Well, Hamas, Since You Brought The Subject Up…
By: Gerald
A. Honigman
Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar
gave an interview which aired on Al-Manar TV on
January 25, 2006.
Among other
things, he stated:
In this
region we have faced Roman occupation, Persian occupation, Crusader occupation,
British occupation - they are all gone. The Israeli enemy does not belong to
the region. It does not belong to the region's history, geography, or faith.
Irresistible… Typical figments of that legendary Arab
imagination at work again.
But repeat
a lie enough times and the ignorant--whether innocent or not so--will accept
it. So, allow me the pleasure to burst the bubble.
Let’s start
with the assertion of how alleged Arab aboriginals--not Jews--faced Roman
occupation in “
There was
no country or nation known as "
Tacitus, Dio Cassius, and
Josephus were famous Roman and/or Roman-sponsored historians who wrote
extensively about Judaea's attempt to remain free
from the Soviet Union of its day, the conquering
Listen
carefully to this quote from Vol. II, Book V, The Works of Tacitus :
Titus was
appointed by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea...
he commanded three legions in
Some things change, some things never change. What really needs to change is
After the
1st Revolt,
Hear that
al-Zahar?
Additionally,
to celebrate this victory, the towering Arch of Titus was erected showing Roman
legionnaires carrying away the giant menorah, other spoils of the Jewish Temple
(which Arabs deny ever existed), and Judaean
captives. It stands tall in
When, some
sixty years later, Emperor Hadrian decided to further desecrate the site of the
destroyed
Listen next
to this quote from Dio Cassius:
580,000 men
were slain, nearly the whole of
Roman sources,
al-Zahar…not Zionists’.
The Emperor
was so enraged at the Jews' struggle for freedom in their own land that, in the
words of the esteemed modern historian, Bernard Lewis, "Hadrian made a
determined attempt to stamp out the embers not only of the revolt but also of
Jewish nationhood and statehood... obliterating its Jewish identity."
Wishing to end,
once and for all, Jewish hopes, Hadrian renamed the land itself from Judaea to "Syria Palaestina"
-- Palestine -- after the Jews' historic enemies, the Philistines, a non-Semitic
sea people from the eastern Mediterranean or Aegean area.
So, sorry Hamas & Co....trying to hijack
the Philistines’ identity as your Arab brethren have done with airplanes and
have constantly tried to do with that of the Jews won't work either.
Palestine
became largely "Arab" the same way that most of the almost two dozen
states that call themselves "Arab" today did...by the conquest,
occupation, settlement, and forced Arabization of
other native, non-Arab peoples and their lands...Berbers, Copts, Assyrians,
Black Africans, Jews, Kurds, native Semitic but largely non-Arab Lebanese, and
so forth. Muhammad and his successors' imperial caliphal
armies burst out of the
As I’ve
often written before, imperialism is only deemed nasty by Arabs when they
themselves are not indulging in it.
Al-Zahar next spoke of the Persian occupation in the early 7th
century C.E.
Let’s
listen to what Euthychius, the Patriarch of
Alexandria (and certainly also no Zionist), had to say about this in his book
of history, the Annals of Euthychius I, 216...
The Persian
commander went to Damascus and destroyed the land, and the Jews from Tiberias, Hebron, Nazareth, and Tyre
gathered together to help the Persians…the Jews of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, Damascus and Cyprus came together until they
numbered an army of 20,000 and came to Tyre to
destroy it.
Keep in
mind that this was centuries after the Roman decimation of the Jews in their
land and the onset of the Great Diaspora.
Of course
prior to these events, unquestionable archaeological and historical
corroboration from other “non-Zionist” sources testifies to the Jewish presence
in the land and region for numerous centuries prior to the Roman occupation.
So much for Hamas’ wishful thinking--or just
plain lies--regarding the alleged non-Jewish connection to the region via
history and geography.
Let’s move
on to al-Zahar’s comments about the alleged
non-connection of the Jews’ faith to the region.
Putting it
bluntly, when Hamas’ ancestors were still practicing
fertility rites and worshipping idols of different sorts and dimensions, over
two thousand years before the Prophet of Islam was born, the Jews were
introducing the G_d of Eternity to the world from
that very region. The Qur’an itself is filled with
such references to the Children of Israel.
When
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, fled
Medina had
been developed centuries earlier as a thriving date palm oasis by Jews fleeing
the Roman assault (the banu-Qurayzah and banu-al-Nadir tribes, etc.), and its mixed population of
Jews and pagan Arabs had thus become conditioned for a native prophet speaking
the word of G_d.
Muhammad
learned much from the Jews.
While the
actual timing of his decision on the direction of prayer may never be known,
during his long sojourn with the Jews of Medina, his followers were instructed
to pray towards
Early
prominent Arab historians such as Jalaluddin came
right out and stated that this was done primarily as an attempt to win support
among the influential Jewish tribes (the "People of the Book") for
Muhammad's religio-political claims.
It is from
the
You see,
despite Arab figments and distortions of the truth such as those spouted by Hamas, there is no doubt among objective scholars
that the Jews of the region had an enormous impact on both Muhammad and
the faith that he founded.
In fact,
the holy sites for Muslims in
The
While there
was some early Christian influence as well, intense scholarship has shown that
the faith spelled out in the Holy Law (Halacha) and Holy Scriptures of the Jews had a tremendous
influence on the Qur’an, Islamic Holy Law (Shari'a), and so forth.
Muhammad's
"
When the
Jews refused to recognize Muhammad as the "Seal of the Prophets," he
turned on them with a vengeance. Before long, with the exception of
Some six
centuries ago, Ibn Khaldun
was one of the world's most important thinkers and is perhaps the greatest
scholar the Islamic world has ever produced. He was also a Zionist.
In The
Muqaddimah, he devoted much time and effort to the
evolution and development of the Jewish nation, its early struggles with its
adversaries, and its later fight for freedom with the mighty
The Muqaddimah emphasizes that the Jews were forced to wander
in the desert for forty years due to their "meekness." Ibn Khaldun stressed that this
was necessary so that a new generation would arise with a new, more powerful 'asabiyah (group feeling). The Zionism Arabs condemn today
was just the prescription Ibn Khaldun
was calling for.
At a time
when homicidal Arabs, like al-Zahar, are demanding
their 22nd state and second, not first, one in the original 1920 borders of the
Palestine Mandate ( Jordan created by the British in 1922 on some 80% of the
latter, and most others having been created by the conquest of non-Arab peoples
and their lands), chances are more than good that this great Muslim scholar
would have approved and viewed the resurrection of Israel as an answer to the
unique plight of perpetually victimized, stateless Jews...the end of an even
more tragic and extensive wandering and period of meekness and powerlessness in
the desert Ibn Khaldun
spoke of so eloquently six hundred years earlier.
While much
more evidence could be included to expose the Arabs’ lies, I’ve covered this
nicely in many of my other writings. Check them out at www.geraldahonigman.com
and elsewhere. Besides, if I cover too much now, I’ll cut out the fun for
later…
It’s now Spring training time for baseball here in
It’s one,
two, three strikes and you’re out!
And as a
footnote, with elections just around the corner,