The Arab World is Guilty of Colonialist Reversal

In 1978, Professor Edward Said published the book, “Orientalism,” which helped create Post-Colonists Studies – the study of the legacy of imperialism and colonialism. Said also wrote, “The Question of Palestine,” and throughout his work he argued that Israel’s creation was an act of colonialism. Said’s nephew, Professor Saree Makdisi, has taken up his uncle’s mantle. In one lecture, Makdisi argued that “Israel should be revealed for what is; a nakedly racist settler-colonist enterprise.”

The argument that Israel is an imperialist state takes two forms: The first argument is that Israel acts as an extension of British and then later American Imperialism. The second argument is that Israel is controlling the Palestinians like an empire. Another premise of this claim is that the Palestinians’ national movement is a grassroots movement inspired by a group of native people who simply want their own land. However, all of these claims are false. The reality is the Arab and Muslim states seek to use the Palestinians as a tool to restore the land of Israel back to Arab-Islamic control. The Arabs want to enforce Arab-Islamic colonialism onto the Jews, while at the same time the Arabs accuse the Jews of being colonists; this is a form of propaganda, which should be considered colonialist reversal.

A brief history of Arab-Islamic colonialism.

The theory of Post-Colonialism studies focuses on the consequences of European Colonialism. Ironically, this view of colonialism is somewhat ethnocentric and only focuses on a relatively brief historical period. The long history of the ancient world is replete with examples of imperialist nations. Indeed, the Arab-Islamic Empire (632-1258) was itself such an imperialist power. In Arabia, Muhammad’s claim that he was the “Messenger of God” was opposed by many of the Bedouin tribes, as well as by the Jewish population. In response, Muhammad waged war to conquer the Arabian Peninsula under the banner of his new religion.

He transformed the pagan Arabs into an army motivated by a single desire to bring the world under the dominion of Allah. The earliest Arab-Islamic conquers came from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and invaded Africa and the Levant. They went on to conquer lands from Spain to India. They subjugated numerous indigenous populations and imposed upon them their own language, customs, and religion. In roughly two hundred years Islam became the political organizing principle of one of the largest empires in the world. For roughly 600 years Islam was the dominant religion and military power in the world. In 1258, the empire started to decline after the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols.

Islamic doctrine mandates the creation a single religious and political body out of all Muslims, called, the Ummah, which will be ruled by the Caliph. Such a desire is reflected in the 2017 updated version of the Hamas Charter which explains that, “Palestine is at the heart of the Arab and Islamic Ummah and enjoys a special status. Within Palestine there exists Jerusalem, whose precincts are blessed by Allah.” And, “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine… Its Islamic and Christian holy places belong exclusively to the Palestinian people and to the Arab and Islamic Ummah.”

In this sense, the concept of a Caliphate is inherently imperialistic because it demands that all people, irrespective of their beliefs, submit to live under one leader and one religion. Hence, Islamic doctrine does not respect the concept of individual independent nations that determine their own futures with their own leaders in their own lands.

Arab colonization of the Middle East and North Africa is one of the longest and most successful forms of colonization in human history. Before the advent of Islam, Egypt was an epicenter for Christian theology. But, wherever the Arabs conquered they subjugated the Christians and Jews and forced them to pay a tax to be allowed to practice their faith, known as the Jyza tax. The Arabs also enslaved an estimated 14 to 17 million Africans. In contrast, the most comprehensive analysis of the Trans-Atlantic Slave shipping records estimated that roughly 12.5 million African slaves had been taken by the Europeans. Although not Arab, another form of Islamic imperialism was the Ottoman Empire whose footprint included the territory of modern countries such as Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Iraq, and reached as far as Mecca.

The consequences of the history of Arab-Islamic colonialism are obvious: There are a billion and a half Muslims. There are 22 Arabs states which comprise the Arab League, representing roughly 430,000,000 Arab citizens, and Arabic is one of the most common languages in the world. Arabic was spread across the world through Arab colonialism in the same way that English was spread across the world by English colonialism. Contrasted with about 15 million Jews worldwide, 6 million Jews in Israel, and only a few million people who speak Hebrew, this means there are about 100 Muslims per one Jew. Clearly, the Arabs were some of the greatest colonialists in human history.

1. The Arab states seek to continue the legacy of Arab-Islamic colonialism through Pan-Arabism and attempt to do so with the aid of outside imperialist powers.

The religious concept of the Ummah was mixed with modern concepts of nationalism and gave birth to Pan-Arabism, which seeks to unify the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and West Asia into an Arab superpower. Another version of this concept is the idea of Arab nationalism, which is the idea that the Arabs constitute a single nation. The earliest ideas of Pan-Arabism were articled by the novelist, Jurji Zaydan (1861-1914). Zaydan wanted to see the acceptance of a modernized version of the Quranic Arabic language, called, Modern Standard Arabic, implemented as the universal language of the Middle East.

The first attempts to implement Pan-Arabism were carried out by Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali of Mecca, who tried to obtain independence from the Ottoman Empire for the Arabs under a single massive state. In other words, Pan-Arabism is simply a modern version of Arab-Islamic imperialism. For example, in 1955, Israel attempted to join the Badung Conference, in which 29 African and Asian countries participated. However, the Arab states threatened to boycott the conference if Israel was invited, and they succeeded in preventing Israel from attending the conference.

Pan-Arabism was given new life after the creation of Israel. In the 1950s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to unite all of the Arab states under his rule. The tiny Jewish state stood in the way of creating a giant Arab empire. The Egyptians as well as the Syrians sought Russia’s help to destroy Israel. Russia had imperialist interests in the region, and the Arabs wanted to create an Arab superpower. Russia wanted to create a foothold in the Middle East and in exchange they supplied the weapons in both The 1967 War and The 1973 War. In other words, the Russians and the Arabs were seeking imperialist goals in the Middle East. After the end of The 1973 War, the Arab states succeeded in damaging Israel’s relationship with African nations by threatening to impose oil boycotts on countries with ties to Israel. In contrast, Israel has never tried to conquer the entire Middle East and make it Jewish, and the Israelis have never attempted to enforce Judaism onto the Palestinians.

2. The Arab and Muslim states seek to continue the legacy of Arab-Islamic colonialism through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Despite the fact that Pan-Arabism has never been fully realized, an Islamic variation has been created, called, The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC is an international organization founded in 1969, consisting of 57 Member States, which represents a collective population of over 1.6 billion. The OIC is “the collective voice of the Muslim world.” The OIC has permanent delegations to the EU and the UN, and forms a massive voting bloc in the UN.

One of the major goals of the OIC’s is to obtain international recognition of East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City and the Temple Mount, as “occupied territory.” Technically speaking, the Jordanian Muslim Authorities have control over the Temple Mount, but Israel has some shared control. The OIC wants to bring The Dome of the Rock back under complete Muslim authority. In 2013, the Secretary-General of the OIC threatened to cut off relations with any country which recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In 2017, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and this decision threw the OIC into a rage. In response, the 57 members of the OIC met in Istanbul and declared Trump’s decision, “null and void.” The OIC also demanded that East Jerusalem be recognized as the capital of Palestine. The OIC seeks to recapture Jerusalem through lawfare, rather than through warfare against the Jews. It is important to understand that returning the Dome of the Rock back to Muslim authorities is a major goal of the Muslim world. The Dome of the Rock is not simply a structure of historical and religious significance. Rather, it is a symbol of Islamic dominance over both Christianity and Judaism.

The Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis explained that the Dome of the Rock is, “The Oldest surviving Muslim religious building outside Arabia, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, was completed in 691 or 692 C.E. The erection of this monument, on the site of the ancient Jewish temple, and in the style and vicinity of Christian Monuments such as the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of the Ascension, sent a clear message to the Jews, and, more important to the Christians. Their revelations, though once authentic, had been corrupted by their unworthy custodians and were therefore superseded by the final and perfect revelation embodied in Islam. Just as the Jews had been overcome and superseded by the Christians, so the Christian world order was now to be replaced by the Muslim faith and the Islamic caliphate. To emphasize the point, the Qur’anic inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock denounce what Muslims regard as the principal Christian errors: ‘Praise be to God, who begets no son, and has no partner.’”

In the same tradition, the OIC acts like a massive Muslim bully against the tiny Jewish state, and has used the UN to launch endless lawfare against Israel. According to UN Watch, “From 2012 through 2015, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted 97 resolutions criticizing countries; 83 out of those 97 have been against Israel (86%).”

3. The Arab and Muslim states seek to continue the legacy of Arab-Islamic colonialism through the creation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

The Arab and Muslim states seek to use the Palestinians as a tool to restore the land of Israel back to Arab-Islamic control. In 1964, The Arab League Summit in Cairo created the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which issued the Palestinian National Charter. The 1964 charter defined Palestine as the territory of the State of Israel and specifically excluded Gaza and the West Bank. During The 1967 War Israel gained control of Gaza and the West Bank, which includes the East side of Jerusalem. In response, the 1968 version of the charter changed to include the territory of Israel, as well as Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem as the Palestinian homeland to be liberated.

The OIC seeks to use the Palestinians as a means to restore Jerusalem back to Islamic authority. The PLO is like the first born son of the OIC. In 1974, the OIC helped the PLO to obtain “observer status” at the UN. In 1975, the OIC and the Russians helped pass the nefarious “Zionism is Racism” resolution. The same year, the OIC helped establish The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). This was designed to guarantee the Palestinian people their inalienable rights to self-determination, as well as the right of return to Israel. In 1977, the OIC helped create “The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” In 2011, the OIC helped Palestine to be accepted as a full member of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In 2012, all of the work of OIC laid the groundwork to grant Palestine non-member observer state status at the UN.

The PLO has always made it public that their goal is to destroy Israel. In fact, the largest faction of the multi-party PLO is called, Fatah, and their flag has an image of Israel being destroyed by machine guns and replaced with Palestine in Islamic green. To make sure that everyone still understands that the goal is to annihilate Israel, the Palestinian leaders hang these flags all over the streets of the West Bank. Yet, despite this fact, the OIC has worked to have the international community grant Palestine the right to non-member observer state status, which is essentially empowering a group to wage war on Israel.

4. The Arabs seek to continue the legacy of Arab-Islamic colonialism through overwhelming Israel with an Arab majority, also known as The Palestinian Right of return.

In 1949, the UN established the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has an annual budget of one billion dollars. There are only two organizations in the UN which deal with refugees. The first is UNRWA, which deals with only the Palestinians. The second is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which deals with all of the refugees from every conflict in the entire world. In 2011,The Center for Near East Research compared the number of staff working for each organization, UNRWA had 29,000 staff members for only the Palestinians, while UNHCR had 7,200 staff members for all of the refugees in the world. According to the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, through organizations like UNRWA the Palestinians have received twenty five times that of the Marshall Plan per person. It is possible that the Palestinians have received the most foreign aid of any group of people in human history.

UNRWA also succeeded in creating a different criterion to be considered a refugee from the standard definition produced by UN. According to UNHCR refugee status cannot pass down from the parent to the children. The sole exception is a definition created for the Palestinians, which allows the descendants of the Arab refugees from The 1948 War to inherit refugee status. For example, the great-grandchild of an Arab who was made a refugee in The 1948 War, will still be considered a refugee, even if he or she was born in America. Through a dishonest application of the term, “refugee,” the numbers are inflated to as much as five million Palestinian refugees. The numbers are inflated for propaganda reasons to claim that Palestinians constitute the largest displaced group in the world. The truth is that there are only a few thousand of the original refugees still alive.

In reality, the great grandchildren of the original refugees have been living in homes and in other Arab countries for decades. The Arab states also deny citizenship to the descendants of the original refugees. The Arab states try to blame their lack of citizenship on Israel, so they can pressure Israel to give them citizenship. The real goal of UNRWA is to keep the Palestinians and their descendants eternal refugees rather than to help them build an independent state.

UNRWA also seeks to implement the Palestinian Right of Return, which is the claim that self-described Palestinian refugees from around the world have the right to return to Israel and overwhelm the state. The idea is that Palestinians should have the right to decide who becomes a citizen of Israel, instead of the Jewish people. Or, really that Palestinian self-determination should replace Jewish self-determination in the territory of Israel. President Obama explained, “the right of return, would extinguish Israel as a Jewish state.” In other words, the right of return is a euphemistic way of calling for the destruction of Israel without sounding violent.

5. The Arab and the Muslim states seek to continue the legacy of Arab-Islamic colonialism through the creation of Hamas.

In 1987, Hamas was founded as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is not committed to Palestinian nationalism, but rather to the restoration of a Caliphate. Hamas is sponsored by Qatar. In 2012, the Emir of Qatar chose to visit Gaza, instead of the West Bank, and symbolically chose to endorse Hamas over the Palestinian Authority. In 2017, Hamas announced its new charter from Doha. A senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council stated, “Qatar provides strong financial aid to the occupied Palestinian territories and is a safe haven for a number of Hamas leaders.” Hamas has also been an umbrella group of the Iranian regime. Iran seeks to become the Islamic-nuclear-military superpower in the region and to surpass Israel. Iran has used Hamas to fight a proxy war with Israel. Iran has funded Hamas, and part of the funding has been used to purchase the rockets fired at Israel. The Iranian regime, Hezbollah, and Hamas are all united in the goal to destroy Israel.

6. Academics such as Edward Said seek to whitewash the history and goals of the Arab-Islamic world.

Edward Said argued that the Arab world is a victim of what he called, “orientalism,”

which is the perception of the Arab world as backwards which was utilized by Europeans to justify the colonization of  the Arab world in the name of progress. Orientalism is, according to Said, a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” However, while there is truth in the claim that the European world was guilty of racism towards the Arab World, Said was guilty of choosing to ignore or distort other historical facts.

First, Said primarily analyzed European history as a form of colonialism, and neglected to recognize that the Arabs were also historically colonizers themselves. Second, Said misrepresented the Jewish people as foreigners to the Middle East in the same way as the Europeans were foreigners. The truth, however, is that the Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel, because their nation, language, and religion all originated in the land. It was their home for well over a millennium before the invention of Islam. Had Said admitted that the Jewish people were indigenous to the land of Israel, then he would have been forced to recognize the validity of Zionism. Third, the Jewish people had also been victims of orientalism, meaning that throughout European history Jews were depicted as backwards because they came from the Middle East in the same manner as Arabs.

Zionism is not colonialism.

The goal of the Zionists was to be freed from centuries of oppressive Arab-Islamic rulers as well as Christian-European rulers. The Zionists were not acting on behalf of any European country. The Zionists did not plant any European flag, instead they planted a Jewish flag in their ancestral lands. The Zionist movement was a nationalist movement, sponsored by the Jewish people, which sought to create a single state where the Jewish people could be free. The Zionists were not colonialists, instead they were nationalists.  

The claim that the Zionists were an extension of British imperialism is also impossible, because some of the early Zionists were fighting against the British. One of the Zionist militant organizations, the Irgun, even bombed the British military headquarters, which was located in the King David Hotel. Ironically, some people accuse the Zionists of being terrorists based on attacking the British empire, while simultaneously calling them an extension of the British empire. Also, it is true that America and Israel are strong allies, but Israel is not an extension of American imperialism. These are simply false attacks, which are used to undermine the desire of the Jewish people to live in their indigenous homeland.

Conclusion:

In summation: The Jewish population in the Arab-Muslim world was kept under Islamic apartheid and dominance for thirteen centuries, until the Zionist movement and the creation of modern Israel. The Jewish State is threatened by theologically based and hostile Muslim states, which still hold the religious belief that Jewish people should have to remain under the authority of Islamic rulers. The reality is the Arab and Muslim states seek to use the Palestinians as a tool to restore the land of Israel back to Arab-Islamic control. The Palestinians were essentially built and propped up by outside organizations such as; UNRWA, Egyptian President Nasser, the Arab League, the KGB, the OIC, the Muslim Brotherhood, and sponsored by Qatar and the Iranian Regime. The Palestinians and the Arab states have repeatedly sought imperialists powers to help them in the war against the Jewish State. The Arabs seek to continue the legacy of Arab-Islamic colonialism.

The end goal of both Pan-Arabism and the Palestinian Right of Return is the destruction of the Jewish State, and the replacement with the twenty third Arab state. The reality is that the Arabs want to enforce Arab-Islamic colonialism onto the Jews, and force them to give up their independence. At the same time the Arabs accuse the Jews of being colonists, this is a form of propaganda, which should be considered colonialist reversal.

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