# Calls for the destruction of Israel

There have been explicit or implicit expressions, statements, and rhetoric advocating for the elimination of the State of Israel as a political entity. These calls for the destruction of Israel often involve the use of strong language or declarations aiming at the state's complete eradication. Such expressions may be manifested in official statements, speeches, charters, or public discourse, reflecting a position that denies the legitimacy of Israel's existence and seeks its destruction through various means, including military or other forms of political or ideological action. These statements have been described by some as genocidal.
Calls for the destruction of Israel have been reported since the 1940s, especially in Arab and Islamic discourse. In one well cited comment in 1947, Arab League leader Azzam Pasha said that he hoped the Arabs would not be forced into a "war of extermination" if a Jewish state was established. This statement has been interpreted by some scholars as a genocidal threat, although others disagree. Prior to the 1967 Six Day War, there was a nearly unanimous consensus among Arab nations that Israel should be destroyed. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser reiterated calls for the annulment of Israel's existence in the years before the war.
Islamist Palestinian organizations like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad have advocated for Israel's destruction. Elements of pro-Palestinian discourse have also been described as advocating for the destruction of Israel, including slogans, boycotts, proposals for a one-state solution, and calls for the Palestinian right of return.

## History

Before and after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, leaders of Arab states and Palestinian Arab leaders made statements which historian Benny Morris has described as reflecting an "expulsionist or eliminationist mindset". In late 1947, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia corresponded with Harry S. Truman, the President of the United States, saying:
   The Arabs have definitely decided to oppose [the] establishment of a Jewish state... Even if it is supposed that the Jews will succeed in gaining support... by their oppressive and tyrannous means and their money, such a state must perish in a short time. The Arab will isolate such a state from the world and will lay siege until it dies by famine... Its end will be the same as that of [the] Crusader states.
In October 1947, in response to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) report, Azzam Pasha, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, said:
   Personally, I hope the Jews do not force us into this war, because it would be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.
Efraim Karsh and David Barnett characterize this statement as a genocidal threat. Tom Segev contests this interpretation, saying Pasha was resigned to a war which he was not sure the Arabs would win. He further quotes Pasha as saying:
   Whatever the outcome, the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like."
In the early months of 1948, Matiel Mughannam, a Palestinian Christian born in Lebanon and the leader of the Arab Women's Organization, stated:
   [A Jewish state] has no chance to survive now that the 'Holy War' has been declared. All the Jews will eventually be massacred.
When the National Water Carrier of Israel was founded in the 1960s, the project was opposed by the Arab League in a 1964 summit, since it would make it more difficult for the Arab states to achieve "the final liquidation of Israel". This was the first time the Arab collective officially declared in an official document that their ultimate aim was the destruction of the State of Israel.
During the 1960s, in the years before the 1967 Six-Day War, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser made several statements about the destruction of Israel. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September 1960, Nasser said the only solution to Palestine was "the annulment of Israel's existence". In 1964, he said:
   We swear to God that we shall not rest until we restore the Arab nation to Palestine and Palestine to the Arab nation. There is no room for imperialism and there is no room for Britain in our country, just as there is no room for Israel within the Arab nation.
In 1965, he said, "We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand, we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood."
Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) initially sought to establish an Arab state over the entire territory of the former Mandatory Palestine, advocating the elimination of Israel. Mediated talks between the Israeli government and the PLO in 1993 (the Oslo I Accord) resulted in the PLO recognizing the legitimacy of the State of Israel and accepting United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which mandated Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories, while Israel recognized the PLO as a legitimate authority representing the Palestinian people. On 29 October 2018, the Palestinian Central Council suspended its recognition of Israel until Israel in turn recognized a Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders.

## In contemporary discourse
### Among political groups

Irwin Cotler coined the term "genocidal antisemitism" to describe public calls and incitements to destroy Israel. According to Cotler, this includes official promotion of anti-Israel sentiments in Ahmadinejad's Iran; the ideologies of groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda, which have advocated for Israel's destruction or endorsed acts of terror to achieve this goal; and religious fatwas and execution writs which frame genocidal calls against Israelis as religious obligations or portray Israel as a collective enemy.

#### Hamas

Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist political and military organization, has previously advocated for Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state. The 1988 Hamas charter has been characterized as antisemitic and genocidal. The 2017 Hamas charter accepted the idea of a Palestinian state being established along the 1967 borders.
Expressions advocating for the destruction of Israel have been articulated by several figures associated with Hamas. Ahmad Yassin, a Palestinian politician and imam who played a pivotal role in the establishment of Hamas, said Israel would be destroyed by the year 2027, employing the traditional Islamic concept of a 40-year historical cycle. Yassin correlated these cycles with significant events, positing that the initial cycle commenced in 1947 with the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and concluded with the First Intifada in 1987. In this framework, the second cycle is anticipated to culminate in the destruction of Israel.
Amid the Israel–Hamas war, Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas's political bureau, said that the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel – which resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians – is but the initial phase in an ongoing series of assaults. Hamad expressed the organization's readiness to endure the consequences and to persist with these attacks until the complete elimination of Israel. Referring to Hamas' 1988 charter and the UN genocide definition, The Economist has described Hamas as a genocidal organization in which the 7 October attacks were a part of "their genocidal law".

#### Hezbollah

From its inception to the present, the elimination of the State of Israel has been one of Hezbollah's primary goals. Some translations of Hezbollah's 1985 Arabic-language manifesto state that "our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated". According to Hezbollah's Deputy-General, Naim Qassem, the struggle against Israel is a core belief of Hezbollah and the central rationale of Hezbollah's existence.

#### Houthi Movement

The slogan of the Houthi movement, an Islamist political and militant group in Yemen, reads: "God is the greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam". During the Israel–Hamas war, the Houthi movement said it intended to continue attacking until it achieved the "demise of Israel".

#### Iran

Since the Iranian Revolution, political figures in the Islamic Republic of Iran have consistently advocated for what some see as the "destruction of Israel". Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, has said that Iran wishes to abolish the "Israeli regime" but has no problem with the Jewish people. He said "thugs like Netanyahu" should be ousted, and all Muslim, Christian and Jewish residents should be able to choose their government. Iran has rejected the two-state solution in favor of a one-state solution that gives equal voting rights to people of all religions.
In 2000, Ali Khamenei said that "the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region", and in 2001 that "the perpetual subject of Iran is the elimination of Israel from the region". In 2013, he labeled Israel a country "doomed to failure and annihilation," deeming it an "illegitimate regime" led by "untouchable rabid dogs" who "cannot be called human beings". In 2014, he outlined a nine-point plan for Israel's elimination.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who served as president of Iran from 2005 to 2013, consistently called for the elimination of Israel. In a 2005 conference titled "A World Without Zionism", he stated: "Our dear Imam (Khomeini) ordered that this Jerusalem occupying regime must be erased from the page of time," and said Iran would "wipe Israel off the map". In 2006, he said Israel was "heading towards annihilation", and in another statement, "The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated". Similar calls were also voiced by Iranian parliament members, philosophers and journalists.
During a speech in May 2012, the Chief of Staff of Iran's Ministry said the Iranian nation was steadfast in its commitment to the complete annihilation of Israel. Hojjat al-Eslam Ali Shirazi, serving as the representative of Ayatollah Khamenei, asserted on October 2, 2012, that Iran needed 24 hours to eliminate Israel, and that Israel was close to annihilation. In 2017, protesters in Iran unveiled a new public clock in Palestine Square known as the "countdown to Israel's annihilation clock", which calculates the days remaining until Israel's predicted destruction by September 9, 2040. This is based on a declaration by Khamenei on September 9, 2015, that Israel would not survive another 25 years.
On 24 May 2024, Khamenei stated that "the divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea". He also said he was surprised at demonstrations in Japan where the slogan "Death to Israel" was chanted in Persian.

#### Palestinian Islamic Jihad

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) explicitly aims for the violent destruction of the State of Israel, and rejects the option of a peaceful settlement with Israel. It considers Israel's eradication as an essential prerequisite for addressing the challenges facing the Muslim world. The PIJ advocates for the use of guerrilla groups to execute terrorist attacks to weaken Israel. It envisions laying the groundwork for a future scenario in which a significant Islamic Arabic army engages in military confrontation to achieve Israel's destruction. The PIJ has been accountable for some of the deadliest suicide attacks in Israel.

#### Others

Al-Qaeda has called for Israel's destruction, with Osama bin Laden saying that "the creation of Israel is a crime that must be erased" and that Muslims have a religious duty to combat Jews in Israel and worldwide.
In April 2024, Essa Al-Nassr, a brigadier general at the Emiri Guard and member of Qatar's legislative body, referred to the 7 October attacks as a "prelude to the annihilation of the corruption of the 'second Zionist entity' upon earth".

### BDS

According to a report from Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the BDS's 2005 founding manifesto, which calls for an end to the "occupation and colonization of all Arab lands", is interpreted as a direct demand for "the end to the existence of Israel as a state". The report says that BDS views its boycott of Israel as a step towards the elimination of Israel as a sovereign state.

### Palestinian right of return

According to journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their ancestral homes is "a euphemism for the destruction of Israel". Many Israelis reason that allowing Palestinian refugees would increase the Arab population in Israel, potentially making Israel into a binational state (instead of a Jewish state), hence destroying Israel as a Jewish state. In 1977, Israel submitted to the United Nations that: "The Arab demand for the return of the refugees to Israel, coupled with proposals for the establishment of a Palestinian State, is calculated to bring about the destruction of Israel." In 1993, former Israeli president Shimon Peres said that the Palestinian right of return "would wipe out" the character of Israel. In 2018, David Horovitz said that the Palestinian "March of Return", whereby Palestinian refugees attempt to return to Israel, was "nothing less than a call for the destruction of Israel". Horovitz added "Suicide bombers, rockets, and tunnels have failed. So now it’s mass marches on the border".

### Slogans and chants

Anti-Israeli protests in many Middle Eastern countries frequently involve the burning of Israeli flags and chants like "Death to Israel" or "Death to the Jewish infidels." The chant of the slogan has extended beyond Muslim countries. In Paris, some North African demonstrators have uttered cries of "death to the Jews, death to Israel". During Quds Day held in Iran and other countries, extensive rallies and marches take place, where senior leaders deliver speeches that frequently result in chants of "Death to Israel, Death to America". Crowds have trampled and burned Israeli flag, and mock-ups of ballistic missiles have slogans like "Death to Israel".