Slaugther the Jews?

Do Arabs really scream "Itbach al-Yahud" (Slaughter the Jews) during their demonstrations?

And is "Itbach al-Yahud" really Arabic?

To take the last and easiest question first: the answer is no.

"Itbach" is not an Arabic word and the closest I can come up with is "itbakh", but that is imperative of the verb "to cook/prepare (food)". So unless we are talking of a, presumably minuscule, cannibalistic subsection of Arabs, the slogan "Cook the Jews" is probably not a very widely-used slogan.

Most probably "itbach" is a Hebrew corruption of the Arabic word "idhbah" ( إذبح ) , where dh signifies the th-sound in the English word "this") or its spoken language-form "idbah", which means slaughter. The verb "dhabah" (to slaughter) is probably related to the Hebrew word "tevech" ( טבח ), with the same meaning. The transliteration of Arabic words passing through Hebrew have a certain tell-tale tendency of changing, especially with respect to sounds that do not exist in Hebrew.

So, do Arabs regularly shout this slogan during demonstration? That is a much trickier question.

If You google "itbach al yahud" you will get more than 296 000 hits. If you change the transliteration slightly (el yahoud, etc.) you may have a few thousands more. So judging by this, the use of this slogan would seem to be quite widespread. A few examples:

• The first mention of "itbach al Yahud" I have found is from the Palestinian riots in 1920. Here is a Zionist source.
• Israeli Historian Benny Morris claims that “idbah al-yahud” was commonly shouted all over the Arab world in 1947. He does not however provide a source for this claim.
  
• In the "Flotilla Choir video " (which I must admit I found quite funny), the fake captain shouts "itbach al yahoud".
• In the settler-associated site Arutz 7 a writer informs us that "itbach al-yahoud" is included in the call for prayer "every Friday afternoon from every mosque" in the West Bank.
• According to a Jerusalem Post blog the slogan "idbah al yahoud" is "shouted whenever Palestinians rally anywhere".
• When Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon visited Oxford University he was allegedly shouted down by protesting students yelling "itbah al-yahud".

But if you google the Arabic original ( إذبح اليهود ) it only yields 781 hits. I have not checked all of them but a sample of a few dozen suggests that these may all be translations from Israeli or Western media. I did not find a single example of an original report of this slogan being shouted during an Arab demonstration.

I also searched YouTube and found nothing. I even googled the extremist right-wing Zionist MEMRI site for confirmation of the use of this slogan, but I found nothing. Surely if this slogans was widely used MEMRI would have discovered it by now.

So we have thousands of claims of Arab demonstrators always and everywhere shouting "itbach al-yahud" (and usually with this typical Hebrew misspelling) but we have yet to find a single recording proving this claim.

The Israeli Arab writer Sayed Kashua (Sayyid Qashu' in Arabic) wrote in the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz a year ago (unfortunately my link is dead) that "Itbah al-yahud" is a "pure Israeli slogan that was never actually uttered by an Arab demonstrator. "Itbah al-yahud" is a purely Israeli product that does not sound anything like Arabic."

I believe that he is right. While a lot of unpleasant or offensive slogans may be shouted in Arab or Muslim demonstrations around the world, "Itbah al-yahud" is probably not among them.