Towards a Lasting Middle East Peace

Each day’s news brings with it horrible tales of suffering from the Holy Land . The death toll on both sides mounts steadily. Indeed, so overwhelming is the seemingly never-ending stream of death and mayhem that it requires an exceptionally bloody day to merit significant media consideration. We have all grown accustomed to the fact that the Israeli state and its Palestinian opponents are locked in mortal combat. So it has been, so it is and so, it seems, it always will be.

Indeed, this pessimistic prognosis seems rooted in a century of precedent. The first Jewish settlers who came to Palestine with the intention of establishing a sovereign Jewish state there arrived towards the end of the nineteenth century. Palestinian nationalism – then generally subsumed under the title Arab nationalism but soon to assume its more particularistic title – began to flourish at about the same time.

The clash of these movements was played out through various wars, atrocities, revolutions and dispossessions throughout the twentieth century. Various strains of ideology in these rival nationalisms have attempted to bring the matter to closure, either by force of arms or, at times, by recourse to the negotiating table.

All these efforts, be they military or compromise oriented, have one fact in common. Their result is always the same. They have failed – failed utterly and totally. We may delude ourselves by yet dreaming, as many do, that there is one final war or one last peace plan which can calm all those concerned. Unfortunately there is no indication that such is the case.

We of Neturei Karta International find the toll of dead and wounded on both sides to be intolerable. We feel that it is high time for a radical departure from the assumptions that have governed and, effectively stifled free debate on the subject.

Our perspective is far from new. It is the centuries old view of the Torah. It was once universally shared by all Jews and it is only our people’s recent flirtation with assorted secularist dogmas that have caused it to be forgotten of late in some quarters.

Simply stated – The essence of Judaism is our faith -- our belief that G-d spoke to Moses and the assembled multitudes at Sinai and there gave His Revelation to the world. This was, is and always will be, Judaism.

The Jewish exile from the Holy Land , which followed the Roman destruction of the Second Temple close to two thousand years ago, was always viewed by our people as a Divine punishment. The state of exile in which we found ourselves was not seen as the result of military or political weakness. Rather, the Creator had decreed that until such time as He would chose to redeem the world, world Jewry was to remain in exile. The only possible means to alter what was and is a metaphysical state are spiritual. Repentance, prayer, Torah study, deeds of kindness and the like could hasten redemption. Nothing else would be effective. Any other means of ending exile is metaphysically doomed to failure.

Zionism was a movement dedicated to altering this traditional view of redemption. It posited that political maneuvering; revolutionary terror, war and dispossession would yield Jewish salvation.

However, Zionism not only broke with the teachings of our faith, it also entered upon a campaign, now over one hundred years old, to persuade and, eventually, force, when possible, Jews to abandon their allegiance to G-d and the Torah and recreate themselves as secular nationalists.

The Zionist movement was not only a heretical departure from Judaism and a practical attempt to lure Jews from their Torah. It was also monstrously blind to the indigenous inhabitants of the Holy Land . In the 1890s, less than 5% of the Holy Land ’s population was Jewish, yet, Theodore Herzl had the nerve to describe his movement as that of “a people without a land for a land without a people.”

Time and again both Revisionist and Labor Zionists, the former overtly and the latter under the clouds of deceptive rhetoric, have sought the elimination of the Palestinian people from their state. They have dispossessed thousands and refused them the right of return or minimum compensation. They have kept the people of Gaza and the West Bank stripped of basic political and human rights and denied them the dignity of self-determination.

This aggression has plunged the region into its never-ending spiral of bloodshed.

Sad to say, the bloody results of Zionism were not unexpected. They were foretold in the Talmud. There we read that a human based attempt to return en masse to the Holy Land would result in terrifying loss of life. This is an unpleasant truth but its seems quite validated by the past century’s events.

People of the Press, I have come before you today to offer a new perspective on the Middle East, a new explanation as to why all previous attempts at peace making have failed. It is our belief that they are inherently doomed to fail. All of them share one fatal assumption. They find it axiomatic that the state of Israel should exist. And, in contrast to the plain evidence of the past half-century of Jewish history they see its existence as a positive development for the Jewish people.

Only blind dogma could at this date see Israel as something good for the Jewish people. Established as a so-called safe haven it has consistently over the past five decades been the most dangerous place on the face of the earth for a Jew to live. It has been the source of tens of thousands of Jewish deaths, of families torn apart and has left a trail of grieving widows, orphans and friends in its wake.

Not to mention the countless thousands of Jewish souls diverted from religion. And our Rabbis state “If you cause one to sin, it is worse than killing him”.

And, let us not forget that this tale of physical Jewish suffering is far magnified among the Palestinian people, a nation condemned to poverty, persecution, homelessness, all pervasive hopelessness and all too often, a far too premature, death.

This web of pain, the cries and tears of the grieving, demand of us as Jews that we return to the wellsprings of our faith. We must accept our task to serve G-d in humility and peace. This is the essence of a Jew.

And, when so doing we will inevitably reject the bizarre and malicious doctrines of Zionism, the falsification of Judaism.

We will realize that defying the Divine decree of exile is doomed to bloody failure.

We will realize that our people’s hopes cannot be built by shattering those of another people.

We will demand and with G-d’s, help live to see the peaceful dismantling of the state. We will return the land to those who dwelt upon it for centuries, the Palestinian people. Under their sovereignty, we will work towards a just solution to any Jewish – Palestinian problems created by the brief period of Zionist ascendancy.

There are I’m sure some skeptics here in the audience who feel that a Palestinian state would represent a threat to the Jewish people. My friends, I have been there time and time again as Neturei Karta International has visited Palestinian and Islamic organizations and I have been greeted with extraordinary warmth and brotherly concern. We have visited Iran , been hosts of the government. We were allowed to speak in Iran to both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, without any prior censorship. We have discovered time after time, that Muslims in general actually yearn for good relations with Jews and, that when the evil face of Zionism is stripped away, the naturally good relations between our peoples bubbles to the surface.

Actully history bears witness that through out the centuries Muslim countries were extremely hospitable to the Jews. In fact as a general rule the Jews faired far better in those countries than in other host lands.

And in Palestine alone our grandparent have testified to the fact that the Muslims and Jews lived in peace and harmony up until the advent of Zionism.

Many stories of the close friendship that existed at that time circulate in the Jewish communities, for instance, baby sitting each others children was a daily occurrence

We also operate a web site. There isn’t a day goes by when we don’t receive e- mails from around the Islamic world. They are all positive. They bless, express love and brotherhood. Often they credit us with having cured them of anti Jewish sentiments. From Yemen to Great Britain the delight these people experience in finding anti Zionist Jews is palpable.

This then is the image we offer as an alternative to the current horror – of a Jewish people free of the need to kill and be killed, free to pursue their Divine task of Torah practice and free to live in peace and respect with all men. May the Creator grant that we all be worthy of seeing that day. And ultimately the day when all will recognize the one G-D and serve Him in harmony. AMEN

The first Jewish settlers who came to Palestine with the intention of establishing a sovereign Jewish state

This is false. Most of the first settlers came to flee anti-Semitic pogroms (from Russia for example) and felt called to the country of their forefathers.

Palestinian nationalism – then generally subsumed under the title Arab nationalism but soon to assume its more particularistic title – began to flourish at about the same time.

What proof of this? The "Palestinian" nationalism developed in the begining of the 1920's under the Nazi Grand Mufti and was Pan Arab Islamic nationalism - in most cases it was considered that the Mandate Area should be part of Syria.

Tell us something we didn't know.

Sounds like the Arabs don't believe in peace. Three wars plus the numerous Islamic terrorist groups which have inflitrated into Israel during the time of its existence funded by Arab nazis like Nasser.

I see some yapping and debating here. I think it's the fact that what is being said amounts to a load of whooey.

Zionism was a movement dedicated to altering this traditional view of redemption. It posited that political maneuvering; revolutionary terror, war and dispossession would yield Jewish salvation.

It did? The Jews who came to Israel had a belief that they could build a land of prosperity (the land of their forefathers) and help the Arabs in the process. Noble belief. It was also a belief that this land would serve as a safe-having for the Jews from Jewish persecution in Europe and Arab Islamic lands. It wasn't their falt Arab Islamic ideology would marry nazi ideology and create a continuous string of terrorist activities against the Jews. All of these activities fommented and led by the same Mufti who would later meet with Hitler, form an SS division in Bosnia and recruit for the SS and plan for his own "solution" in Palestine.

Time and again both Revisionist and Labor Zionists,

I knew it. The religious zionists are conflated with the "labor zionists". The fact of the matter as any historical assessment will bear out, in the diaspora Jews there has always been an aspiration to return to the homeland of their fathers borne out of the Torah. The excruciating persecutions and pogroms in Europe only emphasized to the Jews the importance of their own country where rights would not have to be contingent on the largess of the host country and peoples.

And in Palestine alone our grandparent have testified to the fact that the Muslims and Jews lived in peace and harmony up until the advent of Zionism.

This is equivalent to the lie which Arab Christians feel compelled to tell. Both denying the dhimmi treatment at the hand of the Arab Islamics.Let us chronicle how much revisionism is contained in this statement itself and thus prove that the good rabbi doesn't know what he's talking about.

Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa after the onset of Islam were dhimmized, persecuted, murdered treated with contempt, their property and lands confiscated, etc. very MUCH like they were treated in Europe. The Arab Islamics had a lot of practice in massacring Jews. The following are some small quotes from Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial (1984): (Chapter 3 exerpts, footnotes not included)

The Jewish community of Syria became a refuge for Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. For centuries under Ottoman rule, it has been maintained, the Jews were allowed to live "relatively secure", often prosperous lives--chiefly as merchants--in the mellahs. Spanish exiles were responsible for establishing many Jewish religious schools in DAmascus and Aleppo, and more than one Jew held the post of Finance Minister.
But in Syria, as elsewhere in the Arab world, the "position of Jews was in many ways precarious."
A thirteenth century Syrian Arab writer provided a classic example of the durability and consistency of the Muslims' traditional Koran-inspired demoniacal image of "the Jew" -- the image through which the Prophet Muhammed and his followers sought to avenge Jews for favoring Judaism over the "new", seventh century religion. The Syrian wrote that:

......this [Jewish] group is the most cursed of all God's creation, the most evil-natured
                                 and the most deeply rooted in infidelity and accursedness. They are the most evil inten-
                                 tioned of mankind in their deeds, even they are the most ostentations in humility and
                                 sel-abasement...When they manage to be alone with man, they bring him to destruction
                                  they introduce, by trickery, a stupefying drug into his food, and then they kill him.

As dhimmis they paid the special tax, and their testimony against Muslims was invalid in the Syrian Courts. Jews bore many traditional dhimma discriminatory burdens:forbidden to carry arms; and "usually" prohibited from building or repairing places of worship. To those consistent humiliations were added the intermittent "oppression, extortion and violence by both local authorities and the Muslim population....One Jew who rose to the post of "treasury manager", at the end of the eighteenth century, ran the gamut of the schizoid Jewish existence under Muslim rule. In the first stage of his ascendancy, he was arrested, an eye was gouged out, and his nose and ears cut. In the second stage, he gained prominence "unique" for Jews, under the tolerant reign of a new pasha.....These people are always taken off in the last moment of their greatest apparent glory. True to this..."Hayyim the Jew" was executed in 1820 and his property was confiscated by yet another successor to the Syrian reign.

....According to reports from the Jewish community in 1839, however, it was the European consuls who insisted on the protection of the Jews---not entirely the beneficence of the occupying Arab government.

Libya...The seventh-century Arab conquest, taking fifty years to subjugate all of North Africa, brought Libyan Jews under the same fluctuating oppressive dhimma restrictions as elsewhere in the Maghreb...From that period forward, the Jewish population was, in one city or another, sacked cheated, and pillaged alternatively by nomads and Bedouins, with sterner penalties and banishment meted out arbitrarily, according to the whim of whichever Muslim tribal leader had at the moment defeated his rival...The twelfth century brought the barbarity of the Almohads to the eastern plains, and the Jews were severely persecuted "for the purpose of conversion" about 1140, "the blood of sons and daughters was spilt on a sabbath day...There is not a Jew, not a single one, in Dajayya or al-Mahdiya, and for Sabrat and Tura my eye always weeps".275 ....and the following mid-twelfth century description from another:

....years of distress, oppression and persecution to Israel, and they were exiled from their localities:
                      such as were for death, to death and such as were for the sword, to the sword, and...to the famine,
                      and...to the captivity...and such as were destined to leave the community left because the sword
                      of Ibn Tumart, who went forth into the world in the year 4902 (1141/2) and who had decided
                      to eliminate Israel...And so he left no name of them in the whole of his kingdom nor
                       remnant...from the end of the world to the city of al-Mahdiya.276

....In the late sixteenth century many of the Libyan Jews whose ancestors had fled the forced conversion of Spain ironically were faced with the choice of death---or conversion to Islam. "Hundreds" of Jews were murdered during the persecutions of Ali Gurzi Pasha's reign.281 ....Jews in other regions of Tripolitania did not benefit from the Turkish rule;they were subjected to forced conversion and anti-Jewish pogroms, and they shared the ghetto miseries suffered in other parts of North Africa.....Another plea came from the entire Jewish community of Tripoli----

                        ....The situation of the Jews in all parts of Tripolitania is very dangerous. From all
                        the rights....we are unfortunately excluded by reason of extreme ill-treatment and
                        persecution at the hands of the Muslims in our country, under the...present [Governor]
                       ....who does not wish to...protect us against the cruel and inhumane Muslim population
                       ....Last Thursday, a Jew on the way to his village was killed by Arabs and his companion
                       was injured...the authorities have not attempted to find the criminals...to the Muslims
                       the Jews are of no account, and our personal safety is in jeopardy and our belongings
                       are not our own.285

Tunisian Jewry...an authenticated and respected document of that period [fifteenth century], written by a Flemish nobleman, describes Tunisian Jews as "despised and hated"....

                       The Jews, on the other hand have no freedom. They must all pay a heavy...tax. They wear
                        special clothes, different from those of the Moors. If they did not do so, they would be stoned,
                        and they therefore put a yellow cloth on their heads or necks;their women dare not even
                        wear shoes. They are much despised and hated, more than even the Latin Christians.193

....From the seventh-century Arab conquest down through the Almohad atrocities, Tunisia fared little better than its neighbors.196 The "complete expulsion" of Jews from Kairouan, near Tunis, occurredafter years of hardship, in the thirteenth century, when Kairouan was anointed as a holy city of Islam.197 In thesixteenth century, the "hated and despised" Jews of Tunis were periodically attacked by violence, and they were subjected to "vehement anti-Jewish policy" during the various political struggles of the period.

Algeria....the fate of Algeria's Jewish community was harsh....At the end of the fourteenth century, the Jews of the town of Tlemcen were persecuted to such extremes that one eminent historian states that there is no indication of "how indigenous Jews managed to survive the period of tribulations."170....Even on the edge of the Sahara Desert, the Jews were plundered and murdered. In late fifteenth-century Tu'-at, an "oasis" town, a sheikh incited the Muslims by accusing the Jews of "sorcery" and of arrogance of their failing to conform to the "discriminatory" codes; many Jews were killed and others forced to wear conspicuous and peculiar garb. This took place, ironically, in 1492, when the Jews were expelled from Spain and were wearily arriving in North Africa in search of respite from persecution.171 ....The Algerian Jewish community continued to bear the outrages of local "protectors" even after Algeria came under Turkish domination. In 1801 a would-be ruler promised, in return for assisting the overthrow of a rival, to give the soldiers "8 times their pay, white bread and the right to sack the Jews for three days."173 In the next fifteen years, hundreds of Jews were massacred; during one episode three hundred Jews were slaughtered within a few hours, while as the result of another carnage, the Algerian Chief Rabbi was decapitated. The murder of a Jew by a soldier sparked yet another bloodletting; while desecrating a synagogue, it claimed among its victims more than a dozen Jews who were at prayer.

Morocco...The history of the Jews under Arab rule in North Africa is turbulent and erratic. The conditions of their lives as infidels under the Charter of Omar might have been bearable under a more tolerant Arab caliph of one region, while at the same time, in another, Jews would have been under siege, or massacred.136 Practically from the beginning of the seventh-century Arab conquest, Jews were forced to live separately---in Morocco the ghetto was called mellah, while in Tunisia the Jewish area was hara. Some "Jewish tribes" had lived separately for "reasons of convenience", in some pre-Islamic periods, but now Jewish Quarters were imposed by the Arab conquerors of North Africa, with their "special Maghrebi" type of Islam---the "Malakite madhhab school most intolerant of non-Muslims," and "the establishment of the tariqas, mystical fraternities headed by religious fanatics."137 ....Because most of the Christian minority fled---those who had not been massacred or converted to Islam by the twelfth century 138 ---restrictions became increasingly harsh toward the Jew....Despite their general misery and deprivation, some Jews managed to accumulate wealth.141

However, most Jews were outcasts who suffered not only the traditional contempt of the dhimma code, but were subjected to imaginative interpretations thereof. Slaps in the face upon payment of the head tax, bullying, and insults were everyday occurrences. Rapes and looting, burning of synagogues, ripping of sacred Torah scrolls, even murder---all were "so frequent that it is impossible to list them."142 .....In 1032, 6,000 Jews of Fez were murdered, and still others were "robbed of their women and their property."143 In 1146, Fez was attacked by the Almohads [Arab Islamic], leaving "one hundred thousand persons killed." Marrakesh suffered similarly, when an unbelievable "one hundred twenty thousand" were slaughtered. According to an account of "eye-witness" reports, "On entering...the Almohads tried to convert the Jews to Islam by debate and persuasion..." until "a new commandment...solved the problem by a more efficient method. One hundred and fifty were killed...the remainder converted...."144 ....Those few Christians still in the region were "completely wiped out" by the Almohads, leaving the Jews as lone infidel survivors to suffer "the spite of the second Almohad generation."145 Forced conversion to Islam, death, or exile were the choices of the survivors of the Almohad massacres...In the latter part of the thirteenth century, "immediately before the founding of the New City [of Fez], the Muslims in the Old City rioted against the Jews."150 ....The "fierce persecution of 1640, called the al-Khada," was described by a victim of another assault, in a rare ancient manuscript; this report illustrates the rare instances of Jew insulting Muslim, the Muslims reaped vengeance upon the entire Jewish community with utter disregard for individual innocence or guilt....Down through the nineteenth century, the Jews' existence in Morocco remained insecure and tenuous, their misery often recorded by foreigners. The Jews were subjected at various times under Islam to "such repression, restriction and humiliation as to exceed anything in Europe."163

Egypt....Jews in Egypt, as in other Arab countries, lived at the whim of erratic Arab sovereignty. One Arab caliph invoked sunna (the "Muslim term for customs ascribed to Mohammed') to tyrannize the Jews and Christians in Cairo in the ninth and tenth centuries.101 One caliph, al-Hakim of the Fatimids, devised particularly insidious humiliation for the Jews in his attempt to perform what he deemed his role as "Redeemer of Mankind." First the Jews were forced to wear miniature golden calf images around their necks, as though they still worshipped the Golden Calf. But the Jews refused to convert. Next they wore bells, and after that, six-pound wooden blocks were hung around their necks. In fury at his failure, the caliph had the Cairo Jewish Quarter destroyed along with its Jewish residents, in 1012.103 The rule of the Ayyubids (1171-1250) continued the demeaning dhimma laws 104 and during the thirteenth-century reign of the Burji Mamluks, the Jews were particularly sought out for attack, with the result that the Jewish population "greatly declined".105 At the end of the thirteenth century, the poll tax, or head tax, was "reintroduced in Egypt, where it had fallen into oblivion,"106 and in the fourteenth century Jews were subject to "anti-dhimmi" mob "riots." With the reign of "mainly" Circassian-born Mamluks, "the prevailing attitude....was more severe than ever."107 In the sixteenth century, a religious fanatic wreaked terror among the Jews in Cairo. ".....From even those scholars who have documented the Arab persecution of Jews, there are accounts of a "flourishing" Jewish community in Egypt under the Ottoman rule. Yet Edward Lane's definitive report of the first half of the nineteenth century, which asserts that the "Jews...are under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish empire,"110 puts the Jews role in general, and the relatively "flourishing" Egyptian Jewry, into a somewhat more realistic perspective by that report's description of Egypt's "less oppressed' Jews:

They [the Jews] are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims
                                        in general...the Jews are detested by the Muslims far more than are the Christians.
                                        Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes
                                        beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are
                                        less oppressed; but still they are scarcely ever dare utter a word of abuse when
                                        reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been
                                        put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful
                                        words against the Ku-ran or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse
                                        his jaded ass, and after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by
                                         calling the beast a Jew...A Jew has often been sacrificed to save a Muslim.

...One historian has documented persistent blood libel persecutions throughout nineteenth-century Egypt--six separate instances between 1870 and 1892 alone, preceded by others---in 1844 in Cairo, where "Muslims....despised and sometimes abused the Jews," and even in such cosmopolitan communities as in Alexandria, in 1869.....Among the populous Muslim (fellahin) community, the Jews were not better off. A Britisher long connected with the fellahin through his Egyptian government jod, reported in 1888 that "....I think it would be difficult to discover which particular race is most hated (by the Egyptian fallahin) but I fancy that the Jew or Armenian would take the palm"...In 1890 an Egyptian version of the false charge "documenting" the "Human Sacrifices in the Talmud" was published in Cairo.114 Anti-Jewish "agitation" and persecution of the Jews in Port Sa was frequent between the 1880s and 1908...In 1926 the first Egyptian Nationality Code established that Egyptian citizenship would be offered only to those who belonged "racially to the majority of the population of a country is Arabic or whose religion is Islam."116 From the late 1930's, Egyptian nationalism, Arab unity against Zionists, and Nazi propaganda fused with traditional prejudice to ignite violently against the Jews.117 Often the destruction victimized other infidels. One such major incident was the burning of synagogues and churches, and other communal buildings belonging to non-Muslims.118

Iraq...The Iraqi Jews took pride in their distinguished Jewish community, with its history of scholarship and dignity. Jews had prospered in what was then Babylonia for twelve hundred years BEFORE the Muslim conquest in A.D. 634;75 it was not until the ninth century that dhimma laws such as the yellow patch, heavy head tax, and residence restrictions were enforced. Capricious and extreme oppression under some Arab caliphs and Mamluks brought taxation amounting to expropriation in A.D. 1000, and in 1333 the persecution culminated in pillage and destruction of the Baghdad synagogues. In 1776, there was a slaughter of Jews at Basra, and the bitterness of anti-Jewish measures taken by Turkish-Muslim rulers in the eighteenth century caused many Jews to flee.76

Aden....the general quality of life for Aden's Jews during the Arab reign was hardly "golden." The proximity of Yemen and the same dominating power indicate that Jews of Aden suffered conditions of humiliation under Muslim rule similar to those of the Yemenite Jews "until Aden was conquered by the British in 1839."59 ....

Yemen...Persecution was constant and extreme---stoning Jews, and "age-old" custom, according to "an old doctor of Muslim law,"37 was still common tradition at the time of the 1948 exodus...The Yemenite Jews' situation changed drastically for the worse in the seventh century with the Arab conquest. After the Jews who lived in what is now part of Saudi Arabia were either expelled by the Prophet Muhammad or obliterated, Jewish communities in the rest of the conquered Muslim territory fell under the new infidel status. The Jews of Yemen were subjected to the severest possible interpretation of the Charter of Omar, plus carefully devised brutal improvisations on the dhimmi theme. For about four centuries, the Jews suffered under the fierce fanatical edict of the most tolerant of all Islamic sects.40 .....In the twelfth century the conditions were so punishing, and formerly repugnant forced conversion to Islam was so sought by terrified Jews, that the "Great Rambam"----the venerated Rabbi Moses Maimonides---was prompted to write the famous "Yemen Epistle",41 in which he commiserated with Yemen's Jewry and besought them to keep the faith.....The eighteenth century was one of almost unbearable burden, bringing the 1724 famine, in addition to insidiously varied humiliations and violence. Fanatical rulers ordered synagogues destroyed, and public prayers were forbidden. Many thousands attempted to follow "false messiah" Shabbetai Zevi on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but they were attacked on the way, and the Chief Rabbi of San'a was "tortured to death."42 ....One overlord decided to rid the Arabian peninsula of Jews by offering them a choice of religious conversion or banishment'the overwhelming number chose to leave the capitals and head for the Red Sea coast. Those who had not died of starvation, thirst, or illness during the torturous journey---for many, on foot----were allowed to settle down in a town called Mauza', where more casualties were caused by the cruelties of the climate. The Jews' exile was terminated by decree in 1781, according to one report, because the exiled Jews had been the only craftsmen in the country and the work was keenly missed.....Throughout the nineteenth century Jews were victims of hunger and of Arab attacks on the ghetto, which resulted in murder and pillage.

.....Contrary to the myth that Jews lived in harmony with the Arabs before the Zionist state, innumerable authoritative works document decisively the subjugation, oppression, and spasmodic anti-Jewish eruptions of violence that darkened the existence of the Jews in Muslim Arab countries...The Prophet Muhammad's original plan had been to induce the Jews to adopt Islam;4 when Muhammad began his rule at Medina in A.D. 622 he counted few supporters [Medina had a large Jewish population], so he adopted several Jewish practices----including daily prayer facing towards Jerusalem and the fast of Yom Kippur--in the hope of wooing the Jews. But the Jewish community rejected the Prophet Muhammad's religion, preferring to adhere to its own beliefs, whereupon Muhammad subsequently substituted Mecca for Jerusalem, and dropped many of the Jewish practices...Three years later, Arab hostility against the Jews commenced, when the Meccan army exterminated the Jewish tribe of Quraiza.5 As a result of the Prophet Muhammad's resentment, the Holy Koran itself contains many of his hostile denunciations of Jews6 and bitter attacks upon the Jewish tradition, which undoubtedly have colored the beliefs of religious Muslims down to the present.

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