Islamic
propoganda (da`wah) towards the west
David Bukay
For the complete text of this article
(in English), click
here.
Islamic Propaganda (da`wah)
towards the West is the most sophisticated, precisely because it
takes the extreme outlook of: We are the best in all spheres of
life. From this high level of pretentiousness, it is hard to argue
with all its absurdities. Can you argue with assertions like: “In
time of war, Islam decreed humane rules of war many centuries before
such ideas were put into conventions and agreements in the West?”
Or:
Islam set an unprecedented
standard for the ethics of dealing with captured enemies, and
treated prisoners of war in a manner that has yet to be imitated in
history. The whole system of Islamic ethics places utmost importance
on the preservation of human dignity and rights. For that, all forms
of barbarism, unnecessary acts of violence are forbidden. “Jihad”
for acts of aggression against innocent people is terror and by that
is unjust and a great distortion;
or: “Islam was the first
institution ever to advocate and implement human rights as universal
equality. In fact, Islam promoted the universality of the human
experience over 1300 years before the United Nations.”
Such claims appear in
many Islamic formal websites. Why all these efforts? The answer lies
in the da`wah realm:
to prove that Islam is the best and the perfect of all religions;
that Islam deserves its ambitions to convert the infidels as a
missionary religion; and to attain global hegemony and to win over
dar al-harb.
Precisely for that
reasons the article brings the Islamic propaganda machinery’s claims
and their quotations from the Qur`an and refutes them one by
one using the same Islamic sources.
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AFTER THE FALLING
ROCKETS FROM LEBANON
Louis René Beres
Following the recent war
in Lebanon, Israel will have to draw certain major lessons to ensure
its long-term strategic survival. What is needed now, immediately
and urgently, are thoughtful and coherent guidelines concerning
national defense, deterrence, targeting and even preemption
(anticipatory self-defense). It is no longer adequate for Israel
(more or less capably) to merely stumble from one war to the next
without an appropriate “master plan” for direction. Armed with such
a framework of expanded conceptual understanding, the Jewish state
could quickly begin to deduce pertinent tactics and policy options
to match particular situations and crises. In the near-term, of
course, the need for such a plan will be especially plain in matters
of both nuclear war avoidance and counter-WMD terrorism.
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ON TECHNOLOGICAL
FAILURES AND FUTURE WARS
Azriel Lorber
The 2nd
Lebanon War unearthed three technological failures in the conduct of
the Israeli defense establishment. A technological failure consists
of one of the following:
a. A new technology or device is available to
our forces, but for various reasons is not adopted.
b. The enemy acquired a new weapon system but
our “decision-makers” ignore it and its possible effects.
The first of these
negates the full utilization of the country’s scientific and
technological potential, while the second may result in a
technological surprise, either on the battlefield or as means of
political coercion.
Two such failures were
the vulnerability of Israeli armor to anti-tank weapons and the
defenselessness of Israel’s hinterland to short-range rockets. Both
were known for years but ignored.
In 1978, a group of armor
servicemen proposed a system for the interception of AT missiles,
but were rebuffed. General Tal arranged for feasibility testing of
the proposed concept, and it proved successful. However, for over a
decade nothing was done. Then RAFAEL (Armament Development
Authority) and TA’AS (Israel Military Industries) started work and
both developed successful systems, which were not adopted because of
budgetary considerations. This approach was further fueled by the
idea that “conventional” wars are passé. If production of the
Merkava is to stop, then there is no point in spending money to
protect the remaining tanks.
During the war, the
Israeli rear came under attack. This potential threat was
acknowledged when Israel participated in the feasibility study of
the “Nautilus” high-power laser, but the “decision makers” flinched
at the high cost of development and acquisition. So, the rear was
abandoned to its own devices and Israel was lucky that a stray
Katyusha didn’t cause a mass loss of life or hit a high-value
economic target.
While Israel often claims
that its scientific and technological prowess keeps its enemies at
bay, it appears that Israeli “decision-makers” are often swayed by
financial considerations, but that most such economically influenced
decisions were mistaken.
Here lurks a future third
technological failure: Israel’s neighbors own a varied arsenal of
chemical and biological weapons and their delivery systems. But
instead of preparing for this threat, the government collects the
chemical warfare kits which were already distributed. One often
hears that Israeli deterrence prevents chemical (or for that matter
nuclear) warfare against Israel. Unfortunately, deterrence will work
only if both sides to a conflict adhere to similar mores and values,
which patently is not the case here.
In the last two decades
the IDF made a shift from conventional warfare to long-range missile
warfare, then to anti-terror operations and back to conventional
warfare. Development of the required technologies for the various
scenarios is expensive, but history shows that lack of preparedness
costs more, in blood and monies, than the most extravagant
expenditure for this purpose. The case of the AT missiles and
Katyusha defenses proves this point.
So we will conclude with
the old Roman saying: “Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.”
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The Arabs have not given up the dream
of a Jewish state disappearing following a defeat, or turning it
into a bi-national state. For many in the Arab street, Israel is a
deadly tumor that must be excised. Arab countries and Iran are
building conventional weapons as well as weapons of mass destruction
capabilities. If Israel grows weak militarily, economically and its
societal morale continues to weaken while the Arabs grow stronger
militarily, an inducement will exist for an Arab/Muslim coalition to
attack.
Israel should be preparing to deter
such an eventuality. And, if deterrence fails – to win on the
battlefield. Instead, under the influence of, to borrow a phrase
from American history, an “Era of Good Feeling”, Israelis dreamed
that peace was at hand. Egypt signed a peace treaty, followed by
Mauritania and Jordan. Some years later, the PLO and Israel signed
the Oslo Accords. Relations with Gulf and North African countries
looked promising. It appeared that Israel could start shifting its
heavy defense investment into social expenditures. Or, whenever a
problem exists balancing the national budget, Treasury officials
sought to cut the defense budget.
The effects of the cuts damaged
important segments of Israel’s defense preparations. Planning was
harmed by loss of the five-year plan. Compulsory service was
shortened (the more complex the weaponry, tactics and operational
concepts, the less time required to master them?). Downsizing of
personnel and platforms were thought of as necessities as were
delays or suspension of essential weapons and projects.
The Palestinian war, allowed to
continue for six years under a policy of containment, turned the IDF
into experts in urban warfare. However, this resulted in a shameful
curtailment of regular Army and reserve training year after year.
For some, there was a fear that the
IDF was losing its primacy in the Middle East. Others assuaged that
worry with the notion that the IDF was becoming a “smaller and
smarter” military force. In fact, Israel was in the process of
taking “risks for [keeping the] peace”, as well as giving up
strategic land for the promise of peace. It was entering into
a very dangerous experiment.
To
eliminate the experiment and the risk, it will be necessary to
enlarge Israel’s gross national product, necessitating structural
changes in the economy and government.
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ANTI-SEMITISM IN CONTEMPORARY NORWEGIAN CARICATURES
Erez Uriely
Jewish mainstream media
associate Norway with efforts to bring peace to Israel and the
Middle East. Accordingly, we would expect the Norwegian media to
propagate tolerance towards Jews. But in reality, the Norwegian
media (and its politicians!) imprint in the public mind the ideas
that Jews are a negative and arrogant people who care little for
others; that they steal and cheat; that they are the source of
violence, the cause of wars and therefore a danger to world peace.
This anti-Jewish propaganda must be taken seriously, since everybody
knows that pests must be eliminated – a central idea that enabled
the Holocaust and other persecutions of Jews throughout history.
As usual these days,
rather than blaming the “Jews”, the target is defined as “Israel” –
the land and the country of the Jews. This propaganda is served in a
sophisticated manner: packed in nice words, moral motives and love
for humanity. Thus, the old attitude towards the Jews continues its
venomous life, more intensive and stronger than ever. Contrary to
the common myth, anti-Judaism does not originate from the masses,
but from leading politicians, major church leaders and leaders of
major state-sponsored organizations, who expend vast efforts to
present “Israel”, i.e., the Jews, as evil.
The most active
anti-Jewish campaigners in Norway are of the “left-wing”, including
politicians and the journalists who control the mass communication
media. The mainstream newspapers demonize the Jews of Israel,
creating sympathy for their enemies. The fastest and most effective
means to spread that message is through caricatures.
Norwegian caricatures are
not as crude and grotesque as the anti-Jewish caricatures that are
so common in the Muslim world, but they are worse than the
caricatures spread by the Nazi Germans. We must wake up and
resolutely stop anti-Judaism propaganda from being distributed by
the main Norwegian communication channels to the people. This
propaganda was spread before the Holocaust and it must not be
allowed again, against those who survived.
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ANTI-ISRAELISM AND
ANTI-SEMITISM:
COMMON CHARACTERISTICS AND MOTIFS
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Anti-Semitism’s core
theme is that Jews embody absolute evil. It has been propagated
intensely for many centuries. This extreme fallacy and its principal
sub-motifs have remained largely the same over the ages. Their
representation, however, has evolved according to circumstances. The
three main permutations of the core theme are religious
anti-Semitism – one might call it more precisely anti-Judaism,
ethnic (racist) anti-Semitism, and anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism.
These have a number of
common characteristics, which include an ongoing, powerful promotion
of a discourse of Jew-hatred. The main motif of the Jew
constituting absolute evil expresses itself according to the
prevailing worldviews at a given time.
The Jew is denounced as
the quintessential other as perceived at that moment. When
Christianity dominated the mindset, the Jew was presented as the
killer of God, the Antichrist, and Satan. In periods of strong
nationalism, Jews are portrayed as radically alien elements. When
the societal emphasis is on race, Jews are depicted as an extremely
inferior one. When ideological currents promote universalism, the
State of Israel is demonized as nationalist, racist, and post
colonialist.
The core accusation of
the Jew being evil splits into submotifs. A central one is the
desire for power. Other permutations include a thirst for blood,
infanticide, having a subhuman nature, and a lust for money. These
originated in the worlds of Christian or racist anti-Semitism. Many
have been rejected and discredited but have not disappeared
in the West, or are now recurring with respect to Israel.
Verbal or physical
attacks are often against both Jews and Israelis. Jews, and nowadays
Israel, are judged by standards applied to them but not to others.
In its extreme form, the anti-Semitic process has three stages:
Demonization, Isolation and Elimination.
The anti-Semitic
character of anti-Israelism can be proven through the analysis of
cartoons, the findings of polls, scientific analysis as well as
semantics. During the 2006 Lebanon War further proof came that
anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism go hand in hand.
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THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF TRANS-JORDAN IN 1922:
AN ETERNAL “KINGDOM” OR AN ARTIFICIAL REGIME LACKING A BASIS FOR
EXISTENCE
Eli Maislish
This article, deals with
the entanglement of irrational reasons and the default option that
led the then British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir
Winston Churchill, to establish Trans-Jordan as an entity
independent and separate from the West Bank of Palestine (Land of
Israel).
The entire Middle East at
that time, including Palestine (Land of Israel) – the official name
of the Land of Israel on both banks of the Jordan River – was under
the rule of British and French occupation. France had no previous
commitments to the Arabs regarding the granting of independence to
nations liberated from the Ottoman yoke; however, Britain was
subject to an entanglement of commitments to several opposing
parties.
Originally, there was a
commitment to the ruler of Hejaz, the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein Ibn-Ali,
due to the participation of his son Faisal in the “Arab
Revolutionary Army” – under the guidance of Lawrence, to a large
portion of the Turkish spoils. Two years later, Britain committed to
the Zionist Movement to the establishment of a “national home for
the Jewish people in the Land of Israel”, the implication of which
was the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
However, it also had a
mutual commitment with the French regarding the distribution of
oilfields in Iraq and territorial interests – like, for example,
French control of Syria and Lebanon. In addition to all that, the
Arabs rioted in the Land of Israel and engaged in acts of violence
against the Balfour Declaration from 1920-1921.
The British, who thought
that they could bring their soldiers home after the war, were
required to once again draft an army, which posed a heavy burden on
His Majesty’s government’s budget, which was in a bad state after
the war.
However, the decisive
factor in overcoming the British tolerance and patience, originated
in a place that no one anticipated. It was Abdullah, Faisal’s
brother, who emerged from the Hejaz desert and went to south
Trans-Jordan with several hundred camel riders and threatened to
invade Damascus (that was already under French control) as revenge
for the removal of his brother Faisal from the throne.
The name of the game in
the Middle East, and especially in the Hashemite family, was one: “I
want to be king, no matter what.” It began with the then head of the
family, the Sharif of Mecca, who did everything in his power, for
decades, to be at least the Emir of Mecca (still) under Ottoman
auspices.
Already at the beginning
of World War I, he found an opportunity, when he approached the
“Arab Office in Cairo”, that was, for all intents and purposes, a
British commissionership in Cairo, at least in the revolt against
the Turks. In exchange for his services he was to receive
territorial spoils to distribute among his three sons: Abdullah,
Faisal and Ali. Ali in the Arabian Peninsula, Abdullah in Baghdad
and Faisal in Damascus, and he himself was granted the title “King
of Kings”. This megalomania eventually led him to be forced into
exile by the Wahabi Ibn-Saud (1926).
The war began and the
British were in a panic regarding the jihad declared by the
Sultan-Caliph in Istanbul. By means of letters and promises, and
with the assistance of Lawrence (of Arabia), the desert Arabs were
directed to Damascus to crown Faisal as king. However, Faisal’s
reign in Damascus lasted only two years and ended when the French
received the mandate over Syria and Lebanon.
However, at the same
time, the Arabs in the Land of Israel began disturbing the peace and
Churchill, who had just been appointed Secretary of State for the
Colonies, pressed for a swift solution in the Land of Israel in
general and a means to silence Abdullah in particular. This was
Lawrence’s great moment as he whispered in the ear of the celebrated
minister to kill three birds with one stone: Faisal to Baghdad,
Abdullah to Trans-Jordan and the mandate coated with the Balfour
Declaration to the Jews. And so it was.
For that purpose they
established the “1921 Cairo Conference”, invited Abdullah to
Jerusalem and entrusted him with Trans-Jordan temporarily for six
months (with fixed financial support). The question is: Until when?
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THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
IN KAIFENG CHINA
Xu Xin
The Jewish experience in
Kaifeng China is unique and meaningful. The so-called Kaifeng Jews
have the most documented history among all Jewish communities in
pre-modern China. Available information, though fragmentary,
indicates that Kaifeng Jewry was predominantly of Persian origin
around the end of the11th century. It seems certain that the Silk
Road, a major thoroughfare between China and Persia at the time, was
the route, and business opportunities was one of the attractions
The Kaifeng Jewish
community has a consecutive history of about 800 years as an
observant society. No doubt it was the most dynamic, active, and
important Jewish community in Chinese as well as in world Jewish
history. It is also one of best known single Jewish communities
worldwide. It has drawn attention ever since the meeting between a
Kaifeng Jew named Ai Tien and an Italian Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci
in China, which took place in Beijing, in 1605. The report of the
meeting reached Europe and European Society has remembered the
incident.
This article attempts to
tell the story of the Kaifeng Jews; its development, growth, and
fall against the social environment of the city of residence.
The history of Kaifeng
Jewry is certainly a part of the history of world Jewry. It is both
dramatic and colorful and offers many profound lessons. If it is
ignored, our knowledge of the many byroads and possibilities of
Jewish existence would be not merely be incomplete but seriously
impoverished.
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