The incendiary statement came in a tweet from the Israeli government’s Arabic-language Twitter account. Referring to the increase in mosques across Europe, from fewer than 100 in 1980 to more than 20,000 today, the post framed this demographic and religious presence as a looming threat.
Israel’s tweet went on to describe mosques as breeding grounds for violence and hate, and Muslims as an ungrateful and hostile population, accusing them of forming a “fifth column” within European societies.
“In the year 1980, there were only fewer than a hundred mosques in Europe. As for today, there are more than 20 thousand mosques. This is the true face of colonization”, said the tweet.
While the Israeli government’s tweet paints the growth of Europe’s Muslim population as a threat and labels it “the true face of colonization”, the facts tell a different story.
According to Pew Research, Muslims make up just 4.9 per cent of the European population, with approximately 25.8 million individuals across 30 countries.
The statement from the Israeli account, coming from a state responsible for decades of military occupation, forced displacement, apartheid and genocide drew immediate condemnation.
Observers noted the chilling resemblance between Israel’s rhetoric and the racist “Great Replacement” theory promoted by far-right groups across Europe and North America.
The tweet is not an isolated case. Israel and Zionist-aligned organisations have long played a central role in the infrastructure of global Islamophobia. A growing body of research has exposed the ways in which pro-Israel donors, think tanks, and lobbying groups fund anti-Muslim propaganda under the guise of national security or counter-extremism.
This ideological overlap between support for Israel and anti-Muslim racism has become a defining feature of far-right discourse in the West. It serves to legitimise both domestic crackdowns on Muslims and international complicity in Israeli apartheid.
Israeli government’s framing of European Muslims as a colonising force aligns with far-right narratives and obscures the historical realities of settler colonialism in Palestine. The use of such language by an official state account is an example of how Islamophobic rhetoric has been normalised in Israeli political discourse.
