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.

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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. 

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Jewish Voice for Peace confuses submission (and massacres) with peace - by Lyn Julius

...JVP begins its history lesson with the Ottomans. Jews paid a poll tax so that the Ottoman empire might protect them, and violence against them was “unusual.” Two falsehoods in one sentence. The dhimmi system was a Mafia-style protection racket built on extortion and humiliation: Jews were granted few rights. Pre-1948 massacres against the Jews were not unusual.

Lyn Julius..
JNS.org..
28 January '19..

It has been said that the group Jewish Voice for Peace is neither representative of Jews, nor is it pro-peace. Its voice on the far-left edge of the U.S. Jewish community has been rather shrill since the organization was founded in 1996.

Now, however, with the publication of its Jews of the Middle East worksheet and its document “Our approach to Middle East Peace,” JVP is employing a new tactic: to co-opt Mizrahi Jews into its anti-Zionist struggle.

More than 30 Sephardi and Mizrahi organizations have already responded angrily, calling for JVP to remove all reference to Mizrahi and Sephardi history in their literature.

Drawing on the revisionism of the academics Zvi Ben-Dror Benite, Yehouda Shenhav and Ella Shohat, JVP begins by falsifying the history of Middle Eastern and North African Jews. We are not told that these Jews were settled in the region since biblical times—predating Islam by 1,000 years—lest we are led to believe that Jews are other than white “colonial settlers.” JVP begins its history lesson with the Ottomans. Jews paid a poll tax so that the Ottoman empire might protect them, and violence against them was “unusual.”

Two falsehoods in one sentence. The dhimmi system was a Mafia-style protection racket built on extortion and humiliation: Jews were granted few rights. Pre-1948 massacres against the Jews were not unusual.

If Zionism was a European movement, so was Arab nationalism. In fact, the latter was predicated on a myth: that a common language was enough to glue disparate tribes together. Arab nationalism turned out to be a dismal failure—a recipe for tyranny and internecine conflict, while Israel, despite never knowing a minute of peace, has been an outstanding success.

(Continue to Full Column)

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. 

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Thoughts concerning Palestinian Christian Theologians against Israel - by Denis MacEoin

No one is suggesting that Palestinian Christians should invite their own deaths by outrightly defying the Muslim majority. It seems inexplicable, however, why these Christians prefer to join with the Islamic resistance rather than to remain silent, accept their supposedly inferior status, and refrain from overt endorsements of what Muslims view as right.

Denis MacEoin..
Gatestone Institute..
25 March '18..

It is sad but possibly to be expected that many Palestinian Christians – who are constantly under threat but have not been killed or expelled – identify closely with the cause of their Muslim fellows as they engage in often violent "resistance" to Israel and the limited Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank (Judaea and Samaria). Christians may have a long history in Syria and Palestine, but the earliest Christians, including Christ, were, of course, Jews. According to Christianity Today:

The Acts of the Apostles states that the first Christians in Jerusalem were Jews, and historians believe that even after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Christianity in the Holy Land kept its Jewish flavor. But the Jewish revolt of Bar-Kokhba in 135 changed all this; Rome showed no mercy to the Jews and obliterated Jerusalem, renaming the city "Aelia Capitolina" and the country of Israel "Palestine." With this blow, the Christian Jewish community effectively disappeared.

As non-Jewish Christians emerged, persecution continued throughout the Roman Empire until the emperor Constantine converted in 312 and later imposed Christianity as the sole religion.

Under the Roman and Byzantine empires, the Christians of Palestine enjoyed freedom to live and worship as they pleased. In 634, however, a mere two years after the death of the prophet Muhammad, Muslim Arab forces defeated the Byzantines and took possession of Syria, of which Palestine was the southern region. "Palestine," although an ancient name, was imposed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in an apparent attempt to sever the land even then from its Jewish roots in response to a revolt in 135 CE.

Palestine, however, was never a separate state or province, regardless of its rulers. From 1923-1948, it was the name of the area under the British mandate: during that time, everyone born there – Christian, Muslim and Jew – was officially a Palestinian, with "Palestine" stamped on all passports.

Then, in May of 1948, five Arab armies attacked Israel on the day of its birth, explicitly hoping to end the new country before it could start. The people now called Palestinians were those Arabs who fled during that war, after their leaders promised them they would be able to come back and reclaim their homes as soon as the Arab victory was complete.

That the Arabs might lose this war – which was what occurred-- was never factored into this promise. When, after the war, the Arabs who had fled wished to come back, Israel reminded them that they had not exactly been allies, and declined to admit them.

During that war of 1947-48, Jordan illegally captured and later annexed much of Jerusalem. The Jews who had lived in those areas fled. Overnight, the Christians who had stayed in Gaza and the West Bank found themselves regarded as second-class, tolerated citizens, dhimmi people with few rights, who were forced to live as outnumbered "infidels" under Muslim rule. As such, they had no legal recourse and were under continual threat for their property and lives.

(Continue to Full Article)

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. 

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The Day of the Dhimmi is Done - by Michael Lumish

...Israel Haters do not care about social justice or human rights. Is that not obvious? If they did they might look up for a moment at a world roiling with the most horrendous human rights violations all around them. The rest of the Middle East makes Israel look like a human rights Shangri-la. And, speaking as an American, please keep in mind that jihadi and progressive-left hatred toward the Jews of the Middle East is not limited to the Jews of the Middle East.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
11 February '17..

There are two points concerning Jews and Israel that I very much want to get across to the politically-inclined.

The first is that the day of the dhimmi is done.

No longer will we allow ourselves to be pushed around as pawns in someone else's political game. Nor will we allow non-Jews, like Barack Obama, to tell us where we may, or may not, be allowed to live within our own ancestral homeland.

The second is that the Oslo process is dead.

It is a corpse. It is a dead albatross around the Jewish neck that is very much in need of removal and burial. I am half a world away and I can still smell the stench.

As a diaspora Jew, I am exceedingly reluctant to tell Israel what to do, but that does not always stop me.

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Israel Thrives is a non-partisan political blog for people who care about Israel and want an end to the Arab-Muslim war against the Jews in the Middle East. Michael Lumish, PhD, editor. - mike.lumish@gmail.com - Doodad, Empress Trudy, Geoffff, and Sar Shalom Contributors.

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. 

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The Dhimmi Jews of SOAS as a Fait Accompli

...This isn’t just about presenting a case for Zionism, this is about tainted Zionist feet walking on their holy campus. Just as radical Islam seeks to limit what other identities can do, where they can go, when they are permitted to join in and when they are not, so too it now acts on the SOAS campus. SOAS is the Al Aqsa Mosque of the London university scene. There is a huge sign outside the campus now, it reads ‘Jews not wanted’. This is what is happening. Jews are now Dhimmi on campus. Let us call it out for what it is. Either the UK government takes action against it or accepts it as fait accompli. The choice is theirs to make. Us Jews? We have other decisions to make.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
27 January '17..

A dhimmi ([ðimi]; Arabic: ذمي, meaning “protected person”) refers to specific individuals living in Muslim lands, who were granted special status and safety in Islamic law in return for paying the capital tax.

Almost everyone in the UK knows SOAS is a hotbed of radical Islamic hatred. Except perhaps those that are themselves beyond the edge of rational thought. So on Tuesday 24 Jan, at the Union General Meeting, I thought it wise to take a closer look at the atmosphere. They wouldn’t have wanted me there, they asked for those present to display their student cards, but with around 150 in the room, they were never going to notice one extra attendee. Anyway, this is Senate House, I’ve spent 8 years at Birkbeck. I know my way around.

I don’t like SOAS. I have seen too much extremism, intolerance and Jew hatred displayed here. I consider it a cesspit. If the government, if those in charge at the university are aware that SOAS is a hotbed of extremist hate, then it becomes their duty to protect the minorities that are at risk. None more so that the Jews. It is clear from the recent news that those responsible for upholding our rights are letting these Jews down.

Those in the room make me uncomfortable. They are bullies, the social media mob (smob), with their hashtags and hypocritical self-righteous indignation. Aggressively swarming around their targets, seeking anybody they can link with enemy number one, the greatest evil known to SOAS students, ‘Zionism’.

The three motions on discussion that were of interest where seven, eight and nine. Seven, dealing with Zionist control of the world and the fact that the NUS Vice President has now clearly been infected with Zionism. Eight was a motion seeking to make Jewish students feel more comfortable and welcome at SOAS, and nine was regarding which external groups SOAS students should welcome onto the campus.

(Continue to Full Post)

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. 

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Proleptic Dhimmis Versus the US Embassy in Jerusalem - by Elder of Ziyon

...They treat Muslims like they are irrational, crazy people who must be handled with kid gloves or else they will turn deadly - and too many Muslims embrace that role because it gives them power over the dhimmis. This same logic is used by some Western leaders to demand that Israel act in certain ways - because of the anticipatory violence of Muslims against Western targets if Israel doesn't adhere to the proleptic dhimmi demands. Don't build in Jerusalem, don't enforce zoning laws, don't perform archaeological digs - all of these are demands on Israel by proleptic dhimmis of the West in far greater volume than by Arab leaders in recent years

Elder of Ziyon..
15 December '16..

Professor Richard Landes coined a wonderful phrase, "proleptic dhimmitude." It refers to the actions of Westerners who take what they believe to be pro-Muslim positions in anticipation of supremacist Muslim threats and demands.

Real dhimmis under Muslim rule live in fear that their Muslim leaders will target them if they do not act in a subservient manner. Proleptic dhimmis act as if Muslims are their leaders, too, and they go beyond Muslim demands in their zeal to appease them ahead of time.

There is no better example of proleptic dhimmitude than the gnashing of teeth over the possibility (which seems more and more likely) that Donald Trump will move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews sputtered on Tuesday:

Why are we moving the embassy to — to Jerusalem at a time that the whole place over there could blow up? Why do we something that's right in the face of the Palestinians, right in the face of the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Egyptians. The one thing they say is leave you know, the Dome of the Rock alone, leave are — the hopeful capital of a Palestinian state alone. Don't desecrate it by saying it's the capital of Israel at this point?

Matthews is not arguing that there is a legal reason not to move the embassy. He is not arguing that such a move would violate even Islamic law.

In fact, Matthews is showing incredible ignorance because any embassy move would occur in the part of Jerusalem that was under Israeli control since 1948.

(Continue to Full Post)

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. 

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Already looking for the votes, on the basis of hatred towards Israel? - by Yves Mamou

...In just one year, 2016, France and its socialist president have made multiple hostile gestures towards Israel, which reveal more about raw anti-Semitism posing as anti-Israelism in France than about its unjustly solitary target.

Yves Mamou..
Gatestone Institute..
29 November '16..

In France, retail chains and importers now have the legal obligation to label products originating in Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

On November 24, the Official Gazette of the French Republic (JORF) published Regulation No 1169/2011, ordering "economic operators" to inform consumers about "the origin of goods from the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967."

This French regulation is an application of the interpretive notice issued by the Official Journal of the European Union (OJ), on November 12, 2015. The notice states that the EU "does not recognise Israel's sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967, namely the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and does not consider them to be part of Israel's territory" and claims it is responding to "a demand for clarity from consumers, economic operators and national authorities".

The European Commission allowed member states to arrange their own national implementation of this European regulation, with financial penalties.

The French adoption of this EU policy insists on labeling Israeli products with the greatest precision possible.

(Continue to Full Post)

Yves Mamou is a journalist and author based in France. He worked for two decades for the daily, Le Monde, before his retirement.

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. 

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Israel is The Dhimmi That Got Away - by Michael Lumish

...However, until the Arabs manage to wrest back control of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people it will remain, like all non-Muslim lands, part of Dar al Harb, "the House of War."...Nonetheless, despite chronic and unremitting Arab-Muslim theocratic animosity toward Jews, we are the only indigenous people in the history of the planet to successfully reconstitute a national home upon ancestral land after twenty centuries of diaspora and thirteen centuries of dhimmitude.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
24 September '16..
Link: http://israel-thrives.blogspot.co.il/2016/09/the-dhimmi-that-got-away.html






Israel is The Dhimmi That Got Away.

The fundamental basis of the never-ending Arab-Muslim aggression against the Jews of the Middle East is the Muslim religion as outlined in the Qur'an and the Hadiths.

Period. Full stop.

It is not an aggression based upon notions of social justice, as the Palestinian-Arabs, and their friends, would have you believe. In truth, Israel is a social justice Shangri-La compared to the rest of the Middle East.

The Long Arab War against the Jews of the Middle East is a religious war.

And it is within the primary sources of the Islamic faith that we find the basis of this aggression toward the loathsome Infidel, particularly toward those trouble-making Jews.

The Jewish people, however, along with a few Christians, managed to escape dhimmitude - in violation of Islamic theocratic imperatives - with the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I and the creation of the Jewish State of Israel after World War II.

From those days to these, the Jews of the Middle East are free and the Arabs do not like it.

When Muhammad created Islam as an imperial-supremacist religion intent on global expansion, he constituted it as the enemy of the Jewish people, the Christian people, and all other "unbelievers."

Furthermore, it is an astonishing testament to the man's will and intelligence that he damn near pulled it off. Within a mere century of The Prophet's death Muslims were already banging on Europe's door in search of conquest, slaves, and booty.

Please understand, however, that the following criticism are not pointed at Muslims as individuals, but toward the consequences of Islamic doctrine. It is Islam as a theocratic-political ideology, with far-reaching consequences for all of us, that is under scrutiny.

Temporarily Making Use of Christians to Fight Israel - by Shadi Khalloul

...Coexistence is not the issue for Christians here, but rather fear for their own existence -- based on the ruthless lack of freedom under the PA, as in all Arab states. The PA and other Arab Islamic regimes are smart enough to smell this weakness.

Rami Ayyad, a Christian bookseller in Gaza,
was murdered by Islamic extremists 
because he refused to close his bookshop.

Shadi Khalloul..
Gatestone Institute..
30 May '16..

Christians in Holy Land, Judea and Samaria -- what today is called the West Bank or the Palestinian Authority (PA) -- are, with the Jews and assorted Arabs, the indigenous people of the land. The region has been inhabited by Jews and then Christians for nearly three thousand years; until the seventh century, Muslims did not even exist.

After the conquest of Jerusalem by Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula in 637 AD, the Jews and early followers of Christianity were forced either to convert to Islam or accept the rule of sharia (Islamic religious law) under the Islamic Caliphate, with its dhimmi laws designed to remind you that you are inferior. In Islam, dhimmis are non-Muslims -- and therefore second-class, barely tolerated residents -- who live under separate, harsher, laws and have to pay protection money (a "tax" called the jizya) to safeguard their lives and property.

These laws are imposed by Muslim conquerors against all "infidels," both Christians and Jews, in all occupied areas, and are still valid under different guises today in Gaza and in the Palestinian Authority.

In Syria, ISIS recently sent out an Islamic decree ordering Christians in Al Raqqa to pay a tax of around half an ounce (14g) of pure gold as part of these dhimmi rules, the same as in the earlier Muslim conquest of the Middle East.

In Gaza, Christians are persecuted by Islamic groups and the Hamas government. Rami Ayyad, a local Christian who owned a bookshop, was assassinated for refusing to close it.

In Bethlehem, in the West Bank, the Saint Charbel Monastery was set ablaze on October 8, 2015 and the car of the Jerusalem Latin Patriarch was attacked by Palestinian Islamic extremists last Christmas Eve. Luckily, we have Israeli soldiers at Rachel's Tomb who intervened to stop the Palestinian attackers.

Now, what was the role of the Jews in all these attacks? The answer is: nothing.

(Continue Reading)

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 as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Getting Down to Brass Tacks

...The small bit of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is Israel, the Land of the Jews, and has been for thousands of years. ...Just because western-left racists politically join with bigoted anti-Jewish Arabs does not make it otherwise.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
23 June '15..

For some reason within the American idiom the term "brass tacks" means down to basics.

I am not certain that the term is used much any more, but there was a time when people would sometimes say, in the midst of a dispute, something like, "OK, let's get down to brass tacks."

Here is a brass tack for you:

The small bit of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is Israel, the Land of the Jews, and has been for thousands of years.

Just because western-left racists politically join with bigoted anti-Jewish Arabs does not make it otherwise.

There are no people on this planet - unless someone can drag up a Jebusite - who have greater objective and moral claims to their own home than do the Jews of that small part of the Middle East.

As the Elder notes, Jews are from Judea and Arabs are from Arabia.

Period. End of story.

Just because Muslims stomped out of their enormous peninsula in the seventh century, conquered the entirety of the Middle East, and almost conquered Europe, does not mean that they have some Allah-given right to the tiny Jewish home.

All of Israel, small as it is, is the land of the Jews and former conquerors gain no special dispensation due to their previous aggression and imperial rule.

The Importance of Understanding the Nature of the Beast

...The basis of the conflict is Koranically-grounded Muslim majoritarian racism toward the Jewish minority in the Middle East and that is precisely why it is so intractable. Large swathes of the Arab-Muslim world see the Jewish people as a transcendent evil. It is not merely that we Jews are considered evil, but that evil, in and of itself, is considered Jewish. If you do not understand that then you do not have even the beginnings of an understanding of the conflict.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
22 January '15..

Writing in Commentary about the recent racist hoopla at the Miss Universe Pageant, Jonathan Tobin tells us:

"The problem is a spirit of intolerance and rejection for the idea of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn. That is a hatred so deep that it can’t be bridged by creative diplomacy or gestures of goodwill, such as those that infuse international events like the Miss Universe contest.

It is a cliché for contestants at such competitions to say they wish for world peace when asked for their opinions about the issues of the day. But what happened to Miss Lebanon illustrates that the divisions of the Middle East run so deep and are so primal that no amount of global hooey like a beauty contest is enough to make the Arab and Muslim world forget about their antipathy for Israelis."

So Miss Israel took a "selfie" with Miss Lebanon thereby causing the Lebanese government, if not the Lebanese people, to go into an uproar.

Tobin reminds us, "This sort of thing had happened once before when the 1993 version of Miss Lebanon was pictured next to that year’s Miss Israel. She was subsequently stripped of her title and ostracized as a traitor."

Tobin is correct to see the Miss Universe hoo-ha as a pedagogic opportunity concerning traditional and long-standing Arab-Muslim contempt for the Jewish people and, thus, the true source of the conflict. Arabs and Muslims, particularly those in the Middle East and Europe, tend to despise Jews not because of Israel. Quite the contrary. Arabs and Muslims tend to despise Israel because of Jews. Were Israel not the Jewish state, but yet another Arab state, then there would be no problem despite any and all human rights violations.

If a non-Jewish Israel was the single most violent and unjust place on the entire planet, few would mind. Syria is right next door where the Islamic State is running entirely amuck chopping off heads and raping women, yet few in the west really care and certainly the Arab world seems perfectly content to go on Alahu Akbaring itself to death.

In fact, many more people were killed in Syria within the last few years than have died in the Arab war against the Jews since '48.

Furthermore, Israel has far-and-away the best human rights record in that part of the world - it's not even close - yet this does not shield it, nor the Jewish people, from violent malice in both Europe and the Middle East.

Thoughts Concerning the Palestinan-Arab National Sport

...The truth of the matter is that the conflict, as we see it today, is an extension of the conflict as it emerged out of millennia of Arab-Muslim majority persecution of the stunted Jewish minority, grounded in Koranically-based theocratic bigotry toward all non-Muslims. The reason that the conflict goes on is not out of some alleged historical injustice against Arabs by Jews, but because of rank and long-standing Arab bigotry against Jews. Period.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
21 December '14..







Writing in Arutz Sheva, Yishai Karov and Cynthia Blank tell us:

A four-year-old boy was lightly wounded Sunday morning after rocks were thrown at a car he was traveling in near the Gush Etzion Junction.

The rocks shattered the car's window and the boy was hurt by the glass fragments.
Magen David Adom paramedics arrived on the scene to give the child medical care, before evacuating him to a clinic in Efrat.

The MDA volunteers reported that the child suffered cuts to head as a result of broken glass.
Last week, a Jewish Israeli was lightly injured after Arab terrorists hurled rocks at his car at the Habitot Junction south of Shechem (Nablus) in Samaria.

Arabs love to stone Jews.

Unfortunately, over the centuries they've done such a good job of keeping our numbers so low and driving us out of our communities in the Middle East that the only real place to find Jews in that part of the world is within Israel, which is why it is up to the Arabs of the Land of Israel to maintain the national pastime.

{You can only imagine how jealous the rest of the Arab world is! They don't even get the opportunity to throw rocks at Jews... at least, not yet.}

While western-progressives tend to think that Arabs have every right to try to kill Jews as a matter of righteous "resistance," the truth of the matter is that the hostile Arab majority has been pelting Jews with rocks at least since the time of Muhammad.

The hosting of PA official Mahmoud Al-Habbash. Blessed be the useful idiots?

...What Al-Habbash means by “religious tolerance” is that Islam’s enemies can be tolerated only after being subjugated or eliminated. And if the enemy is willing to cooperate with his own demise, blessed be the useful idiots.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon..
i24 News..
03 December '14..

Ben-Gurion University (BGU) has announced that it will be hosting Palestinian Authority (PA) official Mahmoud Al-Habbash to talk about “The religious aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the need for religious tolerance.” On paper, this sounds like a welcome event: with religious tensions spiraling in Israel, calling for tolerance is certainly the right thing to do. Except that asking Al-Habbash to talk about religious tolerance is like asking Al Capone to talk about tax compliance.

Al-Habbash is the “Supreme Shari’ah Judge of the Palestinian Authority” and “Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs” of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. On 22 October 2014, the PA-controlled newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported that Al-Habbash declared that, according to Islamic Shari’ah law, the “entire land of Palestine” is Islamic waqf and it is forbidden to make peace with Israel. On 5 November 2014, commenting on the Palestinian terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, Al-Habbash declared on PA television: “We kiss every forehead, every hand and even every foot that carries out ribat (i.e. religious war over land claimed to be Islamic) at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem... We are behind them. The leadership is with them... We are with them in every movement, in every action and every deed, and we welcome what they are doing at the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Al-Habbash used the term "ribat" to describe the recent murder of Israelis by stabbing and hit-and-run car attacks. Referring to the recent Palestinian terrorist attacks, Al-Habbash said in his Nov. 5 TV interview: “A few days ago, President [Mahmoud Abbas] greeted them, reinforced them and requested more ribat from them. This statement may have angered the Israelis and the occupation, that the President is inciting the Palestinians from Jerusalem to [perform] ribat. Yes, we are inciting the people in Jerusalem to [perform] ribat. Ribat means to protect and to hold on to your ground.”

Colonists and Other Forgotten Facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict

...The Yazidi in Iraq and the Christian Copts in Egypt are not "occupiers" or "settlers;" neither are the Jews in Israel. They are both victims of a common enemy that seems to want a Middle East free of non-Muslims.

Ezequiel Doiny..
Gatestone Institute..
15 August '14..

The current Palestinian narrative is that all Muslims in Palestine are natives and all Jews are settlers. This narrative is false. There has been a small but almost continuous Jewish presence in Palestine since the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome two thousand years ago, and, as we will see, most of the Muslims living in Palestine when the state of Israel was declared in 1948 were Muslim colonists from other parts of the Ottoman Empire who had been resettled and living in Palestine for fewer than 60 years.

There are two important historical events usually overlooked in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

One is the use that Muslim rulers made of the jizya (a discriminatory tax imposed only on non-Muslims, to "protect" them from being killed or having their property destroyed) to reduce the quantity of Jews living in Palestine before the British Mandate was instituted in 1922. The second were the incentives by the Ottoman government to relocate displaced Muslim populations from other parts of the Ottoman Empire in Palestine.

Until the late 1800s entire ancient Jewish communities had to flee Palestine to escape the brutality of Muslim authorities. As Egyptian historian Bat Ye'or writes in her book, The Dhimmi:

"The Jizya was paid in a humiliating public ceremony in which the non-Muslim while paying was struck in the head. If these taxes were not paid women and children were reduced to slavery, men were imprisoned and tortured until a ransom was paid for them. The Jewish communities in many cities under Muslim Rule was ruined for such demands. This custom of legalized financial abuses and extortion shattered the indigenous pre-Arab populations almost totally eliminating what remained of its peasantry... In 1849 the Jews of Tiberias envisaged exile because of the brutality, exactions, and injustice of the Muslim authorities. In addition to ordinary taxes, an Arab Sheik that ruled Hebron demanded that Jews pay an extra five thousand piastres annually for the protections of their lives and property. The Sheik threatened to attack and expel them from Hebron if it was not paid."

The Muslim rulers not only kept the number of Jews low through discriminatory taxes, they also increased the Muslim population by providing incentives for Muslim colonists to settle in the area. Incentives included free land, 12 years exemption from taxes and exemption from military service.

Hillary's "Hard Choices" and Recent Conversion

...According to her, the freeze made PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's position more entrenched, and led him to reject the talks, demanding an official freeze in eastern Jerusalem as well. So, when did Hillary Clinton become a hard-line, right-wing conservative?

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
11 June '14..





Ari Yashar, writing in Arutz Sheva, tells us:

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has some biting words for President Barack Obama in her new memoir, saying his push for a construction freeze in Judea and Samaria was a mistake.

Speaking about the 2009 building freeze that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu submitted to, Clinton wrote "in retrospect, our early, hard line on settlements didn't work." The book, entitled "Hard Choices," was received by AP ahead of its release on Tuesday.

Clinton added that the pressure to freeze building exerted by the Obama administration was "one mistake of many" by the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the talks.

According to her, the freeze made PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's position more entrenched, and led him to reject the talks, demanding an official freeze in eastern Jerusalem as well.

So, when did Hillary Clinton become a hard-line, right-wing conservative?

I was making almost precisely that argument 5 years ago, as it was happening, but was suddenly and eerily dismissed as one of those conservative bad people from the other side of the tracks.

This is what I published on December 17, 2009, in a piece entitled, The End of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process:

Obama’s big mistake, if he was hoping to actually bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, was calling for a total settlement freeze in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The demand for total settlement freeze, even within blocs that would likely end up as part of Israel, has resulted in a number of negative consequences that undermine even the slim possibility of a negotiated settlement.

The first negative consequence is that by calling for a total settlement freeze, Obama placed a precondition on negotiations at a time when he should have avoided any move that might decrease the likelihood of the two sides sitting down at the negotiating table. When Obama called for total freeze, Abbas took it as an opportunity to avoid negotiations and insisted that the Palestinians would never sit down with the Israelis until Israel met that demand.

The biggest recent mistake that the diaspora Jewish community has made was in throwing people such as Yosef and Melody to the wolves, not to mention the Fogels.

Because almost all of us believed in the two-state solution as the only viable solution, and because the Arabs complained about a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, we agreed that what we called "settlement activity" in the "West Bank" had to end.

I certainly thought so all the way through the Oslo process until quite recently.

One of the main differences, I suppose, between myself and other western-left diaspora Jews on this issue is that I have come to the conclusion that we are essentially playing a rigged game. What the Jewish people in the Middle East want more than anything is to simply be left the hell alone to create their computer software and to litigate against one another.

The Arabs, however, since the time of that Muhammad Guy, have been hell-bent-for-fury in opposition to Jewish sovereignty from the beginning of all of this nonsense. They opposed Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land in the seventh century, just as they oppose Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land today. Nothing much has changed, really. The great Arab majority despised the tiny Jewish minority for theocratic reasons in the seventh century, just as they do so today for precisely those same reasons.

Know what's truly unbearable? Humiliation by ex-dhimmi

..."There is absolutely nothing in that story that we, Israelis Jews, don't experience at the airport, it's the same questions and the same clarifications. What got to him is that a former dhimmi is asking those questions. And this is unbearable."

Salman Masalha:
humiliation

Bataween..
Point of No Return..
06 June '14..

The blogosphere is in uproar about an article published in the leftist daily Haaretz yesterday (Thursday). The newspaper has been accused of plumbing new depths of bigotry by publishing an account of how Israeli-Arab Salman Masalha was humiliated as he underwent security questioning at Ben-Gurion airport. One passage in particular stands out for its racism: Masalha's description of being questioned by a swarthy Mizrahi Jew.

Honestreporting comments:

"While Masalha accuses Israel of being a racist state, he may wish to reflect on his own choice of words when describing the senior Israeli security officer whom is the object of his rage:

Ophir was a young, darkish security man, perhaps a descendant of converts from the Arabian Peninsula, perhaps from the Atlas Mountains. But one thing was clear, his black color looked very shabby, tattered and stained with evil.

It is astonishing that a newspaper that promotes its “liberal” sensitivities could allow a sentence such as this to get past the editorial process. It does however, reveal that Masalha is driven by the same racism he claims to be a victim of."

Ari Soffer blogging on Arutz Sheva concludes:

"Ironically, the article in question is a rather crude attempt to portray Israeli airport security as "racist", and entitled "Israeli apartheid exposed at the airport". Yet far from revealing "Israeli racism", the author, one Salman Masalha, instead illustrates very well how deep-rooted anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism is within Arab society via a bizarre, racist outburst - which he apparently thinks nothing of even as he rails against "Israeli apartheid"."

"Palestine was the Home of the Jew" Where's the Coverage?

...What has the role of the Jews been in Palestine? Considered from this angle, the Palestine of 1918 appears to us a barren country, poor, denuded of all resources, the least developed of all the Turkish vilayets. The Moslem-Arab colony there lived on the borderline of poverty. Jewish immigration began, colonies were formed and established, and in less than twenty years the country was transformed: agriculture flourished, large industries were established, wealth came to the country.

Sarit Catz..
CAMERA Snapshots..
14 May '14..

In August of 1947, a Middle Eastern leader wrote a letter to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). It read in part:

It is an incontestable historical fact that Palestine was the home of the Jew and of the first Christians. None of them was of Arab origin. By the brutal force of conquest they were forced to become converts to the Moslem religion. That is the origin of the Arabs in that country. Can one deduce from that that Palestine is Arab or that it ever was Arab?

[…]

The Holy Places, the temples, the Wailing Wall, the churches and the tombs of the prophets and saints, in short, all the relics of the two religions, are living symbols, which alone invalidate the statements now made by those who have little interest in making Palestine an Arab country. To include Palestine and the Lebanon within the group of Arab countries is to deny history and to destroy the social balance in the Near East.

Who wrote this?

The Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, Ignace (Ignatius) Moubarak (sometimes spelled Mobarac, Mobarak, Moubaraque and otherwise).

UNSCOP was engaged in dividing the mandatory territories and, as Bashir Assad’s grandfather feared for his Alawite minority in Syria, the Archbishop feared for the Christians of Lebanon.

(Video) A Little Reminder from Hamas

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




What really makes this Hamas video extra-special is that they thought to use Hatikva as the background music.



We must finally come to the obvious conclusion that these people are no partners for peace but deadly enemies who need to be treated as such. This does not just include Hamas, but Fatah, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority.

There has been some recent hoopla in the news concerning American Senator Rand Paul and a bill to cut US funding to the PA unless it recognizes Israel as a Jewish state and meets other commonsensical conditions, such as abiding to past negotiated agreements.

AIPAC opposes this measure because it is believed that Israel needs the PA to administer the Arab majority territories.

What I would argue is that while it is obviously true that if the Arab governments, including the local Arab governments, had organized themselves in a manner within which to cooperate and work with their Jewish neighbors, that would have been terrific. That, as a socialist, is certainly what Ben-Gurion wanted. As it is, however, the local Arabs organized themselves in a manner designed to harass Jewish people on Jewish land and that seeks the elimination of Jewish sovereignty and self-defense on that land.

The only question, this being the case, is what should the Israeli government do about a people who represent not only 20 percent of the citizenry of the country, but who also represent our former masters and rulers for 1,300 years?

Let us not forget that the Jewish people lived under second and third-class non-citizenship, within the Islamic system of dhimmitude, beneath the boot of Arab-Muslim imperial rule on our own land.

1,300 years.

Dhimmitude as the root of non-recognition

...But the Jews are one of the few non-Muslim peoples to have achieved self-determination. A nation of former slaves has committed the unforgiveable sin of overturning the natural order: Israel has repeatedly defeated the Arab Muslims on the battlefield. For the humiliated to now humiliate their traditional oppressors is unbearable.

Lyn Julius..
Times of Israel..
22 March '14..

You’ve heard it from a senior Palestinian. You’ve heard it from Mahmoud Abbas, endorsed by Fatah. You’ve heard it from the Arab League.

In the US-brokered peace framework talks, the Arab side has decisively rejected the Israeli demand: “recognise Israel as a Jewish state”.

Of course, US secretary of state John Kerry himself has said he does not see the need for such recognition. Others have poo-poo’d the demand, producing all manner of objections, red herrings and distractions. These have been ably swept away by commentators such as Gilead Ini. It’s all about the Palestinian refusal to waive their ‘right of return’ – turning the Jewish state into an Arab-majority state by overwhelming it with millions of returning refugees and their descendants, he explains.

So much for two states for two peoples. Lest there be any room for doubt, what the Palestinians have in mind is the impending Arabisation of Israel : two states for one (Arab) people.

So far, few have remarked on the religious and cultural underpinnings of the Arab rejection of ‘recognition of Israel as a Jewish state’.

The Muslim denial of collective minority rights is rooted in the historical rejection of non-Muslim peoplehood. Dhimmitude, a term coined by the historian Bat Ye’or, describes the Islamic practice of denying equality to Jews and Christians who live under Muslim rule. Islam offers them religious autonomy, not national freedom. The orthodox Palestinian line has been to deny Israel’s existence, but to offer to allow Jews, after Israel’s demise, to live in a “secular and democratic” Palestinian state. Implicit even in the Saudi peace initiative, hailed by many Israelis as a moderate and reasonable blueprint, is the notion that, in return for ‘normalisation’ ,the Jews of Israel must agree to submit to the traditional cultural and political dominance of the Muslims.

For 14 centuries, Jews, whose presence predated Islam in the Middle East and North Africa by up to one thousand years, lived in an atmosphere of ‘cordial hatred’ alongside Muslims. It is debatable whether Jews ‘had it better’ under Muslims than Christians; that, according to the acclaimed historian Bernard Lewis, is another myth. ’Despised but indispensable’ Jews were spared conversion to Islam because they could be exploited for their essential skills – as international traders, usurers and craftsmen.

But Jews had few rights under Islamic tutelage. They surrendered their right to self-defence to Muslims, paying ‘protection money’ – the jizya poll tax – in order to guarantee their physical safety. They had to submit to ritual humiliations reminding them of their cursed and lowly status – they had to wear special clothing, could not build their homes higher than the Muslim, could not bear witness against a Muslim in court. These rules were mostly abrogated following pressure from the European colonial powers in the 19th century, but, following the rise of 20th century Arab nationalism and now Islamism, indigenous (non-Arabs and) non-Muslims are once again being denied their rights. The Assyrian Christians, the Kurds and the Copts, experienced – and still experience – vicious persecution. But only one group – the Jews – who once numbered almost a million before 1948 – have been ‘ethnically cleansed’ from the region.

Today's Winner of "The Quote of the Day", Mohammad Hammad

What Mr. Hammad needs to learn is that those days are over. The Day of the Dhimmi is Done and the Jews are now a free people.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
11 December '13..

In honor of Mr. Hammad we are starting a new feature here at Israel Thrives imaginatively called "The Quote of the Day."

I think that we may end up getting a few more from Mr. Hammad going forward, but we shall see. The real point is, though, to show the kind of thing that we face. The hatred, the propaganda, the lies, the lack of any historical context.

Here is the quote taken from an Algemeiner article on November 26.

You know what?

Israelis ARE colonizers, there is literally no way around it

And you know what else?

My heroes HAVE always killed colonizers

I literally see nothing wrong with this and my only regret is that not all colonizers were killed

- Mohammad Hammad, president of San Francisco State Universities' General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS)

Does anyone for even an instant believe that when Hammad refers to Israelis that he means Israeli Arabs? Of course, not. He clearly means Jews. It could hardly be more obvious.

The real problem is that Hammad, and many millions of others, have been taught the Big Lie by Arab and Soviet propagandists that has now become "common knowledge." They honestly think that the Holocaust survivors who fought to get into Israel after World War II, whose ancestors had lived on that land two thousand years before the Arab invasion, are insidious "colonizers."

This is why it is imperative to discuss the long Arab war against the Jews in the Middle East within the historical context of Arab-Muslim imperialism and colonization throughout that the part of the world and the subjugation of its native peoples under the repressive boot of dhimmitude.