That seems a rather limited view of history. - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 07/06/2010 01:10:22 AM
Regardless of whether Purim was a silly myth or not, there was no "Israeli-Arab" conflict of the sort that you propose.
No, the interesting thing is that the majority of anti-Jewish sentiment, prior to the latter half of the Twentieth Century, came from WHITE CHRISTIANS IN EUROPE. Jews were protected in al-Andalus, they were protected in Jerusalem under the Muslims, they were protected by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and they were protected by the Shahs of Persia.
Jews lived in peace in Baghdad, and Basra, and Tehran, and Shiraz, and Damascus, and the cities of Morocco, and Jerusalem, and Granada.
Yes, they had to pay taxes as dhimmis. However, they weren't murdered on a regular basis the way they were in Europe. They weren't deported en masse like they were from Spain and England. They weren't burned and attacked like they were in Germany, and France, and Italy. They weren't systematically deprived of any means of working the land, attending institutions of higher education or advancing themselves like they were all over Europe. They weren't slaughtered in pogroms, they weren't killed in death camps and they weren't forced to live in ghettos or shtetls.
Up until the time that militant Zionist settlers arrived in British Mandate Palestine in the 20th Century, there was really virtually no Jew-Arab hostility, and there hadn't been since the establishment of Islam. Some issues can be raised about the last days of Muslim Spain and the Nineteenth Century in the Ottoman Empire, but the problem there is more one of a degeneration of public order generally.
As a result, the problem is, really, a new one.
No, the interesting thing is that the majority of anti-Jewish sentiment, prior to the latter half of the Twentieth Century, came from WHITE CHRISTIANS IN EUROPE. Jews were protected in al-Andalus, they were protected in Jerusalem under the Muslims, they were protected by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and they were protected by the Shahs of Persia.
Jews lived in peace in Baghdad, and Basra, and Tehran, and Shiraz, and Damascus, and the cities of Morocco, and Jerusalem, and Granada.
Yes, they had to pay taxes as dhimmis. However, they weren't murdered on a regular basis the way they were in Europe. They weren't deported en masse like they were from Spain and England. They weren't burned and attacked like they were in Germany, and France, and Italy. They weren't systematically deprived of any means of working the land, attending institutions of higher education or advancing themselves like they were all over Europe. They weren't slaughtered in pogroms, they weren't killed in death camps and they weren't forced to live in ghettos or shtetls.
Up until the time that militant Zionist settlers arrived in British Mandate Palestine in the 20th Century, there was really virtually no Jew-Arab hostility, and there hadn't been since the establishment of Islam. Some issues can be raised about the last days of Muslim Spain and the Nineteenth Century in the Ottoman Empire, but the problem there is more one of a degeneration of public order generally.
As a result, the problem is, really, a new one.
Whether by "history" we mean real events to which Biblical and Koranic stories refer, or the existence of those stories. The Bible claims that same Persian Empire in which the events of Purim were supposed to have occurred ultimately allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem--where the people living there harassed them and sent letters to the Persian King claiming Israel had a predisposition to sedition and rebellion. Again, maybe it's just a story, but it's a story that claims those who built the Second Temple had to work with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other because of constant attacks by their neighbors. They may or may not have been "Arab" but they were almost certainly "Palestinian" in the modern sense.
Yes, there was rampant anti-semitism in Medieval and even Enlightenment Europe; the Holocaust didn't happen in a vacuum. There was also the destruction of the Second Temple and Jerusalem in the wake of the Jewish Revolt against Rome, and the diaspora largely responsible for the large Jewish presence in Medieval Europe in the first place. There was also the FIRST destruction of Jerusalem, Solomons Temple and Israel (can we at least agree THOSE were historical events that had nada to do with Europe?
) By the historical standards of the region, yes, the various Muslim monarchs were benevolent in their treatment of Jews as second class citizens (and didn't restrict that treatment to Jews either. ) That doesn't mean everything was fine, and European anti-semitism doesn't explain instances of anti-Jewish language in the Koran, or the Tanakhs many claims of persecution by various Mid-Eastern Gentiles. If much of it had died down by the 20th Century, that probably had more to do with the diaspora than any warming of relations; I've also heard it argued that the Jewish presence in Canaan prior to the Balfour Declaration was negligible, which might explain why there weren't a lot of Mid-Easterners hunting Jews who weren't there in the first place.Whether or not one accepts the Abraham, the Exodus, Purim or any of the rest as historical events they were a well established part of Jewish religion and culture before Europe even existed. To again reference the quote used in the lecture, the Tanakh doesn't say not to oppress the stranger "because you were a stranger in Buchenwald. " That obviously doesn't excuse centuries of anti-semitism in Europe, but to imply the problems between Palestine and Israel are solely or even primarily of European and American origin is to ignore a great many texts you know far too well.