Israel’s military dropped leaflets over southern Gaza with a verse from the Quran warning of “flooding overtaking wrongdoers” months before war in the Middle East broke out, according to local reports.
Back in December last year, footage captured in the city of Khan Younis showed thousands of pieces of paper being dropped from over the region by Israeli warplanes, Middle East Eye reported at the time.
Written upon them was a verse from the holy book of Islam which read: “The flood overtook them, while they persisted in wrongdoing”, angering Palestinians and Muslims outside the region.
The text was printed alongside a Star of David symbol the logo of the Israeli army. The quote refers to the story of the Prophet Nuh, who is known as Noah in the Bible.
In both texts, God punishes wrongdoers with a global flood.
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Um Shadi Abu el-Tarabeesh, who was displaced from northern Gaza told the outlet at the time: “[Israel] are the wrongdoers, not us. They are the ones harming civilians, innocent citizens and defenceless children.
She added: “We have no weapons, we are not terrorists, and we are not doing anything bad. What is the purpose of these words?”
Speculation followed on social media as to whether the reference to flooding was an allusion to Israel’s plan to flood Hamas’ network of subterranean tunnels in the Gaza Strip.
Approached by CNN at the time over the leaflets dropped over Khan Younis, an IDF spokesperson said: “No comment.” The Daily Express US has reached out to the Israeli army for comment.
In January this year, Israel said it had destroyed some Hamas tunnels in Gaza by flooding them.
“During the war, the IDF has implemented new capabilities to neutralise underground terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip by channelling large volumes of water into the tunnels,” the military said in a statement.
It wasn’t the only instance of Israeli officials cited from the Quran in connection with the Gaza Strip.
During its bombardment of the Gaza in May 2021, Israel’s official Arabic language account on X posted verses from the chapter known as “the elephant”, with a photo of a plume of smoke from a building following an Israeli air strike, the outlet reported.
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In Islamic tradition, Surah al-Fil (the elephant) describes a pre-Islamic episode in which an army made up of war elephants marches on Mecca, a holy city, before being defeated by swarms of birds that drop stones and pebbles upon the army.
Regional tensions have soared since the October 7 attack on southern Israel launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Palestinian militant groups supported by Iran.
The attack killed some 1,200 Israelis, and the militants took around 250 hostages. Israel responded with a massive air and ground campaign, killing nearly 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in their count but say most of the dead are women and children.
Israel has withdrawn most of its forces from Gaza after major offensives that left its two biggest cities – Gaza City and Khan Younis – in ruins. But Israeli officials say the war is not over and that they plan to send ground forces into the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, where more than half the territory’s population of 2.3 million people have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.
Hamas is still holding around 130 hostages, a quarter of whom are believed to be dead, and international efforts to broker a cease-fire and hostage release have made little progress.
