May 12, 2021- 12:19 p.m.
A senior Hamas official has reportedly called on Jerusalem residents to buy “five shekel knives” to “cut off the heads of Jews” in a recent video.
“People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here,” Fathi Hammad, Hamas Political Bureau member and former interior minister, says in the clip, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels. With those five shekels, you will humiliate the Jewish state,” he said.
“The Jews have spread corruption and acted with arrogance, and their moment of reckoning has come. The moment of destruction at your hands has arrived,” Hammad added.
Several people cited the Hamas honcho’s call to arms in the context of his militant group’s firing of rockets into Israel and the clashes between Palestinian rioters and Israeli forces in Jerusalem, the Jewish Journal reported.
“This week’s events are part of a wave of terror led by the terrorist organization Hamas, resulting from reckless and irresponsible incitement to commit violence,” Dov Hikind, former Democratic Brooklyn Assemblyman and head of Americans Against Antisemitism, said in a tweet.
Maurice Hirsch, a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces reserves who serves as head of legal strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, tweeted: “These are the people who were going to take part in, and win, the PA elections. #SheikhJarrah is a subterfuge!”
Sheikh Jarrah is the neighborhood in East Jerusalem where four Palestinian families could be evicted, the purported impetus for the unrest I the capital city, according to the Jewish Journal.
Michael Dickson, executive Israel director of right-wing pro-Israel group StandWithUs, also shared the inflammatory video and wrote: “Hamas = ISIS.”
