A History Least Understood

“We generate fears while we sit: we overcome them by action. Fear is nature’s warning signal to get busy. [Henry C. Link]

“You may delay, but time will not.” [Gene Kilbaum]

Pierre Van Passion, a courageous and independent-minded journalist was in Palestine and provides a graphic account of the 1929 pogrom against the Jews of Hebron in his book, “Days of Our Years”, from which the subsequent emerged. He shows how the Mufti of Jerusalem was behind the riots and slaughter, and accused the British administration of aiding and abetting the Mufti.

Falsified photographs showing the Omar mosque of Jerusalem in ruins, with an inscription that the edifice had been bombed by the Zionists were handed out to the Arabs of Hebron as they were leaving their place of worship on Friday evening of August 23.

A Jew passing by on his way to the synagogue was stabbed to death. When he heard of the murder, Rabbi Slonim, a man born and bred in the city and a friend of the Arab notables, notified the British police commander that the Arabs seemed to be strangely excited. He was told to mind his own business.

An hour later the synagogue was attacked by a mob, and the Jews at prayer were slaughtered. On the Saturday morning following, the Yeshiva was put to the sack, and the students were slain. A delegation of Jewish citizens thereupon set out to visit the police station, but was met by the lynches.

The Jews returned and took refuge in the house of Rabbi Slonim where they remained until evening, when the mob appeared before the door. Unable to batter it down, the Arabs climbed up the trees at the rear of the house and, dropping onto the balcony, entered through the windows on the 1st floor.

Mounted police— Arab troopers in the service of the government—had appeared outside by this time, and some of the Jews ran down the stairs of Slonim’s house and out into the roadway. They implored the policemen to dismount and protect their friends and relatives inside the house and clung around the necks of the horses. From the upper windows came the terrifying screams of the old people, but the police galloped off, but the boys in the road to be cut down by Arabs arriving from all sides for the orgy of blood.

“When I visited the place, in the company of Captain Mareck Schwartz, a former Austrian artillery officer. Mr. Abraham Goldberg of New York, and Mr Ernst Davies, correspondent of the old Berliner Tageblatt, the blood stood in a huge pool on the slightly sagging stone floor of the house. Clocks, crockery, tables and windows had been smashed to smithereens.”

Of the unlooted articles, not a single item had been left intact except a large black-and-white photograph of Dr Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Around the picture’s frame the murderers had draped the blood-drenched underwear of a woman.

“We stood silently contemplating the scene of slaughter when the door was flung open by a British solder with fixed bayonet. In strolled Mr Keith-Roach, a governor of the Jaffa district, followed by a colonel of the Green Howards battalion of the King’s African Rifles. They took a hasty glance around that awful room, and Mr Roach remarked to his companion, ‘Shall we have lunch now or drive to Jerusalem 1st?’”

On the same day of the Hebron massacre, the Arabs had noted in Jerusalem, crying:’ Death to the Jews!’ The government is with us!’ The fact that the attacks on Jewish communities in different parts of the country had occurred simultaneously was interpreted by the Mufti’s newspaper Falastin as irrefutable evidence of the spontaneity of the outburst of Arab indignation.

The Acting High Commissioner Mr H.C. Luke, had informed newspapermen that the government had been completely taken unawares. Yet a full 10 days earlier it was he who had ordered the various hospitals, and especially the Rothschild clinic of which Dr Dantzinger was chief surgeon, to have a large number of beds in readiness in view of the government’s expectation of riotous outbreak!!

To modern ties, we continue to be bedeviled by radical Islam. Why? Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch-American writer, activist, conservative thinker and former politician. Her, “How to Win the Clash of Civilizations” appeared in The Wall Street Journal of August 18, 2010.

She commences with, “What do controversies around the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, the eviction of American missionaries from Morocco earlier this year, the minaret ban in Switzerland last year, and the recent burka ban I France have in common?” All 4 are framed in the Western media as issues of religious tolerance. But that is not their essence. Fundamentally, they are all symptoms of what the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington called the ‘Clash of Civilizations’, particularly the clash between Islam and the West.

The West is declining in relative power. Islam is exploding demographically, and Asian civilizations—especially China—are economically ascendant. The West’s Universalist pretensions are increasingly bringing it into conflict with the other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China. Thus, the survival of the West depends on Americans, Europeans and other Westerners reaffirming their shared civilization as unique—and uniting to defend it against challenges from non-Western civilizations.

President Obama, in his own way, is a One Worder. In his 2009 Cairo speech, he called for a new era of understanding between America and the Muslim world. It would be a world based on “mutual respect, and—upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. The president’s hope was that moderate Muslims would eagerly accept this invitation to be friends.

Of course, this hasn’t gone according to plan. According to the One World view, Turkey is an island of Muslim moderation in a sea of extremism. Bur the illusion of Turkey as the West’s moderate friend in the Muslim world has been shattered. Turkey’s President Recep Erdogen congratulated Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election after he blatantly stole the presidency. Subsequently Turkey joined forces with Brazil to try to dilute the American-led effort to tighten UN sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear arms program. Turkey sponsored the “aid flotilla” designed to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza and to hand Hama a public relations victory.

All the Arab countries except Iraq—a precarious democracy created by the United States—are ruled by despots of various stripes. And all the opposition groups that have any meaningful support among the local populations are run by Islamist outfits like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Analysts have observed that in free and fair elections, a Muslim Brotherhood victory cannot be ruled out.

The greatest advantage of Huntington’s civilization model of international relations allows us to distinguish friends from enemies.

We need to recognize the extent to which the advance of radical Islam is the result of an active propaganda campaign. As opposed to the Saudis who invested at least $2 billion a year over a 30-year period, the Western response has been negligible.
As understood by Huntington, the 1st step towards winning this clash of civilizations is to understand how the other side is winning it— and to rid ourselves of the One World illusion.

On April 12, 2004, the Jerusalem Post published Mordechai Nisan’s “The ethos of Islam”. His essay provides comprehension today, although recorded in the past, it remains relevant. While Israel has fought tenaciously against Islamic terrorism, Europe has adopted escapist routes: blaming Israel and its war with the Palestinians as responsible for Muslim terror, and bowing submissively as dhimmis must to Muslim violence, threats, and ultimatums.

European cowardice and venality, with the rise of anti-Semitism and the shameful Spanish election results were witnessed. That Muslims take their religion seriously and literally appears beyond the grasp of European comprehension. The Americans understand better.

Central to the attitude in the West concerning Islam is the fear to define global terrorism as Muslim terrorism. US President George W. Bush’s reticence, a combination of caution and error, has been representative of all Western leaders.

Islam’s conceptual lexicon and emotional code are radically different from that conventionally understood and practiced in the West. Yasser Arafat and Ahmed Yassin, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Hassan Nasrallah, and Osama bin Laden, register as dramatic personae who relentlessly link religion with war against Jews and Christians, devoid of any remorse or shame.

The mind-set of Islam was etched into theological axioms with appearance of the Koran in the 7th century. This book is its explicit and enduring guide. The Koran is, among other things, a war tract calling upon “the believers”—there are only Muslim believers—“to fight for the cause of Allah”[4:74-76]. This is a war for truth; G-d is One and Muhammad his true prophet and messenger. The infidels must be punished [16:126-8] for their haughtiness and stubbornness in rejecting Muhammad [6:158], and will burn in the fire of Hell [4:55].

The religion of Muhammad will triumph because the Muslims love death, accepting any individual sacrifice, while the enemy loves life. Yet more than the Muslim shahid [martyr] is willing to die, the Muslim mujahidin [fighter] has a passion to kill. This is his religious mission and life’s purpose. There is no reason to pity the infidel or feel culpable for his demise. The Koran commands the believer not to trust or befriend the humiliated shimmies, those Jewish and Christian scriptuaries, who must suffer timorously the heavenly sanctioned rule of Islam.

Conclusion demands poof of being indigenous. The Jewish people have more than 2 millennia consistently maintained the strongest claim to be the aboriginal people in its ancestral homeland, and their existence and roots are widely documented, acknowledged and recognized.

No, the Philistines were an ancient people that ceased to exist in antiquity. The name “Palestine” is related to the Ancient “Peleshet” of the Bible, but the Palestinian people are not descended from the Philistines, who were invaders from the sea, most probably Cyprus. Caleb Howelis writing in Greek Reporter of October 9, 2023 asks the question, “Are the Palestinians Descendants of the Ancient Philistines?”

The two nations share a similar name. For this reason, many people wonder, are the Palestinians the modern-day descendants of the Ancient Philistines? The latter were a nation that lived on the Mediterranean coast of the land of Canaan. Their territory essentially started from Egypt’s border and stretched partway to the border of Phoenicia. Inland from them were the Israelites.

Throughout most of Biblical History, they were enemies of the Israelites. For this reason, the prophet Ezekiel declared that they would be destroyed. By the 5th century BCE, it appears that all historical and archaeological trace of them had disappeared. They may have survived as a group for some time thereafter, but Alexander the Great’s conquests in the following century certainly eliminated whatever trace of that nation was left.

From around 2000 BCE, there is evidence of extensive Aegean expansion towards the Levant. The Minoans from Crete appear to have established colonies in this area. Perhaps these started off as trading colonies, but in any case, they became the Philistines known by the Biblical patriarchs.