Gazans still call for genocide of the Jews while celebrating "peace deal"

One cannot help but marvel at the brazenness of it all: the chants rising like a muezzin's call from the throats of those who fancy themselves peacemakers, yet who summon forth the ghosts of ancient conquests. This is a declaration of perpetual war, a reminder that peace, in their lexicon, is but a pause between battles. 

And Donald Trump, in spite of earning a Nobel Peace Prize, will, of course, wave it away like so much desert sand.

As Robert Spencer's indispensable The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS lays bare with unflinching clarity, the Islamic tradition cherishes a tale that ought to chill the blood of any who still cling to illusions of tolerance. It recounts how Muhammad himself marshaled a Muslim force against the Khaybar oasis, home to Jews whom he had already banished from Medina, no provocation, no casus belli, merely the inexorable logic of expansion. 

One of his followers later recalled the scene with a vividness that borders on the cinematic: "When the apostle raided a people he waited until the morning. If he heard a call to prayer he held back; if he did not hear it he attacked. We came to Khaybar by night, and the apostle passed the night there; and when morning came he did not hear the call to prayer, so he rode and we rode with him….We met the workers of Khaybar coming out in the morning with their spades and baskets. When they saw the apostle and the army they cried, 'Muhammad with his force,' and turned tail and fled. The apostle said, 'Allah Akbar! Khaybar is destroyed. When we arrive in a people's square it is a bad morning for those who have been warned.'"

The invaders wasted no time in their grim harvest. Bursting into Khaybar, they hunted down the inhabitants' riches with the zeal of tax collectors from hell. A Jewish chieftain, Kinana bin al-Rabi, guardian, by tribal trust, of the Banu Nadir's buried treasure, was dragged before Muhammad. Kinana, under duress, feigned ignorance, but the Prophet was not one for games: "Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?" Kinana, cornered, admitted he knew full well the stakes.

A portion of the hoard surfaced, but the rest eluded them. Muhammad's response was as pragmatic as it was pitiless: "Torture him until you extract what he has." A fire was kindled upon Kinana's chest (imagine the agony, the acrid smoke rising like a sacrificial offering) but still he held his tongue. Only as death's shadow lengthened did a blade end his torment, severing head from body. His wife, Safiyya bint Huyayy, fell to the victors as spoils of war; Muhammad, ever the opportunist, selected her for his own harem and contrived a "wedding" that very night, detaining the caravan's departure from Khaybar just long enough to seal the union in the conqueror's tent. Mercy, if one can call it that, flickered briefly:

Muhammad permitted the Khaybar Jews to slink into exile, burdened only with what their arms could bear. Yet he decreed they abandon all gold and silver—a tidy confiscation dressed as concession. He had planned a total expulsion, but the farmers among them, pleading for their soil, bartered half their annual yield for the right to till it. The Prophet assented, with a codicil as cold as a scimitar's edge: "I will allow you to continue here, so long as we would desire." And the warning: "If we wish to expel you we will expel you." Their existence henceforth hung by the thread of Muslim whim, rights reduced to revocable favors. When, inevitably, hidden treasures came to light—smuggled away by the desperate—he retaliated without remorse, enslaving the tribe's women and claiming the land of the guilty. A hadith preserves the epilogue in stark terms: “the Prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and woman taken as captives."

So when today's jihadists cry "Khaybar!" from the streets or the scaffolds, they are not merely rhyming with history; they are resurrecting it, invoking that dawn raid which extinguished the last embers of Jewish life in Arabia. To them, Khaybar is no tragedy but a triumph: the annihilation of the Jews, their wealth rifled and their futures chained, all in the name of a faith that brooks no rivals. 

It is a cry, in short, for the ummah's eternal vendetta, a blueprint for our own uneasy age, should we dare to heed it.

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