🧵The horrific attack today on author Salman Rushdie has its ideological roots in radical Islamic fundamentalism. In the modern era, organized political movements aligning themselves with these ideas began in the late 1920s with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood.
This was formed by Hassan al-Banna in Egypt in 1929. In Syria, Antoun Saadeh (the self styled ‘fuhrer’) founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party in 1932. Meanwhile, Ahmed Hussein was preparing to found the Young Egypt Party in Egypt in 1933.
The Nazis closest ally in the entire MENA was another political figure Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He had already incited the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920 in Jerusalem and Hebron before he became leader of the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement.
al-Husseini would go on to support Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews and planned to establish concentration camps near Nablus vimeo.com/322604709
His nephew, the Egyptian Yasser Arafat, would become the leader of the PLO. Ion Pacepa, the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc, described the relationship between Arafat and the Soviet Union webhome.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/…
The development of modern, radical Islamic fundamentalism was supported by both the Nazis and subsequently the post WWII Soviet Union, while today Putin continues to support the fundamentalist Iranian regime as he seeks control in the Middle East reuters.com/world/putin-vi…
Ayatollah Khomeini, architect of the 1979 fundamentalist Islamic Revolution in Iran, certainly played a part in the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president and peace maker with Israel arabnews.com/node/1826191/m…
‘Iran’s constitution even says the task of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is to spread the rule of God on earth and to build a unified global society based on the struggle to liberate the oppressed of the earth.'
The Iranian constitution continues that ‘the task of Iran’s foreign policy is to support “legitimate jihad.” ‘
These fundamentalist ideas distort more tolerant Islamic teachings but have taken hold within a number of violent groups ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/zed0…
Many Nazi war criminals were also given refuge in Arab countries after WWII where they were allowed to influence radical fundamentalist groups through their work in government, military and propaganda roles …degruyter.com/document/doi/1
Previously unavailable archive material has now confirmed the true extent of Nazi collaboration with fundamentalist Arab Islamic organisations cambridge.org/core/journals/…
In summary, the Nazis supported & trained radical fundamentalist organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement, while the Soviet Union & KGB did the same for organisations such as Fatah, Islamic Jihad & Hezbollah
Sadly there are several other forms of ideological fundamentalism in the world that seek power through violence and oppression. The common thread is that they all attempt to remove legitimate questioning, discussion, difference of opinion, individuality and the right to choice.
Obviously the Middle East has also been of great importance to the British & The USA. After WWII, as Soviet Communism sought to gain influence in the Arab world, the British and Americans launched counter propaganda cambridge.org/core/journals/…
The MENA is obviously a geo-politically complex region, but the existence of violent fundamentalism anywhere is a concern for people everywhere.
The shifting tensions and allegiances relating to Sunni and Shia majority states in the Middle East only adds to the complexity of addressing this problem carnegieendowment.org/files/3-13_Bad…
And these pictures of Arafat and Nazi symbolism at a UNRWA school in Lebanon 1982 show the continued spread of extremist ideology
It is clear that ideologies from both the far right and far left have been employed in an attempt to destabilise & delegitimise the State of Israel tabletmag.com/sections/histo…
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1. After the 1948 war many Arabs were displaced to the West Bank & Gaza - both areas still within the borders of the former British mandate for Palestine.
But who were the approx 150,000 non-Jews who remained in Israel after the 1948 war and became Israeli citizens ?
2. Muslim Arabs
The majority of the Arabs who stayed in Israel were Muslims, primarily Sunni. They resided in various regions, including the Galilee, the "Little Triangle" (a group of Arab villages along the border with Jordan), and the Negev. Many of these communities were rural, living in villages, though some were in urban areas like Haifa, Jaffa, and Acre.
3. Christian Arabs
A significant number of Christian Arabs remained, particularly in cities like Nazareth, Haifa, and Jaffa, as well as in villages in the Galilee. Christian Arabs belonged to various denominations, including Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant communities.
Many people on X aren’t big fans of well researched, factual history.
So those people probably wouldn’t want to know that in 1892, the Ottoman government prohibited the sale of land in Palestine to Jews, regardless of their citizenship. This was part of a broader policy aimed at limiting Jewish settlement and immigration to the region (By the end of the 16th century, the Jewish population in the Ottoman Empire was already estimated to be around 150,000 - the largest Jewish population in the world at that time).
In fact, until their defeat in 1918, the Ottomans continuously restricted Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine.
Then, following violence and pressure from Arab nationalists, this restriction was further enforced by the British Mandate authorities in 1939 through the White Paper, limiting Jewish land purchases to only a small percentage of the total land available.
Why should Jews, with a continual presence in the region for 3000 years, have been denied the same rights of legal citizenship and land ownership as anyone else ?
It’s a clear and obvious case of ethnic discrimination. You don’t need to ethnically cleanse a region if your laws already seek to prevent a specific ethnic (and indigenous) people from legally purchasing land.
Here are 7 obvious errors made by Dave Smith in his debate with Douglas Murray :
1. Completely misrepresented the laws & ethics of warfare with a false analogy about domestic vigilantism.
2. Confused Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann.
3. Falsely equated the Haganah with terrorism (it was established as a Jewish defense force following the Arab riots against Jews of 1920).
4. Showed no knowledge of the massive death toll in Syria, Yemen and other MENA countries over recent years.
5. Failed to demonstrate any grasp of the specific details of a concentration camp.
6. Showed no recognition of the stated genocidal intention of fundamentalist Islamic groups, including Hamas.
7. Failed to acknowledge even the most basic features of Churchill’s role in defeating the Nazis.
Further, no sane person thinks that war is anything other than brutal and horrific.
Some of the clear and obvious questions are whether the consequences of not pursuing a war will be (far) worse than pursuing it, and therefore how a war might be fought within a legal framework.
Further, the point about debate is that if it does not involve people who can be independently & reasonably verified as having done a substantial amount of relevant / legitimate work in the field then it can obviously just descend into personal bias and bigotry without fact-checking or push back.
In addition, Dave Smith had no detailed response to the critical question of how a State should deal with a terrorist militia on its border (funded and supported by Iran, Qatar and Turkey) that invades its sovereign territory, murders and rapes civilians, takes hostages and then embeds itself within its own civilian population - including schools and hospitals.
Yasser Arafat, the Egyptian leader of the PLO, started wars in Jordan & Lebanon, fomented West Bank terrorism, launched the 2nd intifada & accrued personal wealth of $billions.
Abbas, current PA leader, has net worth of $100 million.
Abbas was elected on 9 January 2005 to serve as President of the Palestinian National Authority and has not held elections since.
The Hamas leadership all became billionaires.
The Palestinians have effectively been governed by kleptocratic dictatorship for over 50 years.
When it looks, walks and talks like a group of fundamentalists who seek to profit from continual violence, then that’s most likely what it is.
3. And it was also from 2008 onwards that construction of the tunnel network in Gaza was rapidly expanded as a central piece of the Hamas plan to attack and destroy Israel. wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/hama…