Hamas threatens war resulting from Jews visiting the Temple Mount during Chanukah; Jordan joins the antisemitic, anti-Chanukah jihad

Hamas issued this press release in English:

The planned mass incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, orchestrated by Israeli settler groups under the cover and protection of the hardline right-wing Israeli occupation government to mark the so-called Hanukkah holiday, constitute a dangerous development aimed at provoking the feelings of the Palestinian people and of all Muslims. 

We hold the Israeli occupation government fully responsible for the repercussions of such raids and provocations. We emphasise that such policies and incursions threaten to explode the situation in the face of the Israeli occupation and colonial settlers. 

We call on the Palestinian citizens of Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque by intensifying their presence at the Muslim sacred compound in order to foil all schemes intended to impose a new fait accompli and divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque temporally and spatially. 

The Palestinian people will continue to defend the Al-Aqsa compound with all means possible and at any cost.

Note that even in English, the antisemitism shines through. Not only are they saying that Jews hve no rights to visit our most sacred site, and not only are they saying that the only reason Jews might want to visit the site is specifically to provoke Muslims, and not only are they saying that their own natural violence that might erupt in the anger of seeing Jews walking around peacefully would be the Jews' fault, but they imply that Chanukah itself is a fake holiday - "so-called Hanukkah holiday" - perhaps as an excuse to do these "provocations."

In Arabic, of course, they are even more strident in their threats.

Abu Obeida, the military spokesman for the Martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, called on the masses of our people and our nation to mobilize to protect the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in the face of the continuous crimes of the occupation, stressing that the battle with the occupation is long, extended, complex and has multiple fronts, mechanisms and means.

Today, Sunday, Abu Obeida stressed that the occupation's threats about the further storming of Al-Aqsa are serious, and indicate the nature of the criminal structure that came to power in the entity, adding, "This requires a state of alert for our people and our nation to protect the place of their Prophet from this miserable fragmentation."

He stressed that the battle of Saif al-Quds (2021 Gaza war) was the detonator that exploded latent energies and removed the ashes from blazing embers in the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and occupied Palestine in the year 48, and was an inspiring model.

Abu Obeida called on our revolutionary youth in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian interior, to continue to escalate the resistance against the occupation and settlers, stressing that the extended and escalating resistance movement is the natural state to respond to aggression and establish the next liberation stage.

He added, "We are facing a battle of existence, right, history, and the future, but victory is an hour's patience, and if the martyrs are planted despite the pain, a revolution and a real victory will grow."

Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad met in Lebanon, somehow escaping the Gaza "open air prison" whenever they want to, and they included threats to Israel for Jews visiting the Temple Mount:

Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Sheikh Mujahid Saleh Al-Arouri, Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, met with Brother Mujahid Ziyad Al-Nakhala, in the Lebanese capital, Beirut,  yesterday . 

 The two parties emphasized joint cooperation in strengthening and activating the resistance of our people in all of Palestine in the face of the Zionist occupation and criminality, especially in the West Bank, and to confront the Zionist plans that seek to undermine the resistance and liquidate the Palestinian cause, the aggressive threats targeting Jerusalem, and the repeated storming of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The inflammatory and inciteful rhetoric isn't only the domain of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups. Jordanian officials joined the anti-Chanukah, anti-Jewish party:

Secretary-General of the Royal Commission for Jerusalem Affairs, Abdullah Kanaan, confirmed that the concept of holidays is usually associated with peace, unlike what is happening in occupied Palestine, which activates and intensifies the Israeli attacks and incursions against the Islamic and Christian sanctities in the city of Jerusalem.

He said that the Jews perform alleged rituals related to their festivals in a way that threatens the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque directly,  and makes the idea of ​​​​demolishing the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and establishing the alleged temple in its place a sacred religious principle, as is the case in the doctrine of the holiday (Hanukkah), which provokes the feelings of Muslims and Christians whose sanctities are also exposed. It clearly shows the occupation's plans to Judaize Jerusalem, and efforts to change the existing historical situation, which endangers peace and security in the region and the world.

The Ammon News site then goes on a bizarre, antisemitic reading of history, not only denying Jewish history itself but then blaming Jews celebrating Jewish holidays for Arabs slaughtering Jews:

Today, Sunday, the Jews began their celebrations of the Hanukkah or Lights)festival, which is a celebration to commemorate the so-called alleged temple, and to restore freedom of worship to the Jewish people after the success of the popular revolution led by Judah Maccabee and his brothers, according to legends on which they built their fabricated beliefs, and at the same time they oppress Muslims and Christians in the occupied territories to prevent them from celebrating their festivals.

The Jewish holidays, including Hanukkah, are dominated by the nature of violations and assaults in alleged religious dress, which creates a difficult and even dangerous reality for Jerusalemites by preventing them from freedom of worship, and the exercise of economic and social activities, due to checkpoints, closures, holding Talmudic prayers, lighting candlesticks, and incursions by herds of settlers under protection and direct participation of the Israeli police and army.

It is noteworthy that the Zionist gangs carried out an attack during the Prophet Musa season on 4/4/1920 under the pretext of celebrating the Jewish Passover, and on 8/15/1929, which coincided with the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, they attacked the Palestinians under the pretext of celebrating the day of the alleged destruction of the Temple, so that occupied Palestine would witness the Buraq Revolution. 

This isn't "anti-Zionism." This is Jew-hatred, and anyone who denies this simple equation supports it.

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Would Netflix allow a drama about the 1929 Hebron massacre? (UPDATE)

There has been a lot of coverage of the Jordanian film Farha, now available on Netflix, which includes a scene of Israeli soldiers execute a family with a baby for sheer pleasure. 

Israellycool excerpts some scenes.

His characterization of the film as a blood libel is accurate. People assume that a historic drama is based on reality, and while there were scattered instances of Israeli outrages in 1948 as in any war, they were most definitely the exception and were generally punished. Farha says that this was - and is - the norm for Israel, and as such it is outrageous. 

But let's do a thought experiment. 

Let's pretend that someone made an accurate drama about the massacre of Jews in Hebron in 1929.

The reality is that the Arabs did do atrocities then. As survivors testified, these included "widespread rape. The castration of seven men, including rabbis in their 60s and 70s. A seventy year old tied to a door and tortured until he died. A two-year-old with his head torn off. A rabbi set on fire. An elderly disabled pharmacist tortured to death, his wife mutilated, his daughter raped and murdered."

It would be a compelling story, with real drama and real facts. And it would never be shown on Netflix.

Movies about Nazis massacring Jews are fine, and the more detail, the better. But movies about Arabs abusing Jews? No, that would be considered Islamophobic, and wouldn't be touched by any mainstream streaming service or distributor. Imagine the outcry that would accompany such a film - it would make the Jewish reaction to Farha look like nothing.

Furthermore, imagine what such a film would include. Even if made by a fervent Zionist, it would feature subplots of Arabs saving Jews - which some did - to humanize the Arab side and ensure that the film is not incitement against Arabs as a whole.

Now, can you imagine a Jordanian or Palestinian film about the Nakba that would humanize Jews?  

A documentary was once made about Hebron, in 1999, where survivors told about what they witnessed. It had decent reviews. 

And you essentially cannot find it nowadays. It isn't streamed anywhere, and the only place I can find to buy a DVD is here at the National Center for Jewish Film. 

Why is such a seminal event in Zionist history virtually ignored in film? 

We know the answer. 

UPDATE: The Hebron documentary is (unlisted) on YouTube with the English subtitles. You can watch it here:

(h/t GnasherJew)

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The Buraq Wall was never where the Kotel is

Palestinian routinely claim that the Kotel, or Western Wall, is really a Muslim shrine - the Buraq Wall, where Mohammed supposedly tethered his flying steed during his miraculous "night journey."

It turns out that most Muslims never believed that until the 1929 riots and after Israel built the plaza in front of the Kotel in 1967.

The Shaw Commission report of 1930, about the riots that started at the Wall in 1929, describes the competing religious claims to the wall - and does not mention the legend of the Buraq at all, only that it is part of the Haram esh Sharif like all the other walls. 

One of the Holy Places in connection with which it has not infrequently been necessary to give rulings of the character indicated above is the Western or Wailing Wall; in Jerusalem. This Wall; forms part of the western exterior of the ancient Jewish Temple; being the last remaining vestige of that sacred place it is regarded with the greatest reverence by religious Jews, whose custom of praying there extended back to at least the Middle Ages. ....The Wall is also part of the Haram-esh-Sherif, which is an Islamic place of great sanctity, being reckoned next to the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina as an object of veneration to Moslems.

If the Kotel was considered the holy "Buraq Wall" by Muslims at the time, certainly that would have been mentioned here. Although it must be mentioned that the testimony included the idea that the Muslims had exaggerated the importance of the Buraq Wall:

Merriman introduced part of Chancellor’s statement to the Permanent Mandates Commission in July, in which he stated that the Moslems are trying to invest El Burak with a sanctity never before attached to it. Merriman implied that the Government was as skeptical as the Jews regarding the sacredness of the pavement to the Moslems.

Wikipedia points to an obscure German source from the 1860s that appears to say that the Muslims claimed the entire Western wall of the Temple Mount to be the Buraq Wall. 

A 1932 academic paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature, by C. D. Matthews, discusses the topic of where Muslims believe Mohammed tied the steed and entered the Temple Mount:

Among the orthodox who maintain the legends of Islam as historic truth, the famous "Night-Journey" of the Prophet sanctifies, as could nothing else, Jerusalem as a city of Muslim shrines, especially the Rock itself, from which Mohammed ascended into Heaven, and the Wall of al-Buraq, where Gabriel, the angelic conductor, tied up the divine steed on the arrival at the "further mosque" from Mecca.  Unfortunately, this last spot is identified as the same as the "Wailing Wall," involving a clash of religious sentiments which has often led to tragic results. Of course, the factious can always find factors. But is the Wall of al-Buraq the same as the Wailing Wall? The spot of contention is the southern end of the western wall of the Haram area. Muslim tradition is now well established that this is the holy station of their Prophet. Some accounts of the Night-Journey, as for instance our own author, say that Mohammed entered through a "gate through which the sun and the moon incline"--or shine at setting. This would indicate, of course, a western or southwestern gate. It agrees with the ordinary identification as the now walled-up Bab an-Nabi underneath the Gate of the Moors, Bab al-Maghribah, just south of the Place of Wailing, in the western wall of the Haram. 

He's saying that the Muslim consensus in Jerusalem was that the Buraq was tethered to the south of the Kotel, under the Mughrabi Gate - not where the Kotel is, north of the gate.

But that's just the beginning:

Further, Ibn al-Fakih (903) says the place of the tying up of al-Buraq is in the angle of the southern minaret-which was at the southwest corner of the Haram. And Ibn 'Abd Rabbih (913) says it is under the corner of the masjid-which Le Strange (in his book Palestine Under the Moslems) takes to mean the Aqsa but which can as well refer to the entire Haram and therefore Aqsa, mean the same as the statement of Ibn al-Fakih. 

But Muqaddasi (985), a citizen of Jerusalem and a most careful writer, speaks of the "two gates" of the Prophet, in such terms as positively to identify his choice as the ancient double gate in the south wall of the Aqsa. There used to run here a large entrance which is still a subterranean opening from within the mosque. The location of the former double gate is just as near the southern minaret on the southwestern corner as is the Gate of the Moors in the southern portion of the western wall. 

Further, Nasir I Khusrau (1047), despite the earthquake which came between Muqaddasi and him, resulting in changes of structure and name, still speaks of this gate under the Aqsa as the gate of the Prophet. He says (as quoted by Le Strange, P. M., pp. 178-9): "The gate of the Prophet... which opens toward the kiblah point-- that is, towards the south... The Prophet... on the night of his ascent into heaven, passed into the noble sanctuary through this passageway, for the gateway opens on the road from Makkah." It is only when we come to Mujir ad-Din, as late as 1496, an author whose work was almost entirely of secondary material, that we have a definite change of reference to the southwestern gate in the western wall as the gate of the prophet; and even here the author is speaking mainly of the Gate of the Moors over the walled-up gate which he says incidentally is also called Bab an-Nabi. (See Le S., p. 182.)

Finally, Le Strange (p. 182), who had studied thoroughly all the Arab geographers and historians on Palestine, takes the gates of the Prophet as named (not in order) by the two earliest writers Ibn al-Fakih and Ibn 'Abd Rabbih, to be identifiable with those named in the southern wall by Muqaddasi and Nasir. This places the weight of testimony on the western portion of the southern wall of the Haram area, not the southern portion of the western wall, as the proper Wall of al-Buraq of Muslim tradition.   

The blue section is where the Kotel is, the green is where the Buraq Wall was accepted as Muslim tradition as of 1932, possibly at the southern corner, and the orange outline covers areas where the original Muslim traditions placed the Buraq Wall.

So when Palestinians today claim that the Western Wall is really a holy Muslim Buraq Wall, they are lying. And it is a lie about Muslim tradition itself, meaning that they are willing to change their own history and legends just to take away any Jewish claim in Jerusalem.

That is what hate looks like. 

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A short history of "Arabs Threaten Jews" (not "Zionists")

I decided to do a quick search of headlines that said that Arabs threatened Jews.

April 17, 1920: Arabs threaten to massacre all Jews of Palestine (which included many non-Zionists at the time.)

March 14, 1925: Arabs threaten to attack Jews if they honor Balfour when he visits.

August 11, 1925: Arabs threaten to massacre all Jews in Palestine again (even though the headline says "of Zion movement."

November 23, 1929: Arabs threaten force if Jews continue to worship at the Western Wall.

May 13, 1936: Arabs threaten Jews in Arab countries if they don't get their demands met in Palestine.

June 26, 1936: Bedouin in Transjordan threaten to march across the river to aid their brethren in the "great Arab revolt."

June 30, 1936: Algerian Arabs threaten Algerian Jews.

October 10, 1938: Arab leaders send a telegram to Chaim Weizmann threatening the lives of all Jews in the "East" if Zionists don't accede to their demands, saying it would be the worst calamity in Jewish history.

May 30, 1946: Rulers of Arab states warn Palestinian Jews of plans to have Jews immigrate from DP camps to Palestine. One leader says that if 100,000 Jews enter Palestine after almost being slaughtered in Europe, then the Arabs would slaughter all 100,000 of them.

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Scratch Palestinian history, reveal antisemitism

The PLO tweeted:

As with everything else in Palestinian history, look beneath the surface and find antisemitism.

The Catholic Advance wrote about this conference:

Moslems and Christians - but no Jews. The Palestinians claim that Jews at the time were an equal minority but Jews were not invited to supposedly Palestinian nationalist conferences.

And notice that the resolutions are ultimately about attacking the Zionist community, not about promoting Palestinian nationalism. 

Also notice:

The Catholic Advance, as we will see later, clearly didn't think that Jews have any business living in Palestine. The Jewish Agency allowed women to vote way before 1929, but they  don't count.

The Women's Congress was scheduled right before the All-Palestine Arab Congress, which featured this:

"All the natives of Palestine, irrespective of creed" - except for Jews.

That's pretty much the definition of antisemitism right there (and one that this Catholic newspaper embraced.)

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The King David Hotel Bombing—What Arab Terrorist Ever Warned a Jew, First? (Judean Rose)

Ninety-one people were killed in the King David Hotel bombing of July 22, 1946. Fifteen of them were Jews. One of those Jews was my 28-year-old cousin, Yehuda Yanovsky. He’d gone to the hotel that day to invite his former co-workers to his engagement party, to be held that evening.

Yehuda had clerked for the British, a fact that made him a reviled figure in the eyes of much of the family. They saw him as a traitor compared to say, his Aunt Leah who went to America and on her return, smuggled in guns for the Etzel, under her clothes. Yehuda didn’t care. He’d hitched his star to the Brits to the point that after some years at his desk job at the King David, Yehuda had volunteered for the RAF. Now home from the war, he was all set to marry his sweetheart.

It was not to be.

Yehuda Yanovsky 1918-1946.

That, however, was not the fault of the Etzel (Irgun Tzvai Leumi). Headed by Menachem Begin, the paramilitary organization founded by Zeev Jabotinsky had done everything in its power to minimize casualties. Warning calls were made to the Palestine Post (today the Jerusalem Post), the French Consulate, and the hotel desk, 22 minutes before the bombing. The Palestine Post subsequently reported the warning to the police. The French Consulate, located next door to the hotel, heeded the warning and as directed, opened the windows to prevent them from shattering in the blast. The Etzel itself herded the hotel staff into the kitchen and shooed them out the door, ten minutes before the bombing occurred. But whoever was manning the hotel switchboard that day, chose to ignore the warning and as a result, 91 people died that day, including my cousin Yehuda.

Casualty list from the Palestine Post, July 24, 1946.

From that day forward, Menachem Begin would forever be branded “that terrorist” by those on the Israeli left. The Likud Party, too, the party founded by Begin and headed today by Benjamin Netanyahu, was (and in some quarters still is) thought of as a party of terrorists. Outside of Israel, the anti-Israel crowd loves to point to the King David Hotel bombing as the perfect example of Jewish terror, which they say, is no different than Arab terror, except the diabolical Jews get a pass in the eyes of the world.

Wanted by the British. Menachem Begin at upper left.

You might be tempted to point to the sheer number of Arab terror attacks (and attendant casualties) as the thing that distinguishes them from this single episode of a Jewish hotel bombing. But that is not what makes them different. For while the antisemites like to pretend that the King David Hotel bombing is no different than, for example, the Arab bus bombings of the 1^st Intifada, or the Sbarro Pizzeria Massacre, they aren’t fooling anyone. Go ahead, recite the death count of the King David Hotel bombing all you want, but no Arab terrorist ever gave a Jew advanced warning prior to an attack. No one told Malki Roth to leave her pizza and run. Unlike Menachem Begin’s Etzel, which gave multiple warnings to multiple parties and evacuated the hotel’s personnel to safety.

Menachem Begin was no terrorist. The British were the terrorists. They turned their backs in Hebron and Safed as Arab terrorists murdered innocent men, women, and children, including my husband's cousin Jacob Wexler. They imprisoned Jews and hung them when they tried to defend themselves against Arab terror.

 If only the world would mind its own business and leave the Jews alone.

But they won’t and they didn’t. And so the Etzel decided to make a show of might and force. And a show—albeit with a landmark building destroyed—it would have been, had the call to the hotel not been ignored. In his book, “The Revolt: Story of the Irgun,” Begin quotes a British official who refused to evacuate the building: “We don’t take orders from the Jews.”

 

But this is the attitude the Jews had long encountered under the British the British. As far back as 1929, Rabbi Yaakov Slonim of Hebron was attacked in the street, by Arabs with knives and stones, as Jews watched on from their windows, helpless. 

According to eyewitness testimony:

A Jewish woman who was at the rabbi’s house, dared to go out to the British Chief of Police (who participated in egging on the mob), and begged him to save the rabbi. His answer was: “This is no matter for a dumb, Jewish woman. Go home and stay there. Usually, it is the Jews who are to blame in these cases.”

Though these remarks were said in English, the mob heard and was encouraged by them.

The rabbi’s daughter Rivka Slonim, having survived the pogrom, relates what happened next:

Soon after my father and I shut ourselves up in our home, our neighbor Abu-Shaker appeared on his white horse.

He tied up his horse and sat down on our doorstep. From what he told us – that the British police were aiding the rioters, standing aside when the mob stormed Jewish houses and slaughtered their inhabitants – we knew our final hour had come.

After the massacre, the British made a show of conducting an investigation:

The investigative committee sent out by the British Colonial Office accepted testimony from Arabs only, as well as the infamous police chief Cafferata and Governor Abdullah Kardos.

Jews were not permitted to present their version to the committee, with the exception of Rabbi Yaakov Slonim, the father of the murdered E. D. Slonim.

Rabbi Slonim related the events of the two days in Hebron, of the murder of at least 67 Jews, the destruction of approximately 80 Torah scrolls, and the responsibility of the authorities, particularly Cafferata and Kardos who failed to prevent the pogrom. The committee disallowed Rabbi Slonim’s testimony.

On October 15, 1929, the trials of the murderers began. Sheik Marka, leader of the mob in Hebron, received a two-year prison term which was changed to house arrest, and everything “fizzled away."

Two of the four who murdered Rabbi Meir Shmuel Castel were acquitted due to “lack of evidence.” The two others were sentenced to death. The trials were a show for the gallery. Almost all the murderers went free and kept what they had plundered and stolen. This drove the Jewish community into a deep depression. The clear, positive attitude the British had towards the killers was visible. For most of the trials, a date for proceedings wasn’t even set. . .

. . . The British reaction to the pogrom was to expel about 1,000 Jews out of Hebron.

This is what happened in Hebron with the British in charge. Under their watch, the “City of Forefathers” became a Jew-free zone in 1929. Only in 1967 were the Jews able to return.

British complicity in the 1929 riots in Hebron and in Safed, too, was illustrative of British feeling toward the Jewish population of Mandate Palestine. The Brits were indulgent with the Arabs, but scorned, sneered at, and persecuted the Jews. What happened in Hebron was one very large piece of evidence—evidence of British hatred for the Jews they ruled.  For in essence, the British assisted the Arabs in emptying out the Jews from an entire Jewish city—the city that until today houses the remains of the Jewish forefathers. 

Why should anyone with even a smattering of understanding of what it was like for Jews living under these people in their own land, imagine that they would just shut up and take it—just lie down and die because to the British, like so many other antisemites, the Jews are only so much vermin?

Grave of Yehuda Yanovsky, Mount of Olives Cemetery, Jerusalem

For some Jews—proud Jews like Menachem Begin—that was impossible. No Jew should be treated like that, have to live like that, on Jewish soil. The balance of power was out of whack. So the Etzel bombed a building. But they first told the people to leave: the occupants of the hotel and the people next door at the French Consulate. The Etzel gave advance notice of the bombing to the English-language paper of record and personally evacuated the hotel workers.  

No one was supposed to be hurt. But the Brits didn’t think the Jews had it in them. So they failed to leave the building and save themselves. They also failed to share that information with others in the building who were loyal to them, such as my cousin Yehuda, who clearly made the wrong choice.

This is not terror. This is stupid people who hate and underestimate the Jews so much they won’t leave a building about to be bombed, even with advanced warning. 

When someone calls to alert you on the phone, telling you exactly what is going to happen when, and leaving you plenty of time to leave--that’s not terror. It’s the world once more refusing to mind its own business and leave the Jews alone. Especially within the borders of Eretz Israel. 

An Arab terrorist isn’t in the business of making a show. Rather than minimizing casualties, he aims to maximize them. And of course, the Arab terrorist’s biggest advantage is the element of surprise. 

Arab terrorists come through windows and kill little girls like Hallel Yaffa Ariel. They explode pizzerias and kill little girls like Malki Roth. They burst into homes and decapitate babies like 3-month-old Hadas Fogel. They point their rifles at babies in their strollers taking sun in the park, like 10-month-old Shalhevet Pass. They ram into babies in their strollers at bus stops and kill them, like 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun.

And they never warn a soul. Because the entire purpose of terror is to terrorize. Which is what Yehuda Yanovsky would be the first to tell you, were he alive today. My cousin was not a victim of “Jewish terror” but of British scorn for the Jewish people. 

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Arab antisemitism: The hate that cannot be named

I came across an online copy of Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Essential Reference Guide, a 2014 volume that attempts to distill the conflict to less than 400 pages, including source materials. 

Written and edited by southeast Asia-based academic Priscilla Roberts, it attempts to be even-handed and there is little that is offensive or too inaccurate (it certainly has mistakes.) 

But when I searched the book for "antisemitism," it mentions only the European version. It says nothing about Arab antisemitism. It doesn't have a separate entry on the Mufti of Jerusalem and his virulent hate nor anything about his Nazi collaboration. It mentions the Hebron pogrom of 1929 only as an aside in the article on United Kingdom Middle East policy: "Sporadic armed conflict between the two communities simmered until, in August 1929, 67 Jews were murdered by rioters in Hebron. This shocking event eroded what little confidence Jewish leaders had in a binational compromise future for the region and led to the rapid expansion of the paramilitary Jewish self-defense force known as the Haganah."

Throughout the book, Arab antipathy towards Jews is framed as a logical response to Zionism and the history of Islamic and Arab antisemitism is simply not there.

This is what we see in the media as well as academia. Jew-hatred is fundamentally irrational and no one wants to accuse Arabs or Muslims of being irrational, because that sounds Orientalist. Ignoring the very real history of antipathy towards Jews in the Arab world is not doing anyone any favors, though - if one ignores a fundamental reason for the conflict, one cannot possibly pretend to explain it.

Since the beginning of Islam, Jews were regarded as dhimmis in Muslim-majority (mostly Arab) lands. They were second class citizens with limited rights. They were tolerated, mostly, as long as they kept in their place. When they were perceived as having crossed some imaginary line, they were subjected to pogroms no less violent than those in eastern Europe. And the very existence of a Jewish state in the midst of Arab lands is hated not because of pro-Palestinian sentiment: it is from the shame that the weak, hated, dhimmi Jews defeated the combined Arab armies.

To ignore that history in describing the Arab Israeli conflict is to effectively censor an important narrative. Even worse, it ignores the antisemitism that is still seen in Arab media, today. 

Roberts worked with a larger team on the four volume 2008 "The Encyclopedia of The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History" which is also online. In that work, Arab antisemitism is not ignored, but it is minimized.

Its entry on antisemitism concentrates on how historic European antisemitism has animated modern Zionism, while Arab and Muslim antisemitism is mentioned only as a logical result of Jewish ambition. Even the Mufti's antisemitism, which is well documented from his own writings and radio broadcasts, is  downplayed as a response to Jewish power or realpolitik:

 The figure of Haj Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem, serves as an excellent indication of growing anti-Jewish sentiment during this period. A significant leader of the Palestinian Arabs, al-Husseini moved incrementally toward anti-Semitism as he opposed Jewish ambitions in the region. While he had economic dealings with the Jewish population, he also inspired and organized the growth of Arab paramilitary groups intent on thwarting the growth of Jewish power. When disputes over access to the holy places in Jerusalem led to open conflict in 1929, he proved unable to control his followers and ultimately gave assent to their actions. 

...The grand mufti of Jerusalem gained notoriety for his active courting of the Axis powers. However, his motivations also involved significant anti-British sentiment, for he viewed the Germans as the likely victors in the war and sought to gain influence with them.   

This is ahistorical but it reflects the general attitude of scholars towards Arab antisemitism: when it is mentioned at all, it is regarded as an unfortunate consequence of Jewish greed and power or an unintended result of other historical events. It is never considered on its own, and it is not mentioned as a continuation of centuries of Muslim attitudes towards Jews, as well as the influence of virulent Christian Arab antisemitism on Arab nationalism in the early 20th century which converted the Arab attitude towards Jews into full blown hate. 

The bias is clear when we see the full-page entry on "Anti-Arab Attitudes and Discrimination:" 

 Anti-Arab attitudes, especially toward Muslim Arabs, as well as formal and informal policies and codes of conduct that unfairly target Arabs and are sometimes known as anti-Arabism have been especially virulent in Israel since 1948. 

From reading this encyclopedia, one would believe that the only irrational hate in the conflict is that of Jews towards Arabs!

There is a major gap in scholarship towards the Middle East, and there are no signs that anyone is interested in filling it.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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