by Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar
The existence of a living Jewish people in a functioning Jewish state threatens the very raison d’être of Islam
PLO keffiya, photo via Mordechai Kedar
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 719, January 18, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The existence of a
living Jewish people in a functioning Jewish state threatens the very
raison d’être of Islam, which came into being to render Judaism
obsolete. For that reason, Arabs and Muslims will never accept Israel as
the Jewish State.
Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump’s recognition of
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital aroused massive outrage in the Arab and
Islamic world. This was for two main reasons – one religious and one
nationalist.
The religious reason is rooted in Islam’s
conception of itself as a faith whose mission is to bring both Judaism
and Christianity to an end and inherit all that was once Jewish or
Christian: land, places of worship, and people. In Islam’s worldview,
Palestine in its entirety belongs to Muslims alone because both Jews and
Christians betrayed Allah when they refused to become followers of the
prophet Muhammad. Their punishment is to be expulsion from their lands
and the forfeiture of all rights to them.
Throughout the history of Islam, Muslims turned
churches into mosques, including the Great Mosque of Ramle, the Bani
Omaya Mosque in Damascus, the Hagia Sofia of Istanbul, and many Spanish
churches. The reason is their belief that Christianity, like Judaism, is
nullified by Islam, making churches unnecessary.
According to Islamic tenets, the prophets revered
by these obsolete religions are Muslims. These include Adam, Noah,
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Aaron. And according to Islam, King
Solomon built a mosque, not a Temple, in Jerusalem. (The 1,500-year gap
between the king’s reign and the birth of Islam is irrelevant to true
believers.)
Jews and Christians can be protected under Muslim rule by becoming subservient to Islam in what is known as dhimmi status, which means they are legally deprived of many rights including the right to own land and bear arms. Dhimmis are forced to pay a head tax (jyzia)
and are to be kept in a downtrodden state, as is mandated by the Koran.
In Islam’s view, Jews are not a nation but a collection of religious
communities to be found in various countries: a Jew in Poland is a “Pole
of the Mosaic religion” and a Jew in Morocco is a “Moroccan Arab of the
Mosaic religion.”
Suddenly, towards the end of the 19th
century, everything changed. Jews began coming to Palestine in
ever-growing numbers. The Zionists “invented” a new nation, the “Jewish
People,” and decided that a certain part of the House of Islam was their
homeland, known as Eretz Israel. They built communities and a
protective fighting force even though, as dhimmis, they were not supposed to be allowed to bear arms and were subjected to Islam’s protection.
In 1948, the Jews actually declared a state,
despite the fact that they did not deserve sovereignty. Then, in 1967,
they “conquered” the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Jews now attempt to pray on the Temple Mount,
suggesting that Judaism has returned to being an active, living, and
even dynamic religion. This brings the very raison d’être of Islam into
question. After all, Islam came into the world in order to make Judaism
obsolete.
Muslims loyal to their religion and aware of this
danger cannot possibly accept the existence of a Jewish state, not even a
tiny one on the Tel Aviv coast. To them, Israel as the state of the
Jewish people is a theological threat to Islam and only secondarily a
national, political, judicial, or territorial threat.
President Trump’s acknowledgement of Israel’s
existence by recognizing Jerusalem as its capital was a double whammy
for Islam: Trump, a Christian, had granted recognition to the Jews. The
outraged Muslim world thought this must be a Christo-Judaic plot against
Islam. Trump’s declaration reminded them (along with several Jews) of
the November 1917 Balfour Declaration, about which the Arabs continue to
rail at the world: “You made the promises of non-owners to those who
did not have the right to be given those promises.”
In the weeks following Trump’s declaration,
Muslims all over the world expressed their fury at the seal of approval
granted the Jewish State despite its very existence being opposed to
that of Islam. Leaders and ordinary citizens, men and women took to the
streets to demonstrate their inability to live with the fact that the
most prominent Christian head of state had recognized the capital chosen
by the Jewish nation and, by extension, its right to its own land.
The disturbances in Wadi Ara, in central Israel –
rioters attempted to block the main road and damaged a public bus – were
another manifestation of Muslim fury. The location is not surprising
because the Wadi Ara area includes the city of Umm al-Fahm, where the
main concentration of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement,
headed by the infamous Raed Salah, is to be found. The Northern Branch
has been declared illegal, along with some of the smaller organizations
it has fostered, resulting in its members having no lawful way to
express their fury at the existence of the state of Israel. With little
alternative, they act in the public space as individuals without an
organizational identity.
Nationalistic motives
It is generally accepted that the logic
underpinning the Palestinian national movement is wholly based on the
negation of the Jewish people’s right to its land and state. The
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964 when the
only “occupied” areas were Tel Aviv and Haifa. Its mission was to
destroy the state of Israel, a goal Arabs expressed openly before and
after the 1948 War.
Despite what some people think, the PLO has never
amended its Charter calling for the destruction of Israel, as Yasser
Arafat pledged to Yitzhak Rabin. The Oslo Accords, and the agreements
with the PLO that followed in their wake, were therefore worth nothing.
Those persisting in this false belief about the PLO’s intentions despite
abundant evidence of the perfidy of Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud
Abbas, continued to foster the illusion of peace in the hearts of
war-weary Israelis and anesthetize them in the process.
The goal of the Palestinian national movement is
the creation of an artificial Palestinian nation (from scratch, because
historically, there has never been such a nation). It is to be made
permanent by constructing an Arab state on Israel’s ruins, not alongside
it. This is why there is not one map of Israel to be found in the West
Bank or Gaza. Every Palestinian map portrays a Palestine in the colors
of the PLO flag extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan
River.
Note the PLO keffiya, which displays the words
“Our Jerusalem” on the right and “Falestin” on the left (see photo at
top of article).
The world, and especially Europe, is divided
between a) innocent know-nothings who support a Palestinian state in
order to achieve peace; and b) Jew-haters who fully grasp the PLO’s
intentions and support them wholeheartedly. The entire Arab world,
including those who signed peace treaties with Israel (Egypt and
Jordan), willfully ignores the PLO’s real plans and treats the
organization as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian
people. If the PLO succeeds in carrying out its plans, no one in Jordan
or Egypt is going to mourn Israel’s demise.
Arafat’s followers believe that if they succeed in
moving Jerusalem outside the borders of Israel, many Jews will lose all
hope and leave Israel for the countries from which they or their
parents came. This will be the beginning of the end for the Zionist
enterprise, because there is no Zionism without Zion, or Jerusalem. That
is why they expend so much energy on Jerusalem. As long as most
countries refuse to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the
city will be the weak link in the chain holding Israel together.
Arafat attempted to frighten Israelis with the slogan “A million shaheeds
will march on Jerusalem,” meaning that millions are willing to put
their lives on the line to free the city from Zionist clutches. This
mantra has been internalized in Islamic society and can be heard at
anti-Israel demonstrations all over the world.
Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s
capital city dealt the Palestinian nationalist narrative a serious blow
and gave Israel a kind of insurance policy. This maddens the Arabs who
flourished on the dream of destroying Israel during the Oslo years. It
has now become clear that a very powerful nation, the US, does not see
itself as a partner in that dream and is even willing to act against it.
The Arabs in general, and particularly the
Palestinians, can already see the dominos falling. The Czech Republic,
Hungary, and other important states are considering moving their
embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in recognition that that city is
Israel’s capital. In April 2017, even Russian President Vladimir Putin
declared his recognition of Western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.
There was no outcry in response to Putin’s declaration for one simple
reason: the Arabs are deathly afraid of Putin after he made crystal
clear to what lengths he is willing to go during the war in Syria, and
they carefully refrain from reacting to his statements or decisions.
Conclusion
For both religious and nationalist reasons, the
Arabs and Muslims are incapable of accepting Israel as the Jewish State
that it is.
The question that Israelis, both Jewish and
Christian, are forced to ask themselves is whether they are going to
recognize the Muslim and Arab problem but tell them in no uncertain
terms that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews and they are going to have to
learn to live with it – or whether they are going to give in to the Arab
and Muslim dreamers who refuse to accept the reality that the Jewish
religion is alive and well.
An earlier version of this article, translated by Rochel Sylvetsky, was published on December 14, 2017 by Israel National News.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/muslims-israel-jewish-state/
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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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