Understanding Islam’s Rage

Northern snowbirds escaping to Florida were treated to a brilliant lecture by Professor Asher Susser, Director and Senior Research Fellow, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University. The lecture was entitled, Islam and the West and given at Temple Beth El in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Professor Susser spoke of the historical origins of the rage and fury of the Muslim masses now being graphically demonstrated in world-wide cartoon riots.  He explained how, in inventing the Muslim faith, Mohammed portrayed Islam as a religion which absorbed the best aspects of  the previous faiths of Judaism and Christianity, superseded them, and was thus inherently superior to these faiths and their associated cultures.And for several hundred years this indeed proved to be the case. Islam overwhelmed the Christian and Judaic worlds creating, by the sword, an empire that extended well into Europe and well beyond the Arabian Peninsula to the East. The invasion was finally stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Since then, their supposedly superior civilization and religion has been defeated on numerous occasions and their illusions painfully challenged.  Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 captured Egypt for a short time and the Ottoman Empire was finally defeated and dismembered completely by the British and French, supported by the Americans, in WWI, 1914-1917.  As a result of this final conquest, an entirely new term was created called the “Middle East.” There was no such previous entity in the Arab mind and for many, there still is not. Everything in what they consider the Arab world and all its inhabitants are simply under one banner - Islam. In more local power struggles, Syria has never given up the concept of a “Greater Syria” which includes the entire British Mandate that was supposed to be Israel, the created nation of Jordan, the recently created Palestinian Arab entity plus Lebanon. Saddam Hussein has always considered Kuwait and much of Iran as Iraqi territory.

The greatest insult to Arab illusions was, of course, the victory of a few hundred thousand Israelis supported by starved refugees from the concentration camps of Europe, defeating five invading Arab armies in the War of 1948 and declaring the State of Israel. This was followed by the humiliating Arab defeat in just Six Days of War in 1967 demonstrating the complete superiority of the Israeli military. Professor Susser also briefly went into the astonishing success story of the Israeli economy and its intellectual, scientific and social achievements, which only serve to fuel even further Arab rage and jealousy. He spoke also of the unsuccessful attempt by Islam to develop modernity. He spoke of first their attempt to achieve parity by briefly embracing the socialism of the Soviet Union at the time of Egypt’s Gamel Abdel-Nasser. With this failure and the devastating defeat by the Israelis in 1967, a new gambit has been attempted. The Muslim Brotherhood was formed and the concept developed of not trying to reach modernity by imitating the West but rather to return to their basic Islamic fundamentalist values in the hope that this strategy would once again return their society to the world prominence and superiority of the 7^th to 17^th centuries.  This is the strategy in which much of the Arab world now remains and is, of course, doomed to failure.

Professor Susser spoke of modernity being based primarily on a secular society and the inherent right of the individual to civil rights, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, education - all the things that are an integral part of Western culture and completely alien to the fundamentalist religion, tribal loyalty and the recently developed form of Arab nationalism. He saw no immediate end in sight for this Islamic belief system and the resultant state of affairs. He was pleased with the fact that Israel is now drawing its own borders, setting up its own defenses and taking a very practical view of the fact that this is a centuries old problem and mind set that will not go away.  The professor did not go into details as to borders, territory, etc. but what with the history and intensity of the Islamic antagonism he described,  giving up any territory to an enemy sworn to one’s destruction or doing anything to enhance that society, at the expense of your own, has to be an obvious gross error. Its continuation can only result in more of Israel’s never-ending “citizen sacrifices for peace” -  Israel’s own self-destructive delusion still embraced by the majority of a badly misguided population.

 __________________________________________________________________

Muslim Sensitivity

Perhaps we should re-evaluate the constant drumming we hear as to our lack of sensitivity toward Muslims and their religion.  The latest episode revolved around an error made by Newsweek magazine in its blatant attempt to again discredit President Bush and our own armed forces. The ploy backfired. It turns out Newsweek created a false story describing the flushing of a Muslim holy book, the Koran, down the toilets at the Guantanemo prison Abu Ghraib. This tactic was supposedly used in order to extract information from Muslim prisoners, a doubtful strategy at best.

 There happens to be another much neglected side to the equation.  Where is their "sensitivity" to us? Mary Mostert, political commentator reports that in Serbian Kosovo alone since 1999, 140 Christian Churches were blown up with 25 churches destroyed just this past year! When the Jordanians invaded Israel in 1948 and maintained Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as theirs for 19 years, 57 synagogues were defaced and destroyed in Jerusalem alone. The ancient Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery was decimated with 38,000 gravestones torn loose and used to pave roads and Jordanian army latrines. 

Who is owed the apology and much more?

Yesterday, (June 19, 2005) Israel apologized to the United States, via Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for agreeing to sell Harpy attack drones and other advanced technology to China. "It is impossible to hide the crisis between Israel and the United States with regard to the security industries. We are doing everything possible to put it behind us," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said on Israel Radio "The United States is our biggest ally, and none of the things that were done were done with the intention of harming U.S. interests," he said. Miss Rice had raised concerns about the deal on her way to the Middle East on Friday. "I believe that the Israelis now understand our concerns, and I'm certain that, as good partners can, that we can come to some resolution to allow us to proceed," she said yesterday It is absolutely impossible for me to understand why Israel has to constantly apologize to the United States for selling weaponry to China or India or anyone else. How dare the United States demand such an apology and such control over Israeli military exports to countries thousands of miles, fortunately from our borders, when the United States, at the very same time, has been supplying, in massive quantities, the most sophisticated weaponry to Israel’s mortal enemies - all of whom are either on her immediate borders or very short flying miles away?

Is Israel less needy of import funds than the gargantuan American Military Industrial complex that President Dwight Eisenhower so clairvoyantly warned us against 45 years ago According to the legally required Arms Sales Monitoring Project that keeps track of the administration's notifications to Congress of proposed government-negotiated Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements, export licenses for industry-negotiated Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), leases of equipment, and reduced price or free excess defense article (EDA) transfers, the following countries have impending military sales, not to mention the billions of dollars of sophisticated military hardware furnished to them in the previous 10 years Saudi Arabia – 370 million, Egypt 2.7 billion, Jordan 161 million, Kuwait 113 billion, United Arab Emirates 455 billion Would you not think that only when the US stops these sales to Israel’s mortal enemies (current cosmetic peace treaties not withstanding) can the US legitimately raise concerns as to Israel’s arms sales?

 __________________________________________________________________________________

Response to the Wall Street Journal Editorial

Ms. Oz-Salzberger writes of Israel emerging as a "slimmer stronger more just" society as a result of the tragic expulsion of Israel's dedicated citizens from the Jewish communities of Gaza. The entire problem of Gaza is addressed as if Israel had been the perpetrator of some highly immoral turpitude and is now undergoing some long overdue moral catharsis by divesting itself from territory that was to have been part of the Jewish Homeland in the first place. Totally ignored is the fact that the Arabs have laid false claim to all of Israel while they have 21 infinitely larger, oil rich nations of their own.

In the eyes of Israel's misguided Left, the even greater turpitude of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) with the abandonment of another 250,000 of the bravest and most patriotic of Israel society is next. By this suicidal action, Israel will be completely absolved of the great moral sin of having re-claimed territory that should have been theirs by all historical, political and moral criteria. The greater part of the world has chosen to ignore the historical fact that the Jews were expelled from their land by the Roman Conquest of 70 AD - nearly 2000 years ago and have been forcibly kept from returning ever since. Oz-Salzberger deliberately ignores this irrefutable claim preferring the beautifully developed propaganda lie that the Israelis are "occupiers of Arab land."

Oz-Salzberger also has the temerity to demonize Israel's religious society and create a moral equivalency between the less than 50 innocent Arabs killed by a couple of deranged individually-acting Israelis quickly condemned by the Israeli government with the deliberate, 40 year old Palestinian Authority sponsored terror targeting innocent civilians on buses, in restaurants, in schools, markets, airplanes, wherever. In contrast, these killers are hailed as heroes and martyrs and promised all kinds of questionable benefits in Islamic nirvana. But, Oz-Salzberger is right about one thing - There are many Hamas leaders "uttering statements that Jerusalem will be next." And who is to say they are wrong? Do she and Ariel Sharon think that giving up more land to the Arabs will satiate the appetite of Hamas and the huge majority of the Arabs in Israel and in the rest of the world? Unfortunately, very next on Sharon's give-away drawing board are four small communities in the Northern Shomron of Israel. That does not sound like much but, in the small print, Sharon is also including relinquishing another 300 square miles of Israeli territory to the Arabs! Can you imagine in a country that is already the size of a postage stamp, giving up that much more of its land mass?  That land is almost exactly the same amount of territory as if the United States were ceding away 1/2 of the State of Texas to Mexico!

Finally, where is the  "more just" society of the Arabs? Unfortunately, any semblance of such an entity remains only in the dreamy imagination of the  Oz-Salzbergers of the world.

 

The Koran - Something Lost in the Translation

READ MORE ARTICLES BY DR. JEROME KAUFMAN AT THE WEBSITE OF THE WORLD JEWISH NEWS AGENCY