Khazali quotes the Qur’an to support his claim: “You shall find the strongest in enmity towards the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.” (5:82) Will some moderate Muslim spokesman in the West explain how Khazali is misunderstanding this passage and the Qur’an’s other antisemitic passages? Of course not.

“Iraqi Shiite Militia Leader Qais Khazali: The Jews Are the Enemies of Mankind; Israel Dug Its Own Grave by Carrying out Attacks in Iraq,” MEMRI, September 1, 2019:

Qais Khazali, the leader of the Iraqi Shiite militia Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, said in a September 1, 2019 speech that aired on Al-Ahd TV (Iraq) that the Jews, who he described as the enemies of mankind, attempted to assassinate Imam Hussein and that they are today trying to locate and kill Imam Al-Mahdi. He claimed that there has always been a Jewish-Zionist lobby that has been the main enemy of the Iraqi people, that there has always been a superpower, such as the United States, used by the Jewish-Zionist lobby to execute its plans, and that there have always been “hypocrite Bedouins,” like Saudi Arabia, that have been used by the superpower to achieve its goals. In addition, Khazali said that the Iraqi PMU and its storehouses are being targeted because the enemies know that their “evil plans” cannot succeed if the PMU and Iran are strong. He threatened that Israel’s attacks on Iraq will not go unanswered and that they constituted a “sentence of extinction” for the “plundering entity.”

Following are excerpts:

Qais Khazali: [The Quran says] “You shall find the strongest in enmity towards the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.” If the Byzantine state represented the polytheists in the past, the Jews are said to have even greater enmity towards the believers. The Jews looked for Imam Hussein at his grandfather’s [house] when he was an infant. They looked for him in order to kill him. And the assassination attempts by the Jews continued, as history tell us. And the Jews are looking today for Imam Hussein’s descendant, the Imam Al-Mahdi, in order to kill him.

[…]

The Jews are the enemies of mankind. The Jews are the enemies of Islam. The Jews are the enemies of Allah’s Messenger. The Jews are the enemies of Ali Ibn Abu Talib. The Jews are the enemies of Imam Hussein. The Jews are the enemies of Imam Al-Mahdi. The Jews are the enemies of the Iraqi people. Since the dawn of history, or at least since the time of the Babylonian civilization, and to this very day, the Jews have been the main enemy of the Iraqi people. If we want to put the links in the chain of Imam Hussein’s killers in order, we can say that there has always been a Jewish-Zionist lobby. Its name has not changed. And there has always been a superpower that this lobby has used to execute its plans. This superpower used to be the Byzantine state, and today, it is called the United States of America. Only the name has changed. And there have always been Bedouins, who are the worst in their heresy and hypocrisy, whom the superpower has used to execute its plans. They are the tools of the superpower. In the past, they were called the Umayyad Caliphate, and today they are called Saudi Arabia. Only the name has changed. So, you can see that the three enemies that the Quran mentions – the Jews, the polytheists, and the hypocrite Bedouins – stay the same throughout history. Only their names change. They are the ones who carry the banner of enmity towards Muhammad’s Islam and towards humankind, justice, goodness, and virtue….

These attacks [in Iraq] will not go unanswered. The Iraqis can defend their honor, their sovereignty, and their people. You should have read history more carefully. Throughout history, you have not been able to stand against the Iraqis. By doing what you did, you’ve sentenced your plundering entity to extinction, and you have dug your own grave.