The Muslims of 1845 explain why the existence of Israel is such a source of shame today

"Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846" by James Richardson, includes an anecdote that explains a lot of the hate from the Arab world towards Israel today.

My turjeman is surprised we Christians receive the books of the Jews as sacred and inspired, and so are many other people. They are quite astonished when I tell them that Christians esteem the Scriptures of the Jews equally divine with their own. They have a confused notion that the whole of the Jewish Scriptures consist of the five books of Moses, which they call the Torat, and the Psalms of David. Some of them say Abraham was not a Jew. I explain to them, that the Christians give a different interpretation to the Jewish Scriptures from the Jews themselves, and believe “the Son of Mary” to be the Messiah of the Jews and all the world. They hardly believe me; and say, “The Jews are corrupt and their books corrupt.” When I told them one day before the Rais that we had had Jews in India, they flatly replied it was a lie, for said they, “It is impossible for such a miserable being as a Jew to be a soldier.”

I have long assumed that the hate that Arabs and Muslims have for Israel comes from the honor/shame dynamic - weak Jews defeating Arabs who consider themselves experts in war was a huge psychological blow, far worse than the physical defeat. This is why only the 1948 war, among all the many wars that Muslims and Arabs have lost to the West and others, is called a "nakba," a catastrophe.

Here is the first time I have seen this thinking written specifically. To the Arabs of north Africa, the idea of a Jew being a soldier altogether was not believable. Jews were "miserable beings" and "corrupt" and therefore cannot possibly learn to fight, as honorable Arabs do.

When these "miserable beings" showed that not only can they fight, but they can defeat the combined armies of the Arab world outnumbering the Jews, the psychic damage to the Arab world cannot be overstated.

The only thing that can cure this is a combination of Israeli military strength continuing to dominate the region, and time for the Arabs to get used to the fact that Jews are not what they have been taught for many centuries. Arabs measure time in centuries, not months, so it takes a few generations for changes to occur.

They are occurring, though.

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