Mideast History Lessons

"Israel later learned, at great cost, that Arafat's 'recognition' had been a lie. Yet the principle remaind valid regardless of the lie. Hamas, to its perverse credit, does not lie, at least not on fundamental issues. It have never accepted the Oslo Accords. It is sworn to Israel's destruction. Its charter is nakedly and aggressively anti-Semetic; no fig leaf of 'anti-Zionism' there. The closest it has ever come to terms with the Jewish state is the offer of a long-term hudna, on the model of the Prophet's 10-year truce with the tribes of seventh century Arabia. 'Anyone who thinks Hamas will change is wrong,' said supreme leader Khaled Mashal in 2006. Could he be any clearer? ... The Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is merely an affiliate, has never been keen on the concept of the nation-state. Hamas's charter describes the land of Palestine as an 'Islamic Waqf,' or trust, 'consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day'," Bret Stephens (BS) at the WSJ, 13 January 2009.

Bruce Thornton has a 14 January 2009 post about Islamic history and the creation, not only of Israel, but Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia. For those who know nothing of Middle Eastern and Islamic history, this is must reading, link: http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=AEA03498-5631-4581-84C9-ADB121851CA6.

"In all cultures where Islam has become ascendant, the Muslim authorities have attempted to rewrite the history of the conquered lands to obliterate the memory of anything that went before Islam. By this method the cultural contribution of civilizations that preceeded Islam--during jahiliyah, 'the days of ignorance'--is minimized, denigrated, and distorted. The destruction of physical evidence is part of the revisionist task. To the average Western scholar, the Bamiyan Buddhas and the archeological artifacts buried in the ancient rubble under the Temple Mount are priceless treasures which muct be preserved, restored, studied, and admired. But to a Muslim they are abominations and must be destroyed. If not actual idolatry, they are evidence of non-Muslim civlizations that preceeded the introduction of Islam, and thus are an affront to the pride of the entire Ummah. It has recently been discovered that an exiled Iranian academic literally took a scalpel to valuable Persians history books in the British Library and the Bodelian Library, removing inconvenient and offensive text. His depredations have caused permanent and irrecoverable damage to the historiography of the periods involved. ... Leading scholars at the library are at a loss to explain why Farhand Hakimzadeh, a Havard-educated businessman and publisher, took a scalpel to the leaves of 150 books that have been in the nation's collection for centuries. ... The process is already underway as school textbooks are modified to apmplify the peaceful accomplishments of Islam and play down its violent expansionism, all the while denigrating European Christain civilization", my emphasis, Baron Bodissey, 17 January 2009 at http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/01/historectomy.html.

Finally someone in the MSM discusses waqf and hudna. Once BS discusses takiwa, the "Big Three" words will be complete. No two-state solution can be reached between Israel and its neighbors. Why? Because Jordan exists, it will be at least a "three-state" solution. What is it we Westerners seem not to understand?

Whether it was in India, the West Bank or anywhere else, Islamic practice has been to destroy evidence of prior civilizations. There were 68 synagogues and cemetaries in the West Bank. Between 1948 and 1967 the Jordanians destroyed them all, digging up graves that were in some instances 2,500 years old. This intellectual dry rot has gone far in California where the State Board of Education gave Islamic groups veto power over what appears about Islam in state approved textbooks.

Don Feder expresses similar thoughts on 6 January 2009 at:

http://grasstopsusa.com/df010609.html.