December 10, 2019 (American Thinker) — It is said that it is a crime to remain silent in the face of evil, deceit, and deception. Robert Spencer, one of the foremost authorities of Islamic law, has succinctly spoken unwelcome and little recognized truths in his new fact-based book: The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. Spencer has painstakingly separated fact from fiction.
The Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict is one of the world's longest and most tragic conflicts, without any end in sight. It should be noted that hundreds, if not thousands, of books and articles have been written about this willful tragedy of enormous historical and human misunderstanding and errors. Spencer has penned a book that is both timely and highly educational.
From Chapter One, “How Israel came to be,” to the book's final chapter, “What is to be done?,” Spencer has backed up his reports with highly credible sources that leave no doubt in the mind of the reader about Israel's right to exist. He gives solid answers to questions such as Why don't the Palestinians have their own country? Is it the fault of Israel? Of the Palestinians? Of both parties?
Spencer's book connects the past events with the present. He is an Islamic scholar and understands better than anyone that it is the teaching of Islamic scripture that is feeding this hatred of Jews in the hearts and minds of Palestinians. Spencer has masterfully marshaled the anti-Jewish Quranic commands, in order to illustrate where this immense hatred toward the Jews came from:
Allah transforms disobedient Jews into apes and pigs (2:63–66, 5:59–60, 7:166). While the Qur'an says that Muslims are the “best of people” (3:110), the unbelievers are “like livestock” (7:179). “Indeed, the worst of living creatures in the sight of Allah are those who have disbelieved, and they will not believe” (8:55).
The Jews also “strive to do mischief on earth” — that is, fasaad, for which the punishment is specified in Qur'an 5:33: “they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land.”
Spencer brings to bear historical facts to expose the Palestinians' gross misconceptions and misrepresentations regarding the “land of Zion” (2 Samuel 5:7–5:7), as well as those of misguided Europeans and the United Nations. He shows just how delusional these groups are.
What's more, the Jews had a country of their own long before current invented Arab countries or even European countries existed. Israel did not seize a country known as “Palestine.” Spencer shows that when the Romans captured Judea and demolished the Jewish Temple in 70 A.D., and particularly after the Bar Kokhba revolt in 134 A.D., they forced the Jews out of their land. Furthermore, they renamed the land of Judea “Felestin,” or Palestine, which was thereafter the name of a region, not of a people or a nation.
Spencer briskly traces the post-biblical history of the Jews in the Holy Land, showing that while Jews were dispersed from their original land of Israel to other regions of the world beginning in the second century A.D., many Jews never left. The land known as Israel today always had a Jewish presence.
Unfortunately, the Jewish people have been used as scapegoats for many centuries by a variety of non-Jews. Muslims for their part have adopted scapegoating as an article of faith. Muslims to this day blame the Jews for all kinds of heinous things, dating back to the time of Muhammad himself.
Truth be told, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about land and will not be solved by the two-state solution. Spencer explains how the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip proved that. Also, he shows how Prime Minister Ehud Barak's “generous offer” of 2000 was refused, and again Arabs rejected the 1947 United Nations partition plan. This conflict will never be solved by a treaty that allows Israel to exist as a Jewish state. It is about pushing the Jews into the sea.
Israel's die-hard enemy, Islam, has been hard at work for over 1,400 years to complete the work of finishing off the Jews that the Prophet Muhammad himself had started. Waves of Muslim ill-wishers have over the centuries unleashed their unjustified wrath upon the Jews. The Jewish people, despite suffering huge losses at the hands of their enemies, remained resilient and outlived their tormentors. The pogroms in Russia, the ghettoization in much of Europe, and even genocidal Nazism failed to wipe out the Jews. But as this book demonstrates, the return and rebirth of the Jews to and in the Promised Land in 1948 did not mark the end of their ordeal.
I highly recommend Spencer's new book to anyone who is interested in learning more of the facts about this tragic and unnecessary conflict.
Published with permission from the American Thinker.