The Everlasting Hatred (24 page)

In the early seventeenth century, a pair of Christian visitors to Safed [Galilee] told of life for the Jews: “Life here is the poorest and most miserable that one can imagine.” Because of the harshness of Turkish rule and its crippling dhimmi oppression, the Jews “pay for the very air they breath”.
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Reports like these could be multiplied. The audacity of Haj Amin al-Husseini's claim that the “Jews always did live previously in Arab countries with complete freedom and liberty, as natives of the country” and that, “in fact, Muslim rule has always been tolerant . . . according to history Jews had a most quiet and peaceful residence under Arab rule,” is shown to be a cynical lie.
This simply shows that Haj al-Husseini learned a lot from his visit to Nazis Germany. Adolf Hitler, whom he greatly admired, developed the propaganda tactic of “the Big Lie.”

One thing is certain, Jewish dhimmis were never treated with kindness and never had anything approaching freedom. They were continually persecuted, brutalized, and given the most degrading and humiliating treatment.

The monstrous myth “that there was no problem for the Jews living peacefully with the Muslims until the rise of Zionism and the founding of the state of Israel” is a classic example of Muslim “turnspeak” and the cynical hatred that motivated it. The Muslim idea of humane, peaceful treatment for Jews is to have them subjected to the status of second-rate citizens; to be available as taxable assets; to be scapegoats for whatever leadership failure or calamity that comes along; and to be objects to hit, kick, rape, rob, or murder whenever Muslims just need to let out their aggressions and frustrations.

The Jews who lived in Muslim countries of the Middle East are in fact more truly refugees than the much-publicized “Palestinian refugees
.” It is supremely important to again review the facts. Here are the contrasting conditions of how the two groups became “refugees.”

The Palestinians were not driven out of the Palestinian territory by Jewish threats and acts of terror. They left at the urging of their own fellow Muslims who promised them it would be for only a short while. The reason for the Palestinian “exodus” was to facilitate the Muslim annihilation of the state of Israel and the massacre of the Jewish people. When the Islamic onslaught failed, the Palestinians were never accepted in new lands or repatriated to their brother Muslim countries. Instead, this displaced population has been deliberately kept in the harshness and
squalor of refugee camps “to keep their flames of hatred toward the Israelis white hot.”

The Jews who resided in Muslim lands for centuries were driven out by savage acts of terrorism and massacres. Those who were able to leave alive were not allowed to take anything with them. All of their assets were seized. However, in contrast to how Muslims treated Palestinian refugees, all Jewish refugees were immediately received and repatriated by Israel with the help of financing from Jewish people abroad.

“The Palestinians who are today's refugees in the neighboring countries know all this—that their present nationalist exploiters are the worthy sons of their feudal exploiters of yesterday, and that the thorns of their life are of Arab, not Jewish origin.”

—A
BDEL
R
AZAK
K
ADER
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Many great movements of history took place during the timeframe from the last Crusade in A.D. 1291 to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917, a period that affected both the Islamic Empire and the Christian West.

The eighth and final European Crusade was led by the king of France. It ended in A.D. 1291 with the fall of the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land—the port city of Acre
(Akko
in Hebrew). There would not be another European attempt to
liberate the Holy Land for five hundred years. And oddly enough, another French ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, would launch it. He arrived there in 1798. After defeating Egypt and all resistance in Palestine except the garrison at the fortress of Acre, Napoleon had his artillery loaded aboard the French fleet and shipped to him at Joppa. Interestingly, the great general's noble quest failed because he suffered his first defeat in battle at Acre in 1799.

By God's providence, Napoleon's canons were captured from the French fleet while being transported from Alexandria to Joppa. British Admiral Nelson intercepted and defeated the French fleet, captured Napoleon's artillery, and brought the guns ashore at Acre without Napoleon's knowledge. Napoleon arrived at Acre only to face his own deadly artillery. Some of his best and bravest soldiers were lost at this unlikely battleground before he finally gave up and left. I have closely examined some of Napoleon's cannons that are still on display at Acre. Bible prophecy and God's hand were in this. Napoleon had promised his Jewish financier's that he would capture the Holy Land and reestablish the state of Israel. But this would have been completely out of sync with God's predicted timetable. The Hebrew prophets predicted that God would bring back the scattered sons of Israel and cause the state of Israel to be reborn only in the “Last Days,” shortly before the coming of the Messiah to set up the promised Kingdom of God. Napoleon's effort to restore the nation of Israel was 150 years too early. And so, one the greatest generals of all time suffered his first defeat as a result.

The Mongol tribes became united under a chief called Temujin in A.D. 1206. He was renamed Ghengis Khan, which means
“Supreme Ruler.” He charged across the Eurasian Steppes and over the Caucasus Mountains to take on the Muslim empire.

The formidable Mongol cavalry and fierce warriors were virtually unstoppable. By 1258, the “golden horde,” led by Ghengis Khan's grandson Hulagu Khan, destroyed both the Abbasid Khaliphate of Baghdad, as well as the Seljuk Sultanate in Asia Minor.

The Mongols posed a tremendous threat to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. They were finally defeated by the Muslim Mamelukes at the battle of Ain Jalut in A.D. 1260.
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The greatest significance of all this to my theme is that these events created the circumstances for the rise of the Muslim Ottoman Turks to take control of the Middle East from the Arabs.

Robert Goldston chronicles the events that set the stage for the Ottomans:

After the Mongols had passed, a young Turkish mercenary named Othman [Uthman] gathered some of the shattered Seljuks forces together and began to impose order amid ruin. Othman slowly extended his martial law through Asia Minor. After many years of struggle he created the only kind of state feasible amid the wreckage left by the Mongols—a military dictatorship of which he became the first sultan.
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In A.D. 1288, Uthman, the first sultan of all Turks, founded the Uthman Muslim Dynasty. It soon became known by its variant name—the Ottoman Empire. They called their leaders sultans instead of khaliphs.

For the next six centuries, thirty-seven descendents of the house of Uthman, or Ottoman, ruled over the empire. It became one of the largest and richest in history. Of particular importance to our interests are three of these sultans.

Sultan
Mehmed al-Fatih
(“The Conqueror”) ruled from A.D. 1451 to 1481. He was a brilliant, well-educated man who was conversant in Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Greek literature. He loved poetry. He could also converse in Serbian and Italian. He had an insatiable thirst for literature about Alexander the Great, the Caesars, and the Roman legions. It was no doubt his study of all available literature about war and all things associated with it that enabled him to field one of the finest armies in history. He established a military tradition that remained after him.

Mehmed's greatest importance is that he conquered the eastern capital of the old Roman Empire and the center of Byzantine Christianity—Constantinople. It was renamed Istanbul and made the capital of the Ottoman Empire. A steady transfer of Islamic power began, and Istanbul became the great center of Islam.

Sultan
Salim al-Yavuz
reigned from A.D. 1512 to 1520. Although he ruled for only eight years, he added more territory to the Islamic empire than any other sultan. But most importantly, Salim conquered the Holy Land and Jerusalem for the Ottomans in 1517. They would hold control of this territory until British General Allenby liberated it four hundred years later in December 1917.

Under Sultan
Suleiman “the Magnificent
,” who ruled from A.D. 1520 to 1586, the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith of power and glory. During this time, the empire extended northward to include all of Greece, modern Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and all of the Balkans in what was modern Yugoslavia. They ruled the entire Mediterranean coast from Egypt to Morocco; they ruled the Sudan and all of Middle East, including Arabia; and they ruled the territories of Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, and India. Twice they nearly conquered Vienna.

It was Suleiman that rebuilt Jerusalem and its ancient walls that exist to this day. But from Suleiman's reign onward, the Ottoman Empire began a slow but steady decline. The following
sultans became more interested in the size of their harems than the state of their kingdom. The empire drifted from Koranic dynamism to corrupt despotism.

Robert Goldston notes a very important development within the Muslim world of this time:

The Ottoman Turks were not and never considered themselves to be, part of the Arab world. [They were] a cosmopolitan regime whose rulers looked upon all peoples—Bulgarians, Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Romanians, Persians, Lebanese, Jews and Arabs—as subject nations to be governed from, and for the benefit of, the Turkish homeland in Asia Minor. To Arabs, as to Europeans, the Ottoman Turks were essentially foreign masters.
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It is most important to understand what resulted from the Ottoman's attitude toward the lands and peoples they controlled:
Ottoman rule literally obliterated the state identities and boundaries of the Middle East. For the next four centuries, there were no nation-states such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq/Babylon, Arabia, Persia, and so on
. They were simply territories ruled by Ottoman viziers from major regional cities.

“Palestine,” for instance, included what is now known as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel and was ruled from Damascus. There were no independent Arab nations and no defined boundaries.

Remember this well, for when the British liberated the area from the Ottoman Turks, no Arab had any claim on of a specific land or state that was more valid than the Jews' claim. As a matter of fact, the Jews were the only people who had
a ratified mandate for a specific land from the League of Nations.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the sultan was desperately trying to halt the slide of his empire into oblivion. There were internal threats, and there was concern over the military expansionism of Russia. At this time, long before they teamed up with czarist Russia in an alliance against Germany and Turkey, Britain and France were interested in maintaining the Ottoman Empire for geo-strategic reasons and began applying pressure on Istanbul.

The British had an almost inordinate fear of either Russia or Germany controlling the “strategic land bridge” that connected the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. That “bridge” begins in the north at the Bosporus Straights at Istanbul and extends southward through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and the Sinai—ending at the Suez Canal. The British rightly believed that it was absolutely necessary to control this area. If the land bridge fell into the hands of a hostile power, it would threaten Britain's vital link to its most important colony—India.

Though the Ottoman Turks were not Arabs, they were infected with the old Arab hatred of Jews and Christians through the Koran and the Muslim traditions. They applied the Islamic dhimmi laws with a calloused cruelty.

Fortunately, because of the continuous European influence, from 1847 through about 1880, there was a brief relaxation of the institutionalized and legalized repression against Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Holy Land.

Here are excerpts from some observations noted by a Polish traveler in Palestine around A.D. 1850:

O brothers of Israel, how can I convey to you the harshness of the yoke of exile that our brethren living in Palestine suffered
prior to the year 1847: Even were I to relate everything, would it be credible? It was a great danger for Jews to venture even a few yards outside the gates of Jerusalem because of the Arab brigands. They were accustomed to say Ashlah Yahudi, that is: “Strip yourself, Jew,” and any Jew caught in such a predicament, seeing their aggressiveness and weapons, would strip, while they divided the spoil between them and sent him away naked and barefoot. They call this spoil: Kasb Allah, that is, Allah's reward.

Moreover, the seven-hour journey from Jerusalem to Hebron was fraught with danger even with a large caravan, and all the more so was a trip to smaller towns. To this day it is customary to recite a thanksgiving prayer when arriving safely at a town from another. If a Jew encounters a Muslim in the street and passes on the latter's right, the Muslim says ishmal that is, “Pass on my left side.” If he touches him or bumps into him, and especially if he stains his clothing or shoes, then the Muslim attacks him cruelly and finds witnesses to the effect that the Jew insulted him, his religion and his prophet Muhammad, with the result that a numerous crowd of Muslims descend upon him and leave the Jew practically unconscious. Then they carry him off to jail, where he is subjected to terrible chastisement.