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In an interview broadcast on the Palestinian Authority's official TV channel, Palestinian cleric Sheikh 'Imad Hamatu said that "our enemies have succeeded in creating imaginary enemies for us" in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. "In the past, the Palestinian cause was the mother cause of all Arabs and Muslims. How did they manage to take control of our minds? How did they manage to wipe out our fighting culture, our Jihadi culture?" he asked. The interview aired on August 18.
'Imad Hamatu: "Before its foundation in 1948, Israel had established a system of institutions. It established the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University in 1925, the Egged transport corporation, the Electricity Authority, and the Technion Institute of Technology. It built all the institutions it needed for the establishment of a state. All that was left for Israel to do was to declare something that already existed. What we have done is the exact opposite. For 67 years, we have been making resounding slogans, like 'we shall erase Israel,' 'we shall annihilate it'... We shall, we shall... All these 'shalls' we keep hearing, all this future tense... Well, so far, the Jews have not been swallowed by the sea or eaten by the fish.
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"Are we even qualified to reach Jerusalem? Or did we completely lose our direction, when we turned our gaze to the Arab problems in Yemen, Syria and Iraq? Our enemies have succeeded in creating imaginary enemies for us. Sadly, you even see some of the intellectual elite, whose main cause has become Syria or Iraq. In the past, the Palestinian cause was the mother cause of all Arabs and Muslims. How did they manage to take control of our minds? How did they manage to wipe out our fighting culture, our Jihadi culture? We cannot fight in every single corner. We have been defeated politically and culturally, and I fear that we will be defeated ideologically as well."
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