The truth is, however, we have no one to blame but ourselves

...Unlike Arab-Muslim cultures, Jewish culture tends to be highly self-reflective. We tend to be so self-reflective, in fact, that we excoriate ourselves rather than risk offending others. We were sure - centuries of evidence to the contrary - that if we were simply willing to share the land that the Arab majority would be willing to share with us. They aren't and it is long past time that we acknowledge that fact.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
06 October '14..

The Jewish people in the Middle East are a tiny minority under siege.

There are something like six million Jews surrounded by roughly four hundred million Arabs who, for the most part, do not want them there and many are willing to use extreme violence - baby killing and head-chopping - in order to make us understand this fact.

Throughout the region imams and ayatollahs cry from the rafters that the Jews are evil, that we are war mongers who want nothing so much as to corrupt everything around us. They tell their children that we are the descendants of apes and pigs. They tell their children that the tiny Jewish minority - who for centuries they abused as second and third-class non-citizens under Arab-Muslim imperial rule - are an evil people in need of decimation.

They place the Jews on a Pedestal of Malevolence and tell their children that Allah loves nothing so much as dead Jews and then hand out candies when Jewish yeshiva students are kidnapped and slaughtered.

Meanwhile, the racist western-left tells one another that those very same Jews, whose children grow up with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), are, in fact, agents of a racist, colonial, imperial enterprise that should have been strangled in its crib directly after the Holocaust as a matter of "social justice" and "universal human rights."

The Island of Peace - Poor impulse control or deadly ideology?

In 2011, Daqamseh said that he had not committed any crime, but rather “fulfilled his national and religious duty.” He was supported by Jordan’s Justice Minister (and his former attorney) Hussein Mjali, who called him a ‘hero’.

Fresnozionism.org..
15 April '13..





News item:

An overwhelming 110 members [out of 120] of the Jordanian House of Representatives signed a petition demanding a pardon for a Jordanian soldier who shot and killed seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997.

Ahmad Musa Mustafa Daqamseh shot the girls during a school fieldtrip [to the Island of Peace] in Naharayim, near the Israel-Jordan border, and is currently serving a life sentence.

Here’s a description of the island:

The Island of Peace is an Israeli-Jordanian park at the confluence of the Jordan River and Yarmouk River, on the border between Israel and Jordan. …

Land along the Jordan River’s alluvial slopes and floor bed was under Jewish ownership before the establishment of the State of Israel. In 1927, Pinchas Rutenberg, founder of the Palestine Electric Company, signed an agreement with King Abdullah I of Jordan to build a hydroelectric power station. The canals and dams built for this purpose created a man-made island. …

In 1994, Israel ceded the area to Jordan as part of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace. Jordan agreed to lease it back so the Israeli farmers from Kibbutz Ashdot Ya’acov could continue to cultivate the land. Farming continues under a 25-year, automatically renewable lease. A gate was established to enable Israeli tourists to visit the park without a visa or passport, on presentation of their identity cards to the Jordanian guards at the border crossing.

It is a remarkably beautiful place, and represented one of the rare instances of anything approaching normal relations between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors. In 1994, King Hussein of Jordan told PM Itzhak Rabin that “no place better illustrates the fact that we are at peace.”

The 1997 murders were horrific. Daqamseh said that the picnicking girls had ridiculed him while praying, so he opened fire on them from a guard tower with his M16. Then he climbed down and chased them, continuing to fire until his weapon jammed.

In a gesture of a kind not seen from an Arab leader before or since, King Hussein came to Israel and visited the the shiva houses of the victims, sat on the floor with mourners, and ordered that the families be compensated. “Your pain is my pain,” he said.

Daqamseh was sentenced to life in prison by a Jordanian court, which normally equates to 25 years. His defense was a form of insanity plea: he could have received the death penalty, but the court was lenient because of his “antisocial personality disorder.” And by Western standards — even by King Hussein’s — anyone who would shoot down 13 and 14-year old girls because he believed they had made fun of him would have to be crazy.

In 2001, his mother called an al-Jazeera TV program and made this statement:

I am proud of my son, and I hold my head high. My son did a heroic deed and has pleased Allah and his own conscience. My son lifts my head and the head of the entire Arab and Islamic nation. I am proud of any Muslim who does what Ahmad did. I hope that I am not saying something wrong. When my son went to prison, they asked him: ‘Ahmad, do you regret it?’ He answered: ‘I have no regrets.’ He treated everyone to coffee, honored all the other prisoners, and said: The only thing that I am angry about is the gun, which did not work properly. Otherwise I would have killed all of the passengers on the bus.

Lee Smith - Minority Report

Lee Smith
tabletmag.com
29 June '11

http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/71154/minority-report/

By establishing a Jewish majority in Palestine, Israel distinguished itself from other Middle East minority groups, which suffer physical fear and intellectual confusion, even if they hold power

At a recent event in Dearborn, Mich., a crowd welcomed Syria’s ambassador to Washington, Imad Mustapha, who led a rally on behalf of his country’s President Bashar al-Assad. The scene was outrageous for a number of reasons, including that these were American citizens gathered in support of a regime responsible for the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. But perhaps even more notable was the tragedy at the heart of the scene: These Syrian-Americans—Christians and members of Muslim minority sects like the Alawites, Druze, and Ismailis—are still writhing from their emotional experience as Middle Eastern minorities. No matter how far they get from the region, they are plagued with a vulnerability that leaves them terrified, angry, and often crazy.

And what they throw into sharp relief is a larger lesson: Among all the minorities of the Middle East, only the Jews have escaped this unhealthy condition, thanks to the fact that for over 60 years now they have had their own state and can defend themselves against their adversaries. Theodor Herzl asserted that Israel would allow the Jews to live like normal people, and as it turns out—contrary to what nearly all Arabs, most Europeans, and many Israelis believe—he has largely been proven right.

But to understand why he was right, we have to put aside Herzl and Europe and look at Israel in a Middle Eastern context, as a refuge for a religious minority: the Jews of the Middle East. Many people, including many Jews, still see Israel as the end product of a European ideological movement that found an awful but undeniable justification in the Holocaust. Yet, as many Arabs argue, that narrative is unconnected to the Middle East. No matter how many Arab ideologues collaborated with the Nazis or adopted Nazi ideas about Jews, there is no reason that the Palestinians should have to pay for a European crime. It makes more sense, then, to look at minorities in the Middle East generally, the Jews specifically, and to evaluate the success or failure of Zionism by the standards of the region.

***

Anyone who previously wrote off as a right-wing Zionist myth the idea that Middle Eastern minorities are oppressed by the regional Sunni majority needs only consider the situation of Coptic Christians in Egypt over the last few months. Even many observers who did acknowledge the reality in Egypt are surprised now in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution to note the uptick in violence against Christians—the kidnappings of Coptic girls and the burning of churches, among other incidents. After all, it was commonly believed before the revolution that sectarian violence was the fault of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who, in this view, had empowered the Islamist movement and thus animosity against non-Muslim communities. But Egypt’s Muslim-Christian divide was not about Mubarak, any more than the United States was responsible for the murder of Christians in Iraq or Israel is responsible for the flight of Christians from Bethlehem and other towns in the West Bank.

Bataween - The Dhimmi roots of the conflict with Israel

Bataween
Point of No Return
17 June '11

http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2011/06/dhimmi-roots-of-conflict-with-israel.html



Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote an important piece for the Huffington Post this week pleading for the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to make peace by uttering six little words: I will accept a Jewish state.

In many ways, Foxman puts his finger on the nub of the conflict between Muslims and the Jews of Israel. The root of Arab/Muslim rejectionism lies in Dhimmitude: the traditional lowly status of Jews under Islam. The master cannot stand the thought that his former underling now wants the freedom to run his own life.

Here's the money quote:

"It speaks to the long history of relations between Jews and Muslims through the centuries, a relationship that in many ways was better than that of Jews living under Christians in Europe, but was still characterized by a consistent Muslim belief in Jewish inferiority and second-class status.

"This kind of thinking suffused that part of the world, even when individuals or political parties were not Islamic in any way. It didn't matter if the ruler was pan-Arabist, Socialist, or otherwise secularist; even those of a non-Islamic bent shared pejorative notions about the Jews."

Israel, if it stands for anything in the Arab mind, is an assertion of Jewish equality. This is difficult for Arabs and Muslims to swallow under any circumstances, but particularly so because that assertion is being made in the heartland of the Arab world.

Nowhere is the status of the Dhimmi better expressed than in this poem by Yvonne Green, whose ancestors lived in Muslim Boukhara, central Asia. After reading it, you might call into question Foxman's assertion that 'the relationship was in many ways better than that of Jews living under Christians in Europe':

The Dhimmi

Dhimmi under Sharia law says Jew or Christian gav neza, don't speak.
Dhimmi says mekhusham, be careful. Dhimmi says dar a bah, close the door.
Dhimmi says, even inside be on your guard. Dhimmi Boukharian grandchild can teach Europe how faster to bend the knee. I forgot in your schools, but now I am reminded.
Build your house lower than a Moslem's.
Wear yellow raiment.
Hang a cloth from your window to identify your home. If you get hit or insulted by a Moslem say thank you.
Don't ride a camel or a horse but an ass or a donkey and dismount if a Moslem approaches, for you are less than the khar, beast of burden. If a Moslem approaches step off the pavement, lower your eyes and bend your back before him.
Dhimmi says you may not bear witness against a Moslem, you must guard against any derogation from Isalm and be prepared for a beating as you pay your tax for protection.
Dhimmi says contain women, hide aspiration and wealth.
Reprise conversation with Hamdellela, if Allah wills it, and mashalla, thanks to Allah's will.
Dhimmi says move as one, pray as one, think as one.
Dhimmi says you must leave your face in the mirror of your protector's sect, you must think about inner or actual conversion, forced or pragmatic.
Dhimmi says you must infantilise your household and protect it with rubric.

From The Assay by Yvonne Green (Smith/Doorstop books - 2010)


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Muslim Prayer Rugs and Jewish Orphans

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
03 October '10

On a late summer evening, Omar Rivera stumbled over to a local mosque, clutching a beer bottle in his hand and looking for a place to answer nature's call. He chose the Al-Imam Mosque and proceeded to urinate around its exterior, where there were apparently some Muslim prayer rugs lying around. Omar had committed what was a fairly commonplace act of vandalism in the city, public urination. When suddenly he became the poster child for the rise of a "New Islamophobia".

Along with a drunken liberal arts student who slashed a Muslim cabbie, the media transformed poor Omar into the face of a new and terrible wave of hate directed against Muslims. Initial news stories claimed that he had called the mosque denizens, "Terrorists", before peeing on their rug. The NYPD later explained that it had never happened, and that he never said anything for or against Muslims.

After a five-day drunk, Omar probably didn't even know his own name by that point. Neither did Michael Enright, the cabbie slasher, who had a long history of drinking problems. After the attack, he sat down in the middle of traffic, rather than trying to make an escape. Rather than being motivated by any animus toward Muslims, Riviera and Enright were driven by their blood alcohol level and drinking problems. There was no wave of Islamophobia, just two drunk guys who needed to become Friends of Bill.

But the facts didn't matter, by then liberals had begun to construct their own narrative. Omar had clearly been influenced by Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. Their hateful rhetoric had induced Omar to go and piss on some Muslim rugs in order to show his patriotism and bigotry. This was undoubtedly Islamophobia. And while Mayor Bloomberg did not invite the pissed on prayer rugs to City Hall, as he had the slashed cabbie-- liberals bravely sprung into action to show their support for the micturated upon furnishings.

The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good adopted a statement at the ISNA Emergency Interfaith Summit, warning about a tide violence and condemning "the desecration of Islamic houses of worship". The ISNA is the Islamic Society of North America, an organization that was created by Muslim Brotherhood members. The Muslim Brotherhood, which drew inspiration from Nazi Germany, was also behind such philanthropic organizations as Hamas and Al Querida. But that didn't stop various liberal clergy from co-signing a statement with an organization linked to Islamic terrorists, calling for "tolerance".

One of the signers, Rabbi David Saperstein proclaimed, "We know what it is like when people have attacked us physically, have attacked us verbally, and others have remained silent. It cannot happen here in America in 2010." Of course it can happen here, just not to Muslims. It can happen to the Jews of Malmo or Paris. It can happen to Hindus in Bangladesh and Christians in Egypt. And it can even happen even in New York. While Saperstein was pontification about tolerance, the trial of four Muslim terrorists who had plotted to bomb synagogues in New York was going on. New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good had nothing to say on the subject. They remained silent. Because petty things such as synagogue bombings or Copts being lit on fire are nothing compared to the smell of an infidel's recycled Heineken on a sacred Muslim prayer rug.

When infidels are murdered by Muslims, no one calls for an emergency summit. But when a Muslim prayer rug is pissed upon, everyone had better jump into the Dhimmimobile and denounce that rising wave of hate.

Meanwhile in support of the rugs themselves, J-Street collaborator, Rachel Barenblat of Velveteen Rabbi seized on the chance to promote herself by "passing the hat" and raised over a thousand dollars to replace the urine soaked rugs. At the same time as Rachel was passing the hat for the rugs, five people were murdered in Israel by Muslim terrorists. They left behind six orphans. Rachel Barenblat did not volunteer to "pass the hat" for them, because how can a few Jewish orphans compared to the sacred rugs of the Al-Imam Mosque? She didn't even appear to acknowledge their murders. Unlike the rugs, they were non-people.

(Read full story)

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Far From Home

On the eve of the Iraqi elections, the daughter of Iraqi Jews mourns the destruction of Baghdad’s once-vibrant Jewish community


Marina Benjamin
Tabletmag.com
02 March '10

As Iraq’s March 7 election draws near, I can’t help reflecting on how far the Iraqi nation, now entrenched in factionalism, has departed from the commitment to multiculturalism so vital to its birth. “There is no meaning in the words Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the terminology of patriotism, there is simply a country called Iraq and all are Iraqis,” King Faisal proclaimed in 1921, soon after the British installed him as king. These were fine words, underscored by a constitution that granted all of Iraq’s indigenous minorities equal rights. But Faisal’s valiant experiment in diversity proved short-lived, as I know all too well—my own family was forced into exile in 1951, after the government decided to eject Iraqi Jews en masse from the country.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say my family exploded into exile, atomizing in the process. Some members landed in Israel, some in Iran, and some in North America; my immediate kin escaped first to India and then eventually to the United Kingdom. The dynamite involved was—as is ever the story with Jews—racial hatred, which played itself out in the Iraqi political arena as an inability to resolve escalating tensions between Arab Nationalism and Zionism.

My family was far from alone in being shattered. Iraq’s entire Jewish population—a community with roots in Mesopotamia that pre-date the birth of Islam by a millennium—was unceremoniously ejected from the country between 1950 and 1951. But first the Iraqi government had “denaturalized” the Jews, effectively making them refugees in their own land and rendering them defenseless against marauding gangs eager to harm Jews in a kind of skewed quid pro quo for the displacement of Palestinian Arabs.

(Read full story)
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Living in the ruins of the Jewish West Bank

Point of No Return
(18 October 09)

It is not the place of this blog to say who should rule those disputed lands that the media like to call 'the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank'. Often overlooked in the current debate, however, is the long pre-Arab history of the region, once again 'ethnically cleansed' between 1948 and 1967 of its Jewish inhabitants. Here Bat Yeor, the groundbreaking historian of the dhimmi, lyrically evokes Jewish Judea and Samaria in an article she wrote in 1978:

"Silence. We have taken cover in the shade of an olive tree. Instantly the children have nestled in the branches, listening solemnly to our guide. Somewhere a fig tree perfumes the air...or is it merely the breeze of the Judean hills? Circular gesture by Ya'acov Meshorer, chief curator of archaeology at the Israel Museum, renowned numismatist and former supervisor of excavations in Judea-Samaria.

"Excavations in Judea have brought to light flourishing towns possessing numerous synagogues. The architecture as well as the ornamental patterns are typical of the attractive pre-Islamic Hebrew civilisation, represented in Galilee by the synagogues of Capernaum, Beth Shearim, Chorazim, Kefar Baram, Meron and other places. Between the years 70 AD and the Arab invasion and occupation in 640, these hills were dotted with Hebrew towns and villages where an intense national, religious and cultural life prospered. Deprived of its indepdendence, the nation concentrated its genius by reflecting upon the richness of the national past. This the period in which the Mishnah was elaborated and completed in the second century, shortly to be followed by the Talmud - monumental religious, legal and social compendia. Completed in about 400, this work was continued for another two centuries, keeping alive an intense Messianic fervour whose force was to be felt as far as Arabia.

"The Arab occupation scarcely modified the Hebrew place-names and the Jewish inhabitants, now considered dhimmis, remained on their land. It was only later that the relentless mechanism typical of every colonisation gradually wiped out the indigenous population, thereby encouraging a progressive Arabisation of the soil."

"In the former Jewish town of Bethar, there are now 1500 Arabs. They call the place where the Jewish vestiges stand Khirbet al-Yahud, the ruins of the Jews. Nevertheless, were the Israelis to return, the Arabs would not hesitate to chase them away with indignation, referring to them as foreign intruders. Mystery of the Oriental mind or logic of the occupant? These Arabs, hardly interested in a past which is not theirs, ignore totally the history of the places where they live. Of course they know that the spot was inhabited formerly by Jews, as the name indicates, but these ruins, relating to a people dispossessed and driven out, are only of interest as a quarry conveniently providing stones which others have hewn. But the excited comments from the olive tree taught me that many a Jewish child knows more about the history of this place than its Arab inhabitants.