| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Robert Spencer | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog |  |
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
Nicholas Sarkozy delivered a speech recently that, by contemporary standards, was not entirely deplorable. But not everything in Sarkozy's speech was good. There were two deplorable parts:
"Evoquant les négociations actuelles entre Israéliens et Palestiniens, il a jugé qu'un accord ‘d'ici la fin de l'année est possible’, plaidant pour la création d'un ‘choc de confiance’ à même de susciter une adhésion populaire au processus né de la conférence d'Annapolis, cet automne."
This shows the limits of Sarkozy's understanding of Islam, and therefore of the Lesser Jihad against Israel, and of how impossible, and also damaging, the mere holding of such negotiations, leading to one more version, of so many, of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyyah, in which Israel will exchange its solemn commitments, faithfully to be obseerved, for false promises by the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, not one of which will be honored.
Still worse was this:
"Nicolas Sarkozy a aussi souhaité le ‘gel complet’ de la colonisation, qu'il considère comme ‘un obstacle à la paix’.”
This "gel complet de la colonisation (!)" means a complete halt, anglice a "complete freeze on [Israeli] settlements." Which settlements? Oh, you know. The ones in what has formulaically come to be described, so viciously and inaccurately, as the "Israeli-occupied West Bank." In fact, those Jewish towns and villages and outposts (the very word "settlement" is loaded), have been established over many decades in a place which is described far more accurately and in more juridically sound terms (unless you are prepared to ignore the precise terms, and clear intent of the Mandate for Palestine set up by the League of Nations, its mandates recognized and accepted by the United Nations in its charter) as "Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria."
You find that way of putting it unsettling and strange, don't you? You are thinking that's a bit much, that's a bit too aggressively and one-sidedly on the side of Israel, aren't you? But the only reason you do so is because you are insufficiently familiar with the purpose, intent, and express wording of the Mandate for Palestine. And you have also chosen to ignore, or not to learn, the rules by which borders are revised after every war, almost since the beginning of time. The phrase I offered -- "Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria" -- offends you, perhaps, but that is only because it is so unfamiliar, and you have always lazily gone along with that BBC-sponsored phrase, the one about the "Israeli-occupied West Bank" which has become so familiar because it is repeated on every possible occasion in the press, on the radio, on television, in the corridors of E.U. or U.N. power, wherever people take seriously the notion of "an international community, and everyone thinks what everyone else thinks, or thinks it politic to think. "
And so you have come to believe that the Arab-promoted phrase, now accepted everywhere, must have been accepted because it is true. But you are wrong to assume that. The Arab-favored and Arab-favoring phrase has been pushed, nonstop, for the past forty years, by powerful forces, intent on getting the world of Infidels not to recognize the implacable and immutable nature of the Arab Muslim refusal to accept the Infidel nation-state of Israel, no matter how tiny it is or how much tinier it may become.
Now it is time to undo the phrase, and the meaning it attempts to convey, just like that phrase "the Palestinian people." Just phrase it differently, just see things more truthfully. It is, in fact the "Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria." That, from now on, is the phrase to use. And use. And use. And that is exactly what I intend to do, and have already started to do.
And eventually it will sink in. It's merely a question of how often it is repeated. By dint of repetition -- "Israeli-occupied West Bank"-- established itself in the minds of men. And by dint of repetition, and what's more, appeals to history and morality and evidence and logic, "Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria” can establish itself in the minds of men. The verbal victories of those conducting Lesser Jihads here and there and everywhere need not be permanent. They can be found out, analyzed, held up for inspection and analysis and ridicule. They can be replaced by phrases that express the truth as fair-minded non-Muslims, those not subject to the well-known mental pathologies either of antisemitism or anti-Americanism, see it. And many others will come to see that truth, if the damage of the past forty years is undone.
And it can be undone.
Posted by Hugh at February 14, 2008 3:37 PM
Print this entry
| Email this entry
| Digg this
| del.icio.us
Thank you.
And I hope you're right (about it being undone).
Regards!
Posted by: Godefroi![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 14, 2008 4:38 PM
Brilliant!
I can only hope that this will catch on and be effective. I will look for every opportunity to use the phrase "Arab occupied Judea and Samaria'.
Posted by: Cairistiona at February 14, 2008 4:46 PM
hehe, amazing idea.. but how can you coin a new term instead of the old one?
Posted by: Hebrewman at February 14, 2008 5:13 PM
I agree with this phrase - 'Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria'. Make it as common as 'Pakistan-occupied Kashmir' - which is India's term for the NW part of Kashmir that is under Pak control (Pakistan calls it Azad Kashmir or Independent Kashmir - independent implying 'kaffiro se azad' or 'free of Infidels')
Hugh, not everyone understands French, and BabelFish on Yahoo! gave me this:
Evoking the current negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, it judged qu'un agreement ` d'ici the end of l'année is possible', pleading for creation d'un ` shock of capable confiance' to cause a popular adhesion with the process born of the conference d'Annapolis, this autumnI get a faint idea of what he was pleading for, but given the rest of what he said, risk losing the meaning. Posted by: Infidel Pride
...
Nicolas Sarkozy also wished the ` freezing complet' of colonization, qu'il regards as ` an obstacle with the paix'
at February 14, 2008 5:18 PM
Could I ask for a little clarification of this? The "Israeli Occupied West Bank" is called that because it used to be part of Jordan, and was taken (occupied) by Israel in 1967.
However meaningless and propagandistic the term "Palestinian" may be, the people who were living in that territory at the time, and for the previous 1350 years or so (which is four times as long as my own people, Canadians, have been living in my native country, Canada) were Arabs.
The modern terms "Jordanian" and "Palestinian" are Western impositons, and may be seen as meaningless if you wish, but I don't think there is any denying that the denizens of that region for many centuries, and most of them now, were and are ethnically and linguistically Arabs.
Régimes come and go, the people of the region have never been a nation, and any chance of becoming one was taken from them by the developments of the mid twentieth century. But none of that seems to alter the fact that they are as native to the region as I am to my own country, and that they are now living under Israeli authority (for good or ill) because of war.
I speak as a supporter of the Jewish state, and of its right to exist and defend itself. But I have to ask how one term (Arab Occupied Judea and Samaria) can be substituted for another (Israeli Occupied West Bank) without a little more substantiation than Hugh gives us in this instance.
Posted by: Novalis at February 14, 2008 5:30 PM
Novalis, I recommend the following book on this subject:
From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
The following is Alyssa Lappen's review:
Peters spent 7 years searching Arab, United Nations, League of Nations, British, French, Israeli, Turkish and Ottoman and other records. This book, with more than 1,800 citations, should be required reading for every Middle East reporter.
Peters shows that for 70 years before Israel's independence, there was considerable Arab immigration INTO Palestine--a history confirmed among others by Arieh Avneri's pre-Peters book, Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs 1878-1948. This began in 1878, when Jewish settlers joined tens of thousands of Jews whose families lived in Palestine for two millennia after it was sacked by the Romans in 70 AD.
She shows at length that while Palestine was later conquered by a long parade of others--including Muslims, Crusaders, Saracens, and finally the Ottoman Empire--none ever drove the Jews out completely.
Peters provides documentation by many non-Jewish 19th century travelers, including Mark Twain (Innocents Abroad) and French and British envoys, of a desolate Palestine, whose small population included long-established Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Safed, Nablus, Jericho and other towns. In the 1870s, Jewish settlers from the Middle East and Europe began joining their co-religionists in Palestine. Arab immigration increased as Jewish development raised economic conditions far above those of neighboring Arab countries. Jewish farmers bought land at above-market prices from absentee effendi landlords in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere, employing both Arabs and Jews. Arabs also came for jobs in the government and building the railroads, roads and Haifa port.
Peters also notes a long history of Arab aggression against Israel, and before that, Jews. In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, she shows that Arab pogroms killed thousands of Jews and destroyed many Jewish West Bank and Gaza communities established long before the 1948 war, some for hundreds or thousands of years. This followed a pattern of abuse, Peters demonstrates, which dominated much of the Arab world for 1,000 years. There, Jews were a minority, often (though not always) oppressed--subject to periodic rapes, massacres, dispersion and other horrors.
A former journalist and peace negotiator, Peters shows that over time reporters have revised history and accepted the false thesis that Palestinian Arabs were peace-loving victims of Jewish aggressors, while ignoring voluminous Arab propaganda proving the exact opposite. In 1948, for example, Hajj Amin el-Husseini--the British-appointed Jerusalem mufti--called for a war of annihilation against the Jews, a threat repeated by Gamel Naser in 1967....
As Peters notes, the League of Nations' Palestine Mandate--adopted with the blessings of Sharif Hussein of Mecca and King Faisal of Iraq--included TransJordan. Britain unilaterally gave more than 75% of Palestine to Emir Abdullah. He illegally expelled 100,000 Jewish residents from that part of what international law had designated a National Home for the Jews. Jordan, she writes, is a de facto Palestinian Arab state. Moreover, she notes, at the prompting of Arab Nazi collaborators, Britain all but closed Palestine's doors to Europe's Jews in 1939--effectively greasing the wheels of Hitler's war against them.
Finally, Peters shows that Israeli self-defense has never equaled Arab aggression or the hate that she documents so thoroughly.
A particularly vindictive 1986 criticism of this book was unraveled in a July 1986 Commentary article by Erich and Rael Jean Isaac. It noted that the author made serious errors, and failed to correct them when the essay was later republished in a book.
More important, even Peters' worst Israeli detractors do not contest her basic premise--that Palestine's Arab population ballooned by virtue of Arab immigration. After all, her sources include an interview with Tewfik Bey El-Hurani, published in August 1934, which stated "in the last few months, from 30,000 to 36,000 Huranese [Syrians] had entered Palestine and settled there."
If anything, Peters understates her case. Supporting evidence includes the testimony of Moshe Shertok and Eliahu Epstein, given to the Palestine Royal Commission, who visited 30 Hurani villages and complained of an influx of Huranis. In 35 Western Palestine regions that became Israel, the Arab population rose 135% from 1922 and 1947, compared to a 98% increase in 13 regions of Jewish settlement. But in cities REMOVED from Jewish development--Nablus, Jenin and Hebron--Arab population grew at much slower 56%, 78% and 64% rates, respectively. Avraham Brawer in 1949 similarly compared Western Palestine's population with far less dense populations of neighboring Arab countries.
In other words, Peters is correct: Jewish development fueled Arab migration into Palestine and, consequently, a large proportion of Arab population growth.
Readers in doubt should also consult Arieh Avneri. So should anyone who cares about truth and justice. Alyssa A. LappenPosted by: heroyalwhyness
at February 14, 2008 7:03 PM
Hugh
well said.
For some time now, as I tuck away into my electronic scrapbook news articles posted here in Jihadwatch, or dhimmiwatch, that have to do with the 'Israel front' of the Third Jihad, the phrase 'Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria' is precisely the phrase I have been inserting as a corrective, in every place where a reporter has used the words 'west bank', 'palestinian territories', 'occupied west bank', and suchlike.
Seconding cairistiona - yes, let's do it, every chance we get. For example, those of us who move in church circles, can now have some fun every time we encounter a smiling Useful Idiot, stuffed full of Sabeel-style propaganda, who keeps on talking about 'the West Bank'. We must screw up the courage to look faintly puzzled, count to three, and then, smiling sweetly, chirp, 'Oh, I'm so tired of that unhistorical 'west bank' propaganda nonsense - you do mean "Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria, don't you?'
Also, every time we meet someone emoting about 'the Palestinians', let's come back at them with 'the "Palestinian" Arabs', if the phrase can reasonably be assumed to cover Christians as well as Muslims; or with "'Palestinian' Arab Muslims', when it logically, as in discussion of jihad groups, suicide murderers, and so-called 'martyrs', refers only to those who are Muslim. Make sure, if it is in conversation rather than writing, that a certain tone of ironic distancing attaches to the term 'palestinian', and that the stress falls on the term 'Arab' or 'Muslim'.
Office conversation. Letters to the editor. Newspaper online talkbacks. There are so many opportunities.
Those of us who read Israeli news sources and contribute to the talkbacks there, must make a special effort. If the article we are commenting upon, has used the phrase 'west bank', our talkback will say 'arab-occupied Judea and Samaria'. Where the news item or op ed said 'terrorists' or 'militants' we will write 'jihadists'; if the article said, 'terror' or 'terrorism' we will refer to 'jihad'. We will resolutely write "'Palestinian' Arabs", or, ''Palestinian' Arab Muslims', rather than 'Palestinians'.
The satisfaction one feels from so doing, is immense. It is a sensation of almost physical relief, not unlike that which is felt when the doctor does his thing, and the dislocated elbow, or shoulder, clicks back into its proper place.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at February 14, 2008 7:10 PM
glanced at this and realized you had included whole paragraphs without translation.
am busy. many people are busy. you don't want people to read what you write? it is just a pleasure to get it out on a Web site?
it is not a mark of a cultured man to insist that the reader be a polyglot. it is not wise or intelligent.
Posted by: StillBreathing at February 14, 2008 7:44 PM
Sorry. I just noticed as well that in my haste, when I first posted it, I hadn't bothered to translate the French. I will now do so.
Posted by: Hugh at February 14, 2008 9:11 PM
Are the Jews in Israel occupying Muslim and Arab (Palestinian) lands, or are the Jews in Israel the only remnant left in the Middle East after their own expulsion by Muslims from Middle Eastern lands?
The first expulsion of Jews from Arab lands occurred in the Spring of 624, when Muhammed and the Muslims expelled the Jewish clan of Qaynuqa from Medina, forcing them to leave their weapons behind. These Jews gave up without a fight after a 15-day siege. (The sin of the Qaynuqa was that one of their members had played a prank by pinning the dress of a Muslim woman at the market so that when she stood up, it slipped down and revealed part of her anatomy.)
The second expulsion of Jews from Arab lands occurred in August of 625 when the Jewish clan of an-Nadir was expelled from Medina, again leaving their weapons behind, again after a 15-day siege, and again without a fight. (The sin of this group was that Muhammed sat next to one of their houses and had a vision that one of the an-Nadir wanted to drop a large rock on his head. No attempt was made, but Muhammed fantasized a vision of such an intent, so they had to go.)
That left one Jewish clan in Medina, the Qurayzah, whose demise came in 627. They also were asked to give up, which they did. Thinking that they were also going to be allowed to leave their weapons behind and leave Medina in peace, the Jews of Quarayzah gave up without a fight. Unfortunately for them, all 600 or so of the men were taken off and executed one by one without a struggle, and the women and children were taken as slaves. (The sin of the Quarayzah was that they attempted to remain neutral in a battle between the Muslim Arabs and the non-Muslim Arabs.)
That was the last Jewish clan in Medina to this day. Muhammed made it clear that the Arabian peninsula was to be kept "Juden-rein," and you do not see any synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The real sin of the Jews was that they did not accept Muhammed as a prophet. (Unlike the main stream media, who cannot mention his name without printing the word "prophet" with a capital "P.")
Now, if only the Jews could be convinced to give up Israel without a fight on the promise that they would receive safe passage out of the area, we could all have "peace in our time...." After all, Islam is the religion of peace, and its followers are just as peaceful as its prophet.
Posted by: Karl at February 14, 2008 9:25 PM
'Still Breathing' -
My own ability to read French is far from perfect, but this is what I get:
"Evoquant les négociations actuelles entre Israéliens et Palestiniens, il a jugé qu'un accord ‘d'ici la fin de l'année est possible’, plaidant pour la création d'un ‘choc de confiance’ à même de susciter une adhésion populaire au processus né de la conférence d'Annapolis, cet automne."
- 'Evoking the actual negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, he judged that an agreement 'is possible by the end of the year', pleading for the creation of a 'stroke of confidence' ? to sustain a popular attachment to the process begun at the Annapolis Conference last autumn."
"Nicolas Sarkozy a aussi souhaité le ‘gel complet’ de la colonisation, qu'il considère comme ‘un obstacle à la paix’.”
- 'Nicholas Sarkozy also supported a 'complete freeze' on [Israeli] settlement, which [settlement] he regarded as 'an obstacle to peace'.'
Anyone else with better French than I, feel free to fix this up.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at February 14, 2008 10:24 PM
I didn't do this when I promised -- for god's sake, don't you want me to go to the gym? -- and now I've returned to see that dumbledore has done it herself. I would like to offer a slightly different version of the first paragraph, attempting both to preserving the sense and the way it would be conveyed in American reporter's prose:
"Alluding to the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, he considers [English present for French reporter's past] that an accord by the end of this year is possible, and urged a kind of "outburst of confidence" ("choc de confiance" being a fixed Sarkozy-Fillon phrase, applied previously to what was needed to solve French economic woes) to help create popular suppport [presumably on both sides] for the process that was begun at the Annapolis meeting this past fall."
The meaning of the second phrase has been conveyed perfectly by dumbledore's version and I have nothing to add.
Posted by: Hugh at February 14, 2008 11:07 PM
thank you both. exercise is good for the soul.
Posted by: StillBreathing at February 14, 2008 11:49 PM
Anyone else with better French than I, feel free to fix this up.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy
I can help.. M. Sarkozy.. vous êtes un traître.. Allez-vouz faire foutre par un imam, putain alors!
at February 15, 2008 1:24 AM
Hugh, you're a smart guy, and I usually benefit from reading you.
But, SERIOUSLY! - what is the point of citing a passage in French, without providing a translation.
I'm about 30 years removed from high school French class, and I stopped reading this as soon as I got to the French quote.
Here's some free advice: try not to be so clever. Try not making your readers feel stupid.
Posted by: Slee at February 15, 2008 1:28 AM
Hugh, could you please translate into English, for us English speakers?
Posted by: Voltaire at February 15, 2008 1:43 AM
Even after the "Diaspora" there have ALWAYS been Jewish people living in that territory. Jerusalem has always had a Jewish presence for the past 3500 years.
Posted by: Infidel One at February 15, 2008 3:43 AM
Excellent Post. But don't stop there - for some time now, I have always referred to 'Istanbul' as 'Occupied Constantinople'
Posted by: Jesus Worshipping Zionist at February 15, 2008 5:32 AM
"Arab-occupied Judea and Samaria" sort of implies a claim by Israel on the West Bank ..a greater Israel. Therefore enabling the usual suspects ( the Chomskyists and the Saidists etc )as well the Arab enemies of Israel to what they do now - that is conflate Zionism with colonialism. What's more Israel DID occupy the West bank though Israel won in an act of self defence from Jordan. UN resolution 242 refers to "occupied territories" and withdrawal from them... ( and much more)...so a lot of water has travel under the bridge since the Mandate for Palestine was set up by the League of Nations
Oslo established the principle that Israel would withdraw from the West Bank. And at one point nearly 90% of the "Palestinian " population did not live under 'Israeli occupation' ( they were under PA control).Israel of course had to reinsert itself atfer the second intifada. At this moment a "Palestinian State" looks inevitable...
I think it would best to avoid musings that raise the spectre of Kahanism or at the very least appeal to revisionist zionism.
at February 15, 2008 7:02 AM
I've been calling it that for years, completely unaware of the Mandate language, 'cause that's what it is.
Posted by: Infidel33 at February 15, 2008 10:27 AM
Why not "muslim-occupied Judea and Samaria"?
Posted by: freddiefreeloader at February 15, 2008 11:50 AM
If I could address myself to heroyalwhyness: thank you for the book reference and the excellent review. I have heard this claim about modern transformations in the Arab demographic of Palestine before. I have also heard them criticized and (in the view of the speaker) refuted. They have been called exaggerated (and I do find that hard to believe) but, before I read the book which has been recommended, I can't venture an opinion on that.
As far as mid twentieth century Arab depredations
against Jews and calls for their annihilation are concerned, I think it would be fair to observe that while the political irresponsibility and the inhuman rhetoric (not indeed to say the barbarism) on display there may be repellent from any civilized point of view, what is also surely evident is that this was a reaction to the Jewish influx, which was an influx whatever may be said about the Arab one, which was transforming the region and making plain that an Arab national future there was becoming very unlikely. Is that surprising, or a unique case?
Think of your own country taking in a proportionally comparable number of foreigners within one or two generations - and if you are an American that would mean about 150 million people. South Asians, say, or sub-Saharan Africans. People different enough from your majority that it would be obvious that your country would be forever changed by it. How far could the majority of Americans be depended on to react with welcome, accommodation, and joyful acceptance of the prospects for mutual cooperation?
This is not to defend Arab reactions (on the order of the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin's enthusiasm for Hitler) but merely to say that such reactions are neither unique nor inexplicable, and, like all human reactions and behaviour, have a cause.
Anyway, if you will excuse the longwindedness, all I really mean to say today is that I am not an expert on the subject, and that I look forward to reading the Peters book, for the reference to which I am very thankful.
at February 15, 2008 3:25 PM
Some posters (at 1:42 a.m., for example) asked for a translation of the French after both "dumbledore" and I supplied it. I regret that the original article did not include a translation, but I can explain how this came about. It was written very quickly, and posted at another site, for different, largely European, readers.(In any case, I had simply pasted in the Sarkozy quotes so quickly, and commented so quickly, that I simply forgot to translate them).
The next day, i discovered that 1) I had emailed the text to Robert by mistake and 2) he had put it up for me, in my absence, innocently unaware that there was some French that still needed to be translated.
When I first came across the article at JW, I quickly posted, agreeing with those who were rightly annoyed at having the French untranslated, and promising to get to it soon. As it turned out, I had something that could not wait, and could only turn to the englishing of the text after "dumbledore" had posted it, and I only offered my version of the first of the two paragraphs.
That's it. A series of entirely innocent errors, and not certainly not based on any assumption that visitors to JW would either know French, or should know it. The original oversight was mine, and I have supplied the English translation that should have been supplied before the piece went up. Mistakes all around. End of story.
Sorry.
Posted by: Hugh at February 15, 2008 9:15 PM
Well, as far as that is concerned, I would like to take this opportunity to say, that we Canadians up here had no problem with the French.
Posted by: Novalis at February 16, 2008 2:55 PM
All lands are "occupied".
Won by "right" of war.
If some naive people now want to try to reverse this reality by demanding that the victors of a war against them (the Israelis) return the land they won, then every people will have to vacate every continent and return to the cradle of humanity in Africa, ceding the rest of the Earth back to the animals.
Folly-thinking leading to absurdity.
Why shouldn't Islam, which "occupies" scores of formerly non-Muslim countries -from Fez to Jakarta- end their own "occupation" first?
Their millennial "land-grabs" take historical precedence over little Israel's.
at February 17, 2008 1:41 AM
To novalis
the Jews are not foreigners in the land of Israel, eretz Yisroel, which was the name they knew it by, always. Except for Mt Sinai, ALL the significant spiritual and historical sites, the 'dreaming places' (to use an Australian Aboriginal term) of Judaism, are in the Land of Israel - most of them in Judea and Samaria (Bethlehem [Rachel's Tomb], Shechem [Joseph's Tomb], Jerusalem itself, Shiloh [site of an earlier sanctuary], Hebron [tomb of the patriarchs]). There are other places, such as Safed, that acquired significance in post-Biblical times.
Jews preceded Arab Muslims by over a thousand years. The Romans destroyed the temple and killed or deported many Jews, but they did NOT render the land wholly Judenrein. Byzantine 'Palestine' was thickly populated, with hundreds of thousands of Jews as well as Christians (Christians being primarily of Jewish and of Aramaic or Greco-Roman ethnic origin); the ruins of large, beautifully decorated Roman-era and Byzantine-era synagogues have been found from one end of the Land to the other (from Galilee to Jericho to Gaza).
The Jewish and Christian (and Samaritan) indigenous populations in the Land of Israel collapsed after the Muslim invasions, during the long dark night of foreign Muslim occupation, colonisation, and brutal repression. Many fled or were driven out. Some, crushed by the weight of dhimmitude, tragically, 'converted'. But others hung on by their teeth and toenails; despite being regularly robbed, raped, beaten, insulted, denied the right of self-defence, held to ransom, and generally treated like s**t by their arrogant and cruel Muslim overlords.
There is a recorded, and demonstrable, persisting Jewish presence in the land of Israel for every century between the 7th and the 20th. In 1854, BEFORE anything recognisable as modern Zionism, the population of Jerusalem was guessed at 14000 - of which 8000 were Jews.
But the Jews that remained in Israel, and those outside of Israel, both within the Empire of Islam and within 'christendom' whether eastern or western, NEVER FORGOT and never gave up hope. It is a mitzvah - a worthy deed - to inhabit the land of Israel; so even though Jews knew they would not be treated well there, all through the 1300 years of Muslim imperial occupation, Jewish scholars, pilgrims and even immigrants dared to attempt the return.
Many such 'returners' were destroyed by Muslim misrule and by deliberate, conscious, Muslim assaults upon their persons and property; but others always took their places; and from the 15th/16th century the numbers of returners gradually and steadily increased, decade by decade, as the Ottoman Empire's power decreased. Note that the returners (and they did not only come from 'Europe' - they also came from Turkey, North Africa, Baghdad, Yemen, and other parts of the Empire of Islam) basically joined with and reinforced the EXISTING Jewish communities; and, in the end, when they got their chance, liberated them from a cruel burden of oppression.
To repeat: the Jews are not foreigners on the soil of Israel.
The Jew coming to Jerusalem, and to the land of Israel, was NOT the same as a Pakistani migrating to Britain, or the Pilgrim Fathers landing in New England, or Cortes or Columbus arriving in the Americas. The Jew understood himself (perfectly correctly) to be going home - returning to the land that held the bones of his ancestors, a land steeped in his people's songs and stories, and littered from one end to the other with the physical evidence of their presence.
What the Jews have done in the land of Israel is no different, really, from what the Spanish and Portuguese did in Iberia when they got rid of their Moorish Muslim oppressors (who had 'occupied' and ruined the land, for some EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS); or from what the native non-Muslim people of the Balkans, Greece and Bulgaria did when - in an agony of war - they shook themselves free of the Muslim Ottoman Empire; or what happened in India when the moguls fell and - under the British raj - Hindu India re-asserted itself.
If they were able to do it - reclaim their rights to their ancestors' land, and their sacred places, and their rights to self-defence, to spiritual and intellectual and physical freedom - then what is wrong with their doing it?
The restoration of the Jewish state of Israel was an act not of colonisation, but of DECOLONISATION.
And that is why the Arab Muslims, and other Muslims, HATE Israel with such a deep virulence. The Jews have, so far, achieved a Revolt of the Dhimmis.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at February 17, 2008 2:16 AM
Israel should be leading the repititions, and they're not, they're silent, infact they indict themselves.
Posted by: Sneakyzionistcrusader at February 20, 2008 3:42 PM
Comments are turned off and archived for this entry.
(Note: Comments on articles are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dhimmi Watch or Robert Spencer. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Robert Spencer of the views expressed therein.)