Top 4 myths of the Israeli-Palestine conflict
The four myths are:
1) Israel is an illegal occupier
2) Muslims and Jews got along beautifully before Israel was formed
3) Ashkenazi Jews are not real Jews and therefore have no claim to Israel
4) Zionists are preventing Palestinians from seeking their own state
1) Israel is an illegal occupier
Jews can lay claim to the land simply by being there first. Archaelogically speaking, Jews can trace their origin to what is now Israel and that fact is indisputable. What once used to be called Judea, was a land of the Jews. With time, their culture and people were attacked and sacked by more powerful civilizations, list ranging and not limited to Greeks, Assyrians, Romans, Byzantines, etc. Romans eliminated all trace of the Jews by rename the area Philistine, based on the Philistines who MIGRATED to the area. Ultimately the Ottoman Turks ruled the land up to World War 1. Important to remember also, is land under Islamic law, land deemed "Islamic" can never become non-muslim. A sort of religious eminent domain if you will.
Unfortunately for muslims and fortunately for most of us, the world never operated in such fashion and the Turks lost the land to the British. Let's say you are not interested in what happened 3,00 years ago. Fine, then we need no to go back more than 100 years ago. Turks lost their land via conquest, a method of acquiring land at the time. Most of the countries in the middle east like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were created in the past 80 years through the same methods. All of Israel and Jordan was under the Palestine Mandate of the British and consisted of TransJordan and today's Israel/Gaza/West Bank. The British were very much grateful to the Jews for their assistance back home with financing the war, they promised them land. They also promised land to the Arabs whom they were appeasing to maintain control of the Middle East. Ultimately they gave 80%, or Jordan to the Arabs. The remainder, let's call IsraeliGazaBank - they were having issues with and ultimately decided to hand over the mess they created to the United Nations.
UN mulled over some ideas and ultimately split the land 50/50 based on who was living where. Heavy concentration of Arabs in Ramallah, Gaza and Hebron were the Palestinian territories and the remainder was given to the Jews. Even though Jews were living in the land for thousands of years, between 1900s and 1939 a heavy influx migrated from Europe were they were being persecuted. In fact a census taken by the British in the 1930s suggests that Arabs and Jews were living quite separately many years before the formation of Israel and by the late 1930s Jews already represented one third of the population.
After the Holocaust, despite British immigration restrictions, even more came over. Some of the land was purchased, estimated at about 15% from the Arabs, the rest of the land was cultivated and what once used to be an arid desert nobody wanted, turned into a hospitable country. The UN decision was supported by the majority, but was rejected by the Arab coalition. They gathered their forces and attempted to destroy the newly created Israel state. The war of 1948 was a crushing blow to the Arabs who outnumbered the Jews about 3 to 1. Due to the war, Arabs lost a lot of land that was originally given to them by the UN and roughly formed what is today Gaza and West Bank. Gaza was in control by Egypt and West Bank was in control by Jordan. This was life until 1967.
None of what transpired can be described as illegal or unfair. In fact, had the Arabs accepted the UN creation Israel would have been half of what it is now - but they chose war instead. If indeed Israel is illegal then so is Australia, so is the United States, so is Mexico and almost all of South America. We would be forced to go and redraw virtually every single country, which is silly and impractical.
2) Muslims and Jews got along beautifully before Israel was formed
This is a persistently false claim used to vilify the Zionist movement as the cause of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. Even though Jews lived happily under some particular Arab leaders, for the most part they were considered second class-citizens and were heavily taxed (Jizya), shunned and poorly treated by the general population. A more interesting point, the Nazis are thought of as the first to have invented labels for Jews via the yellow badges. In fact, they got this idea from Muslims who were doing this hundreds of years prior. Below is a list of major Arab countries and their treatment of Jews.
Yemen: From about the 7th century Jews were persecuted by their muslim 'masters' who followed islamic scripture more so than any other country. in 1724 Yemeni leaders ordered the destruction of synagogues and banning of public prayers. Many Jews were exiled and many died from starvation. Danish-German explorer Garsten Neibuhr visited Yemen in 1762 described Jewish life in Yemen:
"By day they work in their shops in San'a, but by night they must withdraw to their isolated dwellings, shortly before my arrival, 12 of the 14 synagogues of the Jews were torn down, and all their beautiful houses wrecked".
A Jerusalem writer described in 1886 the condition of Jews in Yemen:
"The Arab natives have always considered the Jew unclean, but his blood for them was not considered unclean. They lay claims to all his belongings, and if he is unwilling, they employ force...The Jews live outside the town in dark dwellings like prison cells or caves out of fear...for the least offense, he is sentenced to outrageous fines, which he is quite unable to pay. "
In 1922 the government of Yemen ordered by Islamic decree that all Jewish males under 12 were to be converted to Islam by force!
Morocco: Jews lived in Morocco for over 2,000 years. Some of the largest and wide-scale atrocities against Jews took place in Morocco. in 1032 AD, 6000 Jews were murdered. In 1146 Jews to avoid heavy taxes for non-muslims, Jews pretended to embrace Islam. However their plight was severely worsened when the leaders forced Jews to wear a special yellow head covering. Ultimately the anti-Jewish sentiment culminated in a widespread massacre where unknown number of Jews were murdered. An account from that time by Solomon Cohen dated January 1148 AD describes the Muslim Almohad conquests:
"Abd al-Mumin ... the leader of the Almohads after the death of Muhammad Ibn Tumart the Mahdi ... captured Tlemcen [in the Maghreb] and killed all those who were in it, including the Jews, except those who embraced Islam. ... [In Sijilmasa] One hundred and fifty persons were killed for clinging to their [Jewish] faith. ... One hundred thousand persons were killed in Fez on that occasion, and 120,000 in Marrakesh. The Jews in all [Maghreb] localities [conquered] ... groaned under the heavy yoke of the Almohads; many had been killed, many others converted; none were able to appear in public as Jews."
It is unclear how many hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed in the Almohad conquests.
Still, Jews continued to migrate to Morocco, especially after their expulsion from Spain in the 1400s. Still, in Fez Jews were ordered to live in special quarters called mellahs. Charles de Foucauld in 1883 writes of the Jews in Morocco: "They are the most unfortunate of men, every Jew belongs body and soul to his seigneur, the sid". Sid refers to their Arabs masters.
Syria: Roughly 30,000 Jews lived in Syria until 1947, however after the independence from France, thousands of these Jews were hunted down, murdered and kicked out of the country. Their property was confiscated, burned and desroyed. The remainder lived under surveilance and were not allowed to leave unless they were willing to leave members of family behind. Only Syria's desire for support from the Western world alleviate their plight.
Egypt: There were roughly 25,000 Jews living in Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Al-Hakem of the Fatimids in control of Egypt made the Jews convert, those that refused were required to wear golden calf images, bells or wooden blocks from their neck. When they refused to convert, Al-Haken destroyed the Jewish quarter along with it's people. In 1945, Jewish hospitals and shops were looted and destroyed. Many were killed and many more injured. Thousands were arrested and their property confiscated. By 1956 the thousands of Jews were expelled from their country and their properties seized under the guise of "donation".
Iraq: Jews prospered in what was once ancient Babylonia for a long time until the muslim conquests in 600 AD. Arab caliphs forced Jews to wear yellow patches to distinguish themselves, heavy taxes and restrictions to where Jews could live. In 1776 in Bosra, Jews were slaughtered for no apparent reason. Under British rule, Iraqi Jews lived well - maintained government positions, had Zionist organizations and flourished economically. As soon as Iraq gained independence, things changed dramatically and in 1941 riots broke out in Baghdad and killed 100s of Jews and wounding over 1,000 more. They were not allowed to leave, but many snuck out and made their way to Israel for safety. About 150,000 were in Iraq in 1947, with only 6,000 left in 1951.
Tunisia: In 7th century under muslim control, Jews lived in peace but were subject to a special tax. However from the 13th to the 16th century, Jews were hated and despised and were expelled from cities that were deemed holy cities in Islam. Violence was common due to anti-Jewish policy; in 1869 muslims murdered many Jews in their own ghettos.
3) Ashkenazi Jews are not real Jews and therefore have no claim to Israel
This is a favorite among race pimps, Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists and muslims. In fact, I first heard of this theory from Nation of Islam’s leader Louis Farrakhan. The idea is that the modern European Jews are not the relatives of their original Semitic ancestors, but actually converts from an empire called Khazaria. It is true that the Khazar’s adopted Judaism as their state religion, choosing Judaism to strike a medium between their Christian and Muslim neighbors around 830 AD. However it is important to realize why they chose to convert. Both Christianity and Islam recognized that Judaism had a wide following and was a religion worthy of respect. Khazars chose Judaism based on the established prominence of Judaism, not the other way around. Khazars broke apart some time around 960AD, some 130 years after the adoption of the state religion.
Still, the theory that Ashkenazi Jews are direct descendants of the Khazars remains entrenched in some circles and is nothing more than pure ignorance. First of all, of the two major Jewish groups (Ashkenazi, Sephardic) both are European. In ancient Hebrew, Ashkenaz means Germany, while Sephard means Spain/Portugal (even though Sephardi also include those of Arabic/Persian descent as well).
Second of all, DNA tests were performed to validate the claims of the conspiracy theorists.
Modern DNA studies on the Y chromosome of Jews worldwide have largely disproven the Khazar origin theory for the vast majority of Jews, including the Ashkenazi.
A 1999 study by Hammer et al, published in the Proceedings of the United States National Academy of Sciences compared the Y chromosomes of Ashkenazi, Roman, North African, Kurdish, Near Eastern, Yemenite, and Ethiopian Jews with 16 non-Jewish groups from similar geographic locations. It found that "Despite their long-term residence in different countries and isolation from one another, most Jewish populations were not significantly different from one another at the genetic level... The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora." According to Nicholas Wade "The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism."
4) Zionists are preventing Palestinians from seeking their own state
The palestinians never had a unified movement to create a unique country for themselves. While the Zionist movement was a concentrated effort by the Jews of the world to escape oppression, the Palestinian people were comfortable living under whatever regime controlled them. A more important and telling fact of their disintereste in independence is the war of 1948. Even though they lost land, many Arabs lived and continue to live in Israel. These Arabs while not always living as well as the Jews of Israel, have voting rights, freedoms, liberties and can participate in all aspect of Israeli life. Many others, under the pressure of other Arab countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq huddled into modern-day Gaza and lived in refugee camps awaiting promised liberation. However Gaza was Egyptian and West Bank was Jordanian. Not once did "Palestinians" complain of their occupied lands by their Arab masters. The PLO which is the only recognized representation of the Palestinian people was only formed in 1964, three years prior to the 1967 war where even more territory was lost. What is most obvious, is that Arab aggression from 1948 was and still is the biggest contributor for the tremendous loss of land suffered by the Arabs.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars#Alleged_Khazar_ancestry_of_Ashkenazim
http://www.middleeastfacts.com/Articles/history-of-jews-in-arab-countries.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Morocco
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25982
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