ICEJ NEWS - 05/11/2001
Following close on Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's antisemitic comments to Pope John Paul II in Damascus, Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas asserted on Wednesday that killing Jews is a duty for Arabs.

"We live a tradition of martyrdom," Tlas said in an interview on Lebanese TV. "When I see a Jew before me, I kill him. If every Arab did this, it would be the end of the Jews."

Tlas is known for authoring a book purporting to document the 1841 charge against the Jews of Damascus for killing Arab children to use their blood in making matza at Passover. The book's account of this vicious blood libel has now become the subject of a play by an Egyptian writer.

In addition to the Tlas outburst, the official Syrian government daily TISHRIN on Monday accused the Jewish state of a long history of massacres and crimes against Palestinians and against sites sacred to Moslems and Christians. "The contemporary Zionists are the same as those Jews who were fought by Jesus Christ who in turn uncovered their hypocrisy and crimes, the director-general of the paper wrote in a front-page editorial. The editorial was titled "The murderers of prophets and children," and charged that Israelis had "slaughtered children without mercy," among other alleged wrongs.

These comments mirror the remarks made by Assad when greeting the Pope on his arrival in Damascus last Saturday. Assad blamed Israel for murdering and torturing Palestinians and attacking Muslim and Christian religious sites. Israelis "try to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and tortured him, and in the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad," Assad charged.

He also suggested the Jewish people had unjustly benefited from exaggerating their past sufferings. Assad's comments followed his recent repeated attacks on Israeli society for being "more racist than Nazism" for electing the "killer" Ariel Sharon as prime minister.

At no point during the four-day visit to Syria did the pope or Vatican officials condemn or challenge Assad's attack on the Jewish people.

Interestingly, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein made a similar appeal to Christian anti-Semitism in an anti-Israel speech last Christmas Eve in Baghdad. "Principles of Islam and the teachings of Jesus Christ make it imperative on us to take the road that satisfies God and our conscience... that is the road of jihad. Without jihad we will not realize what we are hoping for in achieving peace and justice and saving humanity from the evils of the criminals, the murderers."

Used with Permission from International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.