Taliban leaders call Jews ‘animals’ and back Palestinians against ‘cruel Jewish occupiers’

In another speech in May 2026, Hanafi, who is responsible for enforcing the regime’s interpretation of Sharia law, referred to Jews as “animals” and “unbelievers”, before adding: “The animals’ views are contrary to the Qur’an and Sharia.”

Senior Taliban officials have also blamed tensions in the Middle East on what they describe as the “Jewish occupiers” – language that has become a recurring feature of the regime’s commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We feel the pain of the Palestinian people and are distressed by the cruel and unjust actions of the Jewish occupiers,” said Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s acting interior minister and deputy leader.

Haqqani is also a senior leader of the Haqqani Network and remains wanted by US authorities.

Afghanistan was once home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the region.

Its Jewish population declined dramatically during the 20th century as Afghan Jews emigrated to Israel, Britain and the US, leaving only a tiny community by the time the Taliban first came to power in the 1990s.

Following the Taliban’s return to Kabul in August 2021, the last remaining members of Afghanistan’s Jewish community left the country.

Zebulon Simentov, for years described as Afghanistan’s last Jew, left in September 2021. The following month, his distant cousin, Tova Moradi, an 83-year-old Jewish woman who had remained in Kabul, also fled with members of her family amid fears for their safety.

Since returning to power, the Taliban has repeatedly praised Hamas and other armed groups fighting Israel, while senior officials have publicly expressed support for what they describe as the Palestinian “resistance”.

That support became particularly visible following the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which was backed by Taliban officials.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, claims circulated on social media that the Taliban had asked Iran, Iraq and Jordan to provide its forces with “safe passage” to Palestine so that they could fight alongside Hamas against Israel.

In December 2023, Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Yaqoob said that just as the “mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate” had prevailed against great powers, the Palestinians possessed a similarly strong will and would ultimately prevail in their struggle. He did not, however, announce the deployment of Taliban forces.

In 2024 Hassan Kazemi Qomi, then the Iranian regime’s special representative to Afghanistan, suggested that if the necessary circumstances arose, more than a “division” of Afghan suicide fighters could go to support Gaza.

Iran already has a history of recruiting Afghan fighters for its regional campaigns.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force recruited thousands of Afghan Shia fighters for the Fatemiyoun Division, an Iran-backed militia deployed in support of Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war.

Following the collapse of Assad’s regime in December 2024, Fatemiyoun fighters withdrew from Syria, with members reportedly returning to Iran and Afghanistan.

In June 2024 Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported that the Taliban had told Iranian officials it would send thousands of fighters to Lebanon in the event of a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah. The claim was subsequently repeated by several other media outlets.

A month later, during a meeting with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the Taliban’s Deputy Prime Minister for Political Affairs Abdul Kabir expressed support for what he called the “legitimate struggle of the Palestinian mujahideen”, declaring: “The Islamic Emirate stands alongside its mujahideen brothers.”

Following Haniyeh’s killing later that month, a senior Taliban delegation headed by Kabir travelled to Qatar to attend his funeral.

The Taliban-controlled state broadcaster, RTA, referred to the Hamas leader as a “martyr” and said he had fought for the liberation of Palestine until the end of his life. It also reported that the Taliban described his death as “a great loss for the Islamic Ummah and the caravan of jihad”.

When Yahya Sinwar was subsequently chosen to succeed Haniyeh, Taliban state media described him as a man who had repeatedly been imprisoned by the “Jewish occupiers”, while RTA’s Dari-language service explicitly referred to Hamas as the “jihadi movement”.

The support extended beyond rhetoric. In November 2024, a madrasah (a religious school) in Afghanistan’s Ghor province was named after Sinwar.

Mohammad Jalal, a figure close to the Taliban, said the naming was intended to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Gaza and preserve the memory of the “sacrifices” of Hamas leaders for future generations.

Media outlets close to the Taliban have also reported that some fighters belonging to the movement declared themselves ready to travel to Gaza fight the Israelis, with the assistance of those they described as their “Iranian brothers”. There is, however, no evidence that the Taliban government authorised such a deployment.

The Taliban’s official rhetoric towards Israel became even more explicit in September 2025. Following an Israeli strike targeting Hamas leaders in Doha, an official statement by the Islamic Emirate said: “The office of the Hamas Islamic Movement in Doha was attacked by the Zionist regime…” It also offered condolences to the families of those killed and to the “Palestinian mujahideen”.

More broadly, the Islamic Emirate has framed its position as supporting an “end to the occupation of Palestine”.

The significance of that formulation is unclear. The Taliban does not recognise Israel and, where its statements do not distinguish between the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 and the territory of Israel itself, calls for an end to the “occupation of Palestine” could be interpreted as encompassing the end of the Israel rather than solely the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside it.

With Hamas and Hezbollah severely weakened by years of conflict with Israel, and the collapse of the Assad government having transformed the environment in Syria, Afghanistan could once again become significant to the region’s displaced Islamist militant networks.

The precedent is difficult to ignore. During its first period in power in the 1990s, the Taliban provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and refused to surrender the terrorist leader to the US following the September 11 attacks.

Some observers now warn that, as the operating space available to jihadist groups in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria narrows, Afghanistan could again become an attractive sanctuary.

Whether the Taliban would be prepared to host such groups and potentially use their presence as leverage in its dealings with Western governments remains an open question.

For a regime seeking international recognition while simultaneously maintaining longstanding relationships with jihadist movements, the tension between those two objectives may prove increasingly difficult to conceal.