Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.(Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)
We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948) With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.(Friends of Israel Initiative)
Showing posts with label Jewish Dhimmitude in Islamic Countries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jewish Dhimmitude in Islamic Countries. Show all posts
Dr Andrew Bostom is an American medical specialist who in the wake of 9/11 has emerged as a leading authority on Islamic antisemitism, dhimmitude, and jihad. During a recent interview with Mark Tapson of FrontPageMagazine, Dr Bostom cogently explained the nature of dhimmitude and the doctrine behind it, and gives a clear exposition of Islamic attitudes to Jews, and by extension to their possession of Eretz Israel.
Not the least interesting and useful aspect of the interview is Dr Bostom's summarised sample of known historical incidents of Islamic violence towards Jews:
'Here is but a very incomplete sampling of barely known pogroms and mass murderous violence against Jews living under Islamic rule, across space and time, all resulting from the combined effects of jihadism, general anti-dhimmi, and/or specifically Antisemitic motifs in Islam: 6,000 Jews massacred in Fez in 1033; hundreds of Jews slaughtered in Muslim Cordoba between 1010 and 1015; 4,000 Jews killed in Muslim riots in Grenada in 1066, wiping out the entire community; the Berber Muslim Almohad depredations of Jews (and Christians) in Spain and North Africa between 1130 and 1232, which killed tens of thousands, while forcibly converting thousands more, and subjecting the forced Jewish converts to Islam to a Muslim Inquisition; the 1291 pogroms in Baghdad and its environs, which killed (at least) hundreds of Jews; the 1465 pogrom against the Jews of Fez; the late 15th century pogrom against the Jews of the Southern Moroccan oasis town of Touat; the 1679 pogroms against, and then expulsion of 10,000 Jews from Sanaa, Yemen to the unlivable, hot and dry Plain of Tihama, from which only 1,000 returned alive, in 1680, 90% having died from exposure; recurring Muslim anti-Jewish violence—including pogroms and forced conversions—throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, which rendered areas of Iran (for example, Tabriz) Judenrein; the 1834 pogrom in Safed where raging Muslim mobs killed and grievously wounded hundreds of Jews; the 1888 massacres of Jews in Isfahan and Shiraz, Iran; the 1910 pogrom in Shiraz; the pillage and destruction of the Casablanca, Morocco ghetto in 1907; the pillage of the ghetto of Fez Morocco in 1912; the government sanctioned anti-Jewish pogroms by Muslims in Turkish Eastern Thrace during June-July, 1934 which ethnically cleansed at least 3000 Jews; and the series of pogroms, expropriations, and finally mass expulsions of some 900,000 Jews from Arab Muslim nations, beginning in 1941 in Baghdad (the murderous “Farhud,” during which 600 Jews were murdered, and at least 12,000 pillaged)—eventually involving cities and towns in Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Syria, Aden, Bahrain, and culminating in 1967 in Tunisia—that accompanied the planning and creation of a Jewish state, Israel, on a portion of the Jews’ ancestral homeland.'
David Ben-Gurion's Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 (to use the secular calendar) was of course followed by the Arabs' determined but heroically thwarted attempt to wipe the fledgling state off the map, and in the course of hostilities - started of course by the surrounding Arab nations, not by Israel, which sought only peace - some 600, 000 Arabs (now termed, in hindsight, Palestinians, as cunning and effective a propaganda move as there ever has been) became refugees.
A few years ago a writer in a Palestinian Authority newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadeedah, laid the blame for the so-called Nakba ("catastrophe") squarely where it indeed resides: with the Arab leaders themselves.
"…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” [i.e. unkept] 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…" (hat tip: Elder of Ziyon)
But, as David Gutmann, a former Palmach fighter, observed in an article entitled "The Arab Lie Whose Time Has Come" :
"To back up its demands for full repatriation to Israel of Arab refugees and their descendants, the Palestinian leadership has—for over fifty years—busily spun the story of their "Naqba," their catastrophic flight from Palestine during 1947-48, in all the media available to them. This version of events—replete with Jewish brutality and Arab victimization—is a lie whose time has come, one now almost universally believed by Gentile and Jew alike.
It has become the latest Blood Libel against the People of the Book; and like the others it will never go away. Nevertheless, many Jewish Peaceniks—both Israeli and American—have signed on to the Naqba narrative, and Jewish authors and intellectuals now number among its leading proponents...."
Testified Gutmann from his own firsthand knowledge:
"The Palestinians initiated the war that led to their Naqba. Troops from Tel-Aviv eventually conquered Jaffa, but it was Arab fighters in Jaffa who, from the towers of their mosques, first fired into Tel-Aviv, and turned the intercity border areas into a battleground.
The first refugees were not Arabs but Yemenite Jews, from the Tel Aviv-Jaffa No-Man's Land that Arab aggression had created. Unlike the Palestinians, theirs was only a temporary refugee status. Instead of packing them away and forgetting them in squalid refugee camps, their Ashkenazi compatriots took them into their own neighborhoods. For the most part the Yemenites camped out in Tel Aviv apartment lobbies, and used the cooking and sanitary facilities of the permanent residents. When Jaffa fell to Irgun soldiers, they went back home.
The Palestinians fled for many reasons and from many threats, both real and imaginary, and that thousands upon thousands fled when nobody pushed them. As an example, when my unit occupied the abandoned British police station at Sidn'a Ali in the Sharon Plain, British troops were still stationed in the vicinity, and we had to train and patrol with our few guns (antiquated or homemade) concealed. Nevertheless, the Arabs of Sidn'a Ali were long gone, way before we could have pushed them out, and while the Brits were still in place to protect them from us. Needless to say, in the absence of any Palestinian targets (save for some abandoned camels) we committed no rapes." (For the rest see: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13508)
One of the most intriguing and insightful commentaries on the refugee issue and Arab rejectionism of Israel has been made by Francisco Gil-White in a well-documented article:
"Critics of Israel from the moderate ... to the most extreme portray it as an example of colonialism: European settlers push out the native population turning them into homeless refugees. And sure, they say, those Europeans were themselves victims of genocide, but do two wrongs make a right?
There are two problems with this view. First, it incorrectly portrays the makeup of the people who constitute most of the Jewish population in Israel. And second, it incorrectly describes the causes and nature of the Palestinian refugee problem....
Is Israel a European “Settler State”?
That is the commonly held view, but the truth is quite different."
Pointing out that, following the establishment of and Israel in 1948, refugees from Iraq (130,000), Yemen (45,000), Libya (35,000) and other mizrachi communities took refuge there - in such numbers that some of the countries were virtually depleted of Jews altogether, he states the obvious truth:
Yemeni Jews airlifted to Israel: Operation Magic Carpet
"Thus, the general perception that Arabs are the only refugees produced by the Arab-Jewish conflicts since 1947 is simply wrong. The difference is that Jewish refugees who fled to Israel – and who had everything taken from them in the process – became Israeli citizens (or citizens of other countries). By way of contrast, Palestinian refugees were refused citizenship by every Arab state except Jordan."
The number of Oriental Jews (450,000) who fled to Israel between 1948 and 1956 was markedly higher than the number (360,000) who made aliya from Europe and the USA.
Gil-White cites studies that show that by the early 1970s the number of Israelis of mizrachi background outnumbered Jews there of other origins, and that in 1985, the "Oriental Jews" constituted the majority of Israel's Jewish population, a proportion later diminished by the arrival of Jews from the Soviet Union.
Regarding the lands the mizrachim left behind:
'Many claim that the status of Jews in the Arab world was not like that of Jews in Europe (i.e., it was supposedly better), and therefore Arabs did not have anti-Semitic attitudes until Zionists came to Palestine. In truth, Jewish life in the Arab world was characterized by institutionalized racism....
Why did Zionism, the movement for a Jewish state in Palestine, elicit fury in many Arabs from its very beginnings? To understand this, one must look at the world from a traditionalist Arab/Islamic point of view.
The Arab upper classes saw "dhimmitude" as the cement of the social fabric, helping guarantee the loyalty of 'the street'. Many ordinary Arabs perceived in the lowly status of Jews – that is, in "dhimmitude" – a confirmation of their own worth. And there was special contempt for the Jews, perhaps because, unlike the Christian case, no Jewish states existed to compete with Islamic states....
Why did millions of Arabs all over North Africa and the Middle East, who never met a Zionist, hate them? There are two reasons. First, they did not act like proper dhimmis. Second, the Zionist Jews carried the dangerous contagion of modern ideas....
This helps explain why the Mufti of Jerusalem, Nasser, Arafat, Hamas, etc. have not merely called for defeating Israel and/or extracting political concessions, but rather have always agitated for Israel’s total destruction. The existence of a Jewish State in the Middle East is seen as an offense to the natural order of Allah-proclaimed Jewish inferiority – and as a source of ideas that challenge the traditional Middle Eastern practices and power-relations. Arab leaders use both these perceived offenses to mobilize popular support from the Arab 'street'.
This also explains some otherwise odd facts. For example, the Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, organized a murderous attack against Jewish civilians in 1920.
It was directed primarily at members of the ‘Old Yishuv’. These were not recent Jewish immigrants. Their families had been in Palestine for over 2000 years. In 1929, Mufti-organized Arabs slaughtered Jews in Hebron and other towns. Although Palestinian leaders speak of the Hebron massacre as a heroic act of resistance to Zionism, in fact, it was a terrorist pogrom, and directed largely at indigenous Palestinian Jews, not recent immigrants.
The context of "dhimmitude" explains why so much terrorist violence was directed against non-immigrant Jews in Palestine. By presenting themselves as equal to Muslims, the Zionists had cancelled the dhimma; therefore, jihad could resume. Since the dhimma was an agreement that applied to the entire community, all Jews were now subject to jihad slaughter...
The Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Saudi armies and Iraqi and Palestinian irregulars did not invade Israel because it had attacked or threatened those countries, but because Israel had chosen to exist. By doing so, it had cancelled the dhimma on a grand scale.'
Last September, a guest post on this blog reminded us of the uniqueness of the Palestinian Arabs' insistence on the right to return to their former homeland - other persons displaced as a result of other twentieth-century events, including catalysts during the 1940s, made new lives for themselves, but only in the case of the "Palestinian refugees" is the right to return - a sine qua non for a peace deal as far as the PA is concerned - demanded. See http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2010/09/in-contrast-to-palestine-partitions.html
In May 1906 a British writer and traveller called J. Budgett Meakin gave a talk on his impressions of Moroccan Jewry to the East London Communal League at the East London Synagogue. He revealed that he was not as interested in the Moroccan Jews whose Sephardi ancestors had migrated from Europe, and who tended to be merchants and traders in coastal areas, as in the older Moroccan Jewish community of the interior, whose forebears had lived in the country for over one thousand years. These were the Jews who fascinated him most. Their ancestors had fought the invading Muslim conquerors of North Africa; some had been converted to Islam themselves.
'The Berber Jews,’ he explained, as recorded in a Jewish Chronicle report (18 May 1906),
‘dare not travel , dared hardly do anything except under the protection of some powerful Sheikh or other important personage in the locality. Everyone was practically the serf of someone who protected him. Without this protection the life of the Jew would not be safe, and yet a few dollars might sometimes be considered sufficient “blood-money” for them. Not only could the Jew not leave the place in which he resided unless under this protection, but he was not allowed to take his wife with him under any circumstances; she was kept as a sort of hostage until his return home. Until recent years the sultans of Morocco allowed no Jewesses to leave the country.”
Budgett Meakin went on to say:
“There had long been intimate relations between the Jews of Morocco and Palestine ; quite a number of the most famous rabbis of Jerusalem had been supplied by the schools of Fez (which contained the main Jewish settlement in Morocco) and other parts of the country. Up to that time the Jews of Morocco had ... refused to accept many of the teachings of the rabbis [i.e. the Talmudic sages] ... and had for this reason been compared by some scholars with the Karaite Jews. It was not until a later period that they came into contact with the Talmudic section of the country [the Sephardim].”
They were subject to discrimination by their Muslim overlords:
‘None of the men were allowed to wear bright colours, and though there was a time when the sultan decreed that they should all wear costumes of bright yellow, they were now only allowed to dress in black; they had to wear a black fez, in contradistinction to the red of the Moors. In some of the districts the men had the curious custom of wearing tufts of their hair on either side of their forehead, and it was a curious fact that one of the tribes reported to be of Jewish origin (the Udála) wore precisely similar “sheaves” on their foreheads. The Jewish costume consisted of a black robe, or gabardine, and black slippers. The women were allowed to wear what they liked, although in the streets in the interior, they covered themselves up; the Jewesses, however, unlike the Moorish women, had no objection to their faces being seen ... He regretted to say that the Jewesses on the coast, whom they were used to see going about in becoming costumes, had taken to the hideous Paris fashions which Western Europeans were compelled to adopt.... The time to observe the sumptuous costume of the Jews was at the family festivities .... [At weddings] everybody who cared to walk in and partake in the festivities was perfectly welcome; and the spread of good things was quite unique. It was the custom for the guests who were quite unable to consume all the delicacies allotted to them to sweep them off the table and carry them away in their pockets! Music was being played while the guests assembled, and there was a general atmosphere of luxury. The ladies invested as much of their money as they could in jewellery, brocade, and other ornaments, which they wore on these occasions. The elaborate dresses, which were of silk and velvet, were decorated with real gold braid; and were handed down from generation to generation.
A Jewish Wedding in Morocco, by Eugene Delacroix
Unlike the homes of Muslims, whose passageways had a bend in them so as to prevent passers-by looking into the courtyard and seeing the women, the homes of Jews had no such restrictions. The mellahs (Jewish quarters) tended to have poor drainage, and since refuse piled up in the streets, “the roads in the Mellah were always increasing in height – sometimes the middle of the street was a couple of feet higher than the sides.”
The gates of the mellahs were shut at sunset:
“This was not only awkward for the people, but it was also a protection in times of trouble, when it is as well that the Jews should be safe in their quarters. As the Jews contributed a great deal towards the regular and irregular taxation – of which latter there were plenty – and were important traders and successful in commerce generally, they were regarded with jealousy by the Moors, and there was no love lost between them, feeling running sometimes very high. Once or twice when a new sultan had come to the throne, in order to reward the populace and secure their favour, he had issued an edict that a general pillage of the Jews might take place. The last time such an event had occurred was a hundred years ago... but if the present dynasty were upset, or if any of the fanatics were to overthrow the present condition of things in Morocco, the first to feel its effects would be the Jews, who had accumulated great wealth, and thus offered opportunities for pillage.”
Budgett Meakin went on to explain that those Moroccan Jews who were not agents for European commercial interests (and therefore not under the protection of European powers) suffered many legal disabilities in Morocco, such as not being permitted to give evidence against a Muslim, and being forbidden to strike a Muslim, even in self-defence.
In this state of dhimmitude there was one way to get ahead:
‘When anyone was decapitated, the Jewish butchers were forced to pickle the head in salt, that was why the Mellah got the name of “salted place,” but it was also known as the “saltless” or “rotten” place.'
Forget the realities of living in the Islamic Middle East in a state of dhimmitude. Forget the jizya tax. Forget the imposed humiliations and the mandatory occupations. Forget the caprices of Muslim rulers and “protectors” towards the Jews and Christians in their midst. Forget the periodic outbreaks of cruelty. Forget enslavement. Forget the kidnapping of girls, the marriages by capture, and the incarceration in harems. Forget the enforced conversions to Islam. Forget the expulsions. Forget the mass exodus of Jewish and Christian refugees.
James Watt, Britain’s Ambassador to Jordan, and Frances Guy, Britain’s Ambassador to Lebanon, seem anxious to convince us of an alternative “reality” of their own.
These two “gone native” envoys share an unfortunate track record of blunders in their blogs, which appear on the official website of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
Last year, Mr Watt (pictured), whom I believe it is fair to describe as an Arabist, displayed in several of his blogposts an outrageous denial of the facts of Jewish history and a concomitant lack of empathy with Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish People, and with the Jewish State.
On one post he mentioned that he was looking forward to reading Shlomo Sands’ The Invention of the Jewish People – a blueprint for delegitimisation if ever there was one. But he doesn’t seem to have needed any help from that book in accruing an anti-Israel attitude, comprising denying the right of the Jewish People to self-determination and of Israel to proper self-defence, for he’d already made such statements as these:
"No one is prepared – or very few – to take Zionist arguments at their face value any longer. Completely non-factual assertions – for example that a Jewish people was building Jerusalem 5,000 years ago - only serve to emphasise the absence of real content or reasoning. The strange thing is how long Western audiences tolerated such claims without challenging them: I think because they were hoping that a reasonable settlement with the indigenous Palestinian population would emerge in the course of things (and with some diplomatic heavy lifting)."
“The origin of the problem – the arrival of the Zionists in Palestine, with their commitment to avoiding any kind of integration into existing society, and their policy of importing their co-religionists from cultural and social backgrounds alien to Palestine, changed everything. So did the massive expulsion of huge numbers of Palestinians from their land. Their right to return, and to compensation, remains the central demand, backed by all Arab states and reflected also in the principles set out by the international community for peace."
“I offer my condolences to the families of those who were killed [aboard the Mavi Marmara], in what should have been an entirely avoidable tragedy... the entire world has had enough of the blockade of Gaza – a blockade which Israel should have long ago lifted under the terms of UN Security Resolution 1801, as well as other international law. And the world has had enough of the pretexts Israel uses to continue it.”
“Few observers would disagree with [David] Hirst [in the book Beware of Small States, which Watt had read with enthusiasm] that Israel has long committed itself to a policy of massive military deterrence, which is now becoming progressively more violent - and, by the account of its own officials, more ready to inflict civilian casualties on a large scale in pursuit of its political goals. Gaza showed that progression: more remote shelling and rocketing by the Israeli forces, with minimum risk to its own soldiers: ten lost their lives, and three Israeli civilians, while 1,330 Gazans (most of them civilians and 410 of them children) lost theirs. Compare that to the 43 Israeli civilians who died under Hizbullah rocket fire in July-August 2006, and 119 Israeli soldiers in the fighting, against over a thousand Lebanese civilians (one third of them children) and an unknown number of Lebanese combatants.”
As Melanie Phillips remarked when Watt’s blogposts came to public attention, thanks to a commenter on the blog Harry’s Place:
"Watt makes it clear he doesn’t think Israel has an overwhelming historic claim to its existence, thinks the Palestinian Arabs were indigenous to the land and that the idea that Israel was the Jews’ national home thousands of years ago is fanciful.
[H]e denies Jewish national self-determination .... [H]e denies Jewish and Middle Eastern history.... [H]e denies Jewish history and national self-determination and descends into rank bigotry....[H]e is peddling the Big Lie by Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO that misrepresents Israeli defence as aggression and describes all Arabs killed by Israel as civilians whereas in fact most are terrorists .... [H]e is sympathising with the Turkish terrorists who were killed on the Mavi Marmara when they tried to lynch the boarding Israeli soldiers, and claiming that Israel’s reason for restricting the flow of goods into Gaza, that it is to prevent arms smuggling and weaken the grip of Hamas, is a lie ....
It is an old cliché that diplomats are sent abroad to lie for their country. But one inevitable effect of Watt’s demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel through such distortions and bigotry is to whip up yet more genocidal hatred throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
The British Government says it is committed to a two-state solution. Why is its Ambassador to Jordan suggesting that the state that already exists is illegitimate? Is this the British Government’s position? If not, why is it allowing its Ambassador to Jordan to represent such an obnoxious view? Will Foreign Secretary William Hague repudiate these distortions and the vicious hostility Watt displays towards Britain’s ally? Or are we to conclude that these are beliefs that he himself shares?" http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6132169/camels-were-never-this-vicious.thtml
Now, in the wake of the New Year’s Eve atrocity in Alexandria that left 23 Coptic Christian churchgoers dead and another 100 or so injured, Mr Watt http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/watt/entry/living_in_harmony reflects on the Arabic concept of al-ta'ayush (co-existence). Its spirit, he tells us, “is part of the human and cultural richness of Arab civilisation”. It ‘conveys clearly the sense of “living in harmony”, rather than simply “existing together’ and its spirit “is part of the human and cultural richness of Arab civilisation”.
Uh huh.
“It is a term in common use in those Arab societies where Christians and Muslims live together (and as Jews did too not long ago). Those societies treasure ta’ayyush. They know it is a prize that calls for daily efforts and constant care. They know the disaster and grief that follows if those efforts fail.”
Note the dishonest comment about the Jews. Watt (whose second wife, Amal Saad, comes from an Arab family in Lebanon) implies that they lived alongside Arabs in harmonious paradise. He tells us nothing of dhimmitude, nothing of persecution, nothing of some 750,000 Jewish refugees from Arabic lands who fled to Israel.
Let him see this, for starters:
By coincidence (I assume) Frances Guy has been posting on a similar theme.
You may recall that in July 2010 Ms Guy (pictured), on her blog, blithely revealed her admiration for Sheikh Fadlallah, the Holocaust-denying Hezbollah terror merchant, who had just passed away:
“One of the privileges of being a diplomat is the people you meet; great and small, passionate and furious. People in Lebanon like to ask me which politician I admire most. It is an unfair question, obviously, and many are seeking to make a political response of their own. I usually avoid answering by referring to those I enjoy meeting the most and those that impress me the most. Until yesterday my preferred answer was to refer to Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, head of the Shia clergy in Lebanon and much admired leader of many Shia muslims throughout the world. When you visited him you could be sure of a real debate, a respectful argument and you knew you would leave his presence feeling a better person. That for me is the real effect of a true man of religion; leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith. Sheikh Fadlallah passed away yesterday. Lebanon is a lesser place the day after, but his absence will be felt well beyond Lebanon's shores. I remember well when I was nominated ambassador to Beirut, a Muslim acquaintance sought me out to tell me how lucky I was because I would get a chance to meet Sheikh Fadlallah. Truly he was right. If I was sad to hear the news I know other peoples' lives will be truly blighted. The world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints. May he rest in peace.”
Despite an outcry, she kept her job.
More recently, last September, Ms Guy blogged:
“There are nearly 60 Palestinian veterans in Lebanon who served with the British army during the 2nd World War. The tragic irony of their situation is heart-wringing. After loyally serving the Union Jack, in 1948 they were forced to flee their homes when the state of Israel was created. Some of them have been in refugee camps in Lebanon ever since. ... I am proud that a system is in place to give these brave men some comfort. I am less proud that 60 years after their flight from their homes, diplomacy has so far failed to find a solution to the Arab Israeli conflict. The Royal Commonwealth ex-services League is helping nearly 20,000 veterans all round the world. As they say, these people weren't forced to join up, they chose to. That's why the league is trying to help them. Their quiet dignity in the midst of hardship and poverty is to be admired and respected.”
In a speech made in Beirut on Armistice Day (reported in the Jordanian press and elsewhere in the Arab world), she was less guarded in her language, describing these men as being “chased out” of their homes by the Israelis.
I couldn’t help but think of that speech, and whether she’s been bamboozled, when I read in a newspaper report from 1945, as quoted by me in a recent post http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/01/palestine-government-did-its-best-to.html, that the Palestinian Arabs serving in units of the British Army proved restless and unreliable, mutinying often, deserting along with their rifles and ammunition, joining without authorisation a VE Day procession in Beirut in which they displayed a picture of the traitorous Mufti, and committing acts of hooliganism. After a subsequent similar disturbance they were discharged on the ground that “their services were no longer required”, so that whereas 15,000 Palestinian Jews remained under British arms, “few if any Arabs” did.
In her latest blogpost http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/guy/entry/cedars_of_lebanonMs Guy has been pondering the symbolism of a celebrated arboreal species. “The Cedars of Lebanon as symbol is poignant,” she writes. “It is an indigenous species that is listed as endangered. Quite – where do so many different confessional groups live in relative harmony?”
Well, it’s not too clear from that strange phraseology what inspired the leap from plant to people, but it would appear Ms Guy is trying to spin us the fiction is that Lebanon is a country in which Muslims and non-Muslims get along just fine, better in fact than in any other country.
The facts fail to support her.
During the 1940s there were about 24,000 Jews in Lebanon, about 3000 in 1975, and there are virtually none today – only aged survivors. Although Lebanon was the only Arab nation whose Jewish population increased following the Declaration of the State of Israel (when Lebanon had a Christian majority, be it noted), many Jews left the country after the 1958 Civil War. The situation of Lebanese Jewry deteriorated with the coming of the Civil War that began in 1975, and in 1982 radical Islamists captured and killed eleven of the community’s leaders.
As for that country’s Christians, Brigitte Gabriel (who comes from that background) has given a harrowing account of how they were reduced from 65% of the population in 1975 to less than 20% today, owing to persecution by militant Islamists, including Palestinian incomers, massacres, and polygamous marriages producing numerous offspring. She tells how tolerant, multicultural, open-bordered, progressive, entrepreneurial Christian-majority Lebanon – “the Paris of the Middle East” – became “a terrorist infrastructure, a hotbed of Islamic Jihad”.
Ms Gabriel also describes the torture and murder of Christians in Lebanon (even of leftist Christians who had aided the Muslim cause) including the nicety of tying one leg of infants to their father and one to their mother and then separating the parents so that the infants were torn apart.
She tells of the deliberate fouling of churches with human excrement and urine – and how the Bible was used as toilet paper.
The Bible as toilet paper, eh? Could that be why Frances Guy isn’t overly keen to give the Bible its due as a sourcebook for those Cedars of Lebanon?
There can be few people who grew up in the Judeo-Christian tradition who are completely unaware that the mighty Lebanese cedar is mentioned several times in the Bible. Cedar wood was used in the interior of Solomon’s Temple, for example.
This beautiful line from the Psalms is particularly famous: “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.”
Of the cedar Ms Guy writes: “It grows to be majestic and it has contributed to so many different civilisations; the Phoenicians used it for ships; the Egyptians for ships and its resin for mummification; the Ottomans and the British were more prosaic but the railways benefitted.”
Alarmed at the thought that Ms Guy believes that the ancient Israelites are as off-limits with her hosts as their descendants in the Zionist Entity are, I left the following comment beneath her post: “Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem was built of cedar, which figured prominently in Israelite civilisation, especially for building purposes, and there are numerous references to the cedar in the Bible.”
Short and perhaps not so sweet – from the standpoint of a British diplomat grovelling to the Arab world.
But fair dues to Ms Guy, for my comment has now appeared.
