JERUSALEM NEVER MENTIONED IN KORAN

RIPPED FROM JIHAD WATCH, this is exciting news for al of us who know the truth about the so-called Palestinian people and the Muslim grip on Israel:

Anti-dhimmitude on...Al-Jazeera. "Israeli on Arab TV: J'lem Was Ours When Moslems Worshipped Idols," by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for Israel National News, June 5 (thanks to Seth):

Bar Ilan University political scientist Dr. Mordechai Kedar told a Moslem show host on the Arabic-language Al Jazeera television network, "Jews were in Jerusalem while your ancestors were drinking wine and blowing to idols." In a heated debate with the narrator, he added, "We don't need your permission to build" in the capital of Israel, Jerusalem.

The encounter occurred earlier this week, when Jews around the world celebrated Jerusalem Unification Day. Dr. Kedar has frequently appeared on the widely viewed Qatar-based network but this time encountered a sharp attack from the show's host, Jimal Rian.

"Building in Jerusalem is another nail in the coffin in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority," narrator Jimal Rian asserted. Dr. Kedar answered in fluent Arabic, "This was our capital 3,000 years ago, and we were here when your forefathers were drinking wine, burying girls alive and worshipping pre-Muslim idols. This is our city and it will be our city forever."

His reference to Muslims drinking wine, which is forbidden in Islam, infuriated the host. Rian wagged his finger in the air and said excitedly, "If you want to talk about history, you cannot erase Jerusalem from the Koran, and don’t attack the Muslim religion if we want to continue talking."

Dr. Kedar replied, "Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran. Jerusalem is a Jewish city."

The Al Jazeera host responded by quoting a verse from the Koran in which he thought Jerusalem was mentioned by name, but stopped in the middle upon realizing that it only refers to "the farthest place."

That would be Qur'an 17:1. "The farthest place" (al-aqsa) is identified in Islamic tradition with Jerusalem, but there is no mention of Jerusalem by name in that verse or in any other Qur'anic verse.

Dr. Kedar: "Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran even once. You can't rewrite the Koran on air on Al Jazeera."
He's right. It isn't.

Rian changed the subject to "settlements" and asked Dr. Kedar why Israel is building 1,000 new apartments and deciding to build thousands more while there are rumors that "Jerusalem will include all of the West Bank [Judea and Samaria]. The Bar Ilan researcher replied. "My friend, Israel is not counting the number of apartments that Qatar is building on the Qatar Peninsula so why are you doing so in Jerusalem? Jerusalem is our city forever and is not an issue for you, for Al Jazeera or for anyone else. Period. Jerusalem belongs only to Jews.

Replying to Rian's question if Dr. Behar's assessment is the basis for talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA), he declared, "My friend, I invite you to Jerusalem so you can see with your own eyes that it has become a flourishing city after it was in ruins under Arab rule until 1967. We rebuilt the city and opened it to Christians, Moslems and Jews equally, unlike under Muslim rule" that prohibited other religions....

Indeed.

HUGH FITZGERALD ON MUSLIM ANTISEMITISM

MUSLIM ANTISEMITISM DID NOT grow "uniquely Muslim roots" over the past three decades (as was recently suggested by an idiot mainstreamer). Muslim antisemitism was always there, within Islam. It was not virulent, because the Jews were weak, despised, and unlike the Christians, had no possible strong outside powers that could pressure Muslims in order to protect their co-religionists within Dar al-Islam. But then the Jews re-established their ancient Jewish commonwealth, despite Arab terrorism that started early against Jews settling on land they had bought (Joseph Trumpeldor at Tel Hai). That Arab terrorism continued throughout the 1920s (a decade that begins with murderous mobs killing Jews in Jerusalem in 1920, and then massacring every last Jew Hebron in 1929) and then through the 1930s, especially during the so-called Arab Revolt.

During that revolt, the Mandatory Authority officials in Jerusalem expelled Captain Orde Wingate for the crime of having taught Jewish settlers how to defend themselves. Meanwhile, Arab terrorism continued. Then there was the attack on the nascent state of Israel by seven Arab armies, and the period of terrorism by Egyptian fedayin (and by Jordanians too, until terrorism from Jordan was ended by a retaliatory raid led by Colonel Ariel Sharon and his Unit 101).

It is the refusal of the Jews of Israel to surrender, to relapse into the status that they deserve—according to the Shari'a—of dhimmis, living on Muslim sufferance, according to Muslim dictates, in a state of permanent humiliation and degradation and physical insecurity, that in the twisted worldview of Muslims becomes a constant, gnawing source of anguish for them, of their humiliation, their degradation, their physical insecurity.

And because of this, the texts pertaining to Jews, and the anti-Jewish animus that always was to be found in Islam, and that resulted in the mistreatment of Jews that has been so well-documented, and the texts and tenets that explain the 1350-year mistreatment of Jews, an antisemitism different in its promptings from that found in Western Christendom, was revived with special fervor. That mistreatment of Jews was not unique; Christians, too, were mistreated as dhimmis (unless one takes the ahistorical view that the dhimmi condition was benign, that as "protected peoples" dhimmis had a good thing going), but there was a special animus, with textual authority in support, toward Jews.

They were always regarded, however, as weak, and no threat. And indeed, they had their uses, for example as doctors (the Padishahlar or Ottoman Sultans, for example, always relied on Jewish doctors). But this should not be confused with the condition of the Jewish community, one which the scholar S. E. Goitein described as far worse than he had realized, over many decades of close study, until he finally spent years studying the contents of the Cairo Geniza, which led him to reconsider his underestimate of the burden on the Jews of, for example, the Jizyah, the poll-tax for dhimmis specified in Qur’an 9.29.

Of course the mistreatment of non-People of the Book, such as Hindus and Buddhists, was more atrocious than that endured by Jews. Possibly some may find consolation in that fact. But then, all kinds of people try to make all kinds of mental salti mortali to convince themselves that antisemitism in the Islamic world is an import, and not native. That view, of course, requires that one ignore a mountain of evidence, of the kind collected by Georges Vajda—whose work Bernard Lewis includes in both his notes and his bibliography but, one can only assume from his misleading treatment of Jews under Islam, did not read, or did not comprehend, or did not wish to comprehend.

Did Lewis read Vajda? Did he read Vajda's translation of Al-Magili? What did he get out of Vajda? Or out of many others who wrote on the Jews under Islam?

It is true that the Mufti of Jerusalem was anti-Jewish and found much to his liking the views of Adolf Hitler. But his views preceded those of Hitler, and came from another source: the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira. One of the reasons all the Arabs favored the Nazis is that the Nazi antisemitism echoed, or provided a variant on, familiar and welcome hatreds. Lewis and this new report come perilously close to maintaining, and Lewis certainly gives the impression to many, that Islam "borrowed" European antisemitism because it had no homegrown variety. But it did, and the borrowings were not essential.

Does anyone think that the Saudi textbook remarks on the Jews are due to the Nazis or the antisemitism displayed, at different levels in different places and times, of Western Christendom? Or that what Ahmadinejad thinks of Jews, and the need to wipe Israel out, comes from Hitler and not entirely from another source closer to home?

Read it all.

THE ANCIENT CASE FOR MODERN ISRAEL

I apologize to that cluster of beloved Jewish anti-Zionists, those whom I know personally, for my reticence in not pouncing upon their lofty ideals with strong rebuttals of my own when occasion permits. My own lofty tendency is to allow people their own thoughts and idealogies. After all, most everybody, including these highly educated and emotionally bold prophets of [that dead horse called] Marxism hold themselves in high regard for arriving at their own conclusions. Fair enough. But here in ineffable print, I am the first to shout from the rooftops:

LET'S NOT BE COY!

1. Israel became a state in 1312 B.C., two millennia before Islam;
2. Arab refugees from Israel began calling themselves “Palestinians” in 1967, two decades after (modern) Israeli statehood;
3. After conquering the land in 1272 B.C.., Jews ruled it for a thousand years and maintained a continuous presence there for 3,300 years;
4. The only Arab rule following conquest in 633 B.C. Lasted just 22 years;
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem was the Jewish capital. It was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even under Jordanian rule, (east) Jerusalem was not made the capital, and no Arab leader came to visit it;
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Bible, but not once is it mentioned in the Qur’an;
7. King David founded Jerusalem; Mohammed never set foot in it;
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem; Muslims face Mecca. If between the two cities, Muslims pray facing Mecca, with their backs to Jerusalem;
9. In 1948, Arab leaders urged their people to leave, promising to cleanse the land of Jewish presence. 68% of them fled without ever setting eyes on an Israeli soldier;
10. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Muslim countries had to flee as the result of violence and pogroms;
11. Some 630,000 Arabs left Israel in 1948, while close to a million Jews were forced to leave the Muslim countries;
12. In spite of the vast territories at their disposal, Arab refugess were deliberately prevented from assimilating into their host countries. Of 100 million refugees following World War II, they are the only group to have never integrated with their coreligionists. Most of the Jewish refugees from Europe and Arab lands were settled in Israel, a country no larger than New Jersey;
13. There are 22 Muslim countries, not counting palestine. There is only one Jewish state. Arabs started all five wars against Israel, and lost every one of them;
14. Fatah and Hamas constitutions still call for the destruction of Israel. Israel ceded most of the West Bank and all of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, and even provided it with arms;
15. During the Jordanian occupation, Jewish holy sites were vandalized and were off limits to Jews. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and christian holy sites are accessible to all faiths;
16. Out of 175 United Nations Security Council resolutions up to 1990, 97 were against Israel; out of 690 general assembly resolutions, 429 were against Israel;
17. The U.N. was silent when the Jordanians destroyed 58 synagogues in the old city of Jerusalem. It remained silent while Jordan systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the mount of olives, and it remained silent when Jordan enforced apartheid laws preventing Jews from accessing the Temple Mount and Western Wall.

I was told once by a friend that he believed that anyone on the planet should be free to live anywhere. Not the first time I'd heard that one. In fact, I used to dream of that same world back in my own teens and twenties. But now we are both in our fifties. And I for one have always sensed that the world does not contour to the fantasies of flower children, no matter how soft and beautiful the messenger. But my friend is a serious political activist to this day. And the fact that he, as a Jewish "unbeliever" in the state of Israel, is currently allowed and even encouraged to immigrate and set up residence in Israel, while I, a non-Jewish "believer" in the state of Israel, cannot, makes no sense to him. Fair logic. But logic, we have found, feeds on the corpses of foolish philosophers, and legion are their number. I think Wittgenstein said that.

On the other hand, to hold to his own "free to live anywhere" principle, there should then be nothing to prevent Jews from around the world and current Israelis from setting up house in Israel much the same as they currently do. And this is something the Arabs (and by default, their left-leaning comrades) simply cannot stomach. For these Arab supremists, disturbed by a non-dhimmi Jewish settlement in any form, wish to push the state of Israel, off the map and into the sea. How many times must they state their monstrous case for it to be heard by the ideologues lurking along the Western Left fringes, proclaiming peace at any cost when there is no peace to be had?

After all, the whole story of Baalam and the talking ass begins when the prophets of old, busy taking bribes and acquiescing to the fears of the pagan rulers of that time, proclaimed, "Peace! Peace! Peace in our lifetime! Victory over Israel" But according to the storyline, this was not to be. War and destruction for the Moabites and others was on the menu, and no amount of peacebrokering was going to dissuade the future. Several thousand years later, we have the Neville Chamberlain edition of this old tale.

Today, we seem to be living under similar conditions yet again.

So to this end, I leave you, dear anti-Zionist reader, a poem written in 1980 by a poet you have perhaps known in other roles, walking alone along the line of bleeping patriots:

DIED IN MY MOUTH

A silent tongue unravels the strangling noose,
Its path, unheralded by truce.
Odd scratched and scribbled graffitti,
Peacemaking my splintered head,
Ballets in dizzy nymph

Arousing the needy.
A parlor hunger, birds unfed.

My mind, a blank page.
My head leaps as a small frog,
There is no comfort.

The nothingness crowd is quoted no more,
Altared but undevoted they pay by nod.
My mind, a cluttered page.
My head sleeps as a burnt ephemeral log,
There is no comfort.
(Yet told around gracious Sin Avenue
camp fires spotting downtown Machinery Row
to the lilies laughing over a fine glass
of the best Napolean brandy
noonday dollars never doubt
where sheer distance is divided by
voteless cog, the mist of democracy
is seen reflecting upon our names
an appointed fog grazing upon
the tracks of method....)

And the saint thus
Spoke scantily to the prophet:
"He who demoralizes another
"Can claim no morality for himself."
To this the prophet said nothing, but
He knew in part the saint
For a shanty fool.

(And the unfed,
Left to perish among
The unwelcome, left to ravish
The beauty of beast, and the beast
Of beauty, established
Many fine logics.)

I fell blank at such a formula—
Asses built on caged numbers observed,
Deserved and dirty word reserved
For quaint molecules and family,
Where my occupation is a gift to anyone
Stroking along fishy fables,
Mentality tables, cradled
Images, daisies, nightsies,
Keepsies.

I am the yellow sheep
I can’t earn my keep
Proving the fallibility of this text
World without maps
World without worldliness
Matterhorn

My mind, an accurate page.
My head keeps to its own symbol,
There is no comfort.

I wonder what proof died in my mouth.