What is there to "Return Home" To?

Foreign Policy has a gallery of photographs recording the remains of the Jewish presence in the Arab Middle East - what they headline as "The Arab World's Dwindling Jewish Diaspora" - but still has the chutzpah to write:

The uncertain revolutions of the past year may present the best chance for long-exiled Jewish communities across the Middle East to return home.

Return home to what?

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The Attempted Vanquishing of Judaism

In a follow-up to my illustrative blog of the Temple Mount symbolically fettered/behind Islamic bars, I was directed to David Harounoff's review of Martine Gilbert's book on Jews in Arab lands (here) where David points out some very important observations - and lessons.  The book is entitled "In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands" (the books on my shelf on the subject is that by Norman Stillman and Andre Chouraqui) and Harounoff notes "the brutal choice offered many Jews in Muslim countries was mass conversion – or massacre".

More of his review:

Too often the cause of the enmity between the two peoples is presumed to be associated with the creation of Israel. Gilbert demonstrates the antagonism to be as ancient as Islam itself...the refusal of the Jews of Medina to accept him as a prophet led to their mass execution...the 7th century saw conquered Jewish communities annihilated or sold into slavery...subjected to inferior dhimmi status...compelled to wear distinctive clothing; subjected to an exclusive jizya tax; prohibited from employing Muslims or having sexual relations with Muslim women. Their movement was restricted and they were compelled to walk in the gutters. Another feature was the vanquishing of Judaic holy sites.

In an act that heralded the apparently intractable feud over the Old City, the 7th century Caliph Omar Ibn al-Kattab insisted that the Mosque of Omar be erected at the exact spot in Jerusalem where the Jewish Temple had stood 1,500 years earlier.

...Persian Shi’ite theocracy that ended in 1925 saw anti-Jewish hatred adopt racial features. Jews straying out of their ghettos during the 3-day muharram mourning period were likely to be killed. Jews were not permitted outdoors when it rained as it was thought the dirt they would shed would sully the feet of Muslims. In 1839, the Jews of the northern Persian city of Mashad were faced with the choice of mass conversion or massacre. Gilbert tells the moving story – sadly, one of many – of a 17-year-old girl, Sol Hachuel, who was publicly beheaded in Tangier in 1834 for refusing to convert. The Spanish consul described the tragedy as that of a Jew “entrapped by Islamic enmity toward the infidel.” [I noted that three eyars ago here]

...in 19th century Palestine. Pogroms, rivalling in intensity those of Tsarist Russia, took place in Hebron, Safed and Acre. Gilbert’s meticulous research has unearthed an article written for the New York Daily Tribune in 1854, where Karl Marx wrote that “nothing equals the misery and suffering of the Jews at Jerusalem…the constant object of Musselman oppression and intolerance.” Marx added: “Islamism proscribes the nation of the infidels constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Musselman and the unbeliever.”

...The most extreme manifestation came in the form of the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini. Banished from Palestine, and having fled Iraq where he unsuccessfully attempted to stage a pro-Nazi coup, the Mufti was granted refuge in Berlin. He succeeded in pressuring Hitler not to allow the transit of 4,000 Jewish children from Bulgaria to the safety of Palestine. He was instrumental in establishing an SS division, drawn from Muslim volunteers, who murdered most of Bosnian Jewry. Gilbert also reveals how the Mufti helped create an SS task force under the command of Colonel Walter Rauf who, with the help of Arab collaborators, were charged with planning the mass extermination of not only half a million Jews living in Palestine, but of the Jewish populations in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt...Gilbert recounts in often horrific detail the gradual ethnic cleansing of Jews across North Africa and Arabia...

He writes, though, that

The only Muslim state with a Jewish presence today is Iran.

I am fairly sure that there is a Jewish community in Morocco and smaller communities in Tunisia and a few in Yemen and maybe less in Syria still. This census has 10,400 Jews in Iran and 3,700 for Morocco & Tunisia combined, although after this year's events, who knows.
Getting back to the Temple Mount,

Caliph Omar the conquerer of Palestine in the 7th century asked his Jewish advisors where the Jewish Temple stood. He then ordered the construction of the Mosque of Omar directly on top of the Temple to symbolize the Islamic vanquishing over Judaism

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Anti-Appeasement to Islam Plea

Found here:

Jews have not invented appeasement but they have mastered it to such an extent that in Iran they have earned the reputation for cowardice. I cannot tell you how many jokes I heard about the timidity of the Jews when I was growing up in Iran. Appeasement is always perceived as cowardice. It actually emboldens the bully who sees appeasement as the sign of weakness.

Yathreb, later named after Muhammad, “Madinat al Nabi” (Prophet’s Town), was home to three Jewish tribes. When Muhammad invaded one of those tribes, the other two did not come to help. They feared for their own lives and decided not to anger the tyrant. After Muhammad banished the Bani Qainuqa tribe and took possession of their belongings, he turned his attention to the Bani Nadir. Again the other tribe did not come to the defense of their brethrens. Muhammad banished the Bani Nadir and confiscated their belongings. At this time the Meccans attacked Medina. They came to punish Muhammad for all his raids and robberies. They asked the Bani Quraiza, the remaining Jewish tribe for help. But the Bani Quraiza feared that the Meccans may retreat leaving them at the mercy of Muhammad and refused to help. They even provided Muhammad with picks and shovels to dig a ditch around Medina, which protected him against the invaders.

In the cold of the winter, the army led by Abu Sufyan waited behind the ditches for the Bani Quraiza to join them in the battle. The Jews made excuses and did not show up. Eventually, Abu Sufyan’s patience wore out. He gathered his men, cursed the Jews and returned home.

No sooner than his army left the encampment, Muhammad laid siege on the fortress of the Bani Quraiza, cut off their supply of water and when they surrendered he beheaded all the men and threw their corpses in a ditch that had been dug with their own picks and shovels. He then took their wives and children as slaves.

The British rabbis are making the same mistake made by the rabbis of Yathreb. Should Muslims come to power, the Jews would be the first to lose their freedom and maybe their lives. Can’t the Harrow rabbis see the unbounded hatred that Muslims show towards the Jews? Do they really think all that hatred will go away through appeasement?

Although the Jews in Diaspora try to distance themselves from their brethren in Israel and some go as far as to malign and condemn the “evil Zionists,” Muslims’ enmity towards the Jews did not start with the state of Israel. Muslims hated the Jews before Israel existed and will continue to hate them even if Israel is nuked to extinction. The source of this hatred is in the Quran.

How can Muslims befriend the Jews when the Quran (9:29) says fight them, subdue them, and make them pay Jizyah (protection free) submissively? How can they like the Jews when the Quran (5:13) says “We have cursed them.” How can they be tolerant of the Jews when the Quran says, the Jews “strive to do mischief on earth” and their punishment specified in 5:33 is: “they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land?”

The belief that Muslims will ever accept the Jews as equals is a delusion. This delusion is the result of the ignorance of the Quran and Islam. Because Muhammad was inimical to the Jews, Muslims will keep their hatred of the Jews alive until the “Last Day,” when they believe, stones and trees will call them, “Oh slave of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”

The Harrow rabbis hope to ensure the safety of the Jews through appeasement. Muslims see this as the sign of weakness. They will intensify their hostility, expecting the Jews to bend over backwards and appease them more. This is how bullies react to appeasement. The more you give the more they want. Meanwhile they despise you for your weakness.

Appeasement is a mistaken policy. The Bani Quraiza paid for their mistake with their lives. Had they come to the help of the Meccans and fought against Muhammad, Islam could have been defeated and ended then. They were massacred and an estimated 280 million lives were lost throughout these 1400 years as the result of their timidity.

(Kippah tip: BT)

Roger Cohen Gets A History Lesson

To the Editor:

I was a 9-year-old girl living in Tehran when my family fled to America as a result of the Islamic Revolution. We didn’t leave Iran because of the weather, but because of a second-class existence transformed into a nightmare of religious persecution, which the few remaining Jews that Roger Cohen found have sadly internalized and accepted.

For Mr. Cohen to suggest that Iranian Jews have anything close to religious freedom or free expression in Iran is to discredit the long history of Muslim oppression and to deny the experience of generations of Jews who locked themselves in their homes during the Ashura holidays lest they become the target of the frenzied Shiite masses who filled the streets, or who cringed when they were called a word meaning dirty and impure and told to wait at the end of the line to draw water.

What about the Jewish schools and institutions that were systematically shut down after the Islamic Revolution? Or the fact that while Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are free to shout “Death to Israel,” Iranian Jews are forced to?

We must never forget the true history of Jews under Muslim regimes — my history.

Mojgan Cohanim Lancman
Fresh Meadows, Queen

Good Move

From the NYTimes:-

With assertions of the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land in Israel expected to arise at an planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a Jewish advocacy group has scheduled a meeting in New York on Monday to call attention to people it terms “forgotten refugees.”

The organizing group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, says it is referring to the more than 850,000 Jews who left their homes in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948.

“This did not occur by happenstance, as is sometimes said,” said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of the group, a five-year-old New-York-based organization. “In fact, we have found evidence that there was collusion among the Arab nations to persecute and exploit their Jewish populations.”

To back the claim, the group has reproduced copies of a draft law composed by the Arab League in 1947 that called for measures to be taken against Jews living in Arab countries. The proposals range from imprisonment, confiscation of assets and forced induction into Arab armies to beatings, officially incited acts of violence and pogroms.

Subsequent legislation and discriminatory decrees enacted by Arab governments against Jews were “strikingly similar” to the actions laid out in the draft law, Mr. Urman said.

In January 1948, the World Jewish Congress submitted a memo with the text of the draft to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. It accompanied the submission with a warning that “all Jews residing in the Near and Middle East face extreme and imminent danger.”

At a meeting two months later, however, Charles Malik, the Lebanese ambassador and president of the council, succeeded in a parliamentary maneuver that ended consideration of the memo. Though the event drew news coverage at the time, it has apparently gone unnoticed since.

The Arab League draft law had been drawn up in response to the Nov. 29, 1947, vote in the General Assembly to partition Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish.

With the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the status of Jews in Arab countries changed dramatically, because most of those countries either declared war on Israel or supported the war to destroy the new state.

The group cites United Nations figures showing that 856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries in 1948.

“This was not just a forced exodus, it was a forgotten exodus,” said Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian minister of justice who is scheduled to be the main speaker at Monday’s program to open the campaign on behalf of the Jewish refugees.