No More Dhimmi Status for Us: Never Again

Preston Damsky, 29, is a white nationalist and an antisemite. He is also a law student at the University of Florida. He recently won an award for a paper on “originalism,” the theory that interprets the US Constitution based on the meaning it had when it was originally adopted.

In his capstone paper for the class, Mr. Damsky argued that the framers had intended for the phrase “We the People,” in the Constitution’s preamble, to refer solely to white people. At the end of the semester, Damsky was presented the “book award,” which designated him as the best student in the class even though, in the paper, he argued for the removal of voting rights protections for nonwhites among other ridiculous ideas.

A month later, emboldened by his success in class, Damsky posted on X (previously Twitter) that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary.” Noteworthy: the university has the largest number of Jewish undergraduate students in the country. At that point, the university suspended him, banning him from campus.

As I was reflecting on Damsky’s paper, I thought about the many times Jews lived as second-class citizens. Damsky was advocating for such status for non-white citizens, including Jews if he decided to allow them to live.

I wonder how many anti-Zionists around the world know about dhimmi status, second-class citizenship under Islamic rule, which lasted for 1200 years – 7^th century CE to the mid-19^th century CE.

After the bloody, violent Arab Muslim conquests, which started under Muhammad in the early 7^th century CE, and continued through the 7^th and 8^th centuries CE, the regions, which were formerly the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, including Judea and Samaria, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and parts of North Africa – allowed Jews and other “people of the book” to remain as second class citizens known as dhimmi. The word is derived from dhimma – meaning a contract for residence in return for taxes. The Arabs took over the land and Jews eventually became a minority in their ancestral homeland. Many fled to the four corners of the map – most becoming second-class citizens, in one form or another, wherever they settled. Those that remained lived under incredibly difficult circumstances.

Taxes, known as jizya, were levied on dhimmi; they could be very steep. If a dhimmi family was fortunate, the tax could be as low as what the cost would be for 10 days living expense for a family. The highest rates could be up to 80 percent of earnings. Muslims did not pay the tax.

The Muslim conquest, the colonization of the Levant including Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon, began in 634 CE and was largely completed by 638 CE – an important point when you’re talking about Islamic indigeneity to Palestine. Note: Jewish presence in Jerusalem and other parts of Judea continued before, during, and after the Muslim conquest.

Colonizations were driven by religious zeal, but politics and economics were also a factor – including the desire for both resources and power. Islamist armies were successful for three reasons: (1) their numbers were immense, (2) the combatants were brutal and well-armed, and (3) Islam was a unifying factor. The first Arab Muslim conquests – colonizations of lands not their own – were compared to those of Alexander the Great, but they lasted longer. At their height, the territory colonized by Arabs in the name of Islam stretched from Iberia in the west to India at Sind in the east.

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So…what’s the point? The point is – Jews were expelled, murdered, enslaved, and/or lived as second-class citizens for thousands of years. Jews were often unable to fight back. Living under Islamist rule and paying heavy taxes, they had few resources.

Under the Arab conquest, Jews lost their land. They were dispossessed by the Arab colonizers who brutally ethnically cleansed them from Judea, their ancestral homeland. They had been farmers, while the colonizers had an army, state munitions, horses, and more. After being dispossessed from their homeland, Jews endured unimaginable suffering – expulsion after expulsion in many of the places where they had settled.

Wherever in the world they landed, Jews had always planned to return to their ancestral homeland. Next year in Jerusalem has forever been the cry of the Jewish people through the centuries. The State of Israel, the ancestral Jewish homeland, is the Jewish center. Jews can be scattered around the globe, but if we need a home, we have Israel.

When Jews had to run from Catholic mobs throughout the Dark Ages, from Christian crusaders throughout the Middle Ages, from the Spanish Inquisition, from the Portuguese Inquisition, from the Russian pogroms, from pogroms throughout Eastern Europe, from the Nazis and the Holocaust – there was never anywhere to resettle. No country would accept the Jews. When someone says they want to kill Jews – I believe them. When people like Damsky say “we must abolish Jews by any means necessary” – I believe them.

So Preston Damsky and compatriots, so anti-Zionists everywhere – Jews will never be second class citizens again. And you certainly won’t be able to abolish us. We have a homeland and we plan to keep it. Whether you say you want to abolish us or you scream “from the river to the sea” – we recognize it as Jew-hatred – plain and simple.

Anti-Zionists – you call us colonizers. You scream ethnic cleansing. Look in the mirror. Never again. Am Yisrael Chai.