EXTREMISMFarrakhan Responds to Israel-Hamas War with Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference at the Huntington Place convention center in Detroit, Michigan, on February 22–25. As in years past, the event featured significant antisemitism, including from longtime NOI leader and keynote speaker Louis Farrakhan. 

Farrakhan’s keynote address concluding the conference on Sunday, titled “What Does Allah, the Great Mahdi and the Great Messiah Have to Say About the War in the Middle East,” focused on the events of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent, ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.  

Central to Farrakhan’s speech was his conspiratorial accusation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had advance knowledge of and even a hand in Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. “[Netanyahu] already knew what Hamas was gonna do because he sanctioned it,” Farrakhan alleged. As supposed evidence of this conspiracy, Farrakhan claimed that a photograph published by Israel’s Government Press Office in April 2023 of Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant making a pre-Passover toast touting Israeli military unity was actually a photograph of them secretly “toasting sacrificial Jewish lambs” who were to be “martyred” on October 7 with Netanyahu’s approval. 

Farrakhan further alleged that Netanyahu’s goal in allowing Hamas to attack was to preserve his power and to justify initiating a “second Nakba” that would cleanse Palestinians from not just Gaza, but the West Bank and East Jerusalem, so that Israel could gain control of oil in the region and eventually build a so-called “Greater Israel.” Farrakhan alleged that Netanyahu had a “vision…for Israel to conquer the whole Middle East.” Throughout the speech, Farrakhan compared Netanyahu to Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king notorious for his actions against the Jews in the ancient Kingdom of Judah. 

Farrakhan predicted that Israel will no longer exist in the Middle East; citing verses from the Bible and Quran as supposed proof of this prophecy, he referred to scripture about “desolation” coming to Jerusalem and stated that God intends to return the land to the Palestinians. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” Farrakhan declared, repeating the rallying cry often used by anti-Israel voices.