Dhimmis

The Jews in Arab Lands

     Arab propaganda pretends that prior to Israel’s independence in 1948 the Jews living in Arab countries were happy citizens among a benevolent Muslim population. Yet, the facts are quite otherwise.

     Even during the life time of Mohammed (570-632), Jews were denounced by the prophet because they would not convert to his new religion. Upon the death of Mohammed, his successor, Omar, issued a charter consisting of 12 laws under which a non Muslim or “dhimmi” was allowed to live among the believers. According to this charter, any Jew who violated this code was to be murdered. The code promised death to any Jew who touched the Koran, the Muslim scriptures. The code also compelled Jews to wear distinctive clothing, usually dark blue or black. Jews were also compelled to wear a yellow piece of cloth as a badge. This yellow badge became the inspiration for the Nazi decree that we had to wear a yellow Mogen David on our clothes. The Muslim decree also prohibited Jews from performing any religious activity in public nor were Jews allowed the only transportation then available, in that Jews were not allowed to own a horse. Jews were not allowed to drink wine nor to grieve at funerals in public.

     Both Jews and Christians had to pay a special “head tax” to Muslim governments, a tax compelled by an edict in the Koran: “Fight against those Jews and Christians who believe not in Allah until they pay the tribute” (Allah is the Muslim god).

     At all times, Jews in Muslim lands faced the possibility that if they entered into a dispute with a Muslim, the Muslim could claim that the Jew had insulted Islam, which allowed any Muslim to murder a Jew with impunity. According to Muslim law, the testimony of a Jew or Christian is invalid in a Muslim court.

     In Yemen, Jews were forced to clean the streets of animal carcasses and were also forced to clean latrines on the Sabbath without pay. Also in Yemen, Jewish women had to wear one white and one black shoe, while in Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, a long list of chicaneries were used to torture Jews incessantly.

     The Sultan of Morocco forced Jews to work on the Sabbath and Jewish holy days by carrying heavy burdens on their backs and to clean latrines. Jews were also forced to sell merchandise at half price, accept false coinage, allow government guests to use their beds and furniture, and to act as beasts of burden for Muslims without pay.

     Jews had to live in ghettos or “haramellahs” in Arab countries. These ghettos were overcrowded, and consisted of alleys so narrow that two people could hardly pass by each other. As late as the 19th century and the early twentieth century, the Jews of Egypt lived in homes about to collapse, in dark cellars in lanes choked with mud. Jews worked at the worst kind of work and lived in abject poverty, eating a few beans and some dark bread.

     Jews in Arab lands were also the targets of sporadic “pogroms” in that hordes of Muslims would invade Jewish ghettos and murder Jews at will on the “grounds” that Jews were baking “matzohs” with the blood of Muslim children and drinking Muslim blood.

     This insane lie was bolstered by a book published by the Egyptian ministry of education in 1962 entitled Human Sacrifices in the Talmud, which claims that Jews engage in human sacrifices and drink non-Jewish blood. In 1973, a minister in the Egyptian foreign service published a play to the effect that Jews use human blood in their religious ceremonies.

     Arabs and Muslims consistently deny the Holocaust and simultaneously praise the memory of Hitler as a great man for murdering Jews. In fact, the president of the Palestinian Authority in Israel, Mohammed Abbas, wrote a “dissertation” at a Russian University claiming that the Zionists of the 1940’s collaborated with the Nazis.

     The murder and attack on Jews in Europe clearly demonstrate that the Arab-Muslim hatred of Israel has nothing to do with land or territory. The Arabs recently murdered a rabbi and several Jewish children at a school in France. In France, not in Israel. Norway, which is  over 2,200 miles from Israel, is the scene of attacks on its small Jewish population by Arab mobs. The same is true in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and England. Evidently, attacks against Jews in Europe are purely motivated by religious hate, as these countries and their Jews have nothing to do with Israel.

     The evidence is clear. The Arabs and their supporters believe that no one who believes in Judaism, no Jew, has a right to live on this planet and that they are enjoined by their god, Allah, to kill any and all Jews from Alaska to South Africa.

     That is the source of the enmity between Israel and its fanatic neighbors who seek to kill for the sake of killing. Therefore, the Israelis have no choice but to defend themselves and we, the American Jews, should protect our brethren in Israel by voting Republican this fall instead of helping to re-elect a government which has repeatedly demonstrated a contempt for Israel while promoting the Arab agenda.

Shalom u’vracha.

Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including Assassination, Anarchy, & Terrorism (2012).

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