JPost Editorial: Celebrating Israel
There is no shortage of negative news about Israel; Every once in a while we Israelis should remember there is much for which to be proud.Anti-Semites Unwittingly Aid Israel
In large part due to slanted media reports, propaganda and downright lies, impressions of Israel worldwide tend to be negative – particularly among those who have never visited the country.
But according to the UN Human Development Index released this week, things in the Jewish state are not so bad. In fact, they are pretty good.
The index, which takes into consideration income, life expectancy and education for a combined development score, ranks Israel 18 out of 188 countries in human development. Not only did Israel’s score surpass by far all of its neighbors (Qatar is the highest ranked Arab state at No. 32; Saudi Arabia, 36; Lebanon 67; Jordan 80; Egypt, 108; and war-torn Syria at 134), but it outscored the EU and OECD averages as well. Countries such as France, Spain, Italy and even Japan scored lower than Israel. Sub-Saharan Africa scored the lowest.
A number of factors come together to give Israel one of the highest scores in the world. For instance, Israel has the second lowest rate of maternal mortality in the world with just two deaths for every 100,000 births. And at 2.9 births per woman, the Jewish state manages to maintain such a low mortality rate while having the highest fertility rate of any country in the “Very High Human Development” category (those countries ranked in the top 49). For the sake of comparison, the US has 28 maternal deaths per 100,000 births at a two-birthsper- woman average.
I admit to getting a kick out of seeing anti-Semites inadvertently help the very Jewish state they dream of destroying. And it happens more often than you might think, as was driven home by three very different news reports this week.Book explodes myth of Moroccan coexistence
The first is that some 8,000 French Jews moved to Israel this year, topping last year’s all-time high of 7,000. Immigration is always good for Israel. Not only does each group of immigrants bring its own ideas and strengths that contribute to making Israel a better place, but the country simply needs a critical mass of people to survive as a Jewish state in an Arab region. Indeed, had it not been for the millions of Jews who immigrated since 1948, Israel might not have survived.
Most immigrants to Israel are Zionists; they genuinely care about the Jewish state. But even so, most of them wouldn’t have left comfortable lives elsewhere had there not been a push factor as well as a pull factor; that’s why most American Zionists still don’t come. And usually, anti-Semitism has been part of that push factor, just as it is for French Jews today.
So thank you, anti-Semites, for turning a country of 800,000 people into one eight million strong. It would never have happened without your help.
It is a sorry sign of how intolerant of minorities were the theologians of the al-Maliki school of Islam in the Maghreb until the colonial era, that the first thing they published when the printing press came to Morocco in the 19th century, was not a scientific tract, or even the Koran, but the Epistle against the Jews which al-Maghili wrote to the chieftains of Touat five centuries earlier.
Maghreb theologians preserved a strict interpretation of the dhimmi laws which governed the relationship of Jews and Muslims under the 8th century Pact of Omar. The prophet Muhammad had spared the lives of the defeated Jews and Christians as 'People of the Book', rather than put them to the sword, but they had to abide by rules denoting their subjugation and inferiority to Muslims.
Following codification in the 13th century by the literalist theologian Ibn Taymiyya, 'Dhimmi' acquired a precise meaning in Islamic jurisprudence: non-Muslims would be 'protected' by Muslims in return for a capitation or poll tax. This begs the question - protected against whom?
Violent mobs singled out the Jewish 'Other' for attack and looting. Jews would 'cop it' at times of political turmoil or trouble.
Jews could not build new synagogues or repair them without permission; they had to allow Muslims to enter them at will. Jewish homes had sometimes to be painted red or blue, even after Jews had been permitted in modern times to move out of the Jewish mellah into the medina.
Jews were forbidden from teaching their children the Koran. This was to prevent Jews engaging in theological polemics with Muslims.
Jews had to wear special badges and black attire. A Jew's djellaba was worn awkwardly 'off the shoulder' for maximum discomfort. Jews were not permitted to blow the ram's horn (shofar) in a public place. The Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem would use this pretext to incite anti-Jewish riots in 1929.
