'Jordan will regain J'lem from slayers of prophets'

"The arrogance of the Jews will be defeated, Allah willing," imam tells worshipers on state TV at Friday prayers in Jordan.

By OREN KESSLER
Palestian worshippers at J'lem's Al-Aksa Mosque 521 (R) (photo credit: Reuters)
Palestian worshippers at J'lem's Al-Aksa Mosque 521 (R)
(photo credit: Reuters)
Jordan’s army will destroy Israel and regain Jerusalem from the “killers of prophets” – that was the message a Jordanian cleric delivered in a Friday sermon on state TV, according to recently released video footage.
“The [Jordanian] army is invincible. Its units are filled with people who pray, with imams, and with people who memorized the Koran. This army will never be defeated, Allah willing,” Imam Ghaleb Rabab’a said in footage translated and released late last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“Jerusalem will be regained, Allah willing, by these modest and pure hands, which hold the Koran high and recite it day and night,” Rabab’a said in the March 23 sermon. “This is an army that bows before none but Allah. Today, we must take pride in our country and its army, which descends from the Prophet Muhammad.”
It remained unclear whether the sermon was delivered from a state-run or private mosque.
Article 11 of the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty calls on both countries “to abstain from hostile or discriminatory propaganda against each other, and to take all possible legal and administrative measures to prevent the dissemination of such propaganda by any organization or individual present in the territory of either party.”
Requests to the Jordanian Embassy in Israel for comment went unanswered Sunday.
“The arrogance of the Jews will be defeated, Allah willing,” Rabab’a said. “This army, my brothers in faith, will shatter the might of Israel, Allah willing, just as the might of the Crusaders and the Byzantines was shattered at Hittin, at Yarmouk, Al-Qadisiyya [and] ‘Ain Jalut.”
Hittin, near Tiberias, was the location of the 12th-Century battle in which Saladin’s Muslim army started its final push of the Crusaders out of the Holy Land. ‘Ain Jalut, near today’s Kibbutz Yizre’el, was the site a century later where Muslim forces struck the first major blow against the invading Mongol armies.
“[Israel’s might] will be shattered by the will of Allah,” Rabab’a said in the sermon. “Allah will not leave for long the first direction of prayer for the Islamic nation in the hands of the slayers of the prophets.”
In January the media monitoring group Palestinian Media Watch released a video of Grand Mutfi of Jerusalem Mohammed Hussein reciting a hadith (saying attributed to Islam’s prophet Mohammed) calling for the killing of Jews.
“The day of judgment will not come until you fight the Jews,” Hussein said in the clip.
“The Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will call, ‘Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on the attorney- general to open an incitement investigation into the cleric’s remarks, and President Shimon Peres encouraged the Justice Ministry to open its own investigation.
Hussein, appointed by the Palestinian Authority, has refused to retract his comments, insisting he had not called for the killing of Jews but had simply been quoting the Islamic prophet, whose words he could not change.
“These allegations come within the Israeli incitement campaign against Jerusalem and its figures,” he said.
Herb Keinon contributed to this report.