Self-Delusion at Anti-Mobilization Rally Today

This leaflet was distributed at the New York haredi anti-draft demo, a mass rally protesting ( see here, too) Israel's intent to have as many men as possible fulfill the basic civic responsibility - and a Jewish one, as well - to help one's fellow Jew, in this case, to protect and defend the lives of millions from terror and war:-

I have blogged in the past about the rape of Jewish women in Hebron in 1834.

The situation of Jews in Eretz-Yisrael "before Zionism" was bad.

Here is something concise:

From the beginning of Muslim Turkish rule in 1516, Jews had to pass Muslims on their left side, the side of Satan (David Landes, "Palestine Before the Zionists." Commentary, February 1976). Sultan Murad III decreed death for all Jews of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, but later commuted the sentence (Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine, New York, 1934).

In 1586, the famous Ramban Synagogue of the Old City of Jerusalem was seized by the Muslim authorities. This had been the last synagogue in Jerusalem remaining in Jewish hands (Ben Gurion, Israel, Tel Aviv, 1971).

One single Jew survived the Muslim massacre in the holy city of Safad in 1660 (Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine, New York, 1934).

In 1775, Muslim mob violence against the Jews of Hebron was incited by the infamous blood libel (Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, New York, 1973).

The Albanian born Mamluk "Arab", called "the Butcher", terrorized the land with his sadistic exploits through the late 1700's (Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine, New York, 1934).

To be permitted to pray by the Wailing Wall, the Jews paid a high annual rent to the Arab whose property adjoined it. They paid protection money to Muslim officials, already paid by the Turkish Government, for fear of desecration of the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and of Rachel's Tomb (David Landes, Palestine Before the Zionists, 1976).

In the 1830's, during the brief Egyptian reign over Palestine, the Jews found themselves caught between the ravages of the Egyptian soldiers and the multi-ethnic Muslim rebels who fought them:

"Forty thousand fellahin rushed on Jerusalem... The mob entered, and looted the city for five or six days. The Jews were the worst sufferers, their homes were sacked and their women were violated" (Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine, New York, 1934).

These are from here:

In the early seventeenth century a pair of Christian visitors to Safed told of life for the Jews: "Life here is the poorest and most miserable that one can imagine." Because of the harshness of Turkish rule and its crippling dhimmi oppressions, the Jews "pay for the very air they breathe."[29] Yet at the turn of the century, the Jewish population had grown from 8,000-10,000 (in 1555) to between 20,000 and 30,000 souls.

the marauders were everywhere -- Bedouin raiders, general anarchy, tax corruption -- with the additional tax burden that aimed only at Jews. Yet the Jewish communities of Judah-cum-Palestine "still held on all over the country. ... in Hebron ... Gaza, Ramle, Sh'chem [Nablus], Safed.... Acre, Sidon, Tyre, Haifa, Irsuf, Caesarea, and El Arish; and Jews continued to live and till the soil in Galilean villages."

In 1625, the local ruler of Jerusalem persecuted the Jews mercilessly in defiance of orders from the authorities in Damascus and Constantinople. It was not unusual, when the countryside suffered from drought, for the Moslem mob to attack "Jewish sinners who drank wine and thus caused the rains to stop!" To buy off the attackers, Jews had to borrow money from rich Moslems at compound interest, under threats of further attacks if they failed to repay

In the 1800s the Jews continued to suffer the same discriminatory practices as other non-Muslim "infidels,"[58] which "in many places throughout Syria and Palestine" meant "oppression, extortion, and violence by both the local authorities and the Muslim population."

So, they really don't know much, do they?

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