The Everlasting Hatred

by Hal Lindsey

  For the next six centuries, thirty-seven descendents of the house of Uthman, or Ottoman, ruled over the empire. It became one of the largest and richest in history. Of particular importance to our interests are three of these sultans.

  Sultan Mehmed al-Fatih (“The Conqueror”) ruled from A.D. 1451 to 1481. He was a brilliant, well-educated man who was conversant in Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and Greek literature. He loved poetry. He could also converse in Serbian and Italian. He had an insatiable thirst for literature about Alexander the Great, the Caesars, and the Roman legions. It was no doubt his study of all available literature about war and all things associated with it that enabled him to field one of the finest armies in history. He established a military tradition that remained after him.

  Mehmed’s greatest importance is that he conquered the eastern capital of the old Roman Empire and the center of Byzantine Christianity—Constantinople. It was renamed Istanbul and made the capital of the Ottoman Empire. A steady transfer of Islamic power began, and Istanbul became the great center of Islam.

  Sultan Salim al-Yavuz reigned from A.D. 1512 to 1520. Although he ruled for only eight years, he added more territory to the Islamic empire than any other sultan. But most importantly, Salim conquered the Holy Land and Jerusalem for the Ottomans in 1517. They would hold control of this territory until British General Allenby liberated it four hundred years later in December 1917.

  Under Sultan Suleiman “the Magnificent,” who ruled from A.D. 1520 to 1586, the Ottoman Empire reached its zenith of power and glory. During this time, the empire extended northward to include all of Greece, modern Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and all of the Balkans in what was modern Yugoslavia. They ruled the entire Mediterranean coast from Egypt to Morocco; they ruled the Sudan and all of Middle East, including Arabia; and they ruled the territories of Syria, Persia, Afghanistan, and India. Twice they nearly conquered Vienna.

  It was Suleiman that rebuilt Jerusalem and its ancient walls that exist to this day. But from Suleiman’s reign onward, the Ottoman Empire began a slow but steady decline. The following sultans became more interested in the size of their harems than the state of their kingdom. The empire drifted from Koranic dynamism to corrupt despotism.

  The Ottoman Empire’s Impact on the Middle East

  Robert Goldston notes a very important development within the Muslim world of this time:

  The Ottoman Turks were not and never considered themselves to be, part of the Arab world. [They were] a cosmopolitan regime whose rulers looked upon all peoples—Bulgarians, Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Romanians, Persians, Lebanese, Jews and Arabs—as subject nations to be governed from, and for the benefit of, the Turkish homeland in Asia Minor. To Arabs, as to Europeans, the Ottoman Turks were essentially foreign masters.186

  It is most important to understand what resulted from the Ottoman’s attitude toward the lands and peoples they controlled: Ottoman rule literally obliterated the state identities and boundaries of the Middle East. For the next four centuries, there were no nation-states such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq/Babylon, Arabia, Persia, and so on. They were simply territories ruled by Ottoman viziers from major regional cities.

  “Palestine,” for instance, included what is now known as Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel and was ruled from Damascus. There were no independent Arab nations and no defined boundaries.

  Remember this well, for when the British liberated the area from the Ottoman Turks, no Arab had any claim on of a specific land or state that was more valid than the Jews’ claim. As a matter of fact, the Jews were the only people who had a ratified mandate for a specific land from the League of Nations.

  Britain Seeks to Secure the Land Bridge

  Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the sultan was desperately trying to halt the slide of his empire into oblivion. There were internal threats, and there was concern over the military expansionism of Russia. At this time, long before they teamed up with czarist Russia in an alliance against Germany and Turkey, Britain and France were interested in maintaining the Ottoman Empire for geo-strategic reasons and began applying pressure on Istanbul.

  The British had an almost inordinate fear of either Russia or Germany controlling the “strategic land bridge” that connected the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. That “bridge” begins in the north at the Bosporus Straights at Istanbul and extends southward through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and the Sinai—ending at the Suez Canal. The British rightly believed that it was absolutely necessary to control this area. If the land bridge fell into the hands of a hostile power, it would threaten Britain’s vital link to its most important colony—India.

  Relief for Dhimmis

  Though the Ottoman Turks were not Arabs, they were infected with the old Arab hatred of Jews and Christians through the Koran and the Muslim traditions. They applied the Islamic dhimmi laws with a calloused cruelty.

  Fortunately, because of the continuous European influence, from 1847 through about 1880, there was a brief relaxation of the institutionalized and legalized repression against Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Holy Land.

  Here are excerpts from some observations noted by a Polish traveler in Palestine around A.D. 1850:

  O brothers of Israel, how can I convey to you the harshness of the yoke of exile that our brethren living in Palestine suffered prior to the year 1847: Even were I to relate everything, would it be credible? It was a great danger for Jews to venture even a few yards outside the gates of Jerusalem because of the Arab brigands. They were accustomed to say Ashlah Yahudi, that is: “Strip yourself, Jew,” and any Jew caught in such a predicament, seeing their aggressiveness and weapons, would strip, while they divided the spoil between them and sent him away naked and barefoot. They call this spoil: Kasb Allah, that is, Allah’s reward.

  Moreover, the seven-hour journey from Jerusalem to Hebron was fraught with danger even with a large caravan, and all the more so was a trip to smaller towns. To this day it is customary to recite a thanksgiving prayer when arriving safely at a town from another. If a Jew encounters a Muslim in the street and passes on the latter’s right, the Muslim says ishmal that is, “Pass on my left side.” If he touches him or bumps into him, and especially if he stains his clothing or shoes, then the Muslim attacks him cruelly and finds witnesses to the effect that the Jew insulted him, his religion and his prophet Muhammad, with the result that a numerous crowd of Muslims descend upon him and leave the Jew practically unconscious. Then they carry him off to jail, where he is subjected to terrible chastisement.

  There are many more such sufferings that the pen would weary to describe. These occur particularly when we go to visit the cemetery and when we pray at the Wall of Lamentations, when stones are thrown at us and we are jeered at.187

  More Restrictions on Jews

  Though reforms made life slightly more tolerable for the Jews and Christians in the Holy Land, the local Muslims resented the edicts from Istanbul and often disregarded them. In addition, the reforms were not long lasting. Faced with a budding Zionist movement urging the return of Jews to Palestine, Istanbul repealed the reforms and enacted even more restrictive laws against Jews.

  In 1887, a law was passed forbidding Jews to immigrate into Palestine, to reside there, to buy land, to restore houses, or to live in Jerusalem. It applied only to Jews but not to Christians or Muslim immigrants.188

  Palestinians from Bosnia-Herzegovina

  At the same time, to counteract the effect of Jewish emigration between 1847 and 1880, Ottoman authorities began an affirmative action program to resettle mostly European Muslims in Palestine. While the Arabs often make much of the European heritage of many of Israel’s Jews—even calling them “foreign invaders”—the truth is that many of today’s so called Palestinians have European roots that go back no more than a generation or two.

  During the latter stages of the receding Ottoman Empire, beginning in the late 1870s, Muslim refugees from the lost Islamic provinces o
f Europe streamed into Palestine. “The Ottoman government settled these emigrants in troubled regions, thereby tightening its control through a policy of Muslim colonization,” writes author Bat Ye’or. “In 1878 after annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria, Bosnian Muslim colonists arrived in Macedonia and on the coastal plain of Palestine.”189

  Ottoman Desolation of Holy Land

  The Holy Land under the Ottoman Turks suffered more devastation in four hundred years than in the previous fifteen hundred years. By the nineteeth century, the ancient canal and irrigation systems were destroyed. The land was barren and filled with malaria-ridden swamps. The hills were denuded of trees and brush so that all of the terraces and topsoil were eroded away, leaving only rocks.190

  Mark Twain writes his observations from his visit to the Holy Land in 1867: “Stirring scenes . . . occur in the valley [of Jezreel] no more,” wrote Mark Twain as he described the Holy Land he visited in 1867. “There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent—not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings.”191

  How accurately Mark Twain described the exact conditions predicted by Ezekiel and other prophets about the land Holy Land in the Last Days—just before the Lord would began to return His people to it.

  Curse of the Turk “Effendis”

  Because of the horrible condition of the land in the late-nineteenth century, most Muslim inhabitants of the Holy Land were only too eager to leave if a buyer for their property could be found.

  Perhaps the greatest factor in the final desertification of Palestine was the practice of the landlord class—the effendis—exploiting the Muslim peasants who worked the fields. In some cases, the peasant farmer would have to pay 200 to 300 percent interest to buy seeds.192

  When the debts would reach an unbearable level, the Muslim peasant farmer would simply pack up his meager belongings and join a band of Bedouins. The land then was left without workers and became despoiled.

  The steady pattern: No one really cared for the land. The absentee Ottoman effendi landlords cared only about profit and seldom left the luxury of Istanbul to even check on the land.

  AMAZING JEWISH RECLAMATION

  From the 1880s through 1918, the Jews returning to Palestine faced a harsh life in a barren, Malaria-infested land. But still they came. And by the turn of the century, Jewish villages dotted the countryside. A few years later, Jews represented a majority of the population in Jerusalem. There was new life in Haifa, Safed, and Tiberias. In 1909, the first modern all-Hebrew city was founded on the sands of the Mediterranean—Tel Aviv.

  Far from being run off the land, the Muslim population benefited greatly from these developments. Very quickly, opportunities arose for three Arab groups:

  The landless population looking for work

  The people indebted to the absentee landlords

  The effendis themselves, who were selling land to the Jews at astronomical prices193

  “EFFENDIS” SOW SEEDS OF MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

  The effendis collected taxes for the Turkish administration and controlled the populace from seats of power on governing councils. But, before long, many of them began to see their little feudal empires threatened by the growing influence of the Jews. So, effendis resorted to the age-old tactic that always worked in Muslim history—make the Jews the scapegoats.

  “It was in 1909, at the time when leading effendis felt their grip over the lives and fortunes of their erstwhile prey was getting too loose, that effendi Ruhi Bey al-Khalidi warned that the Jews would ‘displace the Arab farmers from their land and their fathers’ heritage. . . . The Jews were not here when we conquered the country,’” writes historian Joan Peters. “It mattered little that the effendi’s argument was false. It served his group’s long-range economic interests, and at least some of his misstatements would be swallowed whole by a surprisingly large part of the world for the better part of a century.”194

  Peters continues:

  Those few “Arab effendi” families . . . who had been dispossessing and then continuing to exploit the hapless peasant-migrant in underpopulated Palestine would become threatened by the spectacle of “dhimmi Jews” living on the land as equals, tilling their own soil and granting previously unknown benefits to the Arabic-speaking non-Jewish worker. The Jews would undoubtedly upset the “sweets of office” which had been accruing to the effendis. Thousands of peasant-migrants would be emigrating to reap the better wages, health benefits and improvements of the Jewish communities. Although the effendis would charge scalper’s prices for land they sold to the Jews, at the same time they would lose thousands of their former debtors who saw an escape from the stranglehold of usury and corruption prevalent in Palestine for generations. In short, in “Palestine,” the greatest exploitations and injustices against the peasant-migrant Muslims were committed against them by their “brother” Muslim effendis.195

  The Jews became a victim of their own success. The more they restored the land and made it fertile, the more Muslims were attracted from nearby Muslim countries and flocked to Jewish-settled areas for jobs. These same poor Muslims who benefited from Jewish-created jobs later charged that the Jews had stolen land that had been in their families since time immemorial. This remains one of the most colossal lies of history. Yet the West has swallowed the lie hook, line, and sinker. This lie will eventually lead to Armageddon.

  THE EFFECT OF WORLD WAR I ON PALESTINE

  During World War I, it became clear to the Zionist leaders—Chaim Weizmann, Zeev Jabotinsky, and Aaron Aaronson—that working through the Ottoman Empire, now at war with its one-time protector Britain and the allied powers, was a no-win situation.

  “Each independently came to the conclusion that Jewish restoration could be built only on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire,” explains author Samuel Katz. “Each in his own way sought to provide Britain and her allies with help to win the war.”196

  The Jews’ alliance with Britain during World War I, which was critical to the allies’ success in the Middle East campaign, was not without heavy risks for the Jews. By this time, there was a considerable Jewish population in Palestine under Turkish rule. Every one of these lives would be in great peril if the Jewish people were to be perceived as anti-Turkish.

  “Fear of Turkish reprisals . . . was overcome, however, by a more powerful emotion—the urge to national regeneration,” writes Katz.197

  What exactly did the Jews contribute to the successful allied war effort? A Jewish legion was formed to fight within the British Army for the liberation of Palestine. A Jewish auxiliary unit, the Zion Mule Corps, took part in the Gallipoli campaign. Jewish battalions comprised of volunteers from Britain, the United States, Canada, and Palestine took part in Gen. Allenby’s ultimate liberation of the Holy Land. Meanwhile, in Palestine, Aaronson organized the Nili group, an indispensable intelligence service operating behind Turkish lines for the British.198

  THE LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

  MYTH’S TERRIBLE EFFECT

  Movie fans might ask at this point: “Well, what about Lawrence of Arabia? Wasn’t the Arab revolt key to the liberation of the Middle East from the Turks?” To get at the truth on this issue, you have to forget the magnificent movie that was so beautifully acted by Peter O’Toole, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif. It was great entertainment, but nothing close to the truth.

  No folks—once again, Hollywood has helped perpetuate a gross myth on the public with its glorification of the young British army officer T. E. Lawrence and his largely fabricated Arab revolt.

  Stunned by their early military disaster on the shores of Gallipoli, some British diplomatic and military leaders got the brilliant idea of bringing vast areas of the Arab-speaking world, now under Ottoman rule, under British control after the war. They envisioned “a federation of semi-independent Arab states under European guidance and supervision . . . owing spiritual a
llegiance to a single Arab prelate, and looking to Great Britain as patron and protector.”199

  THE BRITISH SET UP THE MIDDLE EAST CRISES

  The British were about to get a lesson in the age-old Arab trait—“Promise an Arab a centimeter and he will demand a kilometer.”

  Another gross British miscalculation had to do with the Muslim religious power structure. The sherif of Mecca did not have the same kind of authority and control over Islam that the pope exercises over the Roman Catholics Church. Yet the British plan to control the Arabs after the war depended on this basic assumption. In fact, the Turks had destroyed the Arab Caliphate centuries before—so the British had no central authority with which to deal. There was only a bunch of warring tribes all wanting to get the best deal in the great land-grab following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

  Britain’s first step in achieving its glorious imperial ambition was to enlist the Arabs in their fight against the Turks. The first contact was with Hussein ibn-Ali, sherif of Mecca. Hussein was promised much of Arabia and vast amounts of gold and arms if he would lead a revolt against the Turks.

  A key player in what followed was Lawrence, an ambitious and imaginative officer who dramatized and embellished his own heroics in the desert. It was this bit of self-aggrandizement that helped create the myth that the Arabs played a key role in the British Middle East campaign.

  Indeed the one significant contribution of the Arab revolt was the capture of Aqaba. But Lawrence did not lead this campaign. It was led by Auda abu Tayi, the sheikh of the Howeitat tribe (played by Anthony Quinn in the movie). Lawrence was permitted by Auda to ride along with the Bedouin army. But by the time Lawrence returned to British headquarters, he was claiming a personal military triumph.

  Nevertheless, it was not until 1955 that British writer Richard Aldington ultimately exposed the Lawrence myth, including the “key role” played by Arabs, as totally false.