“
I tell my story as well to let the Israeli people know that there is hope. If I, the son of a terrorist organization dedicated to the extinction of Israel, can reach a point where I not only learned to love the Jewish people but risked my life for them, there is a light of hope.
”
”
Mosab Hassan Yousef (Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices)
“
Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it has been at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians vs. Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants vs. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims vs. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims vs. Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in recent decades.
Why is religion such a potent source of violence? There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully articulate their differences from one another, or cast these differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion is the one endeavor in which us–them thinking achieves a transcendent significance. If you really believe that calling God by the right name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism, or politics.
”
”
Sam Harris
“
It is simplistic and naive to explain jihadism merely as an inevitable growth from Islam’s ‘violent’ scripture, or as no more than a miscarried interpretation triggered solely by some tragic misreading. It cannot be separated from economic discontent, the enveloping context of US global power, America’s influence and military actions in the Muslim world and, most of all, the gaping sore of the Israel–Palestine conflict.
”
”
Jonathan A.C. Brown (Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy)
“
Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews v Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians v Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v Hindus), Sudan (Muslims v Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v Christians) and Iran and Iraq (Shia v Sunni) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of deaths in the past decade.
”
”
Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)
“
Had Jews merely wanted to live in Palestine, this would not have been a problem. In fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians had coexisted for centuries throughout the Middle East. But Zionists sought sovereignty over a land where other people lived. Their ambitions required not only the dispossession and removal of Palestinians in 1948 but also their forced exile, juridical erasure and denial that they ever existed. So, during Israel’s establishment, some 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes to make way for a Jewish majority state…. This is why Palestinians have been resisting for more than seven decades: They are fighting to remain on their lands with dignity. They have valiantly resisted their colonial erasure…. This resistance is not about returning to the 1947 borders or some notion of the past, but about laying claim to a better future in which Palestinians and their children can live in freedom and equality, rather than being subjugated as second-class citizens or worse.5
”
”
Marc Lamont Hill (Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics)
“
The British census of Palestine in 1922 recorded 84,000 Jews and 670,000 Arabs, of whom 71,000 were Christian, most of the remainder being Muslim.
”
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Lawrence Wright (Thirteen Days in September: The Dramatic Story of the Struggle for Peace)
“
I am not one of those who believes—as Obama is said to believe—that a solution to the Palestinian statehood question would bring an end to Muslim resentment against the United States. (Incidentally, if he really does believe this, his lethargy and impotence in the face of Netanyahu's consistent double-dealing is even more culpable.) The Islamist fanatics have their own agenda, and, as in the case of Hamas and its Iranian backers, they have already demonstrated that nothing but the destruction of Israel and the removal of American influence from the region will possibly satisfy them. No, it is more the case that justice—and a homeland for the Palestinians—is a good and necessary cause in its own right. It is also a special legal and moral responsibility of the United States, which has several times declared a dual-statehood outcome to be its objective.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
For the Arabs, and the above all for the 1.2 million Arabs of Palestine, the partitioning of the land in which they had been a majority for seven centuries seemed a monstrous injustice thrust upon them by white Western imperialism in expiation of a crime they had not committed. With few exceptions, the Jewish people had dwelt in relative security among the Arabs over the centuries. The golden age of the Diaspora had come in the Spain of the caliphs, and the Ottoman Turks had welcomed the Jews when the doors of much of Europe were closed to them. The ghastly chain of crimes perpetrated on the Jewish people culminating in the crematoriums of Germany had been inflicted on them by the Christian nations of Europe, not those of the Islamic East, and it was on those nations, not theirs, the Arabs maintained, that the burden of those sins should fall. Beyond that, seven hundred years of continuous occupation seemed to the Arabs a far more valid claim to the land than the Jews' historic ties, however deep.
”
”
Larry Collins (Ô Jérusalem)
“
you've drawn every line there could be while we wait for a circle
”
”
Yaffa As (Blood Orange)
“
we know it ends in flame because those with power were never taught to relinquish / we wait for them to / we forget you can't give up what wasn't yours to begin with
”
”
Yaffa As (Blood Orange)
“
The religion/ politics dichotomy is a false one. It isn't that politics has no role; it's that politics is simply inseparable from the Abrahamic religions. Religion is politics. That was the case during the Barbary confrontation in 1786, and it's the case with the Israel-Palestine conflict now. Throughout history, religion has simply been an excuse looking for a conflict.
”
”
Ali A. Rizvi (The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason)
“
Incompatible religious doctrines have Balkanised our world and these divisions have become a continuous source of bloodshed. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews v Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians v Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v Hindus), Sudan (Muslims v Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims v Christians) and Iran and Iraq (Shia v Sunni) are merely a few cases in point. These are places where religion has been the explicit cause of millions of deaths in the past decade.
”
”
Sam Harris
“
The mindset and basic values of Israeli Jewish society and Palestinian Muslim society are so different and mutually exclusive as to render a vision of binational statehood tenable only in the most disconnected and unrealistic of minds.
”
”
Benny Morris (One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict)
“
On behalf of those you killed, imprisoned, tortured, you are not welcome, Erdogan!
No, Erdogan, you’re not welcome in Algeria.
We are a country which has already paid its price of blood and tears to those who wanted to impose their caliphate on us, those who put their ideas before our bodies, those who took our children hostage and who attempted to kill our hopes for a better future. The notorious family that claims to act in the name of the God and religion—you’re a member of it—you fund it, you support it, you desire to become its international leader.
Islamism is your livelihood
Islamism, which is your livelihood, is our misfortune. We will not forget about it, and you are a reminder of it today. You offer your shadow and your wings to those who work to make our country kneel down before your “Sublime Door.” You embody and represent what we loathe. You hate freedom, the free spirit. But you love parades. You use religion for business. You dream of a caliphate and hope to return to our lands.
But you do it behind the closed doors, by supporting Islamist parties, by offering gifts through your companies, by infiltrating the life of the community, by controlling the mosques. These are the old methods of your “Muslim Brothers” in this country, who used to show us God’s Heaven with one hand while digging our graves with the other.
No, Mr. Erdogan, you are not a man of help; you do not fight for freedom or principles; you do not defend the right of peoples to self-determination. You know only how to subject the Kurds to the fires of death; you know only how to subject your opponents to your dictatorship.
You cry with the victims in the Middle East, yet sign contracts with their executioners. You do not dream of a dignified future for us, but of a caliphate for yourself. We are aware of your institutionalized persecution, your list of Turks to track down, your sinister prisons filled with the innocent, your dictatorial justice palaces, your insolence and boastful nature.
You do not dream of a humanity that shares common values and principles, but are interested only in the remaking of the Ottoman Empire and its bloodthirsty warlords. Islam, for you, is a footstool; God is a business sign; modernity is an enemy; Palestine is a showcase; and local Islamists are your stunned courtesans.
Humanity will not remember you with good deeds
Humanity will remember you for your machinations, your secret coups d’état, and your manhunts. History will remember you for your bombings, your vengeful wars, and your inability to engage in constructive dialogue with others. The UN vote for Al-Quds is only an instrument in your service. Let us laugh at this with the Palestinians. We know that the Palestinian issue is your political capital, as it is for many others. You know well how to make a political fortune by exploiting others’ emotions.
In Algeria, we suffered, and still suffer, from those who pretend to be God and act as takers and givers of life. They applaud your coming, but not us. You are the idol of Algerian Islamists and Populists, those who are unable to imagine a political structure beyond a caliphate for Muslim-majority societies.
We aspire to become a country of freedom and dignity. This is not your ambition, nor your virtue.
You are an illusion
You have made beautiful Turkey an open prison and a bazaar for your business and loved ones. I hope that this beautiful nation rises above your ambitions. I hope that justice will be restored and flourish there once again, at least for those who have been imprisoned, tortured, bombed, and killed. You are an illusion, Erdogan—you know it and we know it.
You play on the history of our humiliation, on our emotions, on our beliefs, and introduce yourself as a savior. However, you are a gravedigger, both for your own country and for your neighbors. Turkey is a political miracle, but it owes you nothing. The best thing you can do
”
”
Kamel Daoud
“
From the eighth or ninth centuries, Muslim Arabs have been politically dominant in the Islamic world and have grown accustomed to that position; the notion of sharing power or being a minority in a non-Muslim Arab polity is alien to the Muslim Arab mentality.
”
”
Benny Morris (One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict)
“
The truth is the truth, in this context, the Muslim of the world will never be able to liberate the occupied territories as like Palestine and Kashmir until they first liberate their lands from the traitors in uniform, and dictators, who rule as the enemies of own people of the Muslim world.
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Ehsan Sehgal
“
According to a well-known hieroglyphic inscription, the tribes of Israel were a significant, established presence in Canaan no later than 1212 BC. There is a vast body of archaeological evidence that demonstrates the ancient Israelite/Jewish presence in Israel/Judea as far back as 925 BC.18 This historical presence is verified in the ancient records of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Muslim empires. The Arab conquest did not occur until AD 638. An exercise in elementary arithmetic reveals that the Jewish people were there eighteen and one-half centuries before the arrival of the Arabs. Despite being conquered many times, the Jewish people have had a constant, uninterrupted presence in the land of Israel for over thirty centuries. The Arabs and Islam have been there less than fourteen centuries. It has conveniently been forgotten that the Jews and Christians were there first. Furthermore, in the thirty centuries preceding the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, there have been only two periods when there was an independent, internationally recognized state in the area that now comprises Israel. Both of them were Jewish states. Even when this land was part of the Arab empire (AD 638 through AD 1099), there was never an independent Arab state in ‘Palestine,’ by that name or any other. No wonder the Arabs are donating millions of dollars to U.S. colleges for Middle Eastern schools of study. They have a lot of hard historical evidence to rewrite in the young minds of students.
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Brigitte Gabriel (Because They Hate)
“
The idea of a “secular democratic Palestine” is as much a nonstarter today as it was three decades ago. It is a nonstarter primarily because the Palestinian Arabs, like the world’s other Muslim Arab communities, are deeply religious and have no respect for democratic values and no tradition of democratic governance.
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Benny Morris (One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict)
“
The idea of sharing Palestine (as indeed, the sharing of any Muslim Arab land with non-Muslims and non-Arabs)—either through a division of the country into two states, one Jewish, the other Arab, or through a unitary binational entity, based on political parity between the two communities—is alien to the Muslim Arab mindset.
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Benny Morris (One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict)
“
The BDS on campus operation is organized by, among others, a group in Chicago, Illinois, called American Muslims for Palestine, or AMP. For years, AMP, through its sponsorship of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has been sending strategists, digital and communications experts, graphic designers, video editors, and legal advisors to colleges all over America and running flashy events in expensive hotels for the purpose of delegitimizing Israel, minimizing pro-Israel voices on campus, and harassing Jewish and pro-Israel students in order to deter them from supporting Israel. The embodiment of Cancel Culture. Managing such a sophisticated network of political operatives, extensive marketing, and (pre-COVID) ritzy gatherings at nice hotels is extremely expensive.11 So where is the money coming from? I
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Noa Tishby (Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth)
“
TAKE THE ROOM-TEMPERATURE op-ed article that you have read lately, or may be reading now, or will scan in the future. Cast your eye down as far as the sentence that tells you there will be no terminus to Muslim discontent until there has been a solution to the problem of Palestine. Take any writing implement that comes to hand, strike out the word “Palestine,” and insert “Kashmir.” Then spend as much time as you can afford in elucidating the subject. And then . .
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Christopher Hitchens (And Yet ...: Essays)
“
Religion is the most powerful entity on earth. A phenomenon that has conscripted millions to give or sacrifice their lives without so much as a minuscule query about their chosen beliefs or particular ideology. And today thousands of years on despite the huge advent, discovery and the advance of science forensic or otherwise, millions are still prepared and equipped to fall or kill in the name of their God, their Holy Scriptures, their messengers, their prophets and their faith’.
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Cal Sarwar
“
If there is ill will toward the United States in many Middle Eastern countries, it is a mistake to try to explain it by reference to Islamic doctrine, to the alleged propensity of Muslims for violence, or to the supposed centrality of the concept of jihad to Islam. One need look no further than the corrupt and autocratic regimes propped up by the United States all over the Middle East, and at American policies regarding Palestine, Iraq, and other issues that are highly unpopular in the region.
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Rashid Khalidi (The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood)
“
White/Western feminism's attempt at erasing the political context of Palestinian women's oppression was evident yet again around the 2017 Women's March on Washington, when liberal feminists objected to the leadership of Palestinian American organizer Linda Sarsour, and the newly minted "Zionesses" complained of "antisemitism" because Palestinian women's circumstances were on the platform, as part of a broader discussion of US President Donald Trump's Muslim ban and the overall Islamophobia he pandered to.
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Sumaya Awad (Palestine: A Socialist Introduction)
“
If Israel is to survive as a nation state, not a pariah, it will have to get Palestine off its back; otherwise, the prognosis for the two is mutual annihilation. There is no other alternative but to end the occupation, with a complete separation of the two states. For too long, Israel has depended on cheap Palestinian labour to build the very settlements they hate. What is created by this bizarre interaction of profitability and hate is two dysfunctional societies that have put a gun to each other’s heads.
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Tarek Fatah (The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism)
“
When Libya fought against the Italian occupation, all the Arabs supported the Libyan mujahideen.
We Arabs never occupied any country.
Well, we occupied Andalusia unjustly, and they drove us out, but since then, we Arabs have not occupied any country.
It is our countries that are occupied.
Palestine is occupied, Iraq is occupied, and as for the UAE islands...
It is not in the best interest of the Arabs for hostility to develop between them and Iran, Turkey, or any of these nations.
By no means is it in our interest to turn Iran against us.
If there really is a problem, we should decide here to refer this issue to the international court of Justice.
This is the proper venue for the resolution of such problems.
We should decide to refer the issue of the disputed UAE islands to the International Court of Justice, and we should accept whatever it rules.
One time you say this is occupied Arab land, and then you say...
This is not clear, and it causes confusion.
80% of the people of the Gulf are Iranians.
The ruling families are Arab, but the rest are Iranian. The entire people is Iranian.
This is a mess.
Iran cannot be avoided.
Iran is a Muslim neighbour, and it is not in our interes to become enemies.
What is the reason for the invasion and destruction of Iraq, and for killing of one million Iraqis?
Let our American friends answer this question:
Why Iraq? What is the reason?
Is Bin Laden an Iraqi? No he is not.
Were those who attacked New York Iraqis? No, they were not.
were those who attacked the Pentagon Iraqis? No, they were not.
Were there WMDs in Iraq? No, there were not.
Even if iraq did have WMDs - Pakistan and India have nuclear bombs, and so do China, Russia, Britain, France and America.
Should all these countries be destroyed?
Fine, let's destroy all the countries that have WMDs.
Along comes a foreign power, occupies an Arab country, and hangs its president, and we all sit on the sidelines, laughing.
Why didn't they investigate the hanging of Saddam Hussein?
How can a POW be hanged - a president of an Arab country and a member of the Arab League no less!
I'm not talking about the policies of Saddam Hussein, or the disagreements we had with him.
We all had poitlical disagreements with him and we have such disagreements among ourselves here.
We share nothing, beyond this hall.
Why won't there be an investigation into the killing of Saddam Hussein?
An entire Arab leadership was executed by hanging, yet we sit on the sidelines. Why?
Any one of you might be next. Yes.
America fought alongside Saddam Hussein against Khomeini.
He was their friend. Cheney was a friend of Saddam Hussein.
Rumsfeld, the US Defense Secretary at the time Iraq was destroyed, was a close friend of Saddam Hussein.
Ultimately, they sold him out and hanged him.
You are friends of America - let's say that ''we'' are, not ''you'' - but one of these days, America may hang us.
Brother 'Amr Musa has an idea which he is enthusiastic. He mentioned it in his report.
He says that the Arabs have the right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and that there should be an Arab nuclear program.
The Arabs have this right.
They even have the right to have the right to have a nuclear program for other...
But Allah prevails...
But who are those Arabs whom you say should have united nuclear program?
We are the enemies of one another, I'm sad to say.
We all hate one another, we deceive one another, we gloat at the misfortune of one another, and we conspire against one another.
Our intelligence agencies conspire against one another, instead of defending us against the enemy.
We are the enemies of one another, and an Arab's enemy is another Arab's friend.
”
”
Muammar Gaddafi
“
Religious intolerance is an idea that found its earliest expression in the Old Testament, where the Hebrew tribe depicts itself waging a campaign of genocide on the Palestinian peoples to steal their land. They justified this heinous behavior on the grounds that people not chosen by their god were wicked and therefore did not deserve to live or keep their land. In effect, the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian peoples, eradicating their race with the Jew's own Final Solution, was the direct result of a policy of religious superiority and divine right. Joshua 6-11 tells the sad tale, and one needs only read it and consider the point of view of the Palestinians who were simply defending their wives and children and the homes they had built and the fields they had labored for. The actions of the Hebrews can easily be compared with the American genocide of its native peoples - or even, ironically, the Nazi Holocaust.
With the radical advent of Christianity, this self-righteous intolerance was borrowed from the Jews, and a new twist was added. The conversion of infidels by any means possible became the newfound calling card of religious fervor, and this new experiment in human culture spread like wildfire. By its very nature, how could it not have? Islam followed suit, conquering half the world in brutal warfare and, much like its Christian counterpart, it developed a new and convenient survival characteristic: the destruction of all images and practices attributed to other religions. Muslims destroyed millions of statues and paintings in India and Africa, and forced conversion under pain of death (or by more subtle tricks: like taxing only non-Muslims), while the Catholic Church busily burned books along with pagans, shattering statues and defacing or destroying pagan art - or converting it to Christian use. Laws against pagan practices and heretics were in full force throughrout Europe by the sixth century, and as long as those laws were in place it was impossible for anyone to refuse the tenets of Christianity and expect to keep their property or their life. Similar persecution and harassment continues in Islamic countries even to this day, officially and unofficially.
”
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Richard C. Carrier (Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism)
“
By 1948, Israel no longer had to consider what “the Arabs” might want. Over seven hundred thousand Palestinians were uprooted from their own lands and banished by the advancing Israeli Army. Many of these people believed that they would be able to return to their homes after the war. But such a return would destroy the Israeli state project by turning Jews into a minority—the very thing Zionists sought to prevent. So the Palestinians were denied the “right of return,” and their land was confiscated by the state and handed over to other Israelis. The transformation was stunning: Before the establishment of the Israeli state, Palestinians owned 90 percent of all land in Mandatory Palestine. Most of this land was seized and incorporated into Israel. “From 1948 to 1953, the five years following the establishment of the state, 350 (out of a total of 370) new Jewish settlements were built on land owned by Palestinians,” writes Noura Erakat in her book Justice for Some. The threat of losing demographic supremacy still hangs over Israel. In 2003, future prime minister Ehud Olmert called on Israel to “maximize the number of Jews” and “minimize the number of Palestinians.” A “Muslim majority” would mean the “destruction of Israel as a Jewish state,” claimed former prime minister Ehud Barak. Netanyahu once warned that if Palestinian citizens ever reached 35 percent of Israel, the Jewish state would be “annulled.” Looking at the “absurd” borders of Jerusalem, the former deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti summarized the policy behind them as “the aspiration to include a maximum of land with a minimum of Arabs.
”
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Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Message)
“
If we justify practically our claim that the establishment of a Jewish national home will bring benefit to its non-Jewish residents as well, we will find among most of the Muslim effendis, including most of their leaders, an element that will oppose the path of violence and hostility and will
resign from the Muslim-Christian Associations. It will not be difficult to break the Muslim-Christian alliance, but it cannot be done by direct and open action in that direction. A frontal attack will only strengthen that unity. The only way is to win the hearts of the Muslim members one by one, by granting a part of the economic benefits they expect from the establishment of a Jewish national home. After purchasing the effendis, most of the population of Palestine, which will in the future as in the past continue to be led by this caste, will also come over to our side 4
”
”
Hillel Cohen (Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948)
“
The area occupied by the Christians in Syria and Palestine, called Outremer because of its location beyond the Mediterranean Sea, was a thin coastal strip extending from Armenia in the north to the borders of the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt in the south. By 1109, the Christian territory was divided into four large states: the Kingdom of Jerusalem, extending from Gaza to Beirut; the County of Tripoli, from Beirut to Margat; the Principality of Antioch, from Margat to Alexandria; and the County of Edessa, which stretched northeast all the way to present-day Urfa. These Latin states were governed by noble courts in much the same way as their counterparts in Europe. They were often rocked by dynastic disputes, which, together with the scarcity of available troops and the latent threat of Muslim attack, put the security of the Christian population in a constant state of uncertainty.
”
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Barbara Frale (The Templars: The Secret History Revealed)
“
It was also opposed by a Tory. Curzon reminded his colleagues that the British Empire was ‘the greatest Mahometan power on earth’, and was dismayed at the effect the Declaration would have on those hundreds of millions of Muslim subjects of the Crown. He presciently asked how it was proposed ‘to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman inhabitants and introduce the Jews in their place’, and he foresaw that the Arabs would not be happy ‘either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water’. As to the Jews themselves, Curzon told Montagu, ‘I cannot conceive a worse bondage to which to relegate an advanced and intellectual community than to exile in Palestine.’ Churchill was also conscious of the many ‘Mahometan’ subjects of the empire, but disdainful of them, and he was completely indifferent to the wishes or interests of the Palestinian Arabs.
”
”
Geoffrey Wheatcroft (Churchill's Shadow: The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill)
“
There was justice, ultimately, he said, but it would not necessarily arrive in this life. Allah would provide it in the Hereafter. In Islamic politic circles, rather too much can be made of it, he said, and that hurt Muslims. " Think of Palestine," he suggested. "We have no doubt that there has been wrongdoing against the Palestinians by the Jews. But one has to really think about helping what is a very weak community. The way to help is not to bring justice."
"No?"
"No. If you insist on justice, then the weak community becomes weaker, because those in power won't give it. They will just hate them more."
"But what can Muslims do without seeking justice?" I asked.
Compromise, said the Sheikh. That will bring peace, which in turn will give a battered community the time and space to heal.
"Weak people, if they don't admit they are weak, it's going to destroy them more and more," he noted. "Some people say, 'When we make peace, we accept injustice.' I'm saying, when we make peace, we buy time."
The Quran, he reminded me, says "Peace is better.
”
”
Carla Power (If the Oceans Were Ink: An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran)
“
In this first decade of the twentieth century, a large proportion of the Jews living in Palestine were still culturally quite similar to and lived reasonably comfortably alongside city-dwelling Muslims and Christians. They were mostly ultra-Orthodox and non-Zionist, mizrahi (eastern) or Sephardic (descendants of Jews expelled from Spain), urbanites of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin who often spoke Arabic or Turkish, even if only as a second or third language. In spite of marked religious distinctions between them and their neighbors, they were not foreigners, nor were they Europeans or settlers: they were, saw themselves, and were seen as Jews who were part of the indigenous Muslim-majority society.6 Moreover, some young European Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Palestine at this time, including such ardent Zionists as David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (one became prime minister and the other the president of Israel), initially sought a measure of integration into the local society. Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi even took Ottoman nationality, studied in Istanbul, and learned Arabic and Turkish.
”
”
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
“
First, the biblical descriptions regarding the coming of Jesus the Jewish Messiah bear many striking resemblances to the coming Antichrist of Islam, whom Muslims refer to as the al-maseeh al-dajjaal (the counterfeit Messiah). Second, the Bible’s Antichrist bears numerous striking commonalities with the primary messiah figure of Islam, who Muslims call the Mahdi. In other words, our Messiah is their antichrist and our Antichrist is their messiah. Even more shocking to many readers was the revelation that Islam teaches that when Jesus returns, He will come back as a Muslim prophet whose primary mission will be to abolish Christianity. It’s difficult for any Bible believer to read of these things without becoming acutely aware of the satanic origins of the Islamic religion. In 2008, I also had the opportunity to coauthor another book on the same subject with Walid Shoebat, a former operative for the Palestine Liberation Organization. This book, entitled God’s War on Terror, is an almost encyclopedic discussion of the role of Islam in the last days, as well as a chronicle of Walid’s journey from a young Palestinian Muslim with a deep hatred for the Jews, to a Christian man who spends his life standing with the Jewish people and proclaiming the truth concerning the dangers of radical Islam. Together these two books have become the cornerstone of what has developed into a popular eschatological revolution. Today, I receive a steady stream of e-mails and reports from individuals expressing how much these books have affected them and transformed their understanding of the end-times. Students, pastors, and even reputable scholars have expressed that they have abandoned the popular notion that the Antichrist, his empire, and his religion will emerge out of Europe or a revived Roman Empire. Instead they have come to recognize the simple fact that the Bible emphatically and repeatedly points us to the Middle East as the launchpad and epicenter of the emerging empire of the Antichrist and his religion. Many testify that although they have been students of Bible prophecy for many years, never before had anything made so much sense, or the prophecies of the Bible become so clear. And even more important, some have even written to share that they’ve become believers or recommitted their lives to Jesus as a result of reading these books. Hallelujah!
”
”
Joel Richardson (Mideast Beast: The Scriptural Case for an Islamic Antichrist)
“
If elimination of the native population is not a likely outcome in Palestine, then what of dismantling the supremacy of the colonizer in order to make possible a true reconciliation? The advantage that Israel has enjoyed in continuing its project rests on the fact that the basically colonial nature of the encounter in Palestine has not been visible to most Americans and many Europeans. Israel appears to them to be a normal, natural nation-state like any other, faced by the irrational hostility of intransigent and often anti-Semitic Muslims (which is how Palestinians, even the Christians among them, are seen by many). The propagation of this image is one of the greatest achievements of Zionism and is vital to its survival. As Edward Said put it, Zionism triumphed in part because it “won the political battle for Palestine in the international world in which ideas, representation, rhetoric and images were at issue.”5 This is still largely true today. Dismantling this fallacy and making the true nature of the conflict evident is a necessary step if Palestinians and Israelis are to transition to a postcolonial future in which one people does not use external support to oppress and supplant the other.
”
”
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
“
Then there were those who were thrilling to Senator Sanders, who believed that Bernie would be the one to give them free college, to solve climate change, and even to bring peace to the Middle East, though that was not an issue most people associated with him. On a trip to Michigan, I met with a group of young Muslims, most of them college students, for whom this was the first election in which they planned to participate. I was excited that they had come to hear more about HRC's campaign. One young woman, speaking for her peers, said she really wanted to be excited about the first woman president, but she had to support Bernie because she believed he would be more effective at finally brokering a peace treaty in the Middle East. Everyone around her nodded. I asked the group why they doubted Hillary Clinton's ability to do the same.
"Well, she has done nothing to help the Palestinians."
Taking a deep breath, I asked them if they knew that she was the first U.S. official to ever call the territories "Palestine" in the nineties, that she advocated for Palestinian sovereignty back when no other official would. They did not. I then asked them if they were aware that she brought together the last round of direct talks between the Israelis and Palestinians? That she personally negotiated a cease-fire to stop the latest war in Gaza when she was secretary of state? They shook their heads. Had they known that she announced $600 million in assistance to the Palestinian Authority and $300 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza in her first year at State? They began to steal glances at one another. Did they know that she pushed Israel to invest in the West Bank and announced an education program to make college more affordable for Palestinian students? More head shaking. They simply had no idea.
"So," I continued, "respectfully, what is it about Senator Sander's twenty-seven-year record in Congress that suggests to you that the Middle East is a priority for him?"
The young woman's response encapsulated some what we were up against.
"I don't know," she replied. "I just feel it.
”
”
Huma Abedin (Both/And: A Memoir)
“
Prisons are racism incarnate. As Michelle Alexander points out, they constitute the new Jim Crow. But also much more, as the lynchpins of the prison-industrial complex, they represent the increasing profitability of punishment. They represent the increasingly global strategy of dealing with populations of people of color and immigrant populations from the countries of the Global South as surplus populations, as disposable populations. Put them all in a vast garbage bin, add some sophisticated electronic technology to control them, and let them languish there. And in the meantime, create the ideological illusion that the surrounding society is safer and more free because the dangerous Black people and Latinos, and the Native Americans, and the dangerous Asians and the dangerous White people, and of course the dangerous Muslims, are locked up! And in the meantime, corporations profit and poor communities suffer! Public education suffers! Public education suffers because it is not profitable according to corporate measures. Public health care suffers. If punishment can be profitable, then certainly health care should be profitable, too. This is absolutely outrageous! It is outrageous. It is also outrageous that the state of Israel uses the carceral technologies developed in relation to US prisons not only to control the more than eight thousand Palestinian political prisoners in Israel but also to control the broader Palestinian population. These carceral technologies, for example, the separation wall, which reminds us of the US-Mexico border wall, and other carceral technologies are the material constructs of Israeli apartheid. G4S, the organization, the corporation G4S, which profits from the incarceration and the torturing of Palestinian prisoners, has a subsidiary called G4S Secure Solutions, which was formerly known as Wackenhut. And just recently a subsidiary of that just have one more page of notes corporation, GEO Group, which is a private prison company, attempted to claim naming rights at Florida Atlantic University by donating something like $6 million, right? And, the students rose up. They said that our football stadium will not bear the name of a private prison corporation! And the students won. The students won; the name came down from the marquee.
”
”
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
“
Hamas is for Muslims who favor Jihad. ...Hamas aims for every inch of Palestine. ...No part of it should be given up. ...Hamas is opposed to initiatives, peaceful solutions and international conferences. Jihad is the only solution.
”
”
Barry E. Horner (Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged: 3 (New American Commentary Studies in Bible and Theology))
“
Muhammad’s violent end years and final violent words were quickly followed by those who succeeded him in power, after his death in 632 AD. “Within thirty years after Muhammad’s death Islam achieved the most spectacular expansion in its history. During the caliphate of Muhammad’s immediate successors from 632 to 661, Islam conquered the whole Arabian peninsula and invaded territories which had been in Greco-Roman hands since the reign of Alexander the Great….Damascus fell in 635. Jerusalem was captured in 638. In the same year Antioch fell, and the other great Hellenistic capital, Alexandria, became a permanent Arab possession in 646. Coastal cities in Syria, Palestine and Egypt, as well as the island of Cyprus were successively occupied by Arabs in a short period of time…The rapid advance of Islam spread panic and consternation among the Christians in the Greek Near East…The Arabic wars against the Greeks were not only political and economic wars, but holy wars of Islam against Christianity.” (“Greek Christian and Other Accounts of the Muslim Conquests of the Near East,” Demetrios Constantelos, article in The Legacy of Jihad, Prometheus Books, 2005, Edited by Andrew Bostom, MD).
”
”
John Price (The End of America: The Role of Islam in the End Times and Biblical Warnings to Flee America)
“
Let's pray with me for the freedom of the Muslims of Kashmir and Palestine and peace, security, and brotherhood of Pakistan and the Muslim world. We Muslims should show the world that we are Peace, not Violence.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
Hamas was an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded in Egypt in 1928 with reformist aims, but which turned to violence in the 1940s and 1950s, only to reconcile with the Egyptian regime under Sadat in the 1970s. Hamas was begun in Gaza by militants who felt that the Brotherhood had been too accommodating toward the Israeli occupier in return for lenient treatment. Indeed, in the first two decades of the occupation, when the military authorities severely repressed all other Palestinian political, social, cultural, professional, and academic groups, they had allowed the Brotherhood to operate freely. Because of its utility to the occupation in splitting the Palestinian national movement, Israeli indulgence of the Brotherhood was extended to Hamas, notwithstanding its uncompromising and anti-Semitic program and commitment to violence.8
”
”
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017)
“
The United Arab Emirates reportedly had its contract with NSO cancelled in 2021 when it became clear that Dubai’s ruler had used it to hack his ex-wife’s phone and those of her associates. The New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard, Beirut chief for the paper, had his phone compromised while reporting on Saudi Arabia and its leader Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a man who has invested huge amounts of money in commercial spyware.45 Palestinian human rights activists and diplomats in Palestine have also been targeted by Pegasus, including officials who were preparing complaints against Israel to the International Criminal Court. NSO technology was used by the Israeli police to covertly gather information from Israelis’ smartphones. Pegasus had become a key asset for Israel’s domestic and international activities.46 Saudi Arabia is perhaps the crown jewel of NSO’s exploits, one of the Arab world’s most powerful nations and a close ally of the US with no formal relations with the Jewish state. It is a repressive, Sunni Muslim ethnostate that imprisons and tortures dissidents and actively discriminates against its Shia minority.47 Unlike previous generations of Saudi leaders, bin Salman thought that the Israel/Palestine conflict was “an annoying irritant—a problem to be overcome rather than a conflict to be fairly resolved,” according to Rob Malley, a senior White House official in the Obama and Biden administrations.48
”
”
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
“
If indeed all lives mattered, we would not need to emphatically proclaim that “Black Lives Matter.” Or, as we discover on the BLM website: Black Women Matter, Black Girls Matter, Black Gay Lives Matter, Black Bi Lives Matter, Black Boys Matter, Black Queer Lives Matter, Black Men Matter, Black Lesbians Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Black Immigrants Matter, Black Incarcerated Lives Matter. Black Differently Abled Lives Matter. Yes, Black Lives Matter, Latino/Asian American/Native American/Muslim/Poor and Working-Class White Peoples Lives matter. There are many more specific instances we would have to name before we can ethically and comfortable claim that All Lives Matter.
”
”
Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
“
Unsurprisingly, the nation’s xenophobia has seeped into popular culture. Bollywood, long known for its extensive Muslim involvement across the entire industry, is being forced to toe the anti-Islam perspective. Many in Bollywood happily pushed the hard-line Hindu nationalist agenda, releasing films that openly celebrated the actions of the Indian armed forces. In a similar vein, the Israeli series Fauda, which features undercover Israeli agents in the West Bank, has been hugely popular among right-wing Indians, looking for a sugar hit of war on terror and anti-Islamist propaganda in a slickly produced format. During the May 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, the right-wing economist Subramanian Swamy, who sits on the BJP national executive, tweeted that he loved Fauda.28 The post-9/11 “war on terror” suited both India and Israel in their plans to pacify their respective unwanted populations. To this end, Israel trained Indian forces in counterinsurgency. Following a 2014 agreement between Israel and India, pledging to cooperate on “public and homeland security,” countless Indian officers, special forces, pilots, and commandoes visited Israel for training. In 2020, Israel refused to screen Indian police officers to determine if they had committed any abuses in India. Israeli human rights advocate Eitay Mack and a range of other activists petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court in 2020 to demand that Israel stop training Indian police officers who “blind, murder, rape, torture and hide civilians in Kashmir.” The court rejected the request, and in the words of the three justices, “without detracting from the importance of the issue of human rights violations in Kashmir.
”
”
Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
“
The material in this work demonstrates that the Nazi leadership viewed radical anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as indispensable points of entry into Arab and Muslim hearts and minds.29 Throughout the war, Nazi Arabic radio repeated the charge that World War II was a Jewish war whose purpose in the region was to establish a Jewish state in Palestine that would expand into and dominate the entire Arab and Muslim world. Moreover, the broadcasts asserted that the Jews in the mid-twentieth century were attempting to destroy Islam just as their ancestors had been attempting to do for thirteen centuries. They claimed that an Allied victory would be a victory for the Jews, whereas an Axis victory would bring liberation from first British and then American and also “Jewish” imperialism
”
”
Jeffrey Herf (Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World)
“
In his report to the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Ministry), Wolff wrote that Husseini said, “Muslims inside and outside Palestine welcome the new regime in Germany and hope for the spread of fascist, antidemocratic state leadership to other countries.” In his view,” current Jewish influence on economy and politics” was “damaging everywhere and needed to be fought.” In the hope of doing economic damage to the Jews, Husseini opined that “Muslims hope for a boycott of the Jews in Germany because it would then be adopted with enthusiasm in the whole of the Muslim world.” Further, he was willing to spread the boycott message among Muslims traveling through Palestine and to “all Muslims.” He also looked forward to trade with “non-Jewish merchants” dealing in German products.3 Husseini’s remarks on March 1933 demonstrated his early enthusiasm for the Nazi regime based on his ideological support for its antidemocratic and anti-Jewish policies.
”
”
Jeffrey Herf (Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World)
“
Important factors included growing Muslim hostility toward Jews as a result of nationalist mobilization, the creation of Israel, rampant poverty, and the ongoing refusal of citizenship by the French as well as negative experiences with the anti-Semitic Vichy regime during the war.100 Tension with the Muslim majority population started to grow in Morocco in 1947 against the backdrop of the war in Palestine. Following
”
”
Jannis Panagiotidis (The Unchosen Ones: Diaspora, Nation, and Migration in Israel and Germany)
“
Important factors included growing Muslim hostility toward Jews as a result of nationalist mobilization, the creation of Israel, rampant poverty, and the ongoing refusal of citizenship by the French as well as negative experiences with the anti-Semitic Vichy regime during the war.100 Tension with the Muslim majority population started to grow in Morocco in 1947 against the backdrop of the war in Palestine. Following the June 1948 pogroms in Oudjda and Djérada in eastern Morocco on the border with Algeria, emigration of Jews from Morocco to Israel became a more widespread phenomenon.101 When the French colonial rulers realized that the constant illegal flow of migrants could not be stopped, they allowed for the organized emigration of Jews, giving the Jewish Agency free rein in processing and selecting the migrants. For this purpose, the Jewish Agency–operated Kadima (forward) office was created in April of that year.102 A similar office had operated in Tunis since the second half of 1948, when the French authorities had started tolerating, if initially not fully legalizing, Aliyah.103
”
”
Jannis Panagiotidis (The Unchosen Ones: Diaspora, Nation, and Migration in Israel and Germany)
“
The only Hitler of Germany was one who adopted the way of atrocities and cruelties for a limited period; he was evil-minded, whereas every leader of Israel was and is characteristically similar to Hitler for several decades of victimising; despite that, they are not evil characters. The Western states eliminated Hitler, but those countries supported and perpetuated the leaders of Israel, and still, they remain on such distinctive policies; it is the worst hypocrisy in human history.
Virtually, it will be a self-suicidal move of the Muslim world, especially the Arab States, as religiously, politically, morally, and principally, to recognize Israel, ignoring the Palestinians, in the presence of the United Nations resolutions. Indeed, Israel exists; however, it is an unreal reality as the concept and context of the real validity of Palestinians. Factually, recognition of Israel by the Muslim States and Arab dictators means a license of hegemony, allowing Israel to dominate the Muslim world. The Muslims of the world absolutely will never agree with it and dismiss such a move of Arab dictators.
The tiny democracy of the world, Israel seems as an authority upon the United Nations since it does what it wants.
Israel is not afraid nor frightened; its state is just the warmonger and the hate-sponsor within humanity.
Israel is the creation of the West, supported by the West, and licensed to kill by the West; the Muslim rulers expect a fruitful solution from them; I realize it is an endless stupidity.
Spirit of Palestine
***
If you do not understand
The international law that
You constituted yourself
If you do not obey and respect
Your laws and resolutions
We have the right to defend our land
By our way, by all means,
Whether you call it terrorism
Or something else
For us,
It is the fight for freedom
You cannot accept the truth
We cannot accept the lies
Truth always prevails
We will never surrender
Nor yield to the evil
And genocide forces
We are the spirit of Palestine
Long live Palestine,
Long live Palestine
At every cost.
Palestine Never Disappears
***
They stole Palestine
Our land and then our homes
They threw us out
At gunpoint
For our determination
And rights
We throw the stones
They trigger bullets
The champions of human rights
Watch that,
Clapping and cheering
As like it is a football match
And the football referee is Israel
However,
Palestine will never disappear
Never; never; never
We will fight without fear
Until we recover and have that
Palestine is Crying
***
Under the flames of the guns
Palestine is crying
The Arab world is cowardly silent,
West and the rest of the world,
Deliberately ignoring justice
Even also they are criminally denying
Whereas Palestinians are dying
If there are no weapons:
There will be neither terrible wars
Nor criminal deaths, nor tensions
Manufacture oxygen of life expectations
It is a beautiful destination
For all destinations
I wish I could fragrance peace and love
In the minds and hearts of two
Generations of two real brothers.
Day Of Mourning, Not Mother’s Day
***
A lot of Mothers of Palestine are crying
And burying their children, who became
The victim of Israel’s cruelty
Those mothers have no children
To celebrate their Mother’s Day
It is a Day of Mourning for those mothers
Not Mother’s Day
Oh, Palestine, cry, cry, not on Israel
But on Muslims who are dead sleeping.
Ahed Tamimi Of Palestine
The Voice Of Freedom
***
You can trigger bullets
Upon those,
Who stay determined
You can shoot
Or place under house arrest
Hundreds of thousands
As such Ahed Tamimi
However,
You cannot stop
The voices, for the freedom
And Self-determination
You will hear
In every second, minute
Every hour, every day
Until you understand
And realize,
Voices of the human rights
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
Moreover, until the advent of anachronistic European political Zionism at the turn of the 20th century the people of Palestine (Arabic: sha’b Filastin) included Arab Muslims, Arab Christians and Arab Jews. Being a rendering of the Israeli Zionist/Palestinian conflict, historically speaking the binary of Arab versus Jew in Palestine is deeply misleading.
”
”
Nur Masalha (Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History)
“
The obvious path to a two-state solution would be for the United States and the rest of the world to simply recognize the State of Palestine, regardless of Israeli objections, but no president has seriously contemplated taking that step.
”
”
Charles Kurzman (The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists)
“
Starting with the First Crusade in 1096, thousands of soldiers were sent to the Holy Land by the church to reclaim Jerusalem. At first they were successful; the crusading armies managed to establish a Christian-ruled kingdom in Muslim Palestine. However, ultimately the crusades were futile, culminating with the fiasco of the Fourth Crusade (1204), during which the European armies sacked Constantinople (Byzantium). By the late 1200s the region had reverted to uniform Muslim rule.
”
”
Charles River Editors (Petra: The History of the Rose City, One of the New Seven Wonders of the World)
“
When Iran exported its jihad to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Muslim Brotherhood in several regions around the world, these all indirectly threatened the United States. These terrorists threatened our greatest ally in the region, Israel, while destabilizing countries we depend on to help bring security to that area. These terrorists harm our allies with violence while sowing hatred for our values, thus hurting our national interests abroad. Until 2001, these organizations had not historically attempted to carry out terrorist attacks on the American homeland. With the Sunni-Shiite divide once again put on the back burner to tackle a bigger enemy, the relationship between al-Qaeda, another Sunni terrorist organization, and the Shiite regime in Iran is all about destroying the United States of America. Their relationship began a long time before the United States even knew about al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as public enemy number one.1 Today, ISIS is perhaps public enemy number one. Yet the most interesting trait common to ISIS, al-Qaeda, Iran, and every other Islamic terrorist group is this: they are all motivated by the same anti-Western, jihadist ideology.
”
”
Jay Sekulow (Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World)
“
Accordingly, the Hamas Charter calls the existence of the state of Israel on the land that was formerly held by Muslims a “Zionist invasion.”163 It therefore pledges to wage “jihad in the face of the oppressors, in order to deliver the land and the believers from their filth, impurity, and evil”164 in order to “[return the homeland to its rightful owner] and “to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine”165 no matter how long it takes.166 Hamas does not want “peace” with Israel, and it will not negotiate a permanent peace agreement with Israel. Instead, it will only agree to intermittent “truces” when its military capabilities have been so degraded that it needs time to recuperate and rearm.
”
”
Jay Sekulow (Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore)
“
The non-Jewish Arab population of mandate Palestine, initially twice the size of the Yishuv, supported by Muslims throughout the Middle East, strongly resisted the Jewish intrusion into what they perceived as their nation.
”
”
Debi Unger (George Marshall: A Biography)
“
The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood denounced the UN decision, called for volunteers for Palestine and contributions, and announced that "it is a ... battle either for life or death to a nation of 70 million souls ... whom the vilest, the most corrupt, tricky and destructive people wish to conquer and displace. " 198
”
”
Benny Morris (1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War)
“
the New Atheists echo the neo-conservative myth that “the roots of Muslim rage” are rooted in Islamic culture itself, rather than political issues such as Western imperialism, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, colonial legacy racism, and the oppression forced upon them by U.S. backed autocratic despots.
”
”
C.J. Werleman (The New Atheist Threat: The Dangerous Rise of Secular Extremists)
“
Article 11 of the Hamas Covenant states: Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgment Day. . . . The same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgment. . . . Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia . . . is null and void.63 All Muslims are considered brothers; thus the fight is intensely personal. This is why Muslims of all nations are enraged over Palestine. They see Israel as an invader. The Quran refers to Muhammad’s journey to “the Farthest Mosque,” which Muslims believe is referring to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and states that Allah blessed its “precincts”; Muslims have interpreted this to mean that Allah set apart Palestine as holy.64 As long as Israel and other Western powers remain in Palestine and the Middle East, they cause a continual shame on the entire Muslim world.65
”
”
Jay Sekulow (Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World)
“
...the War on Terror is in fact a war against Islam. After all, this was never conceived of as a war against terror per se. If it were, it would have included the Basque separatists in Spain, the Christian insurgency in East Timor, the Hindu/Marxist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Maoist rebels in eastern India, the Jewish Kach and Kahane underground in Israel, the Irish Republican Army, the Sikh separatists in the Punjab, the Marxist Mujahadin-e khalq, the Kurdish PKK, and so on. Rather, this is a war against a particular brand of terrorism: that employed exclusively by Islamic entities, which is why the enemy in this ideological conflict gradually and systematically expanded to include not just the persons who attacked America on September 11, 2001, and the organisations that supported them, but also an ever-widening conspiracy of disparate groups such as Hamas in Palestine, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the clerical regime in Iran, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Chechen rebels, the Kashmiri militants, the Taliban, and any other organisation that declares itself Muslim and employs terrorism as a tactic.
”
”
Reza Aslan (How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror)
“
Their research shows that, over the centuries, Palestine, rather than being a desert, was a thriving Arab society—mostly Muslim, predominantly rural, but with vibrant urban centers.
”
”
Ilan Pappé (Ten Myths About Israel)
“
Shireen Baraka Barghouti lives in a cauldron of hate that often boils over. She’s never been outside the Gaza Strip even though it’s only twenty-five miles long and three miles wide at the narrowest borders, seven miles at the widest. Qasem Soleimani, until his death in 2020, was the major general over Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who invested monstrous sums of Iranian money in the youth of Gaza. In fact, Hamas simply could not exist without the Iranian money he supplied. And to make sure he covered all the bases, Soleimani also funded the rival Islamic Jihad. Shireen doesn’t hold back when speaking about the climate of death and destruction that has helped create. “In Gaza, terrorism is our number-one export,” she said. “How sad that whenever the Gaza Strip is mentioned, people automatically think of radical Islamic terrorists. But how could they not? Our Gaza government is run by them. Iran gives Hamas thirty million dollars a month. “At different times we’ve had al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in charge, to name just a few. New groups form every year, and our young Gaza boys see these ‘freedom fighters’ as heroes to emulate. “In Europe, people idolize soccer players. But not in Gaza. Here, men dressed in green uniforms, toting AK-47s, and shouting ‘death to Israel’ are featured on billboards. “The explosions are enough to cause you a nervous breakdown. A few years ago Hamas fired over ten thousand rockets into Israel in one extended attack over several months. We knew it was just a matter of time before the Israelis responded, and once we heard the drones humming over Gaza, we took cover. “Hamas has done nothing for the people of Gaza. While they line their pockets with millions of dollars, the people go without eating. They are cruel and intentionally keep us in this senseless war with Israel. “You might think because I live in Gaza and grew up Muslim that I hate Israel. But I don’t. I do detest Hamas, however—and all the other terrorist groups that make life unbearable in the Strip.
”
”
Tom Doyle (Women Who Risk: Secret Agents for Jesus in the Muslim World)
“
…the Quds terrorist network has experienced a secret expansion in Latin America, the Gulf states, Palestine, Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and other Muslim former-Soviet republics.
”
”
National Council of Resistance of Iran-U.S. Representative Office (Iran's Emissaries of Terror: How mullahs' embassies run the network of espionage and murder)
“
The first predicament Israel faces is that the majority of Palestinians wish to push it into the sea, and hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims worldwide wish Israel the same deadly fate. To put it plainly, minimizing the size of a Jewish homeland is unlikely to end the large conflict, even if local Palestinians were appeased by this action.
”
”
David Naggar (The Case for a Larger Israel)
“
If one views the problem as a dispute between Israel and only the Arabs living in and around Israel, one may incorrectly conclude that the stateless Palestinians just wish Israel harm because they are being oppressed. These Arabs will be viewed as victims of the military stronger Israelis. But if one uses a wider scope, the global context of the conflict become crystal clear. The overwhelming majority of Arabs, Sunni and Shi’a alike, in twenty-one separate Arab states and in the West Bank and Gaza, together with Muslims in Iran and beyond, wish to eliminate Israel – albeit some in an extended time frame. Through this lens, the tiny Jewish state, which must fend off political, military and economic onslaught, is fairly views as the aggrieved party.
”
”
David Naggar (The Case for a Larger Israel)
“
Jews are painted by the brush strokes of thousands of years of persecution. Repeatedly reminding the world of the pogroms and the holocaust is both tiresome and has worn thin. But these atrocities are worth remembering. For when Arab fanatics and radical Muslims call for all Muslims to fulfill their duty to kill all Jews wherever they may be found, they are talking about each and every Jew, everywhere, and they are not joking. They are deadly serious.
”
”
David Naggar (The Case for a Larger Israel)
“
But what choice does it have? As long as Israel is perceived by its enemies to be vulnerable, many Arabs and radical Muslims will continue to make Israelis kill them... When Israeli soldiers kill Arabs by accident, they mourn—and it causes psychological damage to those soldiers, and to all of Israeli society. The wars the Arab states have instigated are bloody and cruel, and a heavy price is paid by Israel, even when it wins. And win it must, because one loss means the loss of Israel.
”
”
David Naggar (The Case for a Larger Israel)
“
Don't Despair - Victory Is Near
***
O' God, show me the way
So that I could tell
Those who pray to one God,
Those who follow their prophet
Those who recite their Holy Book
But neither people nor leaders
In their lives
Act on that as its context
Kashmiris breathe
In the tyranny of democratic beasts
Palestinians live
In the occupation of Zionists
And cruel occupiers
For decades and decades
Alas, the Muslim world
And United Nations
Stayed: Dumb, Deaf, and Blind
Except for issuing words of condemnation
On the unjust, oppressive rapes,
And killing practices and deeds
The Muslim States and rulers
And the Armed Forces are unique and brave,
Only for murdering their people
And damaging unity and resources
To stay in power
Such rulers destroyed Iraq, Libya,
Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iran
Spending trillions of wealth
The Muslim States fought wars
In the interests of those who preach
Justice, equality, honesty, harmony,
And peace, never learn themselves.
How they can apply justice
For Palestinians and Kashmiris?
Otherwise, peace was a destiny
And the destination of the Muslim State
And entire humanity
In such a scenario as Kashmir,
And Palestine will be bearing cruelty
Unjust, oppression, and bloodshed
We belong to Allah
And to Him, we shall return
Oh, Palestine, oh, Kashmir
Do not despair
Victory is near.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
The liberal Manchester Guardian newspaper, an enthusiastic supporter of the Zionist cause, hailed the declaration as ‘the fulfilment of an aspiration, the signpost of a destiny’. Without a national home the Jews would never have security, argued the editor, C. P. Scott, citing a recent case of the fateful vulnerability of another minority in a Muslim land. ‘The example of Armenia and the wiping out of a population fiftyfold that of the Jewish colonies in Palestine was a terrible warning of what might be in store for these.’ Scott saw no contradiction between the declaration’s central promise and the rights of the country’s native Arabs – and thus reflected widely held contemporary Western views.
”
”
Ian Black (Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017)
“
Academic interest has grown enormously and is closely related to political positions. Several universities in the US and Britain now have dedicated (and separate) centres for Palestine and Israel studies. In the last decade or so the fundamentals of the conflict have been illuminated by the paradigm of settler colonialism – based on the experience of the US, Australia, Canada and South Africa – when native populations are replaced rather than exploited by Europeans. That approach struggles, though, to encompass the Jewish religious–national connection to Eretz-Yisrael that is so central to Zionist ideology and Israeli identity. And Mizrahi (Eastern or oriental) Jews who came to Israel from Iraq, Morocco and elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds are another specific element with no exact parallel elsewhere. In a way this heated contemporary debate reflects a familiar truth about how the conflict is perceived: Zionists have tended to focus on their intentions in immigrating to Palestine; Arabs on the results, and especially, in the words of Edward Said, of ‘having their territory settled by foreigners’.1
”
”
Ian Black (Enemies and Neighbors: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017)
“
This man at the pinnacle of Islam had this to say about 9/11.
“Our enemies weave many lies about us, which we are not necessarily aware of. For example: One day, we awoke to the crime of 9/11, which hit the tallest buildings in New York, the Empire State Building (sic). There is no doubt that not a single Arab or Muslim had anything to do with these events. The incident was fabricated as a pretext to attack Islam and Muslims... - and Allah knows that the Arabs and Muslims are innocent of it – in order to serve as a pretext to attack Islam and the Muslims... I believe a dirty Zionist hand carried out this act. Zionism has taken the opportunity to escalate the war in Palestine, killing hundreds of thousands so far, while we watch from the sidelines in astonishment and ask: What's going on?'?
”
”
David Naggar (The Case for a Larger Israel)
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I felt sad when I heard the President’s words. I assumed that he believed what he was saying, but if that were true, he was profoundly ignorant of the real thoughts and feelings of people in other parts of the world. If he wanted to hear the truth, he should have listened to Osama bin Laden, leader of al-Qaeda, who was well-informed concerning the origins of the kind of fanatical hatred of the U.S. which had led to such treachery. This is his version of events: Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The wind of faith is blowing and the wind of change is blowing to remove evil from the Peninsula of Muhammad, peace be upon him. As to America, I say to it and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him.
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Paul T. Hellyer (The Money Mafia: A World in Crisis)
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Israeli law does not recognize an Israeli nationality. Thus, while Jewish citizens are classified as having “Jewish nationality,” Israeli law methodically strips Palestinian citizens of their national identity and reduces them to mere ethnicity or religious affiliation (like Muslims, Christians, Druze, etc.).6 As a result, Israel is not just another nation-state in which minority communities lack some secondary rights owned by the majority. Instead, it is a settler-colonial state established by the Zionist movement for advancing and expanding its colonialist project for the benefit of the Jews alone.
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Tikva Honig-Parnass (The False Prophets of Peace: Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine)
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Some Nadir Jews took refuge a hundred miles northwest of Medina in the oasis of Khaibar, where a mainly Jewish community lived. Others continued northward for a further five hundred miles, travelling as far as Palestine–their Holy Land and the ancestral home from which they had come more than 1,600 years earlier.
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Martin Gilbert (In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands)
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Churchill was right on both counts. Between 1922 and 1939 more Arabs had entered Palestine than Jews. These were Muslim immigrants, including many illegals, from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Iran and Syria–as well as from Transjordan, Sudan and Saudi Arabia.37 These immigrants were drawn to Palestine by its opportunities for work and its growing prosperity–opportunities and prosperity often created by the Jews there. In 1948 many of these Arab immigrants were to be included in the statistics of ‘Palestinian’ Arab refugees.
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Martin Gilbert (In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands)
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In 1867 a French Jew, Charles Netter, suggested to the Alliance a means to help Jews from Persia and Eastern Europe build new lives as farmers in Ottoman Palestine. With the organisation’s support, he went to Istanbul a year later and met the Grand Vizier of the Imperial State Council. Netter persuaded the Grand Vizier to procure a decree from the Sultan allowing the Alliance to lease land near Jaffa for a Jewish agricultural school. The Governor of Syria, Rashid Pasha, then authorised the purchase of a ninety–nine–year lease on 2,600 dunams (650 acres) of land.14 Netter built a school on this land in 1870, which he named Mikve Israel (‘The Hope of Israel’), serving as both principal and instructor there, and witnessing the beginnings of Jewish agricultural settlement in Ottoman Palestine.15
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Martin Gilbert (In Ishmael's House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands)
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Meanwhile, Facebook censors Palestinian groups so often that they have created their own hashtag, #FBCensorsPalestine. That the groups have become prominent matters little: in 2016, Facebook blocked accounts belonging to editors at the Quds News Network and Shehab News Agency in the West Bank; it later apologized and restored the accounts.30 The following year, it did the same to the official account of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank.31 A year after Facebook’s relationship with the Israelis was formalized, the Guardian released a set of leaked documents exposing the ways the company’s moderation policy discriminates against Palestinians and other groups. Published in a series called “The Facebook Files,” the documents contained slides from manuals used to train content moderators. On the whole, the leaks paint a picture of a disjointed and disorganized company where the community standards are expanded piecemeal, and little attention is given to their consequences. Anna, the former Facebook operations specialist I spoke with, agrees: “There’s no ownership of processes from beginning to end.” One set of documents demonstrate with precision the imbalance on the platform between Palestinians and Israelis (and the supporters of both). In a slide deck entitled “Credible Violence: Abuse Standards,” one slide lists global and local “vulnerable” groups; alongside “foreigners” and “homeless people” is “Zionists.”32 Interestingly, while Zionists are protected as a special category, “migrants,” as ProPublica has reported, are only “quasi-protected” and “Black children” aren’t protected at all.33 In trying to understand how such a decision came about, I reached out to numerous contacts, but only one spoke about it on the record. Maria, who worked in community operations until 2017, told me that she spoke up against the categorization when it was proposed. “We’d say, ‘Being a Zionist isn’t like being a Hindu or Muslim or white or Black—it’s like being a revolutionary socialist, it’s an ideology,’” she told me. “And now, almost everything related to Palestine is getting deleted.
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Jillian York (Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism)
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In terms of change, what is the most significant change in Black politics since the end of the civil rights movement? Is it related to Black feminism as well? Well, I think the interconnectedness of antiracist movements with gender is crucial, but we also need to do this with class, nationality, and ethnicity—I don’t think that we can imagine Black movements in the same way today as we once did. The assumption that Black freedom was freedom for the Black man created a certain kind of border around the Black struggle which can no longer exist. So I think that the Black radical tradition has to embrace the struggles against anti-Muslim racism, which is perhaps the most virulent form of racism today. It makes no sense to imagine eradicating anti-Black racism without also eradicating anti-Muslim racism.
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Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
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The growth of mutual respect went hand in hand as Hindu nationalism became dominant. Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the founding father of the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was an admirer of Nazism. Hindu fundamentalism and hatred of Muslims is at the heart of BJP thinking. A pioneer of this ideology, Veer Savarkar, wrote that India’s model for its “Muslim problem” should be how the Nazis managed their “Jewish problem.” The RSS has evolved since its founding but an admiration of Nazism remains in some contemporary sections of the party.
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Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
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The father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, wrote in his seminal 1896 pamphlet, The Jewish State, “There [in Palestine] we shall be a sector of the wall of Europe against Asia, we shall serve as the outpost of civilization against barbarism.”24 Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who led the country between 1999 and 2001, used a metaphor with a similar meaning: Israel is a “villa in the middle of a jungle,” arguing that Israel was a civilized nation among Muslim savages in the Middle East.
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Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
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The partition of India was not simply the result of an internal feud between Muslims and Hindus. Nor was it an isolated event. Indonesia's numerous secessionists movements, the bloody border disputes between Morocco and Algeria, the fifty-year civil war in Sudan between Arab northerners and Black African southerners, the partitioning of Palestine and the resulting cycle of violence, the warring ethnic factions in Iraq, and the genocide of nearly a million Tutsis at the hands of the Hutus in Rwanda, to name but a handful of cases, have all been in considerable measure a result of the decolonization process.
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Reza Aslan (No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam)
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The example of the Jewish state gives detailed indications of how an Islamic Palestinian state should be organised. Israel has no written constitution, but the Ministry of Religious Affairs controls every law issued by the Knesset to ensure its accordance with the Torah. If the state is sometimes too slow or unwilling to implement religious laws and to supervise their observance, truly religious people (al-qubba ‘āt al-sūd or black hats) themselves go into the street and control their fellow citizens.
Nusse, Andrea. Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas (p. 49). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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Ḥamās perceives Islam in a defensive position, struggling against a local as well as an international environment that is openly hostile towards Muslims. The Umma has to be protected from threatening developments such as the mass immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel. The Islamic world is seen to be in a deep crisis. Nevertheless, the Islamists display self-assurance, optimism and belief in the final victory.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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Again and again, the Islamists stated that the Western intervention [in Iraq] was directed against the Muslim people and not against one political leader [Saddam Hussein] who did wrong. As a proof of this theory, they mentioned that the military and economic boycott, imposed by the "so-called security council", was sufficient to realise the two pretended aims of the US intervention: the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait and the destruction of the Iraqi military power. Ḥamās deplored the undifferentiated bombing of military and civilian targets that proved the "extent of the Western hatred of Islam and the Muslims" (madā ḅaqdihim ‘alā alIslām). This "ideological concept" (tas ṣawwur ‘aqā’ idī) was said to link the West and the Jews more than just economic and security interests. According to Ḥamās, one of the true goals of the Western invasion was the "establishment of the ‘Greater Israel’" as laid down in the texts of the Talmud. The invasion of Iraq should "facilitate Israel to conquer Jordan" (ghazw al-‘urdun).
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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Ḥamās is convinced that Islam corresponds to the "real nature" of the Palestinians and consequently a solution to the Palestinian problem has to be Islamic and achieved by means based on Islamic beliefs. Together with this conviction goes the call for a democratisation of political life. This call was mainly made in connection with a harsh criticism of the existing Arab regimes, but it also applied to the situation in the Occupied Territories.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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The militant Islamists, convinced of the exclusive truth of their vision of Islam, display little tolerance even towards fellow Muslims. Their monolithic vision of Islam does not allow this. Consequently, they do not develop any tools for coping with dissent among the people. Many elements, then, point out that the Islamists’ vision of democracy is quite different from the one developed in Western Europe, even though the same terminology is used.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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The father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, wrote in his seminal 1896 pamphlet, The Jewish State, “There [in Palestine] we shall be a sector of the wall of Europe against Asia, we shall serve as the outpost of civilization against barbarism.”24 Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who led the country between 1999 and 2001, used a metaphor with a similar meaning: Israel is a “villa in the middle of a jungle,” arguing that Israel was a civilized nation among Muslim savages in the Middle East. This language matters because it displays a contempt for non-Jews that is carried into its relations with outsiders. It was common for Jews to be taught at school or in religious education, as I was told at home by my liberal Jewish parents, that Jews are the chosen people and have a unique relationship with God and society. We could and should help others (though there were set limits to this sympathy, namely excluding Palestinians). It is a belief system that allows racial supremacy against non-Jews to thrive and justifies disregard for their lives. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2010, referencing the phrase from verses in the Book of Isaiah, that Israel is “a proud people with a magnificent country and one which always aspires to serve as ‘light unto the nations.
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Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
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This use of the war on terror as a broad designation of the project of twenty-first-century Western democracy has served as a justification of anti-Muslim racism; it has further legitimized the Israeli occupation of Palestine; it has redefined the repression of immigrants; and has indirectly led to the militarization of local police departments throughout the country.
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Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
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While Israel’s exact role in the Rwandan genocide remains hidden from public view, the Jewish state was happy to support another regime in its ethnic cleansing. Myanmar was credibly accused by the United Nations in 2018 of committing genocide against the Muslim Rohingya minority: the country’s military had used arson, rape, and murder as weapons of war in its brutal campaign. None of this had bothered Israel, and in 2015 a secret delegation from Myanmar visited Israel’s defense industries and naval and air bases to negotiate deals for drones, a mobile phone-hacking system, rifles, military training, and warships.
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Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
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The main problem for the Muslims to resolve is the existence of the Jewish state of Israel in the middle of the Arab-Muslim world. It constitutes a constant reminder of the weakness and deep crisis of the Islamic Umma that does not have the strength to get rid of this 'cancer' (saraṭān). The Jewish state is presented by Ḥamās as a purely religious state which is part of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy against the Muslims in particular and the whole world in general. On these grounds, all Muslims have the duty to fight the Jewish enemy.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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It is likely that the Islamists are the only ones authorized to define those boundaries of truly Islamic behaviour; Islam is thus narrowed down to their understanding of Islam. They make clear that they won’t accept any "challenge" (ṭa’n) or denouncement (tashhīr) of individuals or the community, because believers never defame nor curse. Individuals are thus denied the right to criticise.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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The Islamists’ view of religious minorities is crucial for the understanding of the principles underlying their ideas about democracy and the state. Ḥamās’ position relies closely on the classical Islamic teaching on this question. There, Jews and Christians—as well as other non-Muslims possessing a scripture—are recognised as "People of the Book". Those residing in territory ruled by Muslims (dār alḅarb) were tolerated religious minorities, called dhimmīs. Dhimma means a contract which the believer agrees to respect and the violation of which makes him liable to blame (dhamm). The security of life and property and an indefinite assurance of protection (amān) are guaranteed by the Muslim state. But as dhimmīs are not true believers, they are not entitled to full membership in the Muslim brotherhood. As a sign of submission to the Islamic state, dhimmīs have to pay a poll tax.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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The vocabulary used to describe the Jews is highly indicative of the Qur’ānic and Western sources from which it is derived. Qur’ānic vocabulary and paraphrases are often blended with pejorative expressions from certain modern Christian anti-Semitic writings rather than from classical Islamic ones. In the Qur’ān, Ḥadīth, Tafsīr and other theoretical literature, the Jews are named as "Ban ū Isrā’īl" and "al-Yahūd", or the names of the Jewish tribes of Medina are mentioned. The Palestinian Islamists use the term "al-Yah ūd" as well as "unbelievers" (kāfirūn). They also use characterisations of the Jews as "the people upon whom God’s anger came" which can be found in many places in the Qur’ ān as well as in the Sūrat al-Fātiḅa and which are generally interpreted as designating the Jews. The Qur’ ānic terms bāṭil and ḅaqq are used to designate the two parties involved in the conflict.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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One might speculate that the Islamists’ call for democracy is a tactical manoeuvre because in the current political situation in the Arab-Islamic world free elections might assure them the ascendancy to power. And as easily as it was integrated into their thought it might be rejected again if the political situation changes. This could be true, even though Islamists probably do not see it in these terms. As I have shown in the preceding section on the Intifāḍa, the Islamists genuinely believe that Islam corresponds to the "true nature" of Muslim people. If Muslims stray from their path and adhere to other ideologies, this is only a matter of ignorance and it is hoped that one day this "true nature" will regain the upper hand. The Islamists can thus be very confident and honestly support the idea of free elections.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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Ḥamās sketches out an ideological alternative to the PLO’s new moderate position by defending with religious arguments the uncompromising attitude taken up by the PLO for so long. It rejects the PLO’s secular vision of statehood and opposes it with a nationalist ideology supposedly based on traditional Islam.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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The West is perceived as genuinely hostile towards Islam and the Muslim countries. . . . United in their common aim to harm Islam, they are considered by the Islamists as enemies of the Umma. Any strengthening of Islam represents a victory against the West. Thus every development or event in the Arab world is interpreted as reaction to the West. Furthermore, the Islamists’ attitude towards the West and its institutions is ambiguous in a similar way as their view of the Zionists and the state of Israel, where hatred mixes with admiration.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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Perhaps one possible explanation for the elevation of Saddam as a Muslim hero is the centrality of the Palestine question in Palestinian Islamism. Whoever seems to defend the Palestinian interests, a core duty for every true Muslim since it goes far beyond a simple territorial dispute, is accepted with open arms.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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Ḥamās preferred the "prolongation of the present situation with all its weaknesses" to joining the US-Zionist arrangement because they believed that the present weakness of the Muslims will be followed by a period of strength—"this is the logic of history.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)
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Perhaps we should reverse the demand. I think it is entirely appropriate for people in the Arab world to demand that those of us in the West prevent our governments from bolstering repressive regimes—and especially Israel. The so-called war on terror has done inestimable damage to the world, including the intensification of anti-Muslim racism in the United States, Europe, and Australia. As progressives in the Global North, we certainly have not acknowledged our major responsibilities in the continuation of military and ideological attacks on people in the Arab world.
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Angela Y. Davis (Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement)
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The Palestinian national movement started life with a vision and goal of a Palestinian Muslim Arab-majority state in all of Palestine—a one-state “solution”—and continues to espouse and aim to establish such a state down to the present day.
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Benny Morris (One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict)
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The existence of Israel is called by the Qur'ånic term of batil, the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state is viewed as haqq. The dichotomous character of the worldview advanced by the Qur'än is thus applied to the conflict with Israel. But — paradoxically or as a consequence — the fact that Israel is perceived to be based on religious laws, and the efficiency of world Jewry in achieving its religious interests at the same time, inspires profound admiration and serves as a model for a coming Islamic Palestinian state.
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Andrea Nuesse (Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas)