The Real Arab Grievance Against The Jews? That They Exist
At Gatestone Institute Fred Maroun, "a left-leaning" Lebanese Arab based in Canada, posts:
Anti-Zionists often repeat the claim that before modern Israel, Jews were able to live in peace in the Middle East, and that it is the establishment of the State of Israel that created Arab hostility towards Jews. That is a lie.Before modern Israel, as the historian Martin Gilbert wrote, "Jews held the inferior status of dhimmi, which, despite giving them protection to worship according to their own faith, subjected them to many vexatious and humiliating restrictions in their daily lives." As another historian, G.E. von Grunebaum, wrote, Jews in the Middle East faced "a lengthy list of persecutions, arbitrary confiscations, attempted forced conversions, or pogroms."
The right to exist as an independent state
Zionism stemmed from the need for Jews to be masters of their own fate; no longer to be the victims of discrimination or massacres simply for being Jews. This project was accepted and formally recognized by the British, who had been granted a mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations. The Arab world, however, never accepted the recognition formulated by Britain in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and it never accepted the partition plan approved by the United Nations in 1947, which recognized the right of the Jews to their own state.
The Arab refusal to accept the Jewish state's right to exist, a right that carries more international legal weight than almost any other country's right to exist, resulted in several wars, starting with the war of independence in 1948-1949. The Arab world still does not today accept the concept of a Jewish state of any size or any shape. Even Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace agreements with Israel, do not accept that Israel is a Jewish state, and they continue to promote anti-Semitic hatred against Israel.
...As Arabs, we complain because Palestinians feel humiliated going through Israeli checkpoints. We complain because Israel is building in the West Bank without Palestinian permission, and we complain because Israel dares to defend itself against Palestinian terrorists. But how many of us have stopped to consider how this situation came to be? How many of us have the courage to admit that waging war after war against the Jews in order to deny them the right to exist, and refusing every reasonable solution to the conflict, has led to the current situation?
Our message to Jews, throughout history and particularly when they had the temerity to want to govern themselves, has been clear: we cannot tolerate your very existence.
Yet the Jews demand the right to exist and to exist as equals on the land where they have existed and belonged continuously for more than three thousand years.
In addition, denying a people the right to exist is a crime of unimaginable proportions. We Arabs pretend that our lack of respect for the right of Jews to exist is not the cause of the conflict between the Jews and us. We would rather claim that the conflict is about "occupation" and "settlements". They see what radical Islamists are now doing to Christians and other minorities, who were also in the Middle East for thousands of years before the Muslim Prophet Mohammed was even born: Yazidis, Kurds, Christians, Copts, Assyrians, Arameans, and many others. Where are these indigenous people of Iraq, Syria and Egypt now? Are they living freely or are they being persecuted, run out of their own historical land, slaughtered by Islamists? Jews know that this is what would have happened to them if they did not have their own state.
The real Arab grievance against the Jews is that they exist. We want the Jews either to disappear or be subservient to our whims, but the Jews refuse to bend to our bigotry, and they refuse to be swayed by our threats and our slander.
Who in his right mind can blame them?
Hey, Jews. Don't take it personally. The Arabs have had millennia to practice blaming on others their failure to achieve anything of value. It was the Egyptians; then it was the Hittites; then it was the Babylonians; then it was the Assyrians; then it was the Egyptians (again), then it was the Persians; then it was the Macedonians; then it was the Romans; then it was the Parthians; then it was the Crusaders (several times); then it was the Kurds (like Saladin, but, he had a bunch of Egyptians with him, too); then it was the Turks; then it was European Imperial Powers - and, I'm pretty sure I left a few out, since there were a couple of Jewish kingdoms in there, and a few others whose names I either can't recall or can't spell. Anyway, now it's the Jews' turn (again).
Just remember - It's not personal; it's only deadly.
Wfjag at May 13, 2016 3:52 AM
Actually, I think they've hated us all along. We pop up very early in the Quran, though the psychopathic, looting, raping, mass-murdering "prophet" Mohammed sounded slightly more tolerant before he got power than after. (In the Mecca portion of the Quran versus the Medina portion.)
Amy Alkon at May 13, 2016 5:33 AM
Any bets on when Maroun will be assassinated?
Ben at May 13, 2016 6:42 AM
Remember, there are only two ways in which a war is ever truly won: when the enemy either surrenders unconditionally, or is wiped out. By that standard, none of the 1948 war, or the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, or the Gulf War actually ended. They just went into remission. Ethnic hatred is hard-wired into Arab Muslim culture; if there aren't Jews or Westerners around to hate, they'll hate each other. The Syria civil war is a small taste of what's coming.
Cousin Dave at May 13, 2016 7:08 AM
What few people of European descent know, learn in school, or remember is that the Arab world was the center of Western learning during the Dark Ages; they preserved Greek and, perhaps, Latin thought and made the Enlightenment possible. Certainly something to be proud of. I don't understand why their culture went to shit.
DaveG at May 13, 2016 8:06 AM
What few people of European descent know, learn in school, or remember is that the Arab world was the center of Western learning during the Dark Ages; they preserved Greek and, perhaps, Latin thought and made the Enlightenment possible. Certainly something to be proud of. I don't understand why their culture went to shit.
DaveG at May 13, 2016 8:06 AM
This, I believe is mostly untrue. There is no doubt that the Middle East was somewhat a center for the preservation of western culture during the dark ages, but the Arabs have always been mostly a bunch of normadic illiterate goat herders.
The elements in the Middle East who were educated, and literate were largely Persians, Jews, Greeks, and Asians.
All cultures are not equal. The Arab culture has long had a distain for learning. That said, assigning credit, and blame based on collective ethnicity is generally a fools errand.
Isab at May 13, 2016 9:13 AM
Not so DaveG unless you think the carjacker is preserving your car if he washes/waxes it after he takes it from you.
http://www.meforum.org/blog/2015/12/does-the-west-owe-islam
"Should the West feel indebted to Islam for keeping Greek and Hindu learning alive?
Consider the case of the Hindu number system. Muslim conquests of the Indian subcontinent commenced in the 7th century and, by the early 9th century, Muslim scholars had learned about the Hindu numbering system and adopted it. Use of the system then spread rapidly across the Arab world, and by the early 10th century it had reached Spain.
The Hindus were quite capable of preserving their intellectual achievements without the dubious benefits of Islamic conquest. Indeed Hindu societies have preserved the use of the number system they invented right down to the present day."
Bob in Texas at May 13, 2016 10:36 AM
"What few people of European descent know, learn in school, or remember is that the Arab world was the center of Western learning during the Dark Ages; they preserved Greek and, perhaps, Latin thought"
What few Orientalists and romantics know is that that was all preserved in Ireland from the earliest days of Christianity.
And if all that supposed Arab contribution didn't bring about an Enlightenment in their own culture, then how can they be credited with the Enlightenment in Europe? Maybe that learning had a very indirect influence, but that is clearly because of what Western Europeans made of it, which Arabs failed to do.
This shouldn't be controversial. There have been article after article in the press in various Arab countries about the lack of good universities in that region and the need for talented people to leave to study. There has been even more ink on figuring out why the region is so resistant to Enlightenment values.
They recognize the problem and that's the first step.
"Should the West feel indebted to Islam for keeping Greek and Hindu learning alive?"
Heh. Ask Narendra Modi and his people what they think of their debt to Islam. Muslim rulers in India tried to wipe Hinduism out until it became obvious that was impossible.
Muslim invaders destroyed the entire faculty of the Buddhist university at Nalanda. It took them three days to kill everyone.
Muslim invaders forcibly converted millions of Hindus and then threatened death if they backslid.
So no.
Jim at May 13, 2016 10:53 AM
"And if all that supposed Arab contribution didn't bring about an Enlightenment in their own culture, then how can they be credited with the Enlightenment in Europe?"
In my younger days, I used to think that it was the difference between pre-Islam and Islamic Arab culture. But then I studied it further and realized that the timeline doesn't fit. However, I think it's still a pretty common belief.
Cousin Dave at May 13, 2016 11:27 AM
This is what the supporters of Palestinians and the Divest movement totally miss: without US support there would be a genocide. It baffles me what they think would happen if they got their wish to eliminate Israel.
Craig Loehle at May 13, 2016 11:28 AM
" It baffles me what they think would happen if they got their wish to eliminate Israel."
Oh, they know exactly what will happen. That's what they want to happen. At its root, it's all anti-Semitic.
Cousin Dave at May 13, 2016 12:32 PM
What few people of European descent know, learn in school, or remember is that the Arab world was the center of Western learning during the Dark Ages; they preserved Greek and, perhaps, Latin thought and made the Enlightenment possible. Certainly something to be proud of. I don't understand why their culture went to shit.
What even fewer know is the reason.
Those people WERE NOT MUSLIMS, but so long as Islam has its outlet in further conquest the conquered carried on for the most part.
Once Islams spread was halted and beat back muslims began persecuting local non muslims causing more and more to convert or flee.
Read their folklore, going back to before the advent of Islam, it is replete with stories about how the hero was super secretly a prince or son of a rich merchant and how they deserved riches and women, not for any hard work they might have done, but simply because it was owed them.
You can tell alot about a culture by its myths
lujlp at May 13, 2016 3:51 PM
Well, Amy, Sarah banishing Hagar and Ishmeal didn't get the Jews and Arabs off to a friendly start. Family feuds are only fun on TV. But, to explain the present resentment, I think greater weight can be placed on the blame game surrounding corrupt despotic regimes play - telling their citizens that their poverty, lack of opportunity and frustrations are all due to Zionism. But, if it wasn't Zionism, it would be something and someone else, just like it has been for millennia.
Wfjag at May 13, 2016 8:25 PM
Interesting read. Too bad college students will not see/discuss.
http://www.meforum.org/6005/bds-squeezing-palestinians
Bob in Texas at May 14, 2016 5:22 AM
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