A popular cry at the moment is that labelling the criticism of the state of Israel as antisemitism is dishonest, but there are very clear contexts when the criticism of Israel is driven by antisemitism: when the ‘criticism’ is founded on lies, repeated lies, in the face of evidence that exposes the lies.
The ‘Nakba’ story of the Muslim Palestinians is one such lie.
The marking of the Nakba as “ethnic cleansing” is a bare faced antisemitic lie, because there is ample documentation of what really happened in 1948.
But, we can start earlier than that. For 1400 years since the Islamic invasion and occupation of Jewish/Christian Palestine, Jews, Christians and others had been persecuted by Muslims – persecuted dhimmi, second class citizens, sometimes as slaves, sex slaves. This has been the nature of Islam for all of its history, including in the region of Palestine, and understanding that brutality puts a different perspective on Islam in Palestine, and the true nature of Muslim Palestinians and their hatred of Jews.
We focus on the Islamic slavery and pogroms here, because they are so recognisable in modern day Muslim Palestinianism behaviour. The butchery, torture, desctruction by Muslims recorded in history became ever more graphic, in pictures and in film, until today, when Muslims record themselves inflicting untold abuse on Jews and others – when you see the videos that the proud and ecstatic Muslim terrorists inflicted on their victims.
With this history and present atrocities in mind, it becomes clear that criticising only Israel for events in the Middle East is pure antisemitism. When you understand this, look at who is commemorating the Nakba, and you will know what they are.
Slavery In The Ottoman Empire
Slavery persisted in the Ottoman Empire almost until the empire’s final collapse after World War I, although its scale, legal status, and visibility changed over time.
The Ottoman Empire had a large and long-lasting slave system for centuries. Slaves came from many regions: the Balkans and Eastern Europe in earlier centuries, the Caucasus (especially Circassians and Georgians), sub-Saharan Africa via Red Sea and Saharan routes, and sometimes war captives from frontier conflicts. Both men and women were enslaved. Uses included: domestic service, military service, agricultural and manual labour, concubinage and harems, and administration.
A major difference from Atlantic chattel slavery was that Ottoman slavery was often more integrated into households and state structures, and some slaves could rise socially or be manumitted. Slavery was normalised. But it was still slavery: people were bought, sold, transported, and legally owned.
The empire began restricting the trade during the 19th century under pressure from European powers, especially United Kingdom, internal reform movements such as the Tanzimat reforms, and changing international norms.
Important milestones: 1847: Ottoman authorities officially banned the African slave market in Constantinople/Istanbul, though enforcement was inconsistent. 1857: the African slave trade was formally prohibited in much of the empire. Late 19th century: further decrees restricted Circassian and African slave trading. In practice, illegal slave trading and household slavery continued. Think about the nature of the people that wanted to continue slavery, because that mentality persists today.
By the early 20th century open slave markets were far reduced, but domestic slavery, concubinage, and illicit trafficking still existed in parts of the empire, especially in more remote provinces and elite households. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the creation of the Republic of Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, slavery effectively disappeared legally and institutionally during the 1920s, though remnants of former slave relationships survived socially for some time.
So normalised is the dehumanising status of slavery in Islam that ISIS found it very easy to re-introduce sex-slavery in 2014. The Islamic mind is influenced by the Quran and Hadith, which endorse slavery. Today, Islamic preachers still insist it is a valid aspect of Islamic governance, but of course they have to play some rhetorical tricks to maintain some semblance of modern morality – they claim is is a social welfare program. This is how Islam persuades people to be inhumane. Without the intervention of the West there is little doubt that slavery would be as common in the Islamic world now as it once was.
Pogroms
There were repeated outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence across the Middle East and North Africa over many centuries, including in Ottoman and post-Ottoman territories. The term “pogrom” is most commonly associated with the Russian Empire, but historians sometimes use it more broadly for organized or mass anti-Jewish attacks elsewhere.
1517 Safed attacks – In Safed, shortly after the Ottoman conquest from the Mamluks, Jewish residents were attacked and looted amid instability and fighting.
1660 destruction of Safed and Tiberias – Jewish communities in Safed and Tiberias suffered severe destruction during Druze-Ottoman conflicts. Many Jews were killed or displaced.
1834 Safed pogrom – During the Peasants’ Revolt in Palestine, mobs attacked the Jewish quarter of Safed for weeks: homes and synagogues were looted, Jews were assaulted and killed, many women were abused, Torah scrolls and property were destroyed.
1838 Druze attack on Safed – Further violence hit Safed during Druze revolts against Egyptian/Ottoman authority.
Syria 1840 Damascus Affair – In Damascus: Jews were falsely accused of ritual murder (“blood libel”) after a monk disappeared, Jewish leaders were imprisoned and tortured, synagogues were attacked, the affair caused international outrage. This became one of the most famous anti-Jewish incidents in the Ottoman Middle East.
20th Century Pogroms
1920 Nebi Musa riots. In Jerusalem, inflammatory nationalist and religious tensions during the British Mandate led to attacks on Jews during the Nebi Musa festival: Jews were killed and injured, homes and shops were looted, British authorities were criticized for poor response.
1921 Jaffa riots – In Jaffa and nearby areas: Arab mobs attacked Jewish residents and immigrants, dozens of Jews were killed, hundreds injured.
1929 Palestine riots – One of the most serious outbreaks under the British Mandate.
Hebron massacre (1929) – In Hebron: 67 Jews were murdered, many were mutilated or tortured, ancient Jewish communities were effectively destroyed or evacuated.
Safed massacre (1929) – In Safed: Jewish homes and synagogues were attacked, around 20 Jews were killed, widespread destruction occurred.
1936–1939 Arab Revolt – During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine: Jewish civilians were targeted in shootings, bombings, and ambushes, roads and settlements were attacked, retaliatory violence also occurred from Jewish underground groups.
Farhud (Baghdad, 1941) – The Farhud is among the best-known modern anti-Jewish pogroms in the Arab world: mobs attacked Jews during political chaos after a pro-Axis coup collapsed, approximately 180 Jews were killed (some estimates higher), hundreds injured, homes, businesses, and synagogues looted. The Farhud profoundly affected Iraqi Jewish life and contributed to the later exodus of Iraqi Jews.
1942 Rommel Approaches – a planned pogrom – “As the Afrika Korps under Rommel advanced, Arabs were already marking the houses of Jews that they intended to appropriate later. Rommel’s General Staff map shows the planned march through Egypt, with SS Einsatzgruppen set to murder exactly as they did in Europe,” … “The Mufti of Jerusalem must have been bitterly disappointed and spoke on the radio as late as December 1944: “We do not wish to settle for less than the free nations [he means Nazi Germany], an independence that allows no foreigner access and leaves no room for any Jew, in which the entire Arab homeland is reserved solely for its Arab people.” … As @von_manderley points out … A “Jew-free” Arab, Palestinian state. Sounds like Hamas, PFLP, and students in Berkeley? – The similarities to today’s antisemitism are striking.
May 6 in 1943 – The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem wrote the Bulgarian Foreign Minister. He wanted Jewish children to be sent to Poland so they could be exterminated. His contribution alone is its own mass pogrom:
Aleppo anti-Jewish riots (1947) – After the UN partition vote Jewish neighborhoods and synagogues in Aleppo were burned, many Jews fled Syria afterward.
Cairo and Alexandria riots (1945, 1948) – Jewish districts, shops, and synagogues were attacked, deaths and injuries occurred, bombings and arrests followed during the Arab-Israeli conflict period.
Tripoli pogrom (1945) – More than 100 Jews were killed, synagogues and homes destroyed, this accelerated Jewish emigration from Libya.
1948 Libya riots – Further attacks occurred after the establishment of Israel.
Aden pogrom (1947) – Aanti-Jewish riots killed dozens of Jews, homes and businesses were destroyed, the ancient Yemenite Jewish community rapidly declined afterward.
A few important points are necessary for historical balance: Jewish communities existed in many of these places for centuries, often long before Islam and long before modern Zionism. Conditions varied greatly by time and ruler. Some periods were relatively tolerant compared with medieval Europe; others involved discrimination, forced conversions, massacres, or mob violence. Jews under Islamic rule were generally classified as dhimmis — subordinate non-Muslims who paid special taxes and faced legal/social restrictions. Many of the worst modern anti-Jewish outbreaks in the Middle East occurred during the late Ottoman period, European colonial disruption, rising nationalism, and the Muslim-Zionist conflict.
Violence also occurred in the other direction during the Mandate and civil war periods, with attacks by Jewish militias on Muslim civilians and villages – but this was entirely within the context of Palestine and the attacks on Jews. Jews were not instigating attacks on Muslims, as Muslims were on Jews in the many example above. Nevertheless, the antisemites want to tell you only about the attacks by Jews, not the countless attacks throughout Islamic history on Jews.
Migration
From the early 20th century both Jews and Muslims increased migration into Palestine. Jews to return to their homeland, both as a cultural goal, and to escape persecution. The Muslims/Arabs came often to work for the industrious Jews, and Muslims living there became rich selling land to Jews. The same antagonistic hatred from Muslims towars Jews persisted, as it does in many other lands towards Jews, of the few that remain, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and others, because Islam is a supremacist ideology. There are records of pogroms throughout the century.
The antisemitic “Stolen Land” narrative of the Nakba would have you believe that only Jews migrated to Israel.
Choosing Islamic Terrorism and War over Independence
Jews and Muslims were offered separate states. Jews accepted and wanted peace. Muslims refused. Israelis declared their independence in 1948.
David Ben-Gurion: “We call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions … We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples.”
Muslims could have had independence too – but they chose war and terror – the same old solutions they had relied on for centuries.
Had Muslims accepted peace and independence, Israel would have been much smaller than today, and Jerusalem would not be part of Israel. The self-made Nakba.
There are documented records of Muslim leaders inciting violence, and peaceful Muslims acknowledge this, on record. Muslim leaders told Muslims to leave Israel, because the Muslim armies were about to invade. In some places violence errupted, in others Jewish leaders pleaded with Muslims not to leave. But, the Muslim armies invaded, as many Muslims left, with the promise from invading leaders they could return to their homes and more land, once the Jews were gone.
Rememebr this when you hear antisemites complaining that Israel cut off supplies to Gaza.
This is the tragedy, the Nakba, the self-inflicted loss of a war and homes, because the Muslim hatred of Jews was, and is, greater than their love of peace and life.
The astonishing reality of the story of Deir Yassin is the Muslim mind that invents atrocities that have been carried out by Muslims on Jews for centuries. Nothing quite says “I’m a victim” as the viscious slaughter and delight in butchery that so many Muslims enjoy.
The details of the ‘Nakba’ are so well documented, in writing, on film, that anyone in the West playing along with the Muslim story of the Nakba, is doing so out of their own pure antisemitism.
There are three additional indicators that this is so.
First, the young Israel was thought to be an emerging socialist state. The kibbutzim were thought to be experiments in real communism. The left were supportive of Israel. The Soviets were too. Israel’s defence in 1948 was supplied by arms from socialist countries. The left now turns on successful capitalist Israel as part of the West, and for the antisemites it’s particularly gauling that it’s “The Jews”.
Second, far more people were killed and displaced with the partition of India and the independence of Pakistan, but nobody marks that ‘Nakba’. No Jews, no news. We never hear the antisemites recalling the Nakba of the Pakistan independence, or indeed the later separation of Bangladesh and Pakistan where millions more were killed and displaced.
Third, since 1948 then, every terrorist act and attack by Muslim armies has been ignored, then whitewashed and celebrated by antisemites as ‘resistance’. Resistance to peace; resistance to a two-state solution; resistance to Jewish existance, resitance to not beheading, raping, and parading mutilated bodies to baying crowds of frenzied Muslims.
Followers of Islam that take the Quran and Hadith seriously (“Oh Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come kill him,” – a necessary event to bring on the glorious end times) are naturally antisemitic, as was Mohammed when the Jews of Medina refused to acknowledge his prophethood.
The rest of the antisemites have to work at it, and it’s not a task they give up lightly.
Ramblings 