During a recent interview with an Israeli newspaper, Ayaan Hirsi Ali used the conflict between Israel and Hamas to push her anti-Muslim agenda and other controversial statements, including nominating Benjamin Netanyahu for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the interview, Ali, who already has an established history of sympathizing with mass murderers, defended Israel’s assault on Gaza. Ali claimed she viewed the conflict as a “small scale model” in the greater war between the “West and radical Islam.” Framing Islam as the enemy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains a go-to tactic among the Islamophobia movement. In this, Ali is no exception, having previously asked the U.S. government to declare war on the religion.
Ali later claimed that in a “fair world,” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would receive the Nobel Peace Prize for invading Gaza, claiming he chose to do so after being “under so much pressure” from the international community. Netanyahu has been widely criticized for the conflict, which has already killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of whom were children, as well as more than 50 Israelis. Israel HaYom, the paper that conducted the interview with Ali, has also been criticized for its biased coverage in favor of Netanyahu.
She also used the conflict to advocate against Muslim immigration. Ali warned countries who don’t have a Muslim majority that are admitting increasingly larger numbers of Muslim immigrants would soon “find themselves in exactly the same position as Israel.” Ali’s reasoning for such a claim was that young Muslim populations, “who are high on this doctrine of death,” are having more children than these countries’ native population.
Ali was in the news earlier this year as controversy erupted when Brandeis University’s decided to rescind its offer to award her with an honorary degree. The university released a statement explaining its decision, saying Ali’s past anti-Muslim history was “inconsistent” with its “core values.” It appears Ali has done nothing to rectify her anti-Muslim rhetoric, and instead continues to espouse the same intolerance that cost her the honor in the first place.