Previously in another article that dealt with a book by Joan Peters, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL - The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine (2-5- 2010
Pondering On ISRAEL As Written in "From Time Immemorial"), we saw much in the way of the illusions and disinformation promulgated, even produced by our mass media in regards to this problematic situation in the land of Israel.
UPDATE - As of 4-29-10:
Official Policy Shift Against Israel by Obama Administration
To understand what Islam believes regarding Mohammad and the mandate that Allah prescribes on his followers, visit this site.
We continue now with another installment from this amazing book, although much that is gleaned from the writings of Joan Peters in this comprehensive work will not necessarily appear in a contiguous fashion.
Much of the Arab world would have us believe that there exists no significant problem between themselves and the Jews; after all, they say, we are all Semitic! They would insist that there never was a problem between Arabs and Jews, and that the only problem that ever existed was between Arabs and Zionist Jews who were intent on stealing Arab land (Palestine) away from them.
"Before the Jewish state was established, there existed nothing to harm good relations between Arabs and Jews." - The late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, November 1973, to Henry Kissinger.
"We are not against the Jews. On the contrary, we are all Semites and we have been living with each other in peace and fraternity, Muslims, Jews, and Christians, for many centuries. - Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO.
The two assertions, that of peaceful co-existence between Arabs and Jews, and that Jews were "intent on stealing [our] land" are both fallacious lies.
During the times of war and the outbreak of hostilities between Arabs and Jews, there were many refugees that fled their homes and sought refuge elsewhere; what few appreciate is that this didn't entail Arabs only, (which our mass media has focused on) but also Jews (who fled various Islamic states, and sought to relocate in Israel. In 1948 more than 850,000 Jews lived in the Arab world. Today (this book was published in 1984) there are less than 29,000.
It was during these times of war when Jews were treated most miserably, however even in times of 'peace' living conditions were hardly any better!
It was during these chapters in FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL that reading was most difficult for me, learning of the atrocities perpetrated on the Jews; and we know virtually nothing of these times because the history of these events were conveniently omitted by the powers that be who reveal their anti-Semitic attitudes.
From chapter 3 of FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL - The Arab Jew:
"Contrary to the myth that Jews lived in harmony with the Arabs before the Zionist state, innumerable authoritative works document decisively the subjugation, oppression, and spasmodic anti-Jewish eruptions of violence that darkened the existence of the Jews in Muslim Arab countries.
"In truth, before the seventh-century advent of the Prophet Mohammad and Islam, Jews and Arabs did have harmonious relations, and words of praise regarding the noble virtues of the Jews may be found in ancient Arab literature.
"Prior to the formation of Islam, even some of the rulers of Arabia embraced Judaism, and there are even parallels between Koranic legends and theological ideas that are found in Talmudic literature."
In 622 AD Mohammad had so few supporters for his new found religion of Islam, that he intended on inducing Jews to adopt it, yet he met with very little success; so he introduced a few Jewish practices like the Day of Atonement, the Jewish observance of Yom Kipur, and during prayer time Muslims were to face towards Jerusalem, but still he was rejected by the Jews, and so such observances were dropped from Islam, and instruction to face Mecca, rather than Jerusalem during times of prayer ensued. Three years later Arab hostility towards Jews commenced and have continued to this day.
In the Charter of Omar (Mohammad's immediate successor) laws for dhimmi (non-Muslims) were developed and any dhimmi that violated any of these laws were slain. Jews were forbidden to touch the Koran, forced to wear a distinctive habit (blue or black) with a sash and compelled to wear a yellow piece of clothing as a badge (long before Hitler enforced the yellow 6-pointed star on Jews relegated to ghettos), and required to bury their dead without letting their grief be heard by the Muslims.
Such a 'privileged life' at the benevolence of the Muslims was to be repaid by the 'grateful Jews' in the forms of personal head and property taxes; such was justified through the writings of the Koran:
"Fight against those [Jews and Christians] who believe not in Allah...until they pay the tribute (Jaziyah) readily, being brought low." Surah IX: 29
The head tax was enforced in some form until 1908 in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey; until 1925 in Iran; and still enforceable in Yemen today.
Any Jew's word was considered invalid in a court of law, but any charge against a Jew by a Muslim was held fast even if evidence were produced to prove the contrary. A Muslim who killed a fellow Muslim would himself die, yet if that same Muslim were to kill a Jew, no prosecution would be sought by a court of law.
"Demeaning of the Jews as represented by the Charter has carried down through the centuries, its implementation inflicted with varying degrees of cruelty or inflexibility, depending upon the character of the particular Muslim ruler. When that rule was tyrannical, life was abject slavery, as in Yemen, where one of the Jews' tasks was to clean the city latrines and another was to clear the streets of animal carcasses-without pay, and often on the Sabbath."
Over the centuries, as recorded by various travelers, Jews were forced to live in ghettos, called hara, mellah or simply Jewish Quarter. In 14th century Egypt one traveler recorded their observations of Jews living in a ghetto and some five hundred years later, another traveler reported that the Jews were still in residence there.
Throughout this difficult chapter, I read of the terrible plight of Jews who lived in Islamic nations such as Yemen, Aden, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, and Libya; in each case, the stories though different, carried the same elements of prejudice, injustice, oppression, abuse, hatred and violence. Some details were simply too grisly to describe here in this article. Here however I have included some relatively mild testimonies from some individual Jews as interviewed by Joan Peters in Chapter 6: Invitation Declined -
Rafi, an Iraq-born Jew: 1948 -
"Things changed drastically for the Jews when the mandate in Iraq was over and the power was turned over to the Iraqi's (from Britain). . . riots had taken place against the Jews in Palestine-- even though the British were still here--if the Jews were attacked somewhere, there was always some riot in Baghdad against the Jews, I guess just for the fun of it."
Rafi goes on to say that when WW II broke out, Hitler brought no small amount of enthusiasm among Arab nations, encouraging them to likewise prey upon the Jewish communities within their borders; also when Iraq got its independence in '32 there was a major pogrom in Iraq, but not against Jews, rather against Christians! Once the Iraqi's were in power, they felt a demonstration against all minorities should be made.
Rafi comments further about the refugee situation among Jews and Arabs alike, and how they differed:
". . . there have been as many Jew refugees from Arab countries as there has been from Palestine. The only difference is that the Jews' property has been openly confiscated (this practice had been widely experienced by Jews fleeing from various Arab countries: they would have their citizenship revoked, often had to pay exorbitant amounts of money to get out, and have nearly all, or all their property confiscated besides).
"There is also the myth that only Jews are coming to this country (Israel), and sending Arabs out. But Arabs were immigrating to Israel, as much as Jews. . . Why does an Arab, that did not exist here a few generations before, have more right than a Jew who has been here many generations, and sometimes his ancestors for twenty generations, in Israel?"
Yaacov and Shlomo, Egyptian Jews -
Yaacov, a school teacher:
"Sure, there was nothing to complain about. We came back alive from school...when we took the train to school, I have to be very careful to lock the door in my compartment or to be with other Jewish students. And many times I had incidents, as I was ten, eleven years old-this was in 1946 to '48 or '49. It was a fact of life. Nothing to complain about. I mean just to say, well it was raining today. So what? Nothing extraordinary. It was part of every day life to be beaten for being a Jew; you could expect it."
Shlomo, his companion:
"Killings, it happened once in every two years, about. You should expect that too. Every now and then, for one reason or another, though you have done nothing - I mean nothing concerning you directly- you must expect every two years, something like that. You try to avoid it. . . tomorrow someone can get and kill him and he will not be punished as if this fellow killed the same person of his own community. If [a Jew] was lucky he was just slapped on the face for nothing and told, 'You are a dirty Jew'. If he was unlucky he suffered a little bit more than that . . . Jews suffered, and were ill-treated and were persecuted and molested in the streets.
"Let me make a point here. You see, I think that many of the Jews are very taken by the idea that in our lifetime we can see the peace and the Arabs accepting our existence, and all that. But the world must put pressure on the Arabs - the Israelis are not the ones who need the pressure - we want too much that the Arabs will stop warring with us. We are a tiny and poor country [at that time] - they are so rich and great. It is them - the Arabs - that the world must help to understand, that we can live together, to let us live."
Sarah, from Egypt -
"You see in school, the children, six, seven years old, in the playground, they are pretending to shoot the Jewish people. Starting the day having a war! And the Arabs teacher teaches the kids that they should really be against the Jews - that the "Jews are killing" their people, that "the Jews are taking" their land. Giving them a very, very black view of the Jewish people. Not the Israeli, but the Jew. Singing songs against Jews - so figure it out, a Jewish child should be in the school, singing against his own blood?"
Mordecai, from Libya -
"I remember that in the 1950's, although Libya had a relatively low crime rate, I felt threatened by the man on the street . . . why should I feel threatened? Possibly because just five or six years earlier - in 1945 - the Jews had been victims of a terrible pogrom. Around one hundred and fifty Jews were killed in Tripoli. The murders were bestial and whole families were brutally massacred. But all the Arabs who were accused by the British of these crimes were let free, and the only people who were put in prison were ten Jews - they were ready for them so there was less damage, and this time, the British interrupted the violence. . . our Jewish girls were victims of Arab lust and the Arabs even installed an Arab treasurer to check on the funds of the Jewish community. In 1967, after the Six Day War, Jews were killed wantonly, thrown from balconies into the street - it was horrible - riots, burning the synagogue. . ."
If any doubt the severity of these accounts, I would challenge you to get a hold of a copy of this book and research the sources. Joan Peters has ample quotes of sources in the bibliography, and these number (sometimes) in the hundreds, per chapter!
As mentioned in the previous article, you can order a copy of FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL!
Stories of pogroms, household break-ins, store thefts, the brutalization of women, teens and even children, and the like are peppered through out chapter 3, "The Arab Jew" and there were times I had to put the book down, on the verge of tears, at the blatant hatred that was focused on the Jews.
We understand that any prejudice is a sin, but prejudice against the Jew carries with it, a particularly satanic aspect, because of all the people of the Earth, the LORD God chose Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob to bring forth a blessing to all the world, that is, of course, the "seed of the woman" which later is describes as the "Son of David" who would come and reign over all the world in peace and righteousness, from the holy city of Jerusalem, Israel.
This is obviously the Messiah of Israel. Satan hates Israel for this very reason, and he knows that if he can destroy Israel, any prophetic fulfilment's carried out by the Messiah would be impossible. Thus he has stirred those of this fallen world, those who the Bible describes as "the children of disobedience" (EPH 5:6; COL 3:6) to hate these people, and the Jewish people have been hated and persecuted, for longer duration and with greater intensity, than any other nation in history.
Claims that "peaceful coexistence between Jews and Muslims" were a matter of historical record until Zionist ideas and actions which destroyed such good relations is plainly false. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia as well as King Hussein of Jordan made such claims, and at that time, no Jew was even allowed to live in Saudi Arabia or become a citizen of Jordan!
Such Islamic leaders would have us believe that if not for the Zionist movement that gave the Jews a homeland, and a State of their own in which they could live in relative peace, there would be no conflict and friendship between these two peoples would have remained unbroken. Obviously this is a political ploy being used to paint Israel, and those Jews who cherish her, as well as a life apart from Islamic persecution, as 'the bad guy'.
It was mentioned in the previous article, how the term 'Palestine' was created and now exploited by our modern globalists; however if one understands the actual history of Canaan, and the nation of Israel's insertion into that region, the conclusion that there never was a Palestinian history, a Palestinian people, a Palestinian culture, language, society, etc.
The people there in 'Palestine', that is, the refugees, are Jordanians, Syrians, and other Islamic people who wanted to flee Israel when war broke out between the Jews and any particular Muslim nation(s), but for propaganda's sake, not allowed to return to their country of origin. Thus their plight of misery, stranded in camps, would be trumpeted throughout the world, via the mass media, and Israel would be blamed for it, rather than the Muslim nations that would refuse their own people to return!
The long history of Israel has been proven time and time again by careful archaeological discoveries and digs, and museums in Israel are full of such evidence of a national Jewish presence in the land dating thousands of years ago. Having been to Israel twice now, I've witnessed many findings that are even now being excavated for the purpose of archaeological studies concerning the ancient Hebrews and their culture.
When one compares this rich history to that history of the Palestinians, and what is defined as a 'Palestinian' (anyone who has lived there for 18 months to two years), it becomes ludicrous to make any claim that Jews have stolen this land from its rightful heirs, that is, the people of Palestine!
This ends the second segment of this article.
blessings of grace and peace to you all,
James Fire
