1951- Jews in Baghdad line up in front of a synagogue to surrender their assets and register to obtain exit permits
Hat tip to Miggie for the article
This article by Richard Z. Chesnoff is a must read for those of you Westerners who have been fooled by the pro-Palestinian version of the conflict in the Middle East. Read it, and read the referenced book by Sir Martin Gilbert. You might learn a few things about the issue and its history you didn't know.
Surprise, Surprise! Palestinians Won't Recognize Jewish State
By Richard Z. Chesnoff
" The Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state … Such a declaration would directly threaten the Muslims and Christians in Israel and prevent Palestinian refugees, who left their homes and villages a number of decades ago, from being granted the right to return to them."
— Senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath, shortly after the start of US sponsored peace talks
"This rather shocking comment made at a Ramallah press conference last week by one of the supposedly more "moderate" members of the Palestinian leadership produced headlines throughout both the Arab world and Israel.
Amazingly it received nary a mention in the major American media!
As Mr. Shaath well knows, Israel was established and internationally recognized as a Jewish state more than 60 years ago. He also knows that Arab refusal to recognize that fact is at the very core of the Mideast conflict. So how does Shaath expect to win Israeli confidence and concessions for peace if Palestinians still refuse to accept Israel's Jewishness?
And why is Mr. Shaath so worried about Israel's Arabs, that 20 percent of Israel's population of 8 million whose forebears were smart enough not to run away during the 1947-48 Arab-launched war? Surely he knows that Israeli Arabs -- Christian, Druze and Muslim -- are full fledged citizens of the Jewish state. They occasionally face problems, but they always vote, elect their own members of parliament, work in the Israeli government, in Israeli industry, agriculture and commerce, are doctors and nurses in Israeli hospitals, teachers and professors in Israeli schools and universities, serve in the Israeli army if they wish, share in a democratic system unmatched in the Middle East and enjoy a standard of living that is the highest of most Arabs anywhere!
Mr. Shaath also fails to explain that when he speaks of "a Right of Return" he's not referring merely to survivors from 1948's original 700,000 or so Palestinian refugees. He is talking about all their descendants -- four (sometimes five) generations of them -- roughly 4 million souls by Arab count! Does the Palestinian leadership really expect Israel to commit demographic suicide as part of a "peace deal"?
The Palestinian exodus during the Arab war on nascent Israel is part of history. Most fled out of fear of war, others because they were urged to make way for "victorious" Arab armies, and some -- but certainly not most -- because Israeli troops drove them out in the heat of battle.
Other mid-20th century refugee problems were all quickly settled (the millions who simultaneously fled Pakistan and India, for example). But the Arab refugee problem was made to fester with the compliance of the Palestinian leadership. Israel, with millions of Jewish refugees at its gates, understandably refused to allow a hostile Arab refugee mass back onto Israel's sliver of land.
The Muslim world turned its back on its brethren. With the exception of Jordan, no Arab state has ever granted Palestinian refugees citizenship, let alone a permanent home on any of its millions of open acres . Instead Palestinian Arab refugees were kept penned up in overcrowded refugee camps - tent cities that have become squalid towns. They still live off massive international welfare doles, are used as political pawns by corrupt officials, and sit waiting for Israel to be destroyed so they can invoke a "Right of Return".
Compare that to the other, lesser know Mideast refugee crisis that coincided with Israel's birth - the forced exodus of almost 900,000 Jews from their centuries old homes in the Arab world; from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Aden, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia , Algeria and Morocco.
These Jewish communities, some of which had existed 1000 years before Islam, were rich in culture, with their own Judeo dialects and traditions, their own scholars and religious literature. The true story of this other Mideast refugee saga, is now told in a powerful new book by prize-winning British historian, Sir Martin Gilbert called In Ishmael's House; A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (Yale University Press).
To be sure, says Gilbert, Jews in the Arab world were subject over the centuries to occasional violence and forced conversion. Nor were they ever accepted as anything but Dhimmi -- "protected" but always second class citizens.
Still, by 1947, close to a million Jews lived in the Arab world. Many played primary roles in local economies, global trade, and medicine. Some became senior advisors to kings and presidents and helped enrich the cities of the Arab world ( Baghdad's pre 1948 Chamber of Commerce was 50% Jewish).
The historic decision to establish the State of Israel changed all that. Outraged by the idea of even a tiny Jewish state in their midst (and with an avaricious eye on their Jewish citizens' belongings), the Arab world turned on its Jews, targeting them with legislated discrimination, government sponsored anti-Semitic riots and murderous pogroms. Faced with growing threats, outright violence (some were hung for public amusement) and moves to completely disenfranchise them, close to 900,000 Jews were forced to abandon their ancient homes between 1948 and 1967 . In Cairo, the former home of of one of Egypt's wealthiest Jews became the residence of the Egyptian president.
Almost all were eventually "allowed" to leave their native lands on condition they signed agreements never to return and -- most important -- to leave their property and belongings behind. Recently uncovered documents indicate that much of this massive theft was a coordinated scheme by several Arab governments to grab Jewish property worth as much as $100 billion today.
Today, with the exception of small communal pockets in Morocco, the Arab world is effectively Judenrein. Egypt which once had 180,000 Jews now literally has a handful of mostly aged Jews living in Cairo and Alexandria; Iraq which had 160,000 Jews now has 10, Libya and most other Arab states have none.
But here comes the difference between the fates of Arab and Jewish refugees. While the corrupt Arab world condemned Palestinian Arabs to statelessness, squandered opportunities to make peace with Israel and stole mega-millions in welfare funds, the Jewish state and the world Jewish community worked tirelessly to resettle its fellow Jews from Arab lands. More than half a million have settled in Israel where, after early years of economic and sometimes social hardship, they and their descendants have been successfully integrated and now form more than 50% of the Jewish population. Others found new homes in South America, Western Europe, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada -- rebuilding lives while trying to retain their own unique cultural ties and communal institutions.
Most important, not a single Jew from the Arab world remains a "refugee", not one lives in a squalid camp or demands UN funding or a "Right of Return" to the Arab world. Above all, not one angry, Arab-born Jew has ever strapped a terrorist suicide bomb to his or her waist and climbed aboard a bus to murder dozens of innocents.
There are reports Shaath is fighting to win the primary seat on the Palestinian negotiating team. The buzzing swarm of apologists for the Palestinians will argue that Nabil Shaath's statement was strictly for "Arab street consumption." Therein lies the problem. It's time for the Palestinian leadership to tell their people that the only hope for peace is a two state solution -- to recognize Israel as the Jewish one, to build permanent homes for Arab refugees in the Palestinian Arab one and to seek resettlement for those who can't fit on it in other Arab lands.
Won't somebody please send Mr. Shaath a copy of Sir Martin's new book?"
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* Richard Z. Chesnoff, a prize winning veteran of more than 40 years of global news work, has covered many of the major stories and personalities of our times. A former foreign correspondent for Newsweek and executive editor of Newsweek International, he was senior correspondent of US News & World Report from 1985 to 2003 and has been an op-ed columnist for The NY Daily News since 1994.
-Huffington Post
Well, shiver me timbers. That great "independent scholar with a PHD from Princeton", Norm Finklestein (above) never told us that. (Don't call him Norm; he doesn't like that.)
To all you college students, the next time your professor or some invited anti-Israel speaker at your campus starts to rail about the "Nazi state of Israel", why don't you ask them about some of the above historical facts? It will be interesting to see how they respond.
18 comments:
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Think of this Gary.
The Jewish community of Yemen dated back 2,500 years. It had thousands of members and was an economic force in that country. By the end of this year the last 100 Jews will be gone from the land. Why is the world not screaming about this?
Justice for Jews from Arab Lands
Before Israel was formed, there was no reason at all for those Yemeni Jews to leave.
So it is ok to force Jews to leave just because Israel is a nation?
Written like a true Nazi Siarlys.
I should call YOU a Nazi Findalis, since you are the one upholding Israel. But, aside from the fact that I think you said you were Lance's baby's grandmother (that wasn't Miggie, was it?), I don't think Israel is legitimately labeled as "Nazi." Does this surprise you?
I mentioned this fact because people in the twentieth century have a lazy habit of projecting immediate perceptions back upon centuries of history in a most inaccurate way. In the mid-20th century, there were tensions between northern urban blacks and Jews, because Jews happened to be the ethnic group moving out of neighborhoods blacks were moving into. This meant Jews were the landlords and store owners of some of the worst property in town, which hadn't been in much better shape at the time they bought it from departing exemplars of some other ethnic group.
Anyone who has tried to project such hostility back into time has either confounded themselves or resorted to the wierdest lies. When 90% of blacks lived in the south, blacks and Jews were allies, and had in common the enmity of the KKK, even though Judah Benjamin was a member of Jefferson Davis's cabinet.
Likewise, there was no deep-seated inherent anti-Semitism in Muslim or Arab culture. But, once the chain of events that began with the establishment of Israel was set in motion, it set off a series of reactions which included hostility to Jews by people who identified in some way with the Arab neighbors fighting Israel. It was complicated, unlike the political slogans everyone came up with to try to characterize it.
Was this all right? No, if I had the power to redesign the history of the world, like a SIM City program on a cosmic scale, I would arrange things very differently. I would probably snuff out the Grand Mufti before he came home from Berlin, arrange for the coup against King Farouk to be led by officers who blamed him for fighting Israel at all, strike fear in the hearts of King Abdullah's soldiers so they couldn't hold the West Bank in the first place, and cultivate a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state in the Jordan Valley and adjacent seacoast which would quickly have had the highest standard of living anywhere except possibly Iraq when Saddam Hussein was vice-president, before the Peter Principle elevated him to his level of incompetence.
Really my dear, you shoot your mouth off most intemperately, without first taking care to obtain hard data on what you have endeavored to comment on.
Likewise, there was no deep-seated inherent anti-Semitism in Muslim or Arab culture.
You must be smoking crack. Here are just a few examples of Muslim anti-Semitism. Right out of the Koran and Hadiths:
Koran (5:51) - "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people
Those who reject (Truth), among the People of the Book and among the Polytheists, will be in Hell-Fire, to dwell therein (for aye). They are the worst of creatures. (98:6)
Surely the vilest of animals in Allah's sight are those who disbelieve, then they would not believe. (8:55)
Verse 7:176 compares unbelievers to "panting dogs" with regard to their idiocy and worthlessness. Verse 7:179 says they are like "cattle" only worse.
Verse 5:60 even says that Allah transformed Jews of the past into apes and pigs. This is echoed by verses 7:166 and 2:65.
A hadith says that Muhammad believed rats to be "mutated Jews" (Bukhari 54:524, also confirmed by Sahih Muslim 7135 and 7136).
Verses 46:29-35 even say that unbelieving men are worse than demons who believe in Muhammad.
The Jews call Ezra a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth! (9:30) (See also Bukhari 8:427), one of the last things Muhammad ever said on his deathbed was "May Allah curse the Jews and Christians.”)
Jews are also cursed by Allah (5:13), in one of his final pronouncements. The Qur’an goes on to assure Muslims that Jews are wicked (4:160-162) – so wicked, in fact, that they have somehow managed to do the impossible (18:27) and alter the word of Allah (2:75). Jews are “fond of lies” and “devour the forbidden” (5:42).
And now the most famous quote of all:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).Sahih Muslim, 41:6985, see also Sahih Muslim, 41:6981, Sahih Muslim, 41:6982, Sahih Muslim, 41:6983, Sahih Muslim, 41:6984, Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:56:791,(Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:52:177)
We can safely conclude that Islam not only is anti-Semitic, but it is the only religion in the world with anti-Semitism written into its holy book (The Koran).
So much for the claims of Siarlys. I suggest she reads the Koran to understand the true meaning of Islam, and not so-called scholarly works by bull shit artists who pass for University professors these days (And in my day too.).
I put together what I thought was a thorough response to Findalis. Apparently the site doesn't allow commenting at such length. I began:
OK Findalis, good job with the research. Now we have something we can sink our teeth into. I've checked several of your quotes from the Qu'ran. They appear to be consistent with my copy of Marmaduke Pickthall's The Meaning of the Glorious Koran.
So, its your call Gary. Can I post in two parts, or is that overdoing it?
I suppose I could post it at Alexandria, with some introduction to the preceding debate.
I post the source and Siarlys recommends another bs book by the same sob.
Is she scared to confront the source itself?
Findalis, you appear to have several synapses cross-wired in your brain. Incidentally, I hesitate to mention it, but Siarlys is and always has been a male name, at least for the past 1000 years or so.
More important, I post a statement acknowledging the accuracy of the citations you posted, and you identify this is "Siarlys recommends another bs book by the same sob."
The only book I mentioned is the Qu'ran, the same one you quoted from, and Marmaduke Pickthall is the translator of the copy I possess. His name is phonetically distinguishable from "David Levering Lewis."
Now, if we can be clear that all I've posted so far is acknowledgement that what you posted is accurate, I'm waiting for Gary to determine whether I can post the rest of my response in two parts, or whether, being that its so long, I should post it elsewhere.
You just don't know how take yes for an answer, do you?
Siarlys,
Go ahead and post it.
Thank you Gary. Not to repeat the paragraph I already posted, Findalis, good job with the research.
I could offer you a few choice quotes from the Torah which sound an awful lot alike. Exodus 16:28 for example "And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?" Exodus 32:9, "I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: Now, therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them." There are many others. The very Jewish scriptures show God rejecting and threatening to destroy the Jewish people, sometimes perhaps leaving a remnant.
Then there are the viciously anti-Semitic references in the Gospel According to John. We probably won't quarrel over those per se. We all know that Christianity devoted many centuries to anti-Semitism. Christian anti-Semitism does not prove, one way or the other, whether Islam is anti-Semitic, but picking out verses and saying 'This is what the whole faith stands for' can be dangerous. Muhammed may well have cherry-picked Exodus and Jeremiah and Ezra when he had a political conflict with a neighboring Jewish Arab tribe.
Now, back to the Qu'ran. Surah V: 69 "Lo! Those who believe, and those who are Jews, and Sabaeans and Christians - Whosoever believeth in al-Lah [God] and the Last Day and doeth right - there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve." (Subsequent verses are critical, but not condemnatory, and Jews might fully agree with Muhammed's criticisms of Christians in 72-73, particularly "They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! al-Lah is the third of three."
Surah II: 190-193, enjoins believers to fight those who persecute them, but not to begin hostilities, and if they desist, al-Lah is merciful. And of course, Surah II: 256, "There is no compulsion in religion."
I won't try to match you in numbers of verses. What is more relevant is the context. There are Bible-believing Christians who insist that context means nothing. I refer them to the B.C. cartoon where one woman announces "The Bible says 'There is no God'." The other flips through the pages to find the complete context: "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God."
Analysis of context to follow:
Muhammed, like anyone introducing a new faith, denomination, doctrine, school, has to explain why the existing faiths are not the perfect reflection of God's perfect will. You know how Lutherans and Catholics used to talk about each other 200 years ago? At first, he expected the Jewish tribes in his immediate vicinity to accept him as bearing the latest revelation from their God, building on their own tradition. Of course, Jews more often than not rejected their own prophets, at the time, and revered them AFTER the Exile, or once cast into the Diaspora. It was only natural for him to critique those who rejected him.
Further, he became a political leader while still delivering his message. Christianity had the blessing of being a faith of the lower classes of the mighty Roman Empire for 300+ years, before cutting the dirty deal with Constantine that made them The State Religion. Muhammed fought Jewish tribes. (Constantine was one of the first "Christians" to categorically reject Jews). That is reflected in many of Muhammed's verses. Most of the Jews of the world lived elsewhere.
How do we resolve the apparent conflict in the meaning of these different verses? Well, it does suggest that Muhammed's words were not a complete and perfect revelation from God. Sometimes he was having a bad hair day. No doubt, someone or other will issue a fatwa against me for saying so. I say that about Christian scriptures too. Oh yes, God is behind them all, but even the first person given the revelation gets it all screwed up in their own mind. God knew that would happen.
As for Bukhari, "Al-Bukhari traveled widely throughout the Abbasid empire since he was sixteen years, collecting those traditions he thought trustworthy." So, that's his opinion, at best. It would take days to review all of his hadith which are posted at the USC Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement. I don't have that time to devote to it. References to Jews as rats would appear to be a very small portion of the total, and even what you offer sounds speculative rather than a definitive belief. Something he picked up on the road.
Nobody knows how the lands won by Islamic armies would have been governed if Muhammed had lived. We do know how they were governed by others, since all the conquests outside Arabia occurred after his death. As his successor said "If you worship Muhammed, know that he is dead. If you worship God, know that he lives forever."
During the time of the four Rashidun caliphs, and the later Umayyad dynasty, there was no compulsion in matters of religion. Jews are documented to have been active and eager collaborators in the conquest. No doubt, the verses you have collected were convenient propaganda for those who in later times chose to adopt a policy of persecuting Jews, particularly the Fatamids, and the Almohades. Incidentally, Caliph Uman cut deals with both Christians and Jews guaranteeing them religious freedom -- its part of how the caliphate expanded so rapidly. Jerusalem was surrendered well short of a seige, and Alexandria surrendered quite cheerfully. The Iranians put up more of a fight, and appear to have been more forcefully encouraged to convert.
So, like this history of Christianity, and to some extent the history of Judaism, its a mixed bag. Generally, when particular verses are cited by adherents of a holy text, the real motivation is to find something which appears to justify whatever political motivation has already seized the speaker. Evangelical Christians are prone to that also. Jews have a certain purity due to the fact that, until about half a century ago, they haven't actually been the dominant governing body of any territory.
This should be the third of three parts:
Israel is neither Nazi nor fascist, but it is a government, and it becomes less pristine, less uniquely virtuous, more prone to the same corruption and mis-steps that any government is prone to, the longer it exists. Political organizations which have attempted to revive some form of Islam-as-politics have in large part arisen in conflict with Israel. Naturally, they cherry pick precisely the verses you have listed, and make convenient use of them.
Here is some news for you Siarlys: Jews don't worship Allah!
Allah was a Pagan Moon God until Mohammad decided to change his identity. So when the Koran mentions believers in Allah, it is not mentioning Jews or Christians. Both groups rejected the lunatic ramblings of Mohammad a long time ago.
But a good book on the subject of Dhimmitude is:
The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom
Written by Dr. Mark Durie. A former linguistics scholar, Durie is now the Vicar of St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Caulfield in Melbourne, Australia. He writes and speaks extensively in Australia and internationally about Islam, interfaith dialogue, religious conflict, and the persecution of religious minorities, especially Christians living under Sharia law.
Findalis, you are betraying extreme ignorance again. I've heard that shabby claim that "Allah was a Pagan Moon God" before (from a good friend of mine, and an excellent chess player, who is a devout Baptist). I could make an equally sound claim that Yaweh was a variation on Zeus, or that Ashera used to be El's wife.
A very conservative, very learned, Orthodox Jewish rabbi, a 40-year Talmudic scholar, whose politics are much closer to yours than mine, explained that the reason Elohim is a plural word is that various natural elements and forces, worshipped individually in various pagan pantheons, are actually manifestations of one single deity. Elohim capitalized refers to that single deity, as in "Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our G-d is One." If the e is lower case, it refers to the gods, plural, of the pagans.
Now, in Arabic, there is only one word for gods, or God. Any Jewish text written in Arabic (which is, e.g., the language the Jewish tribes of Yathrib and Khaybar spoke), any Christian Bible written in Arabic, uses the term "al-Lah" because there is no other in the Arabic language.
Was there A "lah" who was a moon god among the pagan deities of Mecca, the idols Muhammed smashed on his triumpal return? There certainly was. But al-Lah means The God, the one and only. As Malcolm X explained after returning from the hajj (which is when he abandoned the Black Muslim distortions of Islam, reaching out both to "white" Americans and African American Christians), "The God we worship is the one who created the universe. Isn't that the God you worship?" I have a tape of that speech.
Now, as to your source. I often ask people to cite a source, and of course I wouldn't just brush your source off as a b.s. artist, as you casually do when anyone cites a source you find inconvenient to your argument. My fourth grade teacher taught us "Just because it is in a book, doesn't mean it is true, but always know where you got a fact from."
Durie is deemed an expert in the indigenous cultures in the region of Aceh, Indonesia. That is a Muslim part of the world, but it doesn't appear to make him an expert on the origins of Islam. For a man with a Ph.D in linguistics, he ought to know better. I would challenge him to explain what OTHER word for god, gods or God exists in Arabic???
The man obviously has an ax to grind. I've found a couple of his articles on the internet. He mostly plays word games, rather than presenting documented history. But for me, the bottom line to his credibility is the question I already posted: If he can provide, as a self-proclaimed expert in linguistics, a dissertation on the distinct Arab words for god, gods, and God, I might pay attention. From all other sources I've ever read, there are no different words.
P.S. Gary is a very prolific writer, and it is getting harder and harder to find my way back to this post. I will not be attempting to visit it again. We've both laid our positions out at some length, and obviously neither of us is convincing the other. Any readers who care to read it all can arrive at their own conclusions. You are welcome to the final word, if you want it.
I am reminded by this argument of a similar style argument I had with the late Roger W Gardner of Radarsite.
While I talked of moderate Muslims, he refused to believe many could exist. He like I had made a detailed study of the Koran, yet while I see the possibility of Islam going through a reformation (In many ways the like Christianity has done. It only took Christianity 1500 years to become civilized.) Roger never could.
Thus this whole trend of discussion reminded me of my old friend. Thank you for that.
We leave it that we should agree to disagree.
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