Rushing to Self-Perdition rings the alarm on the naivete of the Israeli and Western world, which has been numbed by peaceful and soothing Arab declarations, both domestically and internationally. This has left them naively rushing to share power with Israel’s sworn enemies, both inside Israel and outside of it, while letting down their defenses in spite of the continued Arab and Muslim denial and rejection of the idea of a Jewish state, and of Zionism as the foundational principle of Israel’s birth. The 20 percent substantial Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel declares insistently that it is only concerned with its own people’s interest and safety, and could not care less about the welfare of Israel. They align with the hostile attitudes of the Palestinian people, rather than with their state of Israel, and still declare that they would have nothing to do with Israelis who pursue the maintenance of a Jewish and Zionist majority of their country. They would conversely continue to press for de-Judaization and de-Zionization of the country, while still expecting naïve Israelis to link up and share power with them.
This volume looks back at my approaching 90 years of age, and the beginning of my 10th (and assuredly last) decade on this earth. I use my long and diversified scholarly life experience to leave behind a final (and I hope lasting) impression of an Israel where I have lived since age 14, completed my studies, taught thousands of students, and written dozens of books on a variety of topics, mostly related to the Islamic world and some on China. I am departing an Israel that has been traumatized following the sudden deadly attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, on 1,300 Israelis, and the abduction of 240 more into captivity in Gaza, including babies, the elderly, and women, all of whom were abused one way or another. Only a revolutionized Israel in all domains, which is acutely expected by all Israelis, in its military, political, social, cultural, and economic fields is likely to start mending these long-term wounds that have caused dislocation, refugees, misery, and destruction on both the directly related Gaza border, where 22 village communities have been annihilated, and the Lebanese border, where similar carnage and ruin are looming, unless the Hizbullah, which has gratuitously joined the fray, is tamed or defeated.
Noted scholar Raphael Israeli describes the surprising “normalization” process that occurred during the pandemic year 2020, in his latest book, Glittering Stars in a Dark Landscape: Early Auguries of the 2020 Arab ”Normalization” with Israel. He explains how the 2020 explosion of the “normalization” between Israel and some Arab Gulf States was the fruit of a long process of Arab self-reckoning. Its fruition was crowned, thanks to the efforts of President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, with counsel from presidential advisor Jared Kushner. The process marks a revolution, insofar as it not only reverses the negative position taken by some Arab States that refused to deal with Israel as long as the Palestinian issue is not resolved, but in view of the Gulf States’ wealth and influence, this reversal will encourage others to follow in their footsteps. Great economic and political benefits will also accrue to Israel as a result.
This polemical volume tackles the thorny and controversial issue of the vastly different narratives told (or manufactured) by the two parties of the conflict in the Middle East (the Arabs and Israel), focusing on 1948, where it all started. While all sides in this debate have vested interests, this author included, an attempt has been made here to reflect the factual truth on the events, although their interpretation will always remain controversial. Although the book argues principally with Benny Morris, the founder and leader of the so-called New Historians, it encompasses a wide array of controversial topics, like the evaluation of the 1948-49 War, the morality of the war (or the necessity to wage it as it was), and its main reverberations, such as the continuing conflict after seven decades, the aggravation of the Palestinian minority in Israel, and the essence of what history means. Israeli argues that the current debate between the so-called Old Historians and the New Historians--itself healthy if and when it is kept to the point and not allowed to degrade into personal libel and recriminations--is not really as unbridgeable as is often claimed. Both sides have erred at points and both sides have some important and complementary light to shed on the contentious events surrounding the birth of Israel.
It’s all Perception “The Shah of Iran had maintained excellent relations with Israel, and the Jews of Iran flourished, but upon the advent of Khomeini in 1978, who dubbed Jews the ‘enemies of Allah,’ those attitudes were reversed overnight until under President Ahmadinejad, Iran and its Hizbullah operatives in Lebanon became the most virulent and violent enemies of Jews and Israel everywhere. Similarly, one cannot compare the dominant stature of Yasser Arafat at the helm of the Palestinians, as he was himself a revolutionary operative who dipped his hands in terrorism, to the more subdued conduct of Abu Mazen, his successor, who enjoys the comfort and prestige of his position but shuns combat, and is content with iconizing PLO terrorists and murderers as models to be emulated by his people, in order to show that the momentum of the Palestinian Revolution did not recede even though the leader could no longer serve as the model himself.” Under authoritarian regimes the depiction of events, politics and events of the future as well as of the past are unpredictable. They are often dependent on the whim of the ruler, who makes his own “constitution” when he comes to power, not as a rigid set of laws to restrict his own power, but as a blueprint for his unrestricted plan of action during his tenure. The manufacturing of lies, myth, invented history, and imagined genealogies, all geared to justify post-facto the ruler’s takeover of the regime, or the self-allocation of titles and feats that aggrandize his fame, create a variant pattern of rule. This can even happen with the establishment of a dynasty under a republican regime, when the authoritarian ruler bequeaths his rule to his offspring (as has happened in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, greatly contributing ultimately to the fall of the regimes). Even more impressive and lasting is the self-conviction embraced by the ruler in the religious Islamic environment, when an expedient political fact like the failed succession of the Prophet Muhammad by his cousin and son-in law Ali was turned into a sacred creed that sanctified through the generations the millennial split of the Shi’ia from mainstream Sunni Islam. Thus, events are often perceived by Muslims in the light of their religious convictions, and myths are created to fill in historical gaps, which can generate distortions of policies when they are acted upon.
A prevailing thought since the beginning of Zionism has falsely assumed that if the settling Jews in Palestine soothed the Palestinians by peaceful conduct and demonstrated good intentions of cooperation, the Arabs would be mollified enough to accept Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine towards the establishment of a Jewish state. However, these assumptions proved delusory, since exactly the reverse happened. The more Zionism advanced in Palestine, and then Israel, the more the Palestinians perceived it as a threat to their own existence. They turned to an aggressively hostile attitude, which provoked wars and spread this thinking to the rest of the Arab world. The reasons for this are many: political, cultural, and religious. Hence, an unfeasibility exists for a peaceful way to settle the conflict and search for alternative solutions. The Vanity of Conversion Therapy: The Delusion of Metastasizing Israeli Arabs covers the period since Israel was founded in 1948 to present day.
The idea of peace is always enchanting, for it encompasses the tranquility and serenity for which every human yearns. The nation of Israel has never known peace, but it dreams of peace. In practice Israel navigates between the poles of war and peace, with endless middle-of the-road situations like cease-fire, truce, armistice, and other temporary cessations of hostilities. The Oslo Idea traces the roots of the current campaign to delegitimize Israel. The campaign is not linked to Israeli resistance, to the absence of an acceptable settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, or to Israel's reluctance to abandon territory. It results from a change of tactics by the Palestinian leadership. Israeli argues that these tactics have been used to exhaust, reduce, and replace Israel rather than produce a compromise. Half the Palestinian people and other uncompromising Arabs and Muslims have stated that goal openly and act to achieve it. Raphael Israeli deconstructs the immense illusion of the Oslo peace accords, which initiated the so-called -peace process.- He shows how Oslo lured a naive Israeli leadership into a trap. He shows how outside factors, bent on finding and supporting an evasive peace, have helped perpetuate the fiasco Oslo represents. He shows how Oslo's supporters have advanced the -peace process- by coaxing and threatening Israel behind the scenes, and binding Israel alone with the Oslo commitments and their derivatives. More importantly, the author outlines and analyzes the basic and seemingly unbridgeable points of contention that remain: security, refugees, settlements, water, borders, and the status of Jerusalem itself.
Suicidal Democracy: Israel’s Future in the Arab Environment spells out the perils inherent in the practice of “democracy at any price,” even when it takes precedence over national identity, and disregards national security and national existence just in order to preserve the ideal of democracy. For one, the values of existence and survival are considered by author Raphael Israeli as overwhelming, while the character of a regime is only auxiliary to ascertain a better existence. Therefore, to choose any kind of government, one first must guarantee one’s survivability. This volume examines the way Israel has been disregarding these basic life requirements in its frenzied drive to be and to appear as a supreme practitioner of democracy, both towards its large Arab population and in its relations with the Arab world, while the latter have been abusing democracy and liberal policies to bring Israel to its demise.
History books are usually written by victors, while the defeated write poetry and words of nostalgia hoping for better days. This volume takes major defeats in Jewish history and tries to describe what happens to a defeated nation, and how in the specific case of Israel and the Jews, the trauma of defeat engenders hope and forces the survivors to learn lessons for the future. The destruction of the two Jewish temples in antiquity, the Holocaust, and the 1973 War serve as case studies to illustrate the problematic. National grief as a result of disasters is a process of recuperation. Drawing lessons learned from the event will help the nation come out of trauma. Survivors commemorating the dead also help that process.
Israel has been constantly threatened by Palestinian and Islamic ghosts that either perennially mount attacks against her or loom in her horizon as permanent menaces for her very existence. These ghosts that cause nightmares and haunt Israel include the Israeli Arab minority, Palestinian refugees, Palestinian prisoners, Muslim radicals and terrorists, Muslim campaigns of de-legitimization, Muslim poisoning of the physical and spiritual environment of the Middle East, and other threats. Written by a college professor, Israel’s Nightmares boldly delves into the history of the region and its politics.
The twenty percent Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel, which enjoys officially equal rights, refuses to recognize and accept the concept of a Jewish-Zionist state. Even though Israel is where Palestinians live, they strive to misuse Israeli democracy, allowing their representation of fifteen MK, or Members of Parliament, to subvert the legitimacy of the Israeli state and to totter it. This would allow them to create a bi-national Jewish-Arab country, where Arabs can veto anything Jewish or Zionist in its symbols or regime. But since the Jewish majority is adamant in maintaining the Jewish state, established more than seven decades ago, the Arabs who cannot reconcile their present situation will have to choose eventually between living in permanent friction and frustration, or restarting a new life in one of the surrounding 22 Arab or 57 Muslim countries where their likely adaptation would be much smoother and seamless. One major figurehead mentioned in the book is MK Ahmed Tibi, who despite being the darling of the liberal Israeli media, often adopts extremist anti-Israeli views and claims that Israel incites against his nation.
This book is built on the assumption that very often what seems to be evidence turns out to be “fake news”, while libels and stereotypes that have no foundation in reality are accepted as evidence, thus potentially causing travesties of justice. Examples are drawn here from several prominent and renowned case studies, including OJ Simpson’s trial, and the fiasco of American intervention in Iraq to search for the traces of weapons of mass-destruction, which were not found. The book also explores the history of anti-Semitism, which is replete with false accusations, where evidence was lacking and Jews were nevertheless convicted. It also shows how the Arab-Israeli conflict also demonstrates how unfounded accusations can be sustained by lies, proving that beliefs and prejudices are sometime stronger than hard facts.
This volume sums up the extraordinary life of an extraordinary man. Dr. Mordechai Helfman was born and raised in Ukraine at the turn of the 20th century. He started his academic training in medicine in Kiev. Due to the severe anti-Semitic persecutions there, he fled to Prague, where he was caught up by the winds of Zionism, which swept up Diaspora Jews, partly in response to the escalating pogroms. Dr. Helfman returned to Kiev and then went to Berlin to complete his medical studies, specializing in ophthalmology, which prepared him for his Aliya (immigration to Mandatory Palestine), where that expertise was in demand. He never relented on his intense Zionist activity, preparing an entire generation to join the meager Jewish Yishuv under the British Mandate (1924), with a view to ultimately create a solid Jewish entity that would in time lead to Jewish independence in a Jewish state. With Jerusalem as his main base, he remained devoted to the UJA (United Jewish Appeal), spending most of his life until Israel was established raising funds throughout the world to encourage Aliya and collect funds for the Yishuv’s development. Only when Israel was founded in 1948 did he turn his full attention to his medical expertise, serving as a popular eye doctor in Jerusalem, yet never neglecting his commitment to fund-raising.
The Middle East conflict, which has been raging for a century and seems to have no end in sight, is not over territory or other assets, but is historically anchored in the Islamic tradition, which has become the preponderant faith of the Arabs. Being a qualitative factor of an either-or import from the Muslim point of view, which is today best expressed by Iran, the Muslim Brothers, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other radical Muslim movements, it is not given to negotiation and compromise, as any other political conflict, but is governed by absolutes and one-sided perspectives. Arab nationalism, Islam, and Zionism are the main political and religious movements taking center stage in this conflict. The intractable nature of the conflict has so far defied all negotiations, agreements, and peace treaties. All the proposed “peaceful” settlements have thus far remained brittle, while the fundamental issues of stereotyping, suspicion, hatred, and condescendence have remained in place, unshaken. This book confronts two contradictory ideologies and attempts to bridge them over.
At the doorstep of the twenty-first century, one would expect that medieval concepts such as blood libel—the accusation that Jews kill children to use their blood in religious ritual—would have been discarded by any civilized human being. Certainly in the Christian world, where the story originated and endured for centuries, modern attitudes have nearly erased these barbaric accusations. But in Arab and Islamic worlds, where enmity towards Israel and Zionism has conditioned beliefs, attitudes, positions, and fantasies, blood libel and similar charges are still part of life. Most people are unaware of the history of blood libel and do not perceive links between it and many of the false accusations currently hurled against the state of Israel. Raphael Israeli argues that individuals and organizations guilty of human rights crimes project crimes onto Israel to avoid awareness of their own guilt. Certainly when countries ruled by dictators set the agenda of the UN Council for human rights, Israel is consistently censured and condemned. Accusations of "apartheid" and charges of discrimination against Muslims are frequently made. Israel is accused of plots against Muslims in order to harm their productive sectors, of using weapons of mass destruction to commit "genocide" against Arabs, of injecting poisonous substances into Palestinian children, of poisoning Arab lands under the guise of "agricultural aid," and of laying siege to peaceful citizens. All of these charges are derivatives of blood libel and have been adopted by Middle East Jihadists in their struggle against Israel. This volume aims to explain the origins of the charge of blood libel and define the ways its derivatives have achieved acceptance in certain parts of the world today.
Inspired by the June 2020 demonstrations and riots in America and in other parts of the world, which were triggered by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, this volume compares the upheaval of the Arab minority in Israel and its claims of “racism” and “discrimination” with the plight of the African Americans in the U.S. The history of Black Power and the Nation of Islam militant activism in America claims that the present conflict between Blacks and whites, which has existed for four centuries, cannot be quelled by human rights demonstrations (peaceful and violent), or legislative measures. Since the 1930s, leaders of Black Power have floated the idea of Black territoriality and sovereignty, self-rule, and independence from white rule as the only way to restore Black dignity and self-confidence. It has been suggested, following the failure of all other solutions after the end of the Civil War, to assign Blacks a section of American soil where they can constitute the largest Black population, and be allowed, with federal assistance and funding, to move freely into and out of this chosen territory, until a Black majority state within the Union affords them the opportunity to practice self-rule.
This is the saga of the underground Jewish emigration from Morocco, which sent hundreds of thousands of Moroccan Jews who had been persecuted under Islam for centuries, onto illegal ships. The Jews faced stormy seas and an uncertain future in their valiant attempts to escape from the authorities forbidding their emigration, risking their lives for the dream of reaching the hopeful shores of nascent Israel. In one of those attempts, the ship “Pisces” sank off the coast of Morocco, taking with it 45 souls, including entire families who were never to reach their destination. Since this book is partly autobiographical, much of the story focuses on the author and his family. The rest is populated by the many brave and unidentified Jews who ventured into the unknown, taking enormous risks to secretly leave Morocco.
The fallout from the Iraq War in 2003 has been widespread. The US finds itself under siege in Iraq; the Iraqi State is ruled by chaos, corruption and terrorism; and the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has been relentlessly debated in the media. Through the prism of the three major conflicts during Saddam's reign: The Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War (1991) and the climax to Middle East tensions, the War on Iraq (2003); Raphael Israeli exposes the tyranny, deception and terror synonymous with the Ba'ath regime. Focusing on Iraq's demographic populations -- the Shi'ites in the south, the Kurdish north, and the Sunni ruling minority -- the author documents the difficulties America faces internally as rulers of an occupied land, and internationally as a perceived unilateralist aggressor. The Impact of the Iraq War contains revealing insights into Saddam's nuclear, chemical and biological programs, his sponsorship of terrorist groups, and his collaboration with other countries, including Syria and France. Testimonies of scientists, along with Israeli's intelligent analysis, expose the true scale of WMD proliferation in Ba'athist Iraq. The term Babylonian intrigue' is used to describe the confusion, chaos and misinterpretation of language that has taken hold in the aftermath of the war. The author provides a penetrating analysis of the social, political, economic, and strategic ruptures the Iraq War has caused in inter-Arab relations and the Islamic world. The book concludes with an evaluation of who won and who gained from this war, and what the future holds for Iraqis, Muslims, and the West.
For many years, Islam has behaved in total authoritarian domination over masses of populations, with a total disregard of basic human rights, based on the Sharia holy law of Empire and rule over its own Muslim subjects. Even more so over a multitude of Christian, Jewish, and other minorities, Islam has ignored Western developments since the American and French Revolutions, which little by little developed the liberal predominance of human rights. The prevailing rationale in Islam was, and has remained, that Allah’s Law as expressed in His Holy edicts forever takes priority over any law that humans can produce. While similar beliefs were modified in other faiths and creeds, which resulted in Western philosophical thought due to the established separation of Church and state, Islam has never known such a separation, and has perpetuated the ancient traditional views, rationalizing that while human-made laws are ephemeral and transient, Allah’s are immutable and eternal. Hence the severe laws on apostasy in Islam, which forbid Muslims the right to deny their faith under threat of death. Even the religions of Christianity and Judaism are under restriction in Islamdom. If their followers wish to convert, they are permitted to do so only to Islam, which is why the record of human rights in Islam is so poor.
Dangers are looming for Western civilizations due to the creeping invasion of Muslims, who are gradually diluting the West with their own beliefs as they end up taking over and dominating them. This danger is described very eloquently and frighteningly by French writer Michel Houellebecq in his best-selling novel Submission. This process also triggers a fundamental change in Western societies, so the old cultures of Europe, which are known, sought, and admired by outsiders, will practically disappear, replaced by an amalgam of ancient European tradition with a newly imposed Muslim faith, mores, and Sharia laws. Muslim tourists and immigrants to the West are gradually but firmly imposing their culture on a scared West, which has lost its will to fight and its capacity to defend itself because of political correctness and a reluctance to face the truth. This volume is the fourth in the Quartet on the Waning of Western Civilizations which also comprises: Retreating from the Mirage of Multi-Culturalism, Misnomers and Cultural Choices, and Suicidal Democracy published in 2018-19.
In December 1991, a two-volume edition of Dead Sea Scroll photographs was issued by the Biblical Archaeology Society, an American group headed by Hershel Shanks. It included an essay written by Dr. Elisha Qimron, an Israeli scholar noted for his work in the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Publication of this reconstruction and transcription resulted in a lawsuit in Israel and the United States between Qimron and Shanks. Piracy in Qumran analyzes this legal controversy, which rocked the scholarly world of Biblical and archaeological studies at the time, and which still resonates today. Qimron's long years of research so as to decipher one of the scrolls that dated from the years immediately preceding the Christian Era led him to revolutionary conclusions. He had controversial ideas about the ancient laws of purity of the Essenes, the authors of the scrolls, and their problematic relationships with the two main streams of Judaism. Read or reconstructed differently, this same text might yield very different conclusions. The emphasis in Raphael Israeli's volume is on legal and moral aspects of intellectual property law as it relates to works of historical reconstruction. There are questions about whether Qimron's work constitutes something original, the fruit of his creativity (and thus is copyrightable) versus whether it is merely a copy of an ancient blurred text, in the public domain, reconstructed by a modern author. This book does not simply take a position with respect to the matter of Qimron versus Shanks, it asks the reader to consider the controversy's implications for such topics as freedom of press. Although there are other books available about the Dead Sea Scrolls, no other study examines the social and cultural implications of this crisis in such detail. The story itself is intriguing for those who are not specialists in the subject, but are generally interested in the issues raised by the controversy. It will be of intense interest to scholars and students of religion or international law and historians of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The volume The Unheeded Warning combines the lived experience of public warning by this author against the mounting violence of radical Muslim immigrants into Australia, and the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas Massacre in Israel that shook the world. The radical Muslim threat is manifested against both the local Aussie Jewry and its support for Israel, as well as against the Western Civilization the radical Muslims are determined to alter to their tune. These immigrants have been trying the same tactics worldwide, including in Europe and in America. This trend has existed for the last few decades in the entire Western world, but exploded into unprecedented peaks of hatred, violence, and bigotry on the morning of the October 7 massacre, launched by Hamas from Gaza into adjacent Israeli territory, which resulted in the murder of 1,300 Israeli civilians in their beds, and the criminal abduction of 240 more into Gaza as hostages for blackmail that they and the active mediators of a “deal” shamelessly misname as “negotiations” for “exchange of prisoners.” The worldwide Muslim radical movement that manifests itself, especially on university campuses across the West, is largely aided by old local antisemites, both on the Right and the Left.
In March 1983 a mass poisoning was reported in the girls' middle school of Arrabeh, a village near Jenin in the West Bank. The malaise recurred in the following weeks in Jenin, Hebron, and other towns in the West Bank. All the sufferers, mainly young Arab women, were hospitalized, but soon released. The toxic agent which allegedly caused the malaise was not found; Israeli authorities concluded that the attacks were caused by mass hysteria. Nonetheless, both local Palestinian authorities and the PLO leadership accused Israel of an attempt of mass poisoning, aiming to affect the women's reproductive system and thus to tamper with the natural growth of the Palestinian population. The accusation was taken up by the media, not only Arab but also in the West (French, British, German, etc.). Once the hoax became apparent, the whole affair disappeared from the media. Compares the "poisoning affair" to blood libels in the past. Raises questions regarding the strange credulity of the Western press, otherwise very cautious in presenting similar affairs in other countries, its anti-Israeli disposition, and its disproportionally great interest in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Contends that the media's incrimination of Israel is a manifestation of its latent antisemitism. Where the Arabs incriminate the Jews as a people, the Westerners, reluctant to look ethnophobic, incriminate the Jewish state. Includes many quotes from the press.
It was paradoxical that under President Trump, who was supposed to be belligerent and irreconcilable, a new avenue of understanding opened up with the Arab world, especially the Gulf States and Egypt. This relationship had gone awry under President Obama, who had started by prostrating himself before the Saudi King and speaking of accommodation and engagement with the Islamic world at Cairo University, but ended up supporting the Muslim Brother government there and condemning the Sisi coup that overturned it. The pragmatic move of President Trump, which scuttled the radical Muslim takeover of many Arab countries in the wake of the abortive “Arab Spring” of the 2010s, also helped open the road to a new era of reconciliation between Israel and the Gulf States, to which were gradually added Morocco, Sudan, and Chad, with more following. This move has launched a new, unprecedented wave of repenting Arab countries besides Egypt and Jordan, which made peace with Israel, discovering that peace and cooperation were more fruitful and promising than vain hatred and repeated battles that resulted only in destruction, death, and loss.
Hatred, Lies, and Violence in the World of Islam examines the torrential flood of anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish, and anti-Zionist propaganda that permeates many Muslim societies. Raphael Israeli locates the source of this anti-Semitic sentiment in the inadequacies and insecurities of Muslim states. By demonizing and delegitimizing Israel and Jews, they seek to eliminate a successful counterexample of their own failures, thus putting an end to their own "humiliation." Beyond mapping the distribution of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda in the Arab and Islamic worlds, Israeli uses case-studies to illustrate the premises of this study: the Palestinians, who have a direct stake in battling Israel; Turkey, which now claims leadership of the Arab and Sunni Muslim worlds; and Shi'ite Iran, which provides a more extreme example of both hatred and disregard for fact and history while threatening to destroy Israel. Israeli documents the worldwide collaboration between Jew-haters of all sorts, explaining the exponential growth of Jew-hatred on the Internet, with thousands of new hate sites added every year, outpacing Jew-hatred in the traditional media. He places anti-Semitism in a broader tradition of political lies and political deceit. In the final chapter, Israeli considers the possibility of reversing anti-Jewish agitation in Muslim countries, which he finds unlikely because so many of the region's regimes are built on foundations of anti-Semitism.
The world is watching with uncertainity as the "Arab Spring" unfolds. Optimistically named by international media sources, the term "Arab Spring" associates the unrest with ideas of renewal, revival, and democratic thought and deed. Many hoped the overthrow of authoritarian leaders signaled a promising new beginning for the Arab world. Raphael Israeli argues that instead of paving a path toward liberal democracy, the Arab Spring in fact launched a power struggle. Judging from the experiences of countries where the dust is settling-including Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and perhaps also Syria and Libya-it appears that Islamic governments will fill the vacuum in leadership. The hopes that swept the Islamic world with the Arab Spring have given way to a winter of lost hopes and aspirations, as it becomes increasingly clear that democratic outcomes are not on the horizon. What is worse is that the West seems to have abandoned its hopes for democracy and freedom in the region, instead making peace with the idea that Islamic governments must be accepted as the lesser of evil options. Presenting a clear-eyed picture of the situation, Israeli examines thematic problems that cut across all the Muslim states experiencing unrest. He groups the countries into various blocs according to their shared characteristics, then discusses these groups one by one. For each country, he considers whether the liberal-democratic option is viable and examines what kind of regime could be considered legitimate and stable. This volume offers valuable insights for political scientists, Middle Eastern specialists, and the general informed public eager to comprehend the import of these momentous events.
There was a time in international relations, when in spite of the regular interests and intrigues used to seek them, some were able to keep the fundamentals of decency, truth, conscience, the respect for facts, traditions and history, and the search for an objective truth. Nowadays, political positions can change from one day to the next, facts can be reversed, narrative is as valuable as fact and history, and all opinions appear to be as valid as others. The world is globalized, no national culture or value can rival any woke-ist claim or sentiment of what is or what must be, for the world oppressors are never right. These developments, or rather this degeneration, is the result of social media, which have not only addicted people to produce fake news at will, but have allowed opinions to be presented instantly and universally as fact, including the routine lies, sycophancy, and betrayal by Arab and Muslim terrorists.
Misnomers are often used in international politics to describe issues and situations that use common words, but carry different meanings. For example, tolerance, suicide bombers, women’s equality, and many other words are commonly used by Muslims to make us believe that these words mean the equivalent of the jargon we know, when in fact they cover up dark schemes that depart miles from conventional meanings. • Tolerance means for us to accept others as they are without value/judgment. For Muslims, it means accepting others (often temporarily), despite their inherent inferiority, until converting or dominating them becomes feasible. • Suicide bombers for us means terrorists who do not care for human life, and are prepared to kill themselves together with other targeted enemies. For Muslims, these bombers are holy martyrs who sacrifice themselves for the sake of Allah by killing enemies of Islam, and are assured the bliss of Paradise in the proximity of Allah. • Women are diminished and relegated to a second-rate status in Islam. Women can be beaten and disciplined, while at the same time, equality and special concern is claimed for them. A wide array of examples and situations of Muslim misnomers are cited and elaborated in the book.
The long history of the dhimmi subordination of Christians and Jews to Islamic rule in the Middle East, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Balkans produced a lengthy trail of persecution, oppression, population cleansing, and transfer. In the modern world, in the wake of more than a millennium of subjugation, a series of reactions by the suppressed peoples brought about either the removal of Muslim invaders, as in Iberia, the Balkans, and Palestine, or the exodus of the Christian and Jewish communities out of Islamdom. In North Africa and the Middle East, the rise of Zionism was the form that the Jewish rebellion took, causing the convergence of various Jewish dhimmi communities in Islamdom into Palestine, where they reconstituted their independence in their ancient Land of Israel.
Israel's New Strategic Dilemmas: Survival or Revival? details the strategic problems facing Israel today as a result of the asymmetrical terrorist wars imposed on it. With the motive of delegitimizing Israel, and forcing it to react against civilian terrorists who dwell amidst other civilian populations and who do not have any legal or international standing, these wars create an untenable situation of retaliation and casualties. Unless Israel succeeds in making the necessary reforms in the strategic areas of security and domestic affairs, its chances for survival are dwindling. An important and fascinating reading experience, Israel's New Strategic Dilemmas: Survival or Revival? will shift your perspective on a highly contentious and complex topic. About the Author: Raphael Israeli grew up in Morocco and Israel, and currently resides in Jerusalem, where he is a University Professor. He was motivated to write Israel's New Strategic Dilemmas: Survival or Revival? by the exposure and criticism of Israel in the world media due to its counterattacks against terrorism in the second Lebanese War (2006) and the Gaza War (2008-9.) He is working on his next book about the death camps in Bosnia and Croatia during WW II, and the alliance between the Nazis and their Muslim collaborators. Publisher's website: http: //www.SBPRA.com/RaphaelIsraeli
This book provides an in-depth account and analysis of Islamic fundamentalism today, and how it has an impact on Israel's relations with the Arab and Islamic worlds. In light of recent events, the book is important for the whole Western world, which now confronts revivalist Islam, both in the Middle East and Europe itself, and even in such far-flung fragments of European civilization as the United States and Australia. This book should be of great help for the West in developing a proper understanding of, and a strategy for dealing with, this movement. Co-published with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
In the 19th century, the scramble for colonies in Asia and Africa by Western nations produced international power competition. This generated different forms of reactions by the colonized civilizations to the Western impact on their cultures. This volume, Confucius and Muhammad: Contrasting Responses of China and Islam to Western Intrusion, is based on original historical archival materials. It exemplifies the differential conduct of France and the United Kingdom in China and Morocco, representing Confucian and Islamic responses to the West in terms of modernization.
Ethnic Cleansing is about the various forms of population displacement, from migration and ethnic cleansing to violent removals and expulsions, which may end up in genocide. It also shows how amidst displacement, the Jewish people have developed a millennial culture of survival. This volume covers the experience of population displacement in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, where the most renowned cases of migration and ethnic cleansing have happened under different regimes and in various cultures along the history of mankind. Today the author is also concerned with the plight of the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar living in Bangladesh and the perennial Palestinian refugee problem.
Modern Arab and Muslim hostility towards Jews and Israel is rooted not only in the Arab-Israeli conflict and traditional Islamic teaching but also in Christian anti-Semitic attitudes brought into the Islamic world by Western colonial powers. In this volume, Raphael Israeli examines how the worsening situation in the Middle East together with large waves of Muslim immigration to Europe, North America, and Australia has brought about a comingling of two anti-Semitic traditions. As the author explains, the unique interaction of Muslim immigrants in the West with the host societies brought them into contact with local, traditional anti- Semites of the xenophobic fascist and racist Right along with the avowedly anti-Zionist Left, to build a formidable wall of hatred against the Jewish state and its people. To complicate this picture further, the same Muslim immigrants share with them minority status in a Christian majority society. Often finding themselves at odds with the majority host society, they find themselves subject to criticism and censure on all sides. They are engaged simultaneously in battle with both their host society into which they cannot integrate, and their Jewish compatriots who are a model of good integration. Consequently, they feel exposed and lose ground in the struggle for social acceptance. Israeli lays out the nature and ideologies of the Muslim immigrant world and shows how in each European country they create their own ethnic sub-groups and religious communities, often in competition with each other. This remarkable and courageous book will be of interest to sociologists, Middle East specialists, and political scientists.
Christian missionaries in China have been toiling since the 16th century, with little success. Only after the Opium War were the Western powers which invaded China able to enforce their gunboat policy, under which their missionaries could penetrate all parts of China and extend their activities to a larger part of the population, which needed welfare assistance and western protection, and therefore resorted to evangelization as a way to obtain both. However, relative to the huge Chinese population and to the optimistic expectations of the missionaries, little was achieved on the ground. Therefore, at some point since the beginning of the 20th century, a decision was made by the missionaries to shift their emphasis to the Muslim population of China, realizing that, unlike the Godless Chinese, who had no knowledge, nor approach to the Bible, the Muslims would be more amenable, due to their Holy Book which knew One God and drew from the Judeo-Christian tradition many of their narratives. The attempt was valiant and lasted for almost a century, with many efforts made to extend educational and medical aid to the Muslim population, but it also ended in frustration, on the whole, due to the unexpected tenacity and resistance of the Hui and Uighur Muslims to the missionaries’ endeavour.
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