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Tariq Mahmood, Toronto, Canada
In such uncertain times, you may feel overwhelmed: millions of debates take place every day on social media, with everyone convinced they are on the right side. Amidst the confusion, the facts are corrupted, and the narrative is lost; but there’s a truthteller in all this:
History.
History is a voice buried by those who wish to change the perception and rewrite the books, but today, history will be our ally, as we explore what Jewish rabbis and journalists themselves have to say about Israel, its creation and its atrocities.
The Backdrop: Jews and Muslims Before Israel
When explaining the relationship between Jews and Muslims centuries ago, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of New York, spokesperson of the Neturei Karta USA, states:
‘The Jews were tortured…and thrown out of Spain and Portugal, and if they didn’t escape, some of them, if there were any people left, they were murdered. So, what happened? The Jews, where did they go to? They went to Muslim countries, and it was the Muslims who took in the Jews, the Ottoman Empire took in the Jews, and Palestine was under the Ottoman Empire, so Jews flourished as distinctly religious Jews under distinctly Muslim countries.’
This is the reality: prior to the notion or idea of Israel, Muslims and Jews (for the most part) lived peacefully. Jewish rabbis used to write about the benevolence of Muslim rulers. Even today, Jewish historians talk about the freedom granted by the Caliph Umarra when Islam conquered Palestine and Iraq.
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss continued: ‘The Jewish community – the God-fearing community that was living for hundreds of years together with the Muslims and the Christians in Palestine – had a chief rabbi (and they still have a chief rabbi), but at that time, the chief rabbi in 1947 was the late Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky. He pleaded with the United Nations, “We don’t want this Zionist movement. It’s not religion, it’s not Judaism, they have no right to be here.”’
Jews in Muslim Countries Today
Has the situation changed today? Some Zionists would have us believe that Muslims hate Jews; that they’re somehow the bane of our existence. But is this true? There may well be incidents of antisemitism, but such discriminatory behaviour is categorically condemned in Islam. In fact, many Jews actually live in Muslim countries peacefully and contribute to society while having full religious freedom, but unfortunately, such peaceful coexistence is rarely reported in the media.
The Review of Religions visited Rabbi Elhanan Beck, spokesperson of the Neturei Karta UK, in the largest Jewish community of London, Stamford Hills. He stated:
‘Look at what Jewish life looks like in Iran. [They say] Iran is the biggest enemy. They want to destroy Israel. They’re the biggest, biggest enemy of the so-called Jewish people. Now, in Iran there is a large, large Jewish community of 30,000 families. They have a beautiful life there. There is a running Jewish hospital founded completely by the government.’
Historically, there was peace and harmony between Jews and Muslims also in Morocco and Turkey, and in fact, even in Palestine, prior to the creation of the state of Israel, as Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss states:
‘This [conflict] is because of 75 years of the state of Israel and well over 100 years of the movement of Zionism that came into a land where Jews and Arabs were living together in total peace. As in every Muslim land, we were living in the same courtyards, we were babysitting each other’s children. We know old Arab people, we know our communities full of old Jews, we lived in harmony. The difference of religion is nothing and has no impediment to coexistence; it has nothing to do with this conflict.’
This is the untold history of interfaith harmony. Examples like these show us that Zionism is not the only peaceful option for the Jewish people. Many examples of harmony exist, but those who wish to erase history and push the clash of civilisations will raise the voice of conflict and suffocate the voice of peace.
With this understanding, we must differentiate between Zionism and Judaism. To stand against the state of Israel’s war crimes is not equivalent to standing against the Jewish people.
Is Judaism Synonymous with Zionism?
It’s a common misconception, often peddled by Zionists: ‘If someone hates Israel, they hate Jews.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. According to some, the creation of Israel flies in the face of Jewish beliefs which have been held for the last 2,000 years. Explaining the history of Judaism in the Levante, Rabbi Haim Sofre, also of Stamford Hill, states:
‘We don’t call it Israel…They occupy the land which doesn’t belong to them. According to the divine decree, we are in exile. We were deported from this land 2,000 years ago, approximately, because of our sins, and we’ll come back to this land, together with all the world, when [the] Messiah appears. And that Messiah that we’re talking about is a spiritual Messiah, which means that he’s a person, but he will bring the world to a high level of spirituality.’
Furthermore, the actions of Israel directly contradict the teachings of the Torah. Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss analyses the actions of the Israeli government, and remarks:
‘The creation of the state [of Israel] comes about by fighting, killing, and destroying the Palestinian people. That in and of itself is a critical breach of the laws of the Torah, not to steal or kill, it’s the basics of Judaism. So in every way you look at this Jewish state, this creation of the state of Israel, it’s totally antithetical, it’s contradictory to Judaism.’
He further explains that the land of Palestine was peacefully inhabited by all. Explaining the true intention of the agenda, he states:
‘They’re using the Jewish religion to occupy people, it has nothing to do with this religion. We were living together with a different religion. It’s a group of nationalists who came along with the flawed selfish plan of creating a home that was inhabited by three people, beautifully living together, the Muslims, the Christians and the Jews, and they decided to take over and it’s not working, it’s 75 years of death, so stop immediately.’
Gideon Levy, the award-winning Israeli journalist who works for Haaretz newspaper, warns us of the dangers of making the Israel-Hamas war a religious conflict. While explaining the danger of equivocating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, he states:
‘It is a national dispute, a political dispute, a dispute over a piece of land, a dispute over rights, and it’s turning into a religious dispute as well. I’m very afraid because once religion is in it, it will be much harder to sort it. And you see tendencies in both sides, among the Jewish Israelis and among the Palestinians, strong religious motivations and arguments which will make it much harder to be sorted.’
Was Palestine Ever Given a Fair Chance?
We respond to a final allegation: ‘But you should know better: Palestine had the opportunity to build itself up as a country, but it just wanted to destroy Israel. It didn’t accept the land given to it.’
Many claim that the Palestinians were being unreasonable and that they rejected the fair propositions offered to them.
But as Gideon Levy explains: ‘The fact of the matter is that the Palestinians were never offered a just solution. They were never offered a solution which would recognise them equally like the Jews in Israel, like the Jews in Israel and Palestine. They were never offered a fair offer. They made their mistakes, the Palestinians. I think that refusing the partition plan…before the creation of the state of Israel was a mistake, even though I think that even if the Palestinians had agreed to the partition plan as it was then, Israel wouldn’t have lived in peace with it and sooner or later Israel would conquer more territory.
I have no doubts about it because Israel was pushed more according to the partition plan. But in any case, ever since then, there has never been a serious offer to create a Palestinian state which is an equal state to Israel, with the same rights, the same sovereign rights, and even the notion that the Palestinian state should be demilitarised. Why should it? I mean, why can Israel be holding any possible weapon in the world, claiming that it is only for self-protection and the Palestinians have no right to self-protection? Who is going to protect them exactly?’
These are not Muslims speaking. These are the believers of the Torah; they are those who live by the teachings of Judaism. The truth of the matter is that Zionism is not the same as Judaism: one is a religion, and the other is a political ideology masking itself as religious.
You, the reader, must reflect over the words of these esteemed rabbis and award-winning journalist, to come to a necessary conclusion: the people of Gaza need not die, if we the audience decide to let truth live, and proclaim it wherever we can. If we decide that enough is enough and use our voices to convince those who are misguided, perhaps enough heads will turn, enough pens will decree, and we might achieve peace.
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About the Author: Tariq Mahmood is an Imam of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Canada and serves as Secretary of The Existence Project Team for The Review of Religions.
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