The Ordeal of Palestine

From the Book
“Winning the Modern World for Islam“ by Imam Abdessalam Yassine
Translated from the French by Martin Jenni

The affair of Palestine is a series of painful ordeals, a path of suffering strewn with landscapes of desolation: disaster in 1948, scourge in 1956, catastrophe in 1967, calamity in 1973, and many other reverses of fortune along the way.

The Arab defeats at the hands of the tiny state of Israel have laid bare the deadly dislocation of Arabic societies and the ineptness of their governments. They have revealed very sad truths: what kind of nameless treachery was it when those in power armed their soldiers in 1948 with defective ammunition and rifles that did not fire, or when in 1967 there were no Egyptian generals—they were too busy with their debauchery to respond—during the Israeli blitz attack.

The lack of response from a depraved general staff was perhaps Egypt’s last chance to fight as equal to equal against the Zionist state, since Uncle Sam would soon settle that score. In 1973, while the penitent Egyptian army took to the field under its rallying cry, “Allahu akbar” (God is great), America, Zion’s unconditional protector, unleashed an airlift worthy of its might to flood the field with warplanes and tanks.

Uncle Sam’s protection was called into play once again when it flung its veto at the heart of the U.N. to decisions running counter to the Zionist state. Sure of its rear, the U.S. dismissed the resolutions of a world of law like so many useless scraps of paper.

Spoiled child of Protestant America so fervent in its Biblical mythologies, the state ofIsrael and its formidable propaganda apparatus in the U.S.—press, radio, and television channels in particular—inflated the number of Hitler’s victims at will and drew from common Biblical sources such motivational themes as Exodus and Shoah.

The slogan “a land without people for a people without land” made of Palestine a no man’s land, a waste ground and lost heritage found again by the chosen people.

A recovered “promised land,” Palestine is only the beach-head for the expansion of a “greater Israel” depicted on published Zionist maps, embracing a large part of the Arab East: Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Egypt. Israel acts, confident and certain of its allies. Its principal ally is the profound sense of guilt developed after the so-called Holocaust.

During WW II, the Vichy government was steeped in Jewish persecution; afterwards,France was persuaded that it owed the Jewish people a historic debt. This debt had to be repaid clean at the cost of squandering the democratic principles by which human rights are upheld.

To redeem Europe, this debt would have to be paid by Arabs. Not only would Arab lands be occupied and split up to receive Jews called to the land of their ancestors, but the same myth that lies at the base of the Jewish claim is preserved at any cost. The Gayssot-Fabius law, enacted in France and promulgated in 1990, severely sanctions all criticism of the Zionist political creed; casting doubt on the existence or extent of the “Holocaust” is a crime, and the doubter is prosecuted at law.

Thanks once again to Jewish propaganda, Hitler, the enemy of the human race and the instigator of a war that had fifty million victims— twenty million of whom were people of the Soviet Union—passed into history merely as a slaughterer of Jews. At Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the numbers are gently reduced so as to be believable; the six millions long sung and lamented have become four million, and this is pared back to a million and a half. This is the official tally engraved on the commemorative steles.

Inflating the number of victims adds nothing to the horror of Hitler’s carnage; a single innocent victim, Jew or not, is already one too many according to our deeply held Islamic convictions.

The favored child of America is also cherished by Hollywood. Jewish production funds and Jewish cinematic talents have combined to honor a mythical Schindler, casting a deaf ear to the protests of his widow who denounced the falsification of the facts.

Serviced by such prestigious advocates, the Jewish cause is omnipresent in the world’s conscience while other causes are erased forever. Neither side erects plaques to mourn the sixty million Native Americans exterminated by the white Protestant American pioneer. No stele commemorates the hundred million dead black Africans packed in the compartment of the slave ships. America’s cotton fields never received more than one out of ten of these human cattle, nine having passed beyond the realm of the living at the time of their capture, or chained and crammed for the crossing. Who thinks any more of them? Only the Jewish state lays claim to attention and memory!

Let us not allow the martyr image, maintained by the Jews to promote and exploit, turn us from the Zionist scheme or prevent us from discerning certain character traits and precedents of the protectors of the Zionist state.

Both the protected and the protectors demand the impossible. They have had the audacity and historical mindlessness to work toward the goal—projected sometime in the future—of having seven million Jews occupy the lands and the economy of 300 million Arabs, already there and backed by a billion and a half Muslims who are surely mindful of the Palestinian stakes and are always capable of responding to the appeal of their brothers!

When the impossible is demanded, when it is known to be out of reach—and when one possesses a nuclear arsenal—the temptation to use it will one day prove irresistible. Will humanity wake up one day to hear the news of a new Hiroshima in some Arab capital?

The menace no longer seems uncertain, judging by the arrogance, irresponsibility, and want of maturity on the part of the current head of the Zionist government, Netanyahu. When we consider the Jewish dogma by which “gentiles” (non-Jews) are ripe for exploiting, whether it be financially (through usury) or any other manner, nuclear aggression can no longer to be excluded. According to the Jewish Bible, “gentiles” can and ought to be exterminated if they stand in the way of the plans of the chosen people. What better means of exterminating than nuclear weapons?

The nightmare cannot be excluded when you think that the head of the Jewish state, at the end of October, 1997, provoked a popular storm when he cast into doubt certain Bible verses threatening the enemies of Israel with extermination, and that the extremist rightwing in power, whose justification rests on such passages as justification for Israel’s insatiable expansion, cried scandal.

The very existence of this artificial and menacing Jewish state is itself menaced with self-destruction by being constituted of a rabble of hetero-geneous peoples. (1)Sephardic Jews, immigrated from Arab countries, are, like Israel’s Arab citizens, treated with distrust. Begrudged of their rights, they ruminate bitterly against the Ashkenazi minority of European origin who are the sole masters of the Zionist state. There is much to be said about the dissensions between master-citizens and slave-citizens of dubious status. The heavy burden of a nuclear arsenal that a fit of temper of a paranoid head or the self-arousal of a military general staff might compel the government to activate, contributes to internal malaise as well as to our worries.

The state that has maintained itself for fifty years, supported by its Western friends, is internally driven by a centrifugal dynamic. The façade of democracy that has operated thus far cannot hold the building together indefinitely: the edifice will crumble sooner or later.

Still, we must not dream that our aggressor will fall of his own accord, brought down by some invisible magic. We must not dream! We must understand and act! We must understand history and prepare ourselves for the conditioned promise God makes to us in the Qur’an. It is written thus:

Afflict not others (O Muslims) nor let yourselves be beaten down. You are most high so long as you have faith. If a wound enfeebles you, the same wound enfeebles your enemy. We make the days (of rising and falling) alternate among the peoples so that God may recognize the faithful (by their conduct) and that He may choose you among the martyrs. God loves not the unjust. (2)Sûrah [Al-’Imran]: verses 139–40.

These verses were revealed after the defeat of the Muslims at Uhud, but the Qur’an is not a record of events limited in time, it is the living Word of God, invaluable instruction for all “days,” the promise of a rotation, of a rise after a fall.

Thus the kingdom of Jerusalem founded by the Crusaders lasted two centuries. The Franks were chased out after that. The feudal regime of the ancient kingdom of Jerusalem, though iniquitous and inhuman, seemed stable. Even though under this cruel and enslaving regime the land was sold or inherited along with serfs under the whip, it seemed to exist as if it would last forever.

Modern democracy in Israel has proved to be a system not for liberating the people but for subjugating them. It will not last forever; it is here for only a certain time. It is there as our ordeal, an ordeal for Arabs and Muslims. The ancient crusader regime was overthrown by a Muslim society united around a sultan. Saladin the Kurd gathered Arabs and non-Arabs behind him.

Today, when the ethnic wars between Muslims are a gaping wound, tearing us apart in fratricidal fury, all of this seems distant. Today, conquered Muslims are divided into little entities: they are no more than Afghans or Turks or Arabs or Berbers. . . .

The Ordeal of Israel will remain for some time until those scattered billion and a half Muslims become aware of their true identity. The Ordeal—by which God recognizes the faithful and distinguishes them from those who are not—is a central notion inislam. God willing, we shall return to it.

God’s explicit promise in the Holy Book is bound up with certain conditions: faith, political and social readiness, resistance, and martyrdom. Let us take a long breath in preparation for the “day” of rotation. Victory is earned!

On the theme of historical challenge and the psychology of a people, the phenomenon of the rotation of civilizations has been attentively observed by the British historian Toynbee.

It is difficult for Western civilization to admit its decadence and downfall, however, since it is beclouded by so much force, so much wealth, and such great capacity to exploit and tame (and so, destroy) nature. But the student of the psychology of modern man—that of the Zionist Jew, for example—discovers irrefutable signs of a certain and inevitable downfall.

That may be, but the Muslim is not in the ideal position. To his moral depression is added material misery, under-development, social injustice, political dismemberment—the list is long.

Observation of historical contingency and the psychology of peoples makes Muslims highly improbable candidates for playing an honorable role on the world stage, and casts doubt on Toynbee’s cyclical theory.

But let us leave the historians to their cold examination of conjunctures; let us bring to mind the history of the Prophets of God recorded in the Qur’an. Whenever an unjust city attained the zenith of power and rebelled against God, it was cursed and struck down, to leave its place for others more just and less corrupt. That was the fate of ‘Ad, the people of the Prophet Hud, of Thamud of the people of Salih, (3)TN: About the ‘Ad people, see in particular Sûrah 26 [Ash-Shu’arâ]: verses 123–40; the Thamud were their successors (cf. Sûrah 7 [Al-‘A’râf]: verses 73–79). of Pharaoh the enemy of Moses, and of many others.

The scorned and sorely tried of yesterday are the very ones to whom victory is promised tomorrow, of course, but it would be false to think that our faith is compatible with contemplative waiting and confident quietism. Victory, God’s gift, is to be earned—we can never repeat that enough!