The State of Israel continues to survive because we defeated those who sought our annihilation - by Nave Dromi

The Jewish refugees from the Middle East know the truth: Only a sovereign people seen as invincible and indestructible are secure in this region.

Nave Dromi..
JNS.org..
24 November '19..

Ever since the Muslim conquest, occupation and colonization of the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th century, the region’s Jews, among others, lived under a dhimmi status. While the Arabic term “dhimmi” has been translated as “tolerated,” the actual meaning is far more sinister.

Under Islamic law, Jews were less than second-class citizens. They were a brutally oppressed minority, forced to pay special taxes called jizya, frequently forced to place distinctive signs on their houses and clothing and sometimes brutally humiliated in other ways.

The Egyptian-born British author Bat Ye’or wrote that the dhimmi status was a “relationship between conqueror and conquered” and that “the dhimmi peoples bore the role of victim, vanquished by force; and indeed, it is after a war, a jihad, and after a defeat, that a nation becomes a dhimmi people.”

The Jewish people had lived in the region for millennia before being expelled and forced to flee by Arab leaders in the 20th century. Almost a million Jews had lived in the Middle East and North Africa before their status turned from perilous to entirely unwanted around the middle of the past century, most fleeing to the nascent State of Israel.

On Nov. 30, we will remember them on the Day of Commemoration for the Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries and Iran. We will remember their history, culture and tradition, maintained under difficult circumstances, and also their ethnic cleansing.

However, there are also lessons we need to learn.

Those of us whose origins are in lands now known as Arab countries and whose families were dhimmis understand well this history of defeat.

(Continue to Full Column)

Nave Dromi is the director of the Middle East Forum in Israel. She previously served as the manager of the Blue and White Human Rights movement, founded by the Institute for Zionist Strategies. She holds a B.A in Political Science and Middle Eastern studies from Ben-Gurion University and a masters degree from the Ruderman Program for Israel and American Jewish Studies.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.