Mohamed Guma Bilazi
Journalist and international analyst
Afirm and well proven fact is that the Jews have always lived in the Diaspora and there is no doubt that they were persecuted throughout the centuries. History has made it clear that, in ancient times, who persecuted the Jews was Ramses II, one of the pharaohs who ruled Egypt around 1200 BC, and who persecuted them last century, was the ‘pharaoh’ of Germany and other European pharaohs, followed by those of the United States.
Was it the fault of the Jews themselves?
Regardless of the answer to this question, it was the Arabs, both before and after the rise of Islam, who treated the Jews, considered people of the Holy Book, well. Throughout history, the Arabs were the ones who offered protection and welcome to the Jews in their flight, from the remote times of the first Muslim caliphates, through the expulsion of Al-Andalus and the recent Ottoman Caliphate, until the middle of the twentieth century.
It was the Jews who betrayed the covenant with the Prophet Muhammad and his followers in Medina (Yathrib) and conspired with the rulers of the tribe of Quraysh in Mecca as revenge against the new Muslims, who believed, and still believe, in all the Holy Books: the Torah, the Gospel and all the Messengers of God and Prophets, both Jews and Christians, most of whom were descendants of the ancient Israelites.
No one would deny that the Arabs were the predecessors in sheltering Jews from the sweeping European religious fury, to which both Jews and Moors were subjected in ultra-Catholic Spain after the fall of Granada, and welcomed them into Arab territories where they lived out their most beautiful years in harmony and peace.
I still remember as a child, during the popular anger that spread throughout the Arab world after the violent occupation of Palestine in 1948, how we hid our neighboring Jewish children who fled in terror from their ‘Jewish quarters’, to protect themselves in our homes, as these were respected by all and no one dared to break into them without the permission of their dwellers. It was a very difficult period. We used to offer food to poor Jews, particularly orphans, despite the scarcity of food in those years of poverty. As time went by, we were realizing that those Jewish children had nothing to do with the occupation of Palestine.
Where was the humane treatment the Jews found among the Arabs compared to the heinous crimes committed today by Netanyahu and his armed gang against children, women, the elderly and refugees in occupied Palestine? Last century, while the Zionist Jews denied all that, the European rulers did not cease to persecute the Jews with the intention of getting rid of them and keeping them away from the European continent.
It is true that Palestine was not the first choice of the Zionist movement, at the end of the 19th century, to found a national homeland for the Jews, but the British government, which also wanted to expel the Jews from Britain and Europe, was primarily responsible for usurping Palestine and giving it to the Zionist movement, Palestine being under a British mandate by resolution of the League of Nations.
That said, the Jews have no rights, neither religiously nor historically, in Palestine, except for the original Jews of the Palestinian land. It was the Zionist movement, and not the texts of the Torah, that sought a place to found a national homeland for the Jews, wherever it was in the world. The first choices were Uganda, Bahrain, eastern Libya or Saudi Arabia.
To put an end to the Middle East conflict, Great Britain should be held accountable before the world for the usurpation of Palestine, for being solely responsible for what has been going on for 76 years, for the successive wars, disasters and thousands of human deaths. It will be an inescapable transcendental duty to correct that historical error and publicly recognize that the promise of its Government – given by its Foreign Minister, Arthur J. Balfour, on November 2, 1917 – was not valid but contrary to the Trusteeship Resolution on Palestine, issued by the League of Nations on July 22, 1922, and referred only to Palestine, without any mention of Israel, the Jews or the Torah.
Israel is nothing more than a plan hatched by European governments, which was well exploited by the Zionists, to expel Jews from the European continent wherever they went and thus definitively prevent their capitals from being razed to the ground in a new war, given what happened in the two world wars. That is the truth behind all the unjust actions to which the Jews were subjected in Europe.
The support that the Zionist occupation authority in Palestine receives today from the countries of Europe and the United States is aimed at keeping the Jews where they are, away from the territories of those countries, despite the fact that many of the Jewish refugees were granted European and American nationalities.
This is, succinctly, the history of aggression against Palestine and its people, to whom divine and earthly laws grant the right to resist occupation and liberate their land from the occupiers.
The slogan erected by the Zionists, which says: “land without people for people without land”, falls under its own weight. Palestine had and still has its own people, made up of Arabs and Jews, among other ethnic minorities. Palestine has never been a land empty of settlers since the ancient Philistines.
The Middle East conflict will only be resolved with the return of millions of the original and true inhabitants to this land called Palestine. And it will last as long as the obstinacy of turning the conflict into a religious war between Muslims and Jews, or the denial of the ultras and radicals of the existence of Palestine and its people, continues.
After 76 years of war, and what is still to come, it is more than demonstrated that the war method is not effective. Conflicts are never solved by weapons because all they achieve is the fall of a greater number of innocent victims. Neither the war waged by the Israeli government against Hamas has put an end to this group, nor to the Lebanese group Hezbullah. It has not been able to wipe out any of them. The proof of this is that one year after the bombings and massacres of civilians, the Israeli government is still negotiating a cease-fire with these groups, although not directly, but through intermediaries.
The war has no end in sight. Palestinian children who have suffered in their own flesh or have lost parents, siblings or relatives, will be the future warriors, and with more inri, not only to recover a land that was usurped from their ancestors and themselves, but to avenge the death of those closest to them.
The two-state solution, one Palestinian and the other Israeli, which the Spanish government has been preaching everywhere for some time, is the only solution to put an end to an endless conflict, which at some points in recent history has put not only the region, but the global world, in the limbo of a total war.
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