by Clive Pinder, The New Conservative
Resolving the Middle East conflict requires intellectual honesty, historical context and moral clarity. These are not border disputes. They are existential struggles rooted in theology, ideology and survival. The recent Israeli strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure underscore how much higher the stakes have become.
The origins of this enmity stretch back over 1,300 years. The Jews’ original ‘sin’ in Islamic doctrine was not conquest or colonisation, it was rejection. When the Jewish tribes of Arabia refused to accept Muhammad’s claim to prophethood, the response was extermination. The Banu Qurayza were beheaded, their women and children enslaved. This was not a footnote of history but a precedent that jihadist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah still glorify.
Contrast this with Christianity’s beginnings. When the Jews rejected Jesus’s messianic claims, the early Christians responded not with bloodshed but sorrow. They endured persecution, preached forgiveness and offered salvation rather than imposed it. One path sanctified the sword, the other the cross. Islamism remains firmly rooted in the former.
In 1988, Hamas codified its genocidal vision in a Charter citing a Hadith:
The Day of Judgement will not come until Muslims fight the Jews… even the stones and trees will say: “O Muslims… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
This is not hyperbole. It is a theological war cry turned into policy. In 2006, Gazans elected Hamas with full knowledge of its founding document. Despite a 2017 ‘policy update’, the Charter remains intact. The rebranding was pure PR. Western-sanitised jihad.