Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

“What would the reaction would be if an Arab state wrote this about synagogues and Jews?” asked one critic.

Israel faced backlash this week after its Arabic-language account on the social media site X published a message warning Europeans to take action against the proliferation of mosques and “remove” Muslims from their countries.

“In the year 1980, there were only fewer than a hundred mosques in Europe. As for today, there are more than 20,000 mosques. This is the true face of colonization,” posted Israel, a settler-colonial state whose nearly 2 million Muslim citizens face widespread discrimination, and where Palestinians in the illegally occupied territories live under an apartheid regime.

“This is what is happening while Europe is oblivious and does not care about the danger,” the post continues. “And the danger does not lie in the existence of mosques in and of themselves, for freedom of worship is one of the basic human rights, and every person has the right to believe and worship his Lord.”

“The problem lies in the contents that are taught in some of these mosques, and they are not limited to piety and good deeds, but rather focus on encouraging escalating violence in the streets of Europe, and spreading hatred for the other and even for those who host them in their countries, and inciting against them instead of teaching love, harmony, and peace,” Israel added. “Europe must wake up and remove this fifth column.”

Referring to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, Berlin-based journalist James Jackson replied on X that “even the AfD don’t tweet, ‘Europe must wake up and remove this fifth column’ over a map of mosques.”

Other social media users called Israel’s post “racist” and “Islamophobic,” while some highlighted the stark contrast between the way Palestinians and Israelis treat Christian people and institutions.

Others noted that some of the map’s fearmongering figures misleadingly showing a large number of mosques indicate countries whose populations are predominantly or significantly Muslim.

“Russia has 8,000 mosques? Who would’ve known a country with millions of Muslim Central Asians and Caucasians would need so many!” said one X user.

Israel’s post came amid growing international outrage over its 691-day assault and siege on Gaza, which has left more than 230,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and hundreds of thousands more starving and facing ethnic cleansing as Operation Gideon’s Chariots 2—a campaign to conquer, occupy, and “cleanse” the strip—ramps up amid a growing engineered famine that has already killed hundreds of people.

Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives form the International Criminal Court, where they are wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder and forced starvation.

European nations including Belgium, Ireland, and Spain are supporting the South Africa-led ICJ genocide case against Israel. Since October 2023, European countries including Belgium, France, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Norway, and Spain have either formally recognized Palestinian statehood or announced their intention to do so.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).