Israel and the anti-Muslim blow-up
By MJ Rosenberg

http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images/2010/8/19/2010819131125360734_20.jpg
Post-9/11 Islamophobia continues to grow within Jewish communities in the US [Gallo/Getty]

I don't know why I am at all surprised that the American Right - including the Republican Party - has decided that scapegoating Muslims is the ticket to success. After all, it's nothing new.

I remember right after 9/11 when the columnist Charles Krauthammer, now one of the most vocal anti-Muslim demagogues, almost literally flipped out in my Chevy Chase, Maryland synagogue when the rabbi said something about the importance of not associating the terrorist attacks with Muslims in general.  

It was on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, but that did not stop Krauthammer from bellowing out his disagreement with the rabbi.  Krauthammer's point: Israel and America are at war with Muslims and that war must be won.

It was shocking, not only because Krauthammer's outburst was so utterly out of place but also because the man was actually chastising the rabbi for not spouting hate against all Muslims - on the Day of Atonement.

The following year, the visiting rabbi from Israel gave a sermon about the intifada that was then raging in Israel and the West Bank.

A sermon with a twist

The sermon was a nutty affair that tearfully made the transition from intifada to Holocaust and back again.  

I remember thinking, "this guy is actually blaming the Palestinians for the suffering of his parents during the Holocaust." I thought I had missed something because it was so ridiculous.

Then came the sermon's ending which was unforgettable. The rabbi concluded with the words from Ecclesiastes.

"To everything there is a season. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap ... A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance..."

He then looked up and said: "Now is the time to hate."

At first, I thought I had not heard him correctly.  He could not be calling on the congregation to hate. There were dozens of children in the room. It wasn't possible.

But it was. To their credit, many of the congregants I spoke with as we left the sanctuary were appalled. Even the right-wingers were uncomfortable with endorsing hate as a virtue.

Yet, the rabbi was unrepentant. I emailed him to complain and he told me that he said what he believed. Nice.

One could ask what the Middle East has to do with the vicious outbreak of Islamophobia (actually Islamo-hatred) that has seemingly seized segments of this country.

US Islamophobia's origins  

The answer is everything. Although the hate is directed at Arab-Americans (which makes it worse) it is justified by invoking 9/11, an attack by Muslims from the Middle East.

This hate is buttressed by the hatred of Muslims and Arabs that has been routinely uttered (or shouted from the rooftops) in the name of defending Israel for decades

Just watch what goes on in congress, where liberals from New York, Florida, California and elsewhere never miss an opportunityto explain that no matter what Israel does, it is right, and no matter what Muslims do, they are wrong.

Can anyone possibly argue that such insidious rhetoric has no impact on public opinion?

At the very least, it gives anti-Arab and/or anti-Muslim bias a legitimacy that other forms of hate no longer have. Bigots who hate African-Americans or Jews, for instance, feel that they must claim that they don't. That is not the case with Muslims who can be despised with impunity.

And here the liberals are worse than the conservatives because liberals exempt Muslims and Arabs (and now Turks) from the humanitarian instincts that inform their views of all other groups.

Conservatives combine their Arab-bashing with a general xenophobia, as is evidenced by their views on immigration.

Illiberal Liberalism?

Liberals, on the other hand, single out Muslims for contempt.

They do it actively - i.e., by defending every single Israeli action against Arabs with vehement enthusiasm. And they do it passively, by refusing to evince an iota of sympathy for Muslims who suffer and die at the hands of Israelis - like the 432 Palestinian children killed in the 2008 Gaza war.

Liberals join conservatives in rushing to the floor of the House of Representatives and Senate to defend the Israelis against any accusation (remember how they robotically attacked the Goldstone report on Israel's war crimes in Gaza, not caring at about the horrors Goldstone described).  

And then they read their AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee lobby)talking points, enumerating all the terrible things Arabs have done while Israel has, Gandhi-like, consistently offered the hand of friendship. It would be laughable if the effect of all this was not so ugly.

Why wouldn't all this hatred affect the perception of Arab-Americans too? Hate invariably overflows its containers, just like hatred of Israel sometimes crosses over into pure old-fashioned anti-Semitism.

TBC..

Bottom line: it's a witches' brew that is being stirred up, and it is one that will no doubt produce violence. But the witches are not all on the right. Just as many liberals are stirring the pot to please some of their donors.

I'm not saying you should not blame Fox News' Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for all this hate. But don't forget to blame your favorite liberal and progressive politicians. With a few (very few) exceptions, they are just as bad.

MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network.

Source: al-Jazeerah

It's amazing what 10,000 - 12,000 missiles and mortar shells exploding in Israel over the past 8 years, curtesy of Muslim extremists in Gaza will do to an Israeli Rabbi's opinion.
Coupled with 8 years of UN inaction and turning the other cheek on this matter would also tend to ruffle the average Rabbi's feathers.

This is OK I presume?

Chicken, this guy has a weird sense of truth and history and his source is none other than al-Jazeerah.

In October 2000, the Palestinian Arabs in Israel started a new war of terror against the Israeli nations. Terror attacks against Israeli civilians occured in every possible place in Israel.


In coffee shops and restaurants, On dozens of buses, In the middle of the street

Among the thousands of Israeli people who were murdered and injured, there were hundreds of children. Some of the attacks were deliberately intended against children and youth.

Some murdered in their beds while they were asleep

http://daledamos.blogspot.com/2006/08/123-israeli-children-killed-by.html

If someone had come and saturated the population of my land until they managed to take it over with militia terrorist forces, and then booted my parents out of their home and I was born in a refugee camps, I'd be lobbing missiles and anything else I could find at them too.

When Ismael Haniyyah fires rockets at towns like Ashkelon, he does so knowing that his parents were expelled from their home there and forced into the open air refugee camp that is Gaza, so some scumbag Zionists could take their home for themselves. They have every right to resist that, and then some.

If the Zionists go back to their own homes in Poland, Russia, England, U.S etc. and vacate the homes of the Palestinians I'm pretty sure the Palestinians will stop the rockets.

Only logical... you take someone's home, they're gonna fight to get it back.

Learn you history. The people who left Israel in 1948, left at the insistence of their own leaders, with the promose of return, once all the Jews were killed, as theyattempted to do but failed.
Israel urged them not to go.

Here are some oldies but goodies – not the words of Jews and Israelis, but the actual words of Arabs closer to the time of the events:

"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agree upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem."
– Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph Sept. 6, 1948


"The Arab state which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees."
– The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, Feb. 19, 1949


"Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now from the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honor nor conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their honor? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it."
– The Beirut Muslim weekly Kul-Shay, Aug. 19, 1951


"The 15th May, 1948, arrived ... On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead."
– The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, Oct. 12, 1963


"For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy."
– The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun, April 9, 1953


The truth is out there – but you've got to search for it.
The candid comments by Arabs in the Arab press continue to this day.

Here's what Jawad Al Bashiti, an Arab Palestinian journalist in Jordan, wrote in Al-Ayyam May 13 of this year: "Remind me of one real cause from all the factors that have caused the 'Palestinian Catastrophe,' and I will remind you that it still exists. … The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our catastrophes today. During the Little Catrastophe, meaning the Palestinian Catastrophe, the following happened: The first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the 'Arab Salvation Army' came and told the Palestinians: 'We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission (destroy Israel) in the best way and so you won't be hurt.' It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states (against Israel) was a big illusion. Arabs fought as if intending to cause the 'Palestinian Catastrophe.'"

The Arabs know the truth – if they read their own history.

There was no Jewish conspiracy to chase Arabs out of their homes in 1948. It never happened. There are, instead, plenty of historical records showing the Jews pleading with their Arab neighbors to stay and live in peace and harmony. Yet, despite the clear, unambiguous words of the Arab observers at the time, history has been successfully rewritten to turn the Jews into the bad guys.

The truth is that 68 percent of the Arab Palestinians who left in 1948 – perhaps 300,000 to 400,000 of them – never saw an Israeli soldier.

Even more importantly, the revised history has given the guilty a free ride. The Arab states that initiated the hostilities have never accepted responsibility – despite their enormous wealth and their ability to assimilate tens of millions of refugees in their largely under-populated nations. And other states have failed to hold them accountable.

It's bad enough the Arab states created a small nation of refugees by their actions. It's worse that they have successfully blamed that international crime on the Jews.
Today, of course, this cruel charade continues. The suffering of millions of Arabs is perpetuated only for political purposes by the Arab states. They are merely pawns in the war to destroy Israel.

There were some 100 million refugees around the world following World War II. The Palestinian Arab group is the only one in the world not absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Since then, millions of Jewish refugees from around the world have been absorbed in the tiny nation of Israel.

PA daily: Arabs left homes on their own to facilitate
destruction of Israel -- and thus became refugees


The Arabs who became refugees in 1948 were not expelled by Israel but left on their own to facilitate the destruction of Israel, according to a senior Palestinian journalist writing in a Palestinian daily. This plan to leave Israel was initiated by the Arab states fighting Israel, who promised the people they would be able to return to their homes in a few days once Israel was defeated. The article in Al-Ayyam concludes that these Arab states are responsible for the Arab refugee problem.

A backbone of Palestinian English-language propaganda is the myth that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Israel and created Arab refugees.

Following are five such statements of blame, starting with this most recent article and including testimony from refugees themselves and corroboration by Palestinian leaders. Clearly, there is a growing Palestinian willingness to blame the Arab leaders, which corroborates Israel's historical record.

1. Jawad Al Bashiti, Palestinian journalist in Jordan, writing in Al-Ayyam, May 13, 2008

"Remind me of one real cause from all the factors that have caused the "Palestinian Catastrophe" [the establishment of Israel and the creation of refugee problem], and I will remind you that it still exists... The reasons for the Palestinian Catastrophe are the same reasons that have produced and are still producing our Catastrophes today.
During the Little Catastrophe, meaning the Palestinian Catastrophe the following happened: the first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the "Arab Salvation Army" came and told the Palestinians: 'We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission (destroy Israel) in the best way and so you won't be hurt.' It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states (against Israel) was a big illusion. Arabs fought as if intending to cause the "Palestinian Catastrophe".  [Al-Ayyam, May 13 2008]        

2. Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Palestinian Journalist in PA official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 13, 2006

"...The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the "Catastrophe" in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those "Arkuvian" promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events..." [Term "Arkuvian," is after Arkuv - a figure from Arab tradition - who was known for breaking his promises and for his lies."] "
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 13, 2006]

3. Asmaa Jabir Balasimah, Woman who fled Israel in 1948, Al-Ayyam, May 16, 2006

"We heard sounds of explosions and of gunfire at the beginning of the summer in the year of the "Catastrophe" [1948]. They told us: The Jews attacked our region and it is better to evacuate the village and return, after the battle is over. And indeed there were among us [who fled Israel] those who left a fire burning under the pot, those who left their flock [of sheep] and those who left their money and gold behind, based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours."
[Al-Ayyam, May 16, 2006]

4. Son of man who fled in 1948, PA TV 1999

An Arab viewer called Palestinian Authority TV and quoted his father, saying that in 1948 the Arab District Officer ordered all Arabs to leave Palestine or be labeled traitors. In response, Arab MK Ibrahim Sarsur, then Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, cursed those leaders, thus acknowledging Israel's historical record.

"Mr. Ibrahim [Sarsur]. I address you as a Muslim. My father and grandfather told me that during the "Catastrophe" [in 1948], our district officer issued an order that whoever stays in Palestine and in Majdel [near Ashkelon - Southern Israel] is a traitor, he is a traitor."

Response from Ibrahim Sarsur, now MK, then Head of the Islamic Movement in Israel:
"The one who gave the order forbidding them to stay there bears guilt for this, in this life and the Afterlife throughout history until Resurrection Day."
[PA TV April 30, 1999]

5. Fuad Abu Higla, senior Palestinian, Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah, March 19, 2001

Fuad Abu Higla, then a regular columnist in the official PA daily Al Hayat Al Jadida, wrote an article before an Arab Summit, which criticized the Arab leaders. One of the failures he cited, in the name of a prisoner, was that an earlier generation of Arab leaders "forced" them to leave Israel in 1948, again placing the blame for the flight on the Arab leaders.

"I have received a letter from a prisoner in Acre prison, to the Arab summit:
To the [Arab and Muslim] Kings and Presidents, poverty is killing us, the symptoms are exhausting us and the souls are leaving our body, yet you are still searching for the way to provide aid, like one who is looking for a needle in a haystack or like the armies of your predecessors in the year of 1948, who forced us to leave [Israel], on the pretext of clearing the battlefields of civilians...
So what will your summit do now?"
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 19, 2001]

Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas says the Arabs of the Galilee city of Tzfat left in 1948 not because they were driven out, but on their own volition.

Many biographies of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas imply that his family became “refugees” because of the War of Independence in 1948. For instance, a BBC profile on Abbas when he succeeded Yasser Arafat as PLO chairman in 2005 writes, “In the light of his origins in Safed in Galilee - in what is now northern Israel - he is said to hold strong views about the right of return of Palestinian refugees.” Answers.com states, “As a result of the Arab-Israel War of 1948, he became a refugee.” Wikipedia articles on the topic say the same – all giving the impression that the Abbas family was driven out and became homeless

However, Abbas himself – co-founder of Fatah with Arafat, and known as Abu Mazen - now tells a different story. Speaking with Al-Palestinia TV on Monday, Abbas admitted that his family was not expelled or driven out, but rather left for fear that the Jews might take revenge for the slaughter of 20 Jews in the city during the Arab pogroms of 19 years earlier.

It's you who needs to learn their history. Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappe have documented using declassified Israeli government documents how Palestine was ethnically cleansed. So we've got official Israeli documents vs. Your wild claims from a two-bit newspaper article.. Quite obvious which one holds more weight.

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 27^th, 2010 at 10:06pm:

When Ismael Haniyyah fires rockets at towns like Ashkelon, he does so knowing that his parents were expelled from their home there and forced into the open air refugee camp that is Gaza, so some scumbag Zionists could take their home for themselves. They have every right to resist that, and then some. Only logical... you take someone's home, they're gonna fight to get it back.

So shouldn't people like Ismael Haniyyah ALSO be firing rockets at Egypt, Jordan and Syria too???

After all Egypt invaded Gaza and held control for 20 odd years...
Jordan butchered or expelled thousands of 'Palestinians' and forced them to move to Gaza,and invaded and held the West Bank for decades....

Syria invaded and conquered the Golan Heights.....

Quote:

So shouldn't people like Ismael Haniyyah ALSO be firing rockets at Egypt, Jordan and Syria too???

Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Jordan are all one people...

Why would he fire rockets at his own people?

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 29^th, 2010 at 2:09pm:

Quote: So shouldn't people like Ismael Haniyyah ALSO be firing rockets at Egypt, Jordan and Syria too??? Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Jordan are all one people... Why would he fire rockets at his own people?

Really???
What 'people' would that be????

Muslims.

And further, they are Arabs.

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 29^th, 2010 at 4:37pm:

Muslims. And further, they are Arabs.

Muslim isn't a 'people'..it's a religion

And if they are Arabs....then they are also 'invaders' or interlopers....

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 29^th, 2010 at 10:04am:

It's you who needs to learn their history. Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappe have documented using declassified Israeli government documents how Palestine was ethnically cleansed. So we've got official Israeli documents vs. Your wild claims from a two-bit newspaper article.. Quite obvious which one holds more weight.

Ilan Pappé. Don’t make me laugh. An activist in Israel's fringe Communist party, he is among the most extreme of a group of radical Israeli historians who have sought to rewrite Israel's history to suggest the country was born in original sin.

He admits that, in his view, facts are irrelevant when it comes to the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. "Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts, Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers," He said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999.


http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=8&x_nameinnews=122&x_article=1299

Quote:

Muslim isn't a 'people'..it's a religion

Well that's your opinion, we consider ourself a people. And the only definition of 'a people' that's really relevant is their own self-identifying one.

Also prior to the British invasion, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon & Syria were pretty much one single unit of land. They have been so for well over 1000 years, culturally, ethnically, linguistically etc.


Quote:

And if they are Arabs....then they are also 'invaders' or interlopers....

How so? Arabs are the most Middle Eastern people there is. Arabic settlements in Palestine stretch back well over 2500 years, from the earliest Sabaic trading posts that were established in Gaza to facilitate the incense trade, through the Nabataean kingdoms that ruled over much of what is today Palestine, Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia, to the Muslims that have inhabited ALL of the Middle east for 1400 years now.

Compare this to the Jews, who were themselves just a tribe of Arabs anyway originally that moved around the Middle east, and had a kingdom or two in parts of Palestine that they invaded and conquered from the Canaanites, for no longer than about a 400 year unbroken stretch.

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 30^th, 2010 at 7:16am:

Quote: Muslim isn't a 'people'..it's a religion Well that's your opinion, we consider ourself a people. And the only definition of 'a people' that's really relevant is their own self-identifying one. Also prior to the British invasion, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon & Syria were pretty much one single unit of land. They have been so for well over 1000 years, culturally, ethnically, linguistically etc. [quote]And if they are Arabs....then they are also 'invaders' or interlopers....

How so? Arabs are the most Middle Eastern people there is. Arabic settlements in Palestine stretch back well over 2500 years, from the earliest Sabaic trading posts that were established in Gaza to facilitate the incense trade, through the Nabataean kingdoms that ruled over much of what is today Palestine, Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia, to the Muslims that have inhabited ALL of the Middle east for 1400 years now.

Compare this to the Jews, who were themselves just a tribe of Arabs anyway originally that moved around the Middle east, and had a kingdom or two in parts of Palestine that they invaded and conquered from the Canaanites, for no longer than about a 400 year unbroken stretch.
[/quote]

The Arab people originated in Arabia (the Arabian Penisula actually), which is where Saudi Arabia, Yemen etc are...

They migrated north and inter-married with the original Canaanite/Hebrew inhabitants...
The majority of the Arab people didn't arrive in the region called 'Palestine until around 700 AD..
The Jews however, have had an unbroken history of living there since about 1000 BC.....Over 3000 yrs..

Quote:

The Arab people originated in Arabia (the Arabian Penisula actually), which is where Saudi Arabia, Yemen etc are...

As did the Canaanites and Hebrews most likely. There's no doubting the Semitic peoples probably originated in the deserts of the Arabian peninsula, and in fact Canaan is merely the northern most part of the peninsula anyway, but that adds weight to my argument, not yours :)

This fact is abundantly clear when one studies the Semitic languages comparatively, and notices that older variants of Hebrew for instance are much much more Arabic-like. As are many other Canaanite dialects (Hebrew merely being a dialect of the Canaanite group of languages) such as Ugaritic, which is very Arabic-like in it's phonology, grammar and morphology.


Quote:

They migrated north and inter-married with the original Canaanite/Hebrew inhabitants...

Close, more like the Canaanites and Hebrews and Aramaeans and Assyrians etc. were all just bedouin Arabs who migrated out of the peninsula over the past 3000-5000 years and settled amongst the coast dwelling peoples of the mediterranean and in Mesopotamia. Many Middle-eastern archaeologists have noticed this pattern of waves of migration out of the peninsula, which continues even until modern times, as nomadic bedouins slowly assimilate into the settled coastal regions.


Quote:

The majority of the Arab people didn't arrive in the region called 'Palestine until around 700 AD..

This is just nonsense. Revisionism at it's finest. As I mentioned Sabaic incense traders from Yemen were the first Arabs from the historical records to setup settlements in Palestine, about 2500-3000 years ago. After them came the Nabataeans, and after them the Ghassanids and after them the Mudlims. This is historical fact, which you can even read about on Israeli government websites like this one from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.


Quote:

The Jews however, have had an unbroken history of living there since about 1000 BC.....Over 3000 yrs..

You seriously need a history lesson. The Jews were invaded by the Babylonians and transported out about 500 B.C. they later returned and were vassals of other empires, but not self-ruling until about the first century C.E when the Romans razed Jerusalem and expelled them. They did not have any major presence there from that time until the early 20th. century.

Please read up a little. When the Muslims arrived in Palestine in the 7th. century, the inhabitants of Palestine were Christian Arabs & Byzantines, not Jews. Only a few small scattered communities of Jews existed there at the time.

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 30^th, 2010 at 8:27am:

Quote: The Arab people originated in Arabia (the Arabian Penisula actually), which is where Saudi Arabia, Yemen etc are... As did the Canaanites and Hebrews most likely. There's no doubting the Semitic peoples probably originated in the deserts of the Arabian peninsula, and in fact Canaan is merely the northern most part of the peninsula anyway, but that adds weight to my argument, not yours :) This fact is abundantly clear when one studies the Semitic languages comparatively, and notices that older variants of Hebrew for instance are much much more Arabic-like. As are many other Canaanite dialects (Hebrew merely being a dialect of the Canaanite group of languages) such as Ugaritic, which is very Arabic-like in it's phonology, grammar and morphology. [quote]They migrated north and inter-married with the original Canaanite/Hebrew inhabitants...

Close, more like the Canaanites and Hebrews and Aramaeans and Assyrians etc. were all just bedouin Arabs who migrated out of the peninsula over the past 3000-5000 years and settled amongst the coast dwelling peoples of the mediterranean and in Mesopotamia. Many Middle-eastern archaeologists have noticed this pattern of waves of migration out of the peninsula, which continues even until modern times, as nomadic bedouins slowly assimilate into the settled coastal regions.


Quote:

The majority of the Arab people didn't arrive in the region called 'Palestine until around 700 AD..

This is just nonsense. Revisionism at it's finest. As I mentioned Sabaic incense traders from Yemen were the first Arabs from the historical records to setup settlements in Palestine, about 2500-3000 years ago. After them came the Nabataeans, and after them the Ghassanids and after them the Mudlims. This is historical fact, which you can even read about on Israeli government websites like this one from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.


Quote:

The Jews however, have had an unbroken history of living there since about 1000 BC.....Over 3000 yrs..

You seriously need a history lesson. The Jews were invaded by the Babylonians and transported out about 500 B.C. they later returned and were vassals of other empires, but not self-ruling until about the first century C.E when the Romans razed Jerusalem and expelled them. They did not have any major presence there from that time until the early 20th. century.

Please read up a little. When the Muslims arrived in Palestine in the 7th. century, the inhabitants of Palestine were Christian Arabs & Byzantines, not Jews. Only a few small scattered communities of Jews existed there at the time.[/quote]

"You seriously need a history lesson. The Jews were invaded by the Babylonians and transported out about 500 B.C."

I think you're  the one in need of a history lesson....Babylon was conquered by Cyrus the Great, King of Persia in 539 B.C...

Cyrus released all captive peoples.....which yes did included Jews...

But it impossible to capture and transport an entire race of people out of their country..

And I never said the Canaanites and Hebrews and Aramaeans and Assyrians weren't related to the Arabs....but there weren't Arabs who'd migrated out of the penisula.......they were the ancestors of people who had migrated TO the penisula....

Quote:

I think you're  the one in need of a history lesson....Babylon was conquered by Cyrus the Great, King of Persia in 539 B.C...

Before you take that history lesson, you'd better take a reading and comprehension lesson.

You claimed the Jews had an unbroken 3000 year history there, I corrected you, to show it was indeed broken. Not to mention the other 1800 or so years after the Roman expulsions and it ends up that your 3000 years has been reduced to about 1000 years, broken in the middle and half of it as vassal states, not even an independant sovereign state.


Quote:

Cyrus released all captive peoples.....which yes did included Jews...

Yes, and they were permitted to rebuild the temple, and exist as a vassal of Persia, as they remained until Alexander and then they became vassals of the Greeks. In other words, precisely as I recounted above.


Quote:

But it impossible to capture and transport an entire race of people out of their country..

Why is it impossible? The Soviets did it to Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia etc. It's not impossible at all.


Quote:

And I never said the Canaanites and Hebrews and Aramaeans and Assyrians weren't related to the Arabs....but there weren't Arabs who'd migrated out of the penisula.......they were the ancestors of people who had migrated TO the penisula....

That's completely illogical. Settled, agricultural peoples don't migrate into deserts and become nomads. The Arabic way of life, language, culture etc. are quite clearly the primitive Semitic form. The Hebrew, Phoenician, Assyrian, Aramaean languages and cultures are quite clearly mixed with other non-Semitic elements which resulted in them becoming very simplified and 'corrupted'. Jews today can barely even pronounce about 1/3 of the original Semitic sounds, and their alphabet has been reduced from the full 29 letters down to 22, resulting in merging of vocabulary and confusion of sounds. This is simple linguistic fact, and it tells us a lot about the way the history of the region unfolded.

Arabic is the purest Semitic language alive, Hebrew on the other hand is a complete mish-mash formed from millenia of foreign influence and simplifications and corruptions due to their migrating OUT of the ancestral Semitic homeland.

"Arabic is the purest Semitic language alive, Hebrew on the other hand is a complete mish-mash formed from millenia of foreign influence and simplifications and corruptions"

What the hell are you talking about ? I have never come across anyone so wrong and so self opinionated.........and so rude .

If you think your statement to be correct, how come my uncle was able to read the Dead Sea Scrolls?

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 30^th, 2010 at 8:56pm:

Quote: I think you're  the one in need of a history lesson....Babylon was conquered by Cyrus the Great, King of Persia in 539 B.C... Before you take that history lesson, you'd better take a reading and comprehension lesson. You claimed the Jews had an unbroken 3000 year history there, I corrected you, to show it was indeed broken. Not to mention the other 1800 or so years after the Roman expulsions and it ends up that your 3000 years has been reduced to about 1000 years, broken in the middle and half of it as vassal states, not even an independant sovereign state. [quote]Cyrus released all captive peoples.....which yes did included Jews...

Yes, and they were permitted to rebuild the temple, and exist as a vassal of Persia, as they remained until Alexander and then they became vassals of the Greeks. In other words, precisely as I recounted above.


Quote:

But it impossible to capture and transport an entire race of people out of their country..

Why is it impossible? The Soviets did it to Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia etc. It's not impossible at all.


Quote:

And I never said the Canaanites and Hebrews and Aramaeans and Assyrians weren't related to the Arabs....but there weren't Arabs who'd migrated out of the penisula.......they were the ancestors of people who had migrated TO the penisula....

That's completely illogical. Settled, agricultural peoples don't migrate into deserts and become nomads. The Arabic way of life, language, culture etc. are quite clearly the primitive Semitic form. The Hebrew, Phoenician, Assyrian, Aramaean languages and cultures are quite clearly mixed with other non-Semitic elements which resulted in them becoming very simplified and 'corrupted'. Jews today can barely even pronounce about 1/3 of the original Semitic sounds, and their alphabet has been reduced from the full 29 letters down to 22, resulting in merging of vocabulary and confusion of sounds. This is simple linguistic fact, and it tells us a lot about the way the history of the region unfolded.

Arabic is the purest Semitic language alive, Hebrew on the other hand is a complete mish-mash formed from millenia of foreign influence and simplifications and corruptions due to their migrating OUT of the ancestral Semitic homeland.[/quote]

At the time, Arabia wasn't a desert 4000 years ago, when the Sabaean Kingdom existed in what is now Yemen....

The oldest culture so far found in the Arabia Penisula is the Sabaean, which dates from 2000 B.C
In comparison, the oldest city so far found in Mesopotamia (the Tigris/Euphrates basin) is dated at around 5400 B.C...some 3000 years earlier than the earliest Sabaean city....

So, unless the Arabs from the Southern Arabian Penisula discovered time travel, they are the descendants, NOT the ancestors of the Sumerians....

Hebrew was physically updated some years ago to modern Hebrew, Ivrit. It has not altered over the millennium, since it grew out of Aramaic.

The "s" sound has become "t". "a" sounds have been changed too

In the Diaspora, the Hebrew language was only used for prayer. Yiddish grew in central Europe, that was a bastardised form of German, written in Hebrew characters

Ladino in Spain, which was influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic. No idea how it was written, but I suspect Hebrew characters

There was a little known “Jewish “ language used in Italy, But I have no idea as to its name.

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What the hell are you talking about

It's a simple fact that compared to Arabic, Hebrew is a very "evolved" language. It lost many of the original Semitic features like grammatical cases, dual number, and about 7 of it's sounds completely merged into others and became lost well over 3000 years ago. This was proven with the discovery of Ugaritic, a language which is closely related to Hebrew, yet which retains many features in common with Arabic.


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If you think your statement to be correct, how come my uncle was able to read the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Because most of the changes occurred prior to the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by which time the written language was standardised. But still many changes have occurred since then, and although your uncle may read the scrolls, it's very doubtful he can read them the way their authors would've read them, because several sound mergers and shifts have occurred even since then. I can read them as well, and my Arabic-accented pronunciation of them would probably be closer to the original than a modern day Hebrew speaker's rendering.

I have sent an email to a person who can help

From what I read Arabic only has 15 letters and 11 or 12 symbols which change the sound of the letters

Quote:

Hebrew was physically updated some years ago to modern Hebrew, Ivrit. It has not altered over the millennium, since it grew out of Aramaic.

Hebrew did not grow out of Aramaic, the two of them probably came from a common ancestor language. Because Jews spoke Aramaic for many centuries, that's probably why there is a lot more similarity between them.

Hebrew orthography (writing) has not changed much for about 2000 years, but the spoken language definitely has. And even the orthography can be deceptive, because Hebrew often doubled up letters, so sin/shin for instance use the one letter, and in the early centuries B.C ayin also doubled as ghayin, a letter which has now disappeared from Hebrew speech altogether. So for instance the city called Ghazzah (which we spell gaza in english) is spelt with an ayin in Hebrew (in the Bible) but originally it was pronounced ghayin, as is witnessed by the fact that Greek translations of the Bible spelt it gaza, and that in Arabic it's spelt with a ghayin. There are numerous cases of these same kinds of degradation of Hebrew phonemes. This is well documented, and is certainly not my 'theory'.


Quote:

The "s" sound has become "t". "a" sounds have been changed too

Not quite sure what you mean by this... can you elaborate? With Hebrew letter names instead of just Latin letters?

Perhaps you mean the Semitic 'th' which has merged into shin in Hebrew but taw in Aramaic? But which Arabic still retains as a separate letter 'tha'?

Arabic has 28 of the original 29 Semitic letters, not 15.

Hebrew has 22 letters, but 1 of them doubles as two letters (sin and shin). However, when it comes to speech sin has merged with samekh and kaph and khet have also merged in most cases. Aleph and ayin have also merged and qoph has merged into what kaph used to be.

As I said, Hebrew is a mish-mash. Arabic on the other hand has merged only 1 letter, samekh assimilated into sin. Sabaic and the other ancient Arabian languages were the only known Semitic languages to have preserved all 29 Semitic sounds.

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 27^th, 2010 at 10:06pm:

If someone had come and saturated the population of my land until they managed to take it over with militia terrorist forces, and then booted my parents out of their home and I was born in a refugee camps, I'd be lobbing missiles and anything else I could find at them too. When Ismael Haniyyah fires rockets at towns like Ashkelon, he does so knowing that his parents were expelled from their home there and forced into the open air refugee camp that is Gaza, so some scumbag Zionists could take their home for themselves. They have every right to resist that, and then some. If the Zionists go back to their own homes in Poland, Russia, England, U.S etc. and vacate the homes of the Palestinians I'm pretty sure the Palestinians will stop the rockets. Only logical... you take someone's home, they're gonna fight to get it back.

Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle and won't go back in.
The Jewish State has been in existence for over sixty years and many in Israel today were born there, so going back to wherever is not an option.

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 27^th, 2010 at 10:06pm:

If someone had come and saturated the population of my land until they managed to take it over with militia terrorist forces, and then booted my parents out of their home and I was born in a refugee camps, I'd be lobbing missiles and anything else I could find at them too. When Ismael Haniyyah fires rockets at towns like Ashkelon, he does so knowing that his parents were expelled from their home there and forced into the open air refugee camp that is Gaza, so some scumbag Zionists could take their home for themselves. They have every right to resist that, and then some.

History tells a slightly different story to yours about how the occupants were urged by their leaders to evacuate their homes.
Perhaps all those Arab armies that attacked Israel the day after it's formation as a state in 1948, should have been better at making war instead of being so inept.
And the real difference about the open air 'refugee' camp in Gaza, is that it is not a refugee camp at all.
Recent available films shown of Gaza on the internet show us very un-refugee camp like existence in the food markets and the 5 star resorts making a mockery of the 'refugee' tale.
If Hamas could sort out their ongoing issues with the Palestinian Authority, then passports would be available to the Gazans that wish to leave their 'open air refugee camp'.
In fact the Palestinian Authority might even turn the electricity back on if that were so.
So when Ismael Haniyyah fires rockets at towns like Ashkelon, he does so because he is a terrorist who deserves a firing squad for making war on women and children.

abu_rashid wrote on Aug 29^th, 2010 at 2:09pm:

Quote: So shouldn't people like Ismael Haniyyah ALSO be firing rockets at Egypt, Jordan and Syria too??? Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Jordan are all one people... Why would he fire rockets at his own people?

If only it was so eh.
Were they one people during the Black September massacres of 1972 when Palestinians were slaughtered in their tens of thousands by the Jordanians.
Or was it when the Jordanians last year refused to recognise dual citizenship passports for those in the West Bank.
Perhaps they are one people whilst the Lebanese still today discriminate against the Palestinians in their work opportunities, or like the Saudi's treat them as lowly paid coolies.
Even their brothers, the Egyptians are assisting the Israeli's to keep the terrorists in their box called Gaza.
Maybe it was when the Iraqi's deported them all last year was a sign of Muslim brotherly love?
One people?
Their is no truth in that statement I'm afraid.

Quote:

If only it was so eh. Were they one people during the Black September massacres...

I said the people, not the rotten scumbag traitor rulers. The rulers have been agents of the British and Zionists since day one, this is pretty well known fact. It doesn't serve your little propaganda story to justify the existence of the Zionist entity, that's why you are in denial about it, but for many it's a well known fact.

abu_rashid wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2010 at 7:32am:

Quote: If only it was so eh. Were they one people during the Black September massacres... I said the people, not the rotten scumbag traitor rulers. The rulers have been agents of the British and Zionists since day one, this is pretty well known fact. It doesn't serve your little propaganda story to justify the existence of the Zionist entity, that's why you are in denial about it, but for many it's a well known fact.

That little 'propaganda' story is called history, and none can escape that fact. It happened.
So your assertions that the rulers of Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq were and are traitors and agents of the Israeli's & British is unsubstantiated, as there is no proof of this.
If the Lebanese government was in the pocket of the British or Israeli's, Hezbollah would be just a bad memory and Israeli citizens near the border could live in peace without wondering when the next attack will come.
Whether you accept it or not, the Palestinians are the social lepers of the Muslim brotherhood by the actions taken against them every day by their own 'brothers', not solely by the policies of their political leaders.
Not even the Israeli's would dare treat them in such a fashion.
Perhaps the treatment of the Palestinians by their Muslim brothers could be explained by that old South American proverb, "Who needs revolutionaries once the revolution is over".
The reality is if the Muslim fraternitity was interested in the Palestinians having their own land, it would have happened long ago before Israel even existed.
The Ottomans had 500 years to make it so, the Jordanians and Egyptians could have also for a time.
However, none want them as a neighbour so the status quo remains.

Chicken, I think this guy is a cross between Amer (thick and stubborn) and bulldoost ( a know it all ) !!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVfkKC1F7Pk

Cockney Doll wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2010 at 9:14am:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVfkKC1F7Pk

Absolutely outstanding video.
Thanks.
:)

Thanks it only just went up on Youtube
This is excellent too

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=iXPGUdS2Fpc&feature=related

Cockney Doll wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2010 at 9:00am:

Chicken, I think this guy is a cross between Amer (thick and stubborn) and bulldoost ( a know it all ) !!!!

Are we sure he's NOT 'Amer'???

We're not Giz......... !!!!!!!

Just looking down the list of his topics and the quantity of them.......he could well be...LOL!!

From Ahl  AlQuran..International Quranic Centre

Eliminating Arab Discrimination against Palestinians



Throughout the Arab world, the Palestinians are subject to blatant discrimination with regard to employment opportunities, property ownership, freedom of movement, and acquisition of citizenship. For example, Saudi Arabia in 2004 announced it was introducing measures to ease the attainment of Saudi citizenship for all foreigners who were residing in the country except Palestinians, half a million of whom live in the kingdom.

Similar policies of discrimination are prevalent in other Arab states. A 2004 Los Angeles Times report painted a grim picture of the life Palestinians are forced to endure among the Arab “brethren.” According to the report, Palestinians in Egypt suffer restrictions on employment, education, and owning property, and when Egypt announced in 2003 that it would grant nationality to children of Egyptian mothers married to foreigners, Palestinians were excluded. In Lebanon, meanwhile, nearly 400,000 Palestinians live in 12 “refugee camps,” where crime is rife and clashes between rival Palestinian factions are common. Palestinians cannot own property or getstate health care. According to Tayseer Nasrallah, head of the Palestinian Refugee Rights Committee in the West Bank, Lebanon bans refugees from 72 areas of employment, including medicine and engineering. Syria, with a population of 18 million, is a strong verbal supporter of the Palestinian cause, but refuses citizenship to its 410,000 Palestinian refugees. Even in Jordan, where Palestinians comprise nearly 70% of the population, Palestinians complain that they are discriminated against in terms of employment.

When approached on this issue of discrimination against the Palestinian residents in Arab countries, Hisham Youssef, spokesman for the 22-nation Arab League, openly acknowledged that Palestinians live “in very bad conditions,” but claimed the policy is meant “to preserve their Palestinian identity.” He went on to explain with perhaps unintended candor: “If every Palestinian who sought refuge in a certain country was integrated and accommodated into that country, there won’t be any reason for them to return to Palestine.”

But according to a survey conducted by the well-known Palestinian pollster, Dr. Khalil Shikaki, most Palestinians were less interested in being nationalist standard-bearers than in living fuller lives. This view resonates strongly with opinion samples gathered by the leadingArab television stations Al-Arabiya and Al Jazeera of Palestinians living in the various Arab states, the vast majority of whom very much want to become citizens in the their respective countries of residence.

This clearly seems to indicate that Palestinian national identity is something more jealously guarded by non-Palestinian Arabs rather than the Palestinians themselves.

It is only the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that allows the Arab countries to continue to keep the Palestinians within their borders in their situation of suspended stateless animation. For while its mandate prevents finding a permanent solution for the Palestinian residents in these countries, it is the ongoing humanitarian aid that it provides for an ever-increasing client population that permits the host governments to sustain their discriminatory policy toward their Palestinian “guests,” to perpetuate their inferior status, and to allow their situation to languish and fester.

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So your assertions that the rulers of Egypt, Saudi, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq were and are traitors and agents of the Israeli's & British is unsubstantiated

No it's quite well substantiated in fact. Since all of those countries were forged by the British, and Jordan, the only one with a half trained army was actually commanded pretty much all by British officers.

That's substantiated enough for me. It might detract from the myth that the tiny little Jewish state fought off 5 great huge Arab neighbours at once and gave them a whipping, but it certainly explains a lot when we actually know who was pulling the strings doesn't it?


Quote:

The reality is if the Muslim fraternitity was interested in the Palestinians having their own land, it would have happened long ago before Israel even existed.

Your mistake is still in assuming the treacherous Arab rulers are part of the Muslim fraternity, they are not.

They are puppets who do nothing other than what their masters ask of them.


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The Ottomans had 500 years to make it so

You've lost me here. Make what so? During the entire Ottoman period, there was no Israel so whatever point you think you've made there is moot.


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Eliminating Arab Discrimination against Palestinians

There's no argument from me here. The Arab puppets need to go just as much as the Zionists do. They are in fact two sides of the same coin.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-09/03/c_13475890.htm


13 Palestinian armed groups vow to step up attacks against Israel

Militants of Palestinian armed factions, including members of Hamas, hold a press conference against the direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine in Washington, in Gaza City on Sept. 2, 2010. More than a dozen Palestinian militant groups on Thursday pledged to step up joint and separate attacks on Israeli targets to foil the peace negotiations which kicked off in Washington this week. (Xinhua/Wissam Nassar)


PEACE .............................my left foot

Was no myth

"It might detract from the myth that the tiny little Jewish state fought off 5 great huge Arab neighbours at once and gave them a whipping, but it certainly explains a lot when we actually know who was pulling the strings doesn't it?"

Only to your evil twisted mind....

Israel was alone. The US was not involved with Israel and Britain certainly wasn't

Watch the first video I posted

Cockney Doll wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2010 at 9:14am:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVfkKC1F7Pk