Anti-Zionism – ancient Arab roots

This is a politically correct term for anti-Semitism. It basically rejects Israel’s right to exist. Origins of Anti-Zionism go back thousands of years.

1. Amalakites attacked the women and children of the ancient Israelites, while they were still in the desert with Moses

Exdous 17:8-16 At Rephidim, the Israelites are attacked by the Amalakites. Moses instructs Joshua to gather soldiers to fight back. Israel prevails when Moses lifts up his hands and Israel weakens when Moses’ arms grow weary and are lowered. Israel does prevail, aided no doubt by Moses hands, held by Aaron on the one side and Hur on the other. Thus, when Moses grew weary and his hands heavy with fatigue his arms would not fall to the side. The Amalakites were especially vicious in their attacks, going after the weakest of the Israelites, rather than the soldiers.

God condemns the Amalakites as his enemies

Deu 25:17¶ Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt;

Deu 25:18 How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, [even] all [that were] feeble behind thee, when thou [wast] faint and weary; and he feared not God.

Deu 25:19 Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee [for] an inheritance to possess it, [that] thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget [it].

2. Continued opposition once in the Promised Land.

King Saul and King David fought wars with them. (1-2 Samuel )

Numbers 31:17 & 18, Deuteronomy 7 and I Samuel 15:3.

The Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, Amalakites all opposed the presence of the Israelites in Canaan and there were constant wars. They were Baal worshipers, and were vicious people whose presence was incompatible with decent life. Baal worship was satanic in nature.

It is here that the Hebrews are given instructions on how to deal with certain corrupt tribes; namely the Midianites, the Caananites and the Amalakites. These groups not only advocated the extermination of the Jews themselves but also the murder of their own first born child as a sacrifice to the pagan god Baal. That is to say that Baal-worshippers sacrificed their own children. Indeed ancient texts speak of the Caananites placing a new born baby on a hot iron and watching it die as a form of worship to Baal. . If one looks at current events in the Palestinian areas, we will still see people sacrificing their children to their god. Their present claim is that they are descendants of the ancient Canaanites, Amalakites, etc.

The solution that God gives to the Hebrews concerning these tribes of people is to wipe them out – kill them – remove them from the face of the earth. They are evil.

3. plot of Haman, an Amalakite, in Persia to destroy the entire population of Jews there

Book of Esther – plot is discovered by Mordecai, and Ester intercedes with the king after 3 days of fasting and prayer by her and the entire Jewish nation. God gives the plan for the salvation of the Jews to Esther, and the Jews after they fasted and prayed.

4. King David, the Psalmist, writes about the constant threats to the Jewish nation of Israel.

King David writes in the Psalms about the Canaanites trying to “cut off Israel from becoming a nation” – the same words we hear today. Apparently the Canaanites tolerate each other, but they oppose the presence of the Israelites:

Psa 83:1 Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.

Psa 83:2 For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.

Psa 83:3 They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones.
Psa 83:4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from [being] a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance. ( Isn’t this what we hear today from Iran ?)

Psa 83:5 For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:

Psa 83:6 The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes;

Psa 83:7 Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre;

Psa 83:8 Assur also is joined with them: they have helped the children of Lot.

5. The ancient Babylonians and Assyrians were also enemies of Israel, and managed to wipe out the Northern part of the Israel kingdom, and put the Southern kingdom in captivity.

The summary of the destruction of Israel is summarized in this link:

http://www.bible-history.com/destruction_of_israel/index.html

6. Muslim persecution of the Jews during the Middle ages.

It was the Prophet Muhammad himself who initiated attacks against Jews after the Jewish community rejected the Prophet Muhammad’s religion, preferring to adhere to its own beliefs.

After each major battle with the Medinans, Muhammad accused one of the Jewish tribes of treachery after aiding the enemies of the community after the Jewish treaty with the Muslims (See [Qur’an 2:100]). After Badr and Uhud, the Banu Qainuqa and Banu Nadir, respectively, were expelled “with their families and possessions” from Medina. After the Battle of the Trench in 627, the Jews of Banu Qurayza were accused of conspiring with the Meccans; 600-900 Qurayza men were beheaded (except for the few who chose to convert to Islam), women and children enslaved, and their properties confiscated.

Traditionally Jews living in Muslim lands, known as dhimmis, were allowed to practice their religion and to administor their internal affairs but subject to certain conditions. They had to pay the jizya (a per capita tax imposed on free adult non-muslim males) to Muslims. Dhimmis had an inferior status under Islamic rule. They had several social and legal disabilities such as prohibitions against bearing arms or giving testimony in courts in cases involving Muslims. Many of the disabilities were highly symbolic. The most degrading one was the requirement of distinctive clothing, not found in the Qur’an or hadith but invented in early medieval Baghdad; its enforcement was highly erratic.

In Moorish Spain, ibn Hazm and Abu Ishaq focused their anti-Jewish writings on the latter allegation. This was also the chief motivation behind the 1066 Granada massacre, when “[m]ore than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day”, and in Fez in 1033, when 6,000 Jews were killed. There were further massacres in Fez in 1276 and 1465.

Other mass murders of Jews in Arab lands occurred in Morocco in the 8th century, where whole communities were wiped out by Muslim ruler Idris I; North Africa in the 12th century, where the Almohads either forcibly converted or decimated several communities; Libya in 1785, where Ali Burzi Pasha murdered hundreds of Jews; Algiers, where Jews were massacred in 1805, 1815 and 1830 and Marrakesh, Morocco, where more than 300 hundred Jews were murdered between 1864 and 1880.

The Damascus affair occurred in 1840, when an Italian monk and his servant disappeared in Damascus. Immediately following, a charge of ritual murder was brought against a large number of Jews in the city. All were found guilty. The consuls of England, France and Germany as well as Ottoman authorities, Christians, Muslims and Jews all played a great role in this affair.

Following the Damascus affair, Pogroms spread through the Middle East and North Africa. Pogroms occurred in: Aleppo (1850, 1875), Damascus (1840, 1848, 1890), Beirut (1862, 1874), Dayr al-Qamar (1847), Jerusalem (1847), Cairo (1844, 1890, 1901-02), Mansura (1877), Alexandria (1870, 1882, 1901-07), Port Said (1903, 1908), Damanhur (1871, 1873, 1877, 1891), Istanbul (1870, 1874), Buyukdere (1864), Kuzguncuk (1866), Eyub (1868), Edirne (1872), Izmir (1872, 1874).

There was a massacre of Jews in Baghdad in 1828.

There was another massacre in Barfurush in 1867.

In 1839, in the eastern Persian city of Meshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue, and destroyed the Torah scrolls. Known as the Allahdad incident. It was only by forcible conversion that a massacre was averted.

7. Muslims persecution of Jews and contribution to the Holocaust in the last century

picture of the grand mufti giving support to Adolf Hilter

In 1941, following Rashid Ali’s pro-Axis coup, riots known as the Farhud broke out in Baghdad in which approximately 180 Jews were killed and about 240 were wounded, 586 Jewish-owned businesses were looted and 99 Jewish houses were destroyed.

Before the Holocaust, The Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husayni actively worked to block Jewish immigration out of Germany into Israel, thus allowing the murder of 6 million Jews. . While a Jewish minority had lived in Palestine for centuries, the Arab Palestinians were strongly opposed to the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish immigrant state, and hence to any immigration that would threaten to change the majority status of the Arab population. Thus, while small-scale Jewish immigration (such as the First Aliyah of the 1880s) was accepted and often welcomed for economic reasons, larger influxes of Jews were resisted strenuously.

Once the Balfour Declaration made it clear that the British intended to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, Arab opposition grew much firmer. Hostilities punctuated the 1920s (Jerusalem riots of April, 1920, 1929 Palestine riots (in Hebron, Jerusalem and Safed) and 1930s (activities of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and the Black Hand group, 1936-1939 Great Uprising). Even though this was British land to do with as they pleased, to this day, Palestinians illegally claimed it was their land, not that of the British, and to this day make false claims against the Israelis.

Muslim anti-Zionism generally opposes the state of Israel as an intrusion into what many Muslims consider to be Dar al-Islam, a domain rightfully, and permanently, ruled only by Muslims.

During the Holocaust, the Mufti staged a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and organized the Farhud pogrom which marked the turning point for about 150,000 Iraqi Jews who, following this event and the hostilities generated by the war with Israel in 1948, were targeted for violence, persecution, boycotts, confiscations, and near complete expulsion in 1951.

The coup failed and the Mufti fled to Berlin, where he actively supported Hitler. In Egypt, with a Jewish population of about 75,000, young Anwar Sadat was imprisoned for conspiring with the Nazis and promised them that “no British soldier would leave Egypt alive,” leaving the Jews of that region defenseless. In the French Vichy territories of Algeria and Syria plans drawn up for the liquidation of their Jewish populations were the Axis powers to triumph.

The tensions of the Arab-Israeli conflict were also a factor in the rise of animosity to Jews all over the Middle East, as hundreds of thousands of Jews fled as refugees, the main waves being soon after the 1948 and 1956 wars.

In reaction to the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Egyptian government expelled almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscated their property, and sent approximately 1,000 more Jews to prisons and detention camps.

The population of Jewish communities of Muslim Middle East and North Africa was reduced from about 900,000 in 1948 to less than 8,000 today.

7. Modern Palestinian homicide bombings of Israelis

This is constantly in the news, and the first infitada did not start in 2000, but long before that. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians refuse to live in harmony with the Israelis. They claim the entire land of formerly called Palestine was actually their land, when, in effect they never had any ownership, or governmental control over the region. The land went from Ottoman rule to British rule. The land was a wasteland before the Israelis took over. Now it is a fertile, productive area. The land was legally transferred to the Israelis by the British.

Modern Arabs were merely residents of the region, and many did not even move here until recent times. They were refugees from other Arab lands. The constant bloody atrocities by Palestinians on Jews, and terrorist (Hamas, Hezbollah) attacks on Israel will bring World War III, because their deep rooted hatred for the Jewish people started thousands of years ago, as referenced above.

Modern Palestinians claim to be descendants of the ancient Canaanites. Has history come full circle, and once again there will be an attempt to destroy Israel forever, resulting in the final war of the end times? Will this ancient hatred result in the unleashing of the red horse of the apocalypse?

Recalling what King David said

Psa 83:4 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from [being] a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.

Anti-Zionism – Jewish self-betrayal…..Click here for more

Anti-Zionism – Roman and Christian (Western) roots…… Click here for more

Zionism : Man’s Idea or God’s Plan?…. Click here for more

Israel’s Divine Right to the land…… Click here for more

References:

http://www.middleeastfacts.com/Articles/history-of-jews-in-arab-countries.php

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/persecution.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews#Muslim_and_Arab_antisemitism

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/nationalism.html

Esposito, Islam: the straight path, extended edition, Oxford University Press, pp. 10-11

Lewis, Bernard (1984). The Jews of Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00807-8 pp.10,20

Lewis, Bernard (1999). Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice. W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-31839-7 p.131

Granada by Richard Gottheil, Meyer Kayserling, Jewish Encyclopedia. 1906 ed.

Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. Vintage Books, 2001, pp. 10-11.

Frankel, Jonathan: The Damascus Affair: ‘Ritual Murder’, Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-48396-4 p.1

Yossef Bodansky. “Islamic Anti-Semitism as a Political Instrument” Co-Produced by The Ariel Center for Policy Research and The Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, 1999. ISBN-10 0967139104, ISBN-13 978-0967139104

Patai, Raphael (1997). Jadid al-Islam: The Jewish “New Muslims” of Meshhed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2652-8

Levin, Itamar (2001). Locked Doors: The Seizure of Jewish Property in Arab Countries. (Praeger/Greenwood) ISBN 0-275-97134-1, p. 6.