'The Elephant in the Room': The Real Source of Jew-Hatred in the Middle East

by Lawrence A. Franklin • November 5, 2023 at 5:00 am

For [many Muslims], the Koran, every word of it, is the dictated word of Allah (God) as told by the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) to Allah's prophet Muhammad....
Ten years ago, U.S. soldiers being deployed to the Middle East who flew to Qatar or Kuwait on the United Arab Emirates airline, before the UAE's supreme leadership in spearheading the Abraham Accords, reported that on maps in flight brochures, a country named Israel did not exist. Many seem to be working now to make that a reality, not just on a map.

The "elephant in the room," which few commentators have had the courage to explore, is that for many Muslims, "Jew-hatred" is dogma. The 114 sura (chapters) of the Koran are replete with passages of Jew-hatred. Pictured: Adolf Hitler meets with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, on November 28, 1941. (Image source: German Federal Archive)

"We are not sub-humans. Let me repeat: We are not sub-humans," said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian Authority's representative to the United Nations, after the sub-human atrocities inflicted on innocent civilians in Israel by his fellow Palestinian Arabs. He felt the need to repeat the claim twice last month at an emergency session of the of the UN General Assembly, possibly to try to convince anyone he could. Hamas and Iran reportedly masterminded the murderous invasion. Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to hold at least 240 Israeli hostages in Gaza.

It was not long before media commentators, after the October 7 mass murder in Israeli towns and villages near Gaza, began to air pro-Hamas demonstrators on college campuses and in the streets of US cities. Many of these demonstrators openly rationalized and even defended the actions of Hamas.

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War Isn't What It Used to Be

by Amir Taheri • November 5, 2023 at 4:00 am

[T]his strange war [Russia's invasion of Ukraine] is morphing into a pointless struggle that ignores the first rule of war, which is the setting of a final objective, in other words, a clear-cut victory.
Wars do not end with one protagonist declaring victory; they end when one protagonist admits defeat. In our postmodern era, however, a loser is not always allowed to accept his loss.
What Israel wanted from Hamas was for it not to launch an attack, something that Hamas could have easily offered. But what Hamas wanted, the elimination of Israel as a nation-state, was and remains impossible for Israel to contemplate let alone deliver.
Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rhetorical outbursts, the current struggle, presented as a war, may end up as a trompe l'oeil version of war. Even if possible, a return to the status quo that was shattered by the Hamas attack is undesirable, if only because of its conceptual fragility. A new status quo based on full reoccupation of the enclave is equally undesirable because, tested for decades, it provided no security for Israel.

(Image source: iStock)

Throughout history, at least until our post-modernist times, war was regarded as the highest of human pursuits, one that enlisted other pursuits such as politics, industry and even literature in its service. Aristotle gave war a thumbs-up because it was "the key to peace." Neo-Platonics regarded war as the ultimate organizer and guardian of hierarchies within the polis (city-state) and among various states.

Over time, however, war, like some other human pursuits, has lost part of what the French would call its "authenticity", leaving us with ersatz wars motivated by folie de grandeur, racial and religious hatred, and mercenary interests.

The old war was regarded as a continuation of politics by other means. In other words, it was resorted to when all other means including politics, diplomacy, trade and propaganda had failed to preserve the hierarchy needed to sustain a stable status quo.

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