Australia / Israel Review

Shi’ite cleric Youssef Nabha is the imam of the Arrahman mosque in Sydney. He is an avid supporter of the Iranian regime, spreads conspiracy theories (such as ‘the US created ISIS’) and has openly voiced antisemitic views multiple times. In 2019, an Australian fund where Nabha was a director (Al-Mabarat) lost its charity status. This is possibly because ties between this organisation and Iran’s terror proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, surfaced in the media. In 2020, he praised Iranian terror mastermind General Qassim Soleimani shortly after he was assassinated by the US.

On Sept. 27, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, along with other top commanders of the terror organisation. It was no surprise that Nabha, likely shocked by death of his heroes, quickly arranged a three-day vigil in his mosque for “the righteous martyrs, the master of resistance” – as the notice about the event read.

In the first vigil (Sept. 27), Nabha told the audience that “Israel wages its war on Lebanon and behind it [are] all the parties from America and the hypocritical, charlatan and lying West. [Israel’s PM] Netanyahu also teaches all the arts of lying and hypocrisy. These parties who meet in order to eradicate the resistance and in order to eradicate Lebanon with its people and its honour and in order to besiege it and invade its land if they can.”

He then boasted that while Muslims believe in the afterlife and are not afraid to die, “your enemy, he is keen on life. He would like to live a thousand years, connected to life. I mean, imagine that one missile lands, it lands a million and 200,000 [Israelis] in the shelters. But we remember when the planes came, we would go up to the roofs to watch.”

Islam will win, promised Nabha, and will eventually destroy Israel: “Now we will invade them and they will not invade us. Let the Israelis prepare their brigades, perhaps after this war, in which there will either be final victory or it will be the first fruits of the final victory, because it sometimes needs stages.”

The Arrahman mosque’s invitation to a vigil for the righteous martyr and “master of resistance” Hassan Nasrallah

Hailing the attacks on Israel by “all those supporting fronts from Syria to Iraq to Yemen to Iran in their supportive stance for this entire axis [of Iranian proxies],” Nabha prophesied that “This war may carry the good news of victory, and it gives us that… live in it… high and lofty morale.”

“Israel or this arrogant one [a derogatory term for the West] exploits [the war] to start tearing apart and dispersing the Muslims,” warned Nabha. To prevent that, he said, the Islamic world must unite to outnumber the Israelis and easily destroy the Jewish state – as the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, called for: “Imagine, brothers and sisters, if Muslims were united, perhaps a billion and a half or two billion Muslims in the world, as Imam Khomeini… said. If every Muslim had a bucket of water, they [Israel] would have drowned… There would be no need for missiles, no earthquake, no [battle of] Khaybar… a bucket of water, they would have drowned… Egypt is 115 million – 115 million! If they were to ‘liberate’ Israel, 115 million Egyptians would come.”

Slamming attempts to reach a ceasefire in the war in the Middle East and the mediating Arab countries assisting in this effort, Nabha concluded, “There is no doubt that Israel has committed and continues to commit the most heinous crimes in Palestine and Lebanon under an American-Western cover that arms and supports it with the latest missiles and military technology and provides it with money that prevents its economy from collapsing.”

Israelis lie to everyone in the world, and are headed by a liar PM, said Nabha: “Israeli lies have been combined to the point that they say that it is lying to them, that it is lying to everyone. Netanyahu is lying to everyone, even to the Americans, the West, and the Arabs… Israeli lies represented by Netanyahu have been combined with American-Western hypocrisy and deception, resulting in an uncompromising war on Palestine and Lebanon, which will bring nothing but disappointment, failure, and defeat to Israel and its supporters, God willing, and which will achieve the beginning of a resounding victory for Palestine and Lebanon, God willing. They see it far away, but we see it close.”

Near the end of his sermon, Nabha resorted back to the traditional Muslim antisemitic trope that Jews have distorted the “true religion” and are cursed by God: “Those who were entrusted with the Torah and then did not take it up are like that of a donkey carrying volumes. Wretched is the example of the people who deny the verses of Allah. And Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people. Say, ‘O you who are Jews, if you claim that you are allies of Allah rather than the people, then wish for death, if you should be truthful.’ But they will never wish for it, because of what their hands have put forth. And Allah is knowing of the wrongdoers.”

A few days later (Sept. 29), Nabha again spoke about Nasrallah in his sermon and praised martyrdom: “The battle has changed [since past times] through technological weapons and the treachery, deceit and trickery that the Israelis and Americans are doing to seize opportunities to kill others. Therefore, it is natural for this resistance fighter and this mujahid to be martyred when he has lived 40 or 42 [years] of his honourable and blessed life in this line, in this path. In this, it is natural for him to be a martyr.”

Nabha is not alone in his support for Hezbollah among Australian Muslim preachers. At least two more mosques in Sydney held mourning ceremonies for Nasrallah, which were attended by hundreds. In one of them, al-Zahra Mosque in Arncliffe, people were told pray for “the soul of the leader of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the souls of the righteous martyrs who departed with him and all those who have been innocently slain as a result of the Zionist aggression in Lebanon and Palestine.” And prominent Sheikh Ahmad Jundi prayed for Hezbollah’s victory against Israel during an event at al-Sadiq College in Sydney, attended by an audience of children.

Hezbollah in its entirety has been a proscribed terror organisation in Australia since 2021. Our law enforcement agencies should be taking immediate action against the people involved in these events celebrating terrorism and calling for direct support for this banned terror group.