Special to WorldTribune.com

Several videos in which clerics incite Palestinians to stab and murder Jews in Israel have been widely viewed on social media in recent weeks. In a new viral video, however, a Salafi sheikh in Jordan has issued a fatwa – against killing Jews.

In the video, Sheikh Ali Halabi, head of the Imam al-Albani religious studies center, is asked by a student if the murder of Jews is allowed in “Palestine.”

“Someone who protects you, gives you electricity and water, transfers you money and you work for him and take his money – would you betray him, even if he was a Jew?,” Halabi responds. “If you trust him and he trusts you, then it is forbidden to betray him. And therefore you are forbidden to murder him.”

Halabi is asked by another student if the heavily-armed Israeli soldiers who patrol the streets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could be murdered. “The answer is the same,” the sheikh responded.

“Let me ask you a question: Does this man, who walks down the street with a gun, kill every Muslim he sees?” Halabi asks. “This is the reality. If they killed every Muslim they saw, nobody would be left in Palestine. They would all flee to other countries. But all the people there stay put.”

When asked “is it true that they do not attack you if you do not attack them?” the sheikh replied, “I don’t live in Palestine, but that is what the brothers there tell me… that the Jews do not attack anyone who does not attack them.”

Though Halabi insisted he was not “defending the accursed Jews,” his comments were highly condemned by Palestinian supporters on social media.

Another Jordanian cleric, Sheikh Ahmad Adwan, was similarly condemned last year when he proclaimed that Allah had given the land of Israel to the Jews and that there is no such thing as “Palestine.”

Earlier this year, a Jordanian sheikh who said he supported Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount was arrested.

  Sheikh Ali Halabi, Shocker: Jordanian cleric issues fatwa against killing Jews, WorldTribune.com