The Everlasting Hatred

by Hal Lindsey

  Babylon and Iraq

  Jews had a long history of residence in Babylon until the Muslim conquest in the year A.D. 634. Later, the heavy taxes were imposed, synagogues were razed, and, ultimately, entire communities were slaughtered.

  In the modern era, after Israel became a state, Iraq came down on Iraqi Jews with a pent-up fury. There was a long history of persecution in this region, but this was horrific. More than 123,000 Iraqi Jews fled to Israel in terror between 1949 and 1952 alone. Many were killed in riots. Those who fled left with nothing but the clothes on their backs—thankful they escaped with their lives. They left behind wealth and property that their families had accumulated over some twenty-five hundred years. Most of these families could trace their origins in Iraq back to the Babylonian captivity in the days of Daniel the prophet.

  Egypt

  Prior to 1948, the Jewish community in Egypt lived in relative peace and harmony compared to the plight of Jews in the neighboring Muslim nations. Even so, their lives were filled with constant uncertainty. Humiliations, property confiscations, and physical atrocities happened daily at the whim of the Muslim neighbors.

  Beginning in 1940, spurred by Nazi propaganda and the growth of the Zionist movement, many Jews were killed in anti-Jewish riots. Egypt even passed laws that all but prohibited Jews from being employed. The government confiscated property, and after the 1947 vote to partition Palestine, Jewish homes were looted and synagogues destroyed.

  In one ten-day period in 1948, 150 Jews were murdered or seriously wounded in Egyptian bloodletting. As soon as a ban on Jews leaving the country was lifted in 1949, some twenty thousand fled Egypt, mostly for Israel, with only the clothes on their backs.

  Admiration for Hitler

  Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser openly declared in 1964, “Our sympathy was with the Germans. The president of our Parliament, for instance, Anwar Sadat, was imprisoned for his sympathy with the Germans.”161

  In the 1970s, a prominent Egyptian writer was, once more, helping to stir up the old blood libels against Jews. Anis Mansour assured his readers that the medieval lie that Jews sacrificed children and drank their blood was historically true and that “the Jews confessed.” Because of this, he said it was perfectly appropriate to persecute “the wild beasts.” Another time he wrote: “People all over the world have come to realize that Hitler was right, since Jews … are bloodsuckers … interested in destroying the whole world which has … expelled them and despised them for centuries … and burnt them in Hitler’s crematoria … one million … six million—I would that he had finished it!”162

  Mansour is hardly regarded as some kind of renegade nut in Egypt. In 1975, he represented the nation at the fortieth International PEN (writers) Conference in Vienna. Upon his return he charged that “the Jews are guilty” for Nazism, and that they “have only themselves to blame.”163

  Syria

  Egypt was just a walk in the park in the twentieth century compared to Syria, which was a living hell for Jews. The smoldering enmity against Jews that has always been in Syria burst into a roaring fire with the advent of Zionism. Damascus became the headquarters of anti-Jewish activities and feasted on Nazism.

  During World War II, the Jewish quarter in Damascus was raided several times because of ridiculous rumors that Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed to make Syria into a Jewish state.

  Israelis have told me on many occasions that the most vicious enemy in the whole Middle Eastern neighborhood is Syria—and that’s a rough neighborhood. Today, Damascus is host to offices of virtually every Islamic terror organization on the planet.

  Jew-Hating Taught from Infancy

  Not only do Muslim families teach their children from the cradle to hate Jews, but Islamic educators also interweave this message of hatred into their class instruction.

  Today, Muslim governments have official policies against Jews actually written into public school textbooks. For example:

  “The Jews in Europe were persecuted and despised because of their corruption, meanness and treachery” —Jordanian history textbook, from 1966 onward.

  “Israel was born to die. Prove it” —Instructions in a Jordanian high school.

  “The Jews … live exiled and despised since by their nature they are vile, greedy and enemies of mankind” —Syrian junior high school textbook.

  “We shall expel all the Jews from Muslim lands” —A fifth-year elementary school syntax exercise in a Syrian textbook.

  “The Arabs do not cease to act for the extermination of Israel” —An Egyptian junior high school grammar exercise in a textbook.

  “Israel hopes to be the homeland of the Jew, and they have the stubbornness of 4,000 years of history behind them. But Israel shall not live if the Arabs stand fast in their hatred. She shall wither and decline. Even if all the human race, and the devil in Hell, conspires to aid her, she shall not exist” —A ninth-grade Egyptian text.

  Official Anti-Jewishness

  “The anti-Semitic literature published by the Arabs since World War II has been voluminous, and is continually increasing, despite the almost total evacuation of the Arab world’s Jews,” writes Peters. “The virulence of this literature is disturbing, but even more significant is the official or governmental origin of the publications—not from an extremist fringe, which might be lightly dismissed, but from Arab governments, including those called ‘moderate.’” 164 The examples below are all too typical of the anti-Semitism in the Arab press:

  El-Ahram, a leading daily with more than 700,000 readers, carried a book review of The First Terrorists in which the critic, Abd El-Muneim Qandil, asserted March 3, 1987: “I lower my pen in respect to the author who presents proof from Israeli books to the malice of the Jews who wish to kill all male newborns and pregnant women in order to uproot the Palestinians… . The author speaks about turning facts upside down … such as their claim that the gas chambers used by Hitler to get rid of people infected by plague were especially built to burn Jews alive.”

  El Masa, a daily of 100,000, reported April 21, 1987: “Jews distributed a ‘ridiculous lie’ after the Second World War concerning the Holocaust. They started with the claim that 100,000 Jews were exterminated but later reached the figure of 8 million. Jews are inflating these numbers in order to achieve bigger help from the USA… .We can expect, therefore, that very soon the number of Jews killed by the Nazis will reach 10 million.”

  Sawt El-Arab, a daily with a large circulation, wrote on March 15, 1987: “Israel sells to Egypt seeds, plants and cattle infected with diseases in order to destroy the local agriculture.”

  El Mukhtar El-Islami, a monthly religious publication, states in April 1986: “The Jews were responsible for World War II. They initiated this war in order to crush Nazi Germany, which was the last obstacle before Jewish domination of the world. Europe was indeed destroyed and Zionist strategy had its victory. The Jews were also behind the murder of President Abraham Lincoln.”

  El-Nur, a weekly publication of the Muslim Brotherhood, circulation over 100,000, said October 22, 1986: “We wait for the moment that all Jews will gather in Palestine and that will be the great day for enormous massacre.”

  Sawt Filastin, a semi-official weekly published for Palestinians, published in August 1987, the fifth anniversary of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre: “Deception and treason are basic components of Jewish character. Jews always used tricks and plots to spread terror and death all over the world.”

  El-Tawhid, a fundamentalist Islamic monthly, stated in February 1987: “The children of Israel are ‘garbage allied with Satan, purulence causing pain and infection, a deposit of germs.’”

  Many more examples like these could be quoted here, but these illustrate the irrational hatred that is constantly spread against the Jew in the Muslim world. If anything, anti-Semitism has gotten far worse in the twenty-first century.

  Christians Are Also Increasingly Targeted

  That this hatred is spreading around the world is illustrated by
the 9/11 attack on the United States is evidence this hatred is spreading around the world. Islamic fundamentalists see the United States as the world center of the Judeo-Christian-based world order, which they believe is the greatest threat to true Islam. They believe we must be destroyed and replaced with an Islamic-based world order.

  Just as the Jews were driven out of Muslim lands, Christians are now targeted for persecution. Here are just a few examples of anti-Christian persecution occurring throughout the Islamic world.

  Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, is systematically killing and terrorizing Christians. More than five hundred churches have been burned and hundreds of Christians killed. People have fled certain areas in fear for their lives.

  Muslims of the Sudan have systematically slaughtered Christians in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Thousands have been killed, and millions have been driven into exile, resulting in tens of thousands dying of famine.

  In Egypt, Muslim fundamentalists have forced Christians to stay inside their mud hovels for months at a time due to the intensity of persecution. Churches have been burned, Christian shops looted and destroyed, and Christians have been killed. One Coptic Christian said, “Life for Christians is over. Now we must figure out how to get out alive.” Coptic Christians, who number seven to eight million of Egypt’s fifty-six million people, belong to one of the oldest denominations in Christendom.165

  Because “Christian U.S. soldiers” have stayed in Saudi Arabia to defend it against Iraqi invasion, Osama Bin Laden has declared this protection as the ultimate sacrilege. To him and his al Qaeda, our mere presence on Saudi soil constitutes an invasion of sacred Islamic land and desecrates the most holy places of Islam.

  This is clearly expressed in Bin Laden’s “Fatwa,” which declared a Jihad against all Americans. The terror leader writes, “For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.” For this and equally “serious crimes,” Osama concludes, “We—with God’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money whenever and wherever they find it. We call on Muslim ulema [believers], leaders, youths, and soldiers to launch the raid on Satan’s U.S. troops and the devil’s supporters allying with them, and to displace those who are behind them so that they may learn a lesson.”166

  The Koranic Verses

  You, like most westerners, must be asking, “Where does this kind of hate come from?” We have seen how the hate started in the tents of Abraham and grew in the deserts of Arabia. But the constantly flowing spring that feeds and nourishes this hate is the Koran itself. The Muslim holy book pulls no punches in its denunciations of both Jews and Christians. I will close with just a few examples out of many that could be cited. Later we will examine this issue in more detail. The following verses were taken from an English translation of the Koran on an Islamic Web site:

  “Certainly you will find the most violent of people in enmity for those who believe to be the Jews and those who are polytheists [Christians].” —Surah 5.82

  “So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush.”

  —Surah 9.5

  “O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.” —Surah 5.51

  “Abasement is made to cleave to them [Jews] wherever they are found, … and they have become deserving of wrath from Allah, and humiliation is made to cleave to them; this is because they disbelieved in the communications of Allah and slew the prophets unjustly; this is because they disobeyed and exceeded the limits.” —Surah 3.112

  “And you will most certainly find them [Jews] the greediest of men.” —Surah 2.96

  “And when there came to them [Jews] a Book from Allah (Koran) verifying that which they have … they disbelieved in him; so Allah’s curse is on the unbelievers. Evil is that for which they [Jews] have sold their souls—that they should deny what Allah has revealed, out of envy that Allah should send down of His grace on whomsoever of His servants He pleases; so they have made themselves deserving of wrath upon wrath.”

  —Surah 2.89–90

  “Those who disbelieve in Our communications, We shall make them enter fire; so oft as their skins are thoroughly burned, We will change them for other skins, that they may taste the chastisement; surely Allah is Mighty, Wise.” —Surah 4.56

  “Of those who are Jews [they are those who] alter words from their places and say: We have heard and we disobey … but Allah has cursed them on account of their unbelief.” —Surah 4:46

  “Shall I inform you of him who is worse than this in the retribution from Allah? Worse is he [Jews] whom Allah has cursed and brought His wrath upon, and of whom He made apes and pigs, and he who served the Satan; these are worse in place and more erring from the straight path.” —Surah 5.60

  With this kind of institutionalized anti-Semitism justified by their sacred religious book, their religious traditions, and the example of Mohammad himself, is it any wonder that nearly all the Jews living under Muslim rule gladly fled and left their possessions behind in 1948?

  And is it any wonder that today’s leaders of Israel are not anxious to rush into granting statehood to the Palestinians? The current Palestinian demands would make the borders of Israel indefensible. Israeli concerns are especially understandable since the Palestinians cannot stop their vicious terrorist attacks for even a week. Israel is being asked to give irreplaceable land and defensive positions for nothing more than the Muslim’s promises of peace. And given what we know about the “Quraysh model” and Mohammad’s declaration that “war is deception,” that is a suicidal choice.

  Maybe Israel’s leaders have concluded that Muslims today really believe the Prophet Mohammad’s words that, “war is deception.” Who in their right mind would want to gamble the survival of their nation on that kind of “peace partner”?

  [ TEN ]

  THE OTHER

  PALESTINIAN REFUGEES

  “Over the last 40 years, the countries of the Middle East and North Africa have undergone radical transformations which, among other things, have brought about the near extinction of Jewish communities after 2,000 to 3,000 years of existence.”

  —BAT YE’OR167

  “The Jews always did live previously in Arab countries with complete freedom and liberty, as natives of the country. In fact, Muslim rule has always been tolerant . . . according to history Jews had a most quiet and peaceful residence under Arab rule.”

  —HAJ AMIN AL-HUSSEINI168

  THE UNTOLD REFUGEE STORY

  If you read about the Middle East problem in the newspaper today or listen to the discussions on the news, you can’t help but be bombarded by analysts suggesting that the key to peace is resolving “the “Palestinian refugee issue.” Well, prepare to be shocked. There is another virtually untold side of the Middle East refugee story.169

  Joan Peters put it so well in her monumental work, From Time Immemorial:

  For every refugee—adult or child—in Syria, Lebanon or elsewhere in the Arab world who compels our sympathy, there is a Jewish refugee who fled from the Arab country of his birth. For every Arab who moved to neighboring lands, a Jew was forced to flee from a community where he and his ancestors may have lived for 2,000 years.170

  The world seldom if ever hears about the more than 800,000 Jewish refugees who fled Arab terror and hatred and settled in Israel as a result of the Muslim fury at the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel. Perhaps it is because
every single one of those refugees was accepted, resettled, and provided for by the young struggling Jewish state without question or hesitation. There never has been a Jewish refugee camp in Israel or anywhere else.171 On the other hand, Palestinians have never been accepted and settled in Muslim countries. They have been deliberately kept in miserable conditions so as to keep their hatred against the Jews and Israel at a fever pitch.

  Exodus, Phase II

  Here are some indisputable facts. In 1948, there were more than 850,000 Jews living in the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 29,000. Where were those Jewish dhimmi communities in the Arab world? Before Israel was reborn, between 125,000 and 135,000 Jews lived in Iraq; 75,000 lived in Egypt; 30,000 lived in Syria; 55,000 lived in Yemen; 8,000 lived in Aden; 265,000 lived in Morocco; up to 140,000 lived in Algeria; 105,000 lived in Tunisia; 5,000 lived in Lebanon; and some 38,000 lived in Libya.172

  Where are all of these Jews now? What happened to them? Where are their properties and financial resources? Why are they never mentioned in the “Palestinian Refugee debate” that keeps being trumpeted in the United Nations and the liberal media?

  “The Arab world has been virtually emptied of its Jews, and the fledgling Jewish state would bear the burden of its hundreds of thousands of Jewish Arab-born refugees almost in secret,” explains Peters. “So unknown and undisclosed are these Arab-born Jews and the plight they have faced—the camps, squalor, uprooting, loss of property and security, discontent, unemployment and what they sensed to be neglect of their problems in Israel—that in countless conversations outside the Middle East with academics or professionals, from university graduates to blue-collar workers, including Jews as well as non-Jews, when the question of the ‘Middle East refugees’ is raised, almost without exception the response is, ‘You mean the Palestinians—the Arabs, of course.’ It is as though the sad and painful story of the Arab-born Jewish refugees had been erased, their struggle covered over by a revision of the pages of history.”173