jihad as described in their sacred texts.

Hope and faith that the moment had finally arrived to obliterate the Jewish presence in the Middle East fueled their medieval butchery, as did the fervent belief that, in this life, the greatest achievement possible is to die as a martyr (shahid) for the sake of Allah.

The real dispute is not about land or refugees or statehood.

It is about the refusal of Palestinian Muslims to co-exist with Jews.

In Arabic, Palestinian political and religious leaders describe the conflict with Israel as an Islamic holy war fought by Muslims against Jews to liberate Muslim land, including Israel proper, which they view as an Islamic Waqf, an inalienable religious endowment.

This hoped-for goal is reinforced by Imams in mosques, school textbooks and maps which omit Israel.

A vast majority of Arabs across the Mideast support Hamas’s slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7 as "legitimate resistance,"according to a January 2024 Qatari survey of 16 nations.

Only 5% denounce Hamas’s war crimes as illegitimate.

Eighty-nine per cent reject a Jewish state in the Middle East. All West Bank Palestinians polled support the Oct. 7 genocide. In another poll, 98% of West Bank Arabs and Gazans said the rape, slaughter and hostage-taking made them feel "prouder of their identity as Palestinians."

These polls shock most Westerners who assume that all people share our values.

For Muslim believers, life is a corridor leading to paradise.

They find the Western focus on freedom, peace, security and prosperity in this life immoral and debased.

If one accepts the word of Allah, a two-state solution hardly fulfills the Muslim goal of exterminating the Jews in the Mideast.

In a May 10, 1994 speech in Arabic, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat called for a jihad to liberate Jerusalem, suggesting that the now-discredited Oslo Accords were a reversible tactical move, a temporary peace.

He told an associate, "The day will come when you will see thousands of Jews fleeing Palestine. The Oslo Accords will help bring this about."

From any perspective, the Biden plan for a Palestinian state in Israel’s Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria is asinine.

Not only does it facilitate the annihilation of the Jews, but, perhaps most ludicrous of all, sharing the land with the Jews is not what the Palestinians themselves want!

Read their lips!

Ziva Dahl is a senior fellow with the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Ziva writes and lectures about U.S.-Israel relations, U.S. foreign policy, Israel, Zionism, Antisemitism and BDS on college campuses. Her articles have appeared in such publications as The Hill, New York Daily News, New York Observer, The Washington Times, American Spectator, American Thinker and Jerusalem Post. Read Ziva Dahl's Reports — More Here.