Essa Al-Nassr, a member of the Qatari legislative Shura council, spoke on Monday at an Arab League session, expressing antisemitic remarks and inciting to violence and terrorism.
In his remarks, he said: “there will be no peace nor negotiations with the Zionist entity for one reason: because their mentality does not recognize negotiations, but rather only… breaking promises and lying… They only recognize one thing, which is killings; since they are killers of prophets.”
The accusation of Jews as ‘killers of prophets’ is a well-known antisemitic trope made in several Islamic texts, which is understood by many, including Al-Nassr himself, as a charge against the entire Jewish people valid for eternity.
This allegation is reminiscent and perhaps reflective of the charge of deicide by which Jews were accused in classical Christian texts.
In addition to the inherent antisemitic rhetoric featured in such allegations, the projection of real or unreal wrongdoings by Jews of ancient times onto the modern State of Israel is viewed as another type of antisemitism practiced nowadays in many religious and nationalistic circles.
Al-Nassr was not satisfied with these comments alone, as he went on in his speech to commend the “Flood of Al-Aqsa operation” (Hamas’s name for the October 7th massacre), claiming that this was only a “prelude to the annihilation of the corruption of the ‘second Zionist entity’ upon earth.”
He then referred to a presumably Godly promise for the ingathering of Jews in the land of Palestine as preparation for the ‘battle of the next generation,’ which according to Al-Nassr, would bring an end to the Jewish state.
This excerpt refers to yet another religious-nationalistic view salient in Islamist circles which regards the ingathering of Jews in the Holy Land as part of a Godly plan to an epic battle of Muslims against Jews in which Jews as a whole would suffer a deadly blow.
According to the Shura council’s website, Al-Nassr is a Brigadier General at the Guard for Intelligence and Security of the Emiri Guard, and serves as a member of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee, and the Cultural and Media Affairs Committee.
Qatar’s role in war against Jews
The Qatari Shura council of which Al-Nassr is a member, is comprised of 45 members, 15 of which are directly appointed by the Emir. Members of the council hold very limited powers, which allow them, inter alia, to oversee the country’s budget and question the Prime Minister about his policies, provided that two thirds of the council agree.
In 2021, the Qatari regime passed a controversial election law which effectively denied the right of an entire clan, the Aal Murrah clan, to running in the elections, sparking a short-lived and very rare wave of protest from members of the clan, which in turn led to the arrest of seven clan activists and oppression of the movement.
The Qatari regime made many headlines in the past six months due to their patronage and hosting of Hamas, a designated terror organization in many countries which led the October 7th massacre, featuring the murder, kidnapping and sexual assault of over 1500 Israelis and foreign citizens.
The small Gulf country has also endeavored in the last months to act as a mediator between Israel and the terror organization in an attempt to broker deals in which Israeli citizens aged 1-86 would be released from captivity in exchange for Palestinians convicted in various terrorist actions, from murder to rioting to incitement.
This is not the first time in which Qatar is found as a promoter of antisemitism, as a March 2023 report by the Zachor institute showed how its mouthpiece and state-owned channel Al-Jazeera has reportedly propagated conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and antisemitic tropes on its various outlets, mainly the Arabic-speaking ones.
