These parties were responsible for raising the level of hateful rhetoric against non-Jews. One rabbi stated that the “Arabs are a cancer, cancer, cancer in the midst of us. . . . There is only one solution, no other, no partial solution: the Arabs out! Out! . . . Let me become defense minister for two months and you will not have a single cockroach around here.” As Fred Halliday notes, it was in this context that anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric came together to a much greater extent, especially among the settler community as well as the nationalist and religious parties. However, these sentiments did not prevent the Likud party from using the precursor organization to Hamas, the Mujamma, for its own purposes. When the Israeli state recognized and formally licensed the Mujamma in 1978, the logic was simple—the Islamists' hostility to the secular left made them useful.

XREF: This connects to the broader pattern of states funding radical religious groups against secular rivals — echoes of US support for mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 399