No Explanation Necessary

The student who screamed "Kill the Jews" in Arabic during a talk at Oxford by Israeli Minister Danny Ayalon "explains" his hateful outburst:

The student who appeared to shout “Slaughter the Jews” at Israeli minister Danny Ayalon has claimed the Deputy Foreign minister misunderstood his Arabic.

The Oxford Student newspaper has named the protester as second year St Edmund’s Hall student Noor Rashid.

Several eyewitnesses said they heard Mr Rashid shout: “Itbah Al-Yahud”, an Arabic phrase meaning “Slaughter the Jews”. Mr Ayalon translated the phrase with this meaning.

But Mr Rashid claimed that he had in fact shouted “Khaybar ya Yahod”, a classic Arabic battle cry referring to a seventh-century attack by Mohammed on the Jewish community in Khaybar where the Jews were conquered and made to pay half of their income to the Muslim population.

They were finally expelled by a successive Muslim ruler, Caliph Omar.

Mr Rashid said: “My version went: ‘Khaybar, O Jews, we will win’. This is in classical, Koranic Arabic and I doubt that apart from picking up on the word ‘Jew’, that even the Arabic speakers in the room would have understood the phrase.

“As you can see, I made no reference to killing Jews. It carries absolutely no derogatory or secondary meanings.”

Mr Rashid said he believed the words ‘Jew’ and ‘Israeli’ were interchangeable terms...

Hey, don't sweat it, dude. Lots of folks seem to make that "mistake" these days.