Guest Post: Why Many Muslims Hate Jews and Israel

I was born into an Arab Muslim family in the Middle East, and although we didn’t have a direct conflict with Israel, we were taught from school, media and religion that Israel is our enemy and Jews are our eternal enemies. They’ve always said that our issue with Israel isn’t only because of the Israeli Palestinian conflict – it’s a religious hatred based on the teachings of God in Quran and Prophet Mohamed.

I didn’t really care a lot about this until I was 14, when the second intifada erupted. Pictures of Mohamed Aldora were everywhere, even in schools. At our school, the students were encouraged to protest against Israel in the school yard for days.

The school brought an Islamic cleric to give us a lecture about the situation between Israelis and Palestinians from an Islamic point of view. It was a boring, repetitive and emotional lecture about how awful Jews are, and he stated that Jews were turned into pigs and monkeys for violating God’s orders – that’s why it is legitimate to call them the grandchildren of pigs and monkeys. He talked about historical stories claiming that Jews harmed and betrayed Prophet Mohamed. He talked about the final war that will happen between Muslims and Jews in this place (Israel/Palestine), and that Muslims can’t wait till this war happen – all this hatred against Jews has been planned for centuries, and not only since Israel became a state. The cleric ended his lecture by asking us to raise our hands and he started praying to God to bring prosperity to Muslims around the world, so we said Amen, and he then asked God to bring destruction to Jews, Christians and non-Muslims (he called them infidels) and leave their wives widowed and their children orphans. I put my hand down, didn’t say Amen, and looked at all these teens while asking myself: are they okay with what he is saying?

image Al-Aqsa MosquePalestinians as well as Arabs and Muslims deny that there is any proof that there was a Jewish temple on the same site where Al Aqsa mosque is located today. They deny that Jewish people have the right to have a country although Quran itself shows that this was always a Jewish land. Schools maps don’t show the state of Israel – they show it only as Palestine. Officially we can’t express that Israel is a reality and a country. I feel sorry for the Israelis and Palestinians; I don’t know how such a conflict would be solved when everyone is making it very complex. I don’t hate Israelis and I see Israel as a legitimate country.  I hope both people can cooperate with each other since they’re living next to each other. I hope Palestinians can learn from Israelis how to be strong and progressive.

I don’t know if Islam is the real issue. I left Islam because it made no sense to me, the hatred against everything and everyone who is different made me uncomfortable. I tried believing in Islam without this hatred but I ended up giving up entirely on it and only now I feel like I’m truly myself. I know that there are open-minded Muslims who don’t see Jews as their enemies, but the latest reaction that came from the Arabs and Muslims to the fires in Israel revealed only a little of how much hatred there is against Israel and Jewish people.

Rose is an Arab girl who happily works for a charity organization. She enjoys reading and writing. She believes in curiosity, doubt and change.

28 thoughts on “Guest Post: Why Many Muslims Hate Jews and Israel”

  1. Norman_In_New_York

    I know some open-minded Muslims here in the New York area and I respect them. Also, the Kurds know who their friends are. Islam needs a thorough Enlightenment that Europe underwent beginning in the 17th Century for the civilization of the umma to advance to our level.

  2. Muslims protected Jews from Christians for longer than anything called zionism ever existed. The oppression of millions over the pursuit of that ‘temple mount’ is the rube of the whole middle east divide.
    No rational human being on this earth has a problem with a Jew (commandment adherent human being) but god help any soul that claims to have rights over other by god.

    1. What a load of bullshit. The Islamofascists have persecuted the Jews for 1,400 years now. Just because for a short period they were marginally better than the Christians is nothing to brag about and that was a very long time ago.

      Zionism has existed longer than the Islamofascist colonists have

      1. When the Christians drove the Muslims from Spain, most Jews went with the Muslims to North Africa rather than live under Christian oppression. Read a history book sometime.

          1. You’re not saying anything different than I am. The Jews left/the Jews were expelled are not different things. I didn’t say the Jews in Spain were BFFs with the Muslims there, but when given the choice of living in Muslim lands in North Africa or stay in Catholic Spain and convert to Christianity, leave or die, they left in droves. Not a good choice for the Jews, but a choice any sane being would make.

            1. 1Biodegradable1

              Choosing to go with the Muslims and being expelled by the Catholics are indeed two very different things.

              You seem to be saying that the Jews went along with the Muslims out of choice, I’m saying they didn’t “go with the Muslims” – they were forced to leave by the Catholics. They just happened, many of them, to go to a Muslim land.

              The expelled Jews certainly did not choose to go to Muslim lands in North Africa because they would be better off under Muslim rule, although living as a dhimmi was certainly preferable to dying. They went there because it was close and easier to reach than, for example, Turkey, where many others went. Many also went to Portugal, right next door to Spain.

              IMO leaving Spain rather than being forced, under threat of death, to convert was a good choice for a Jew.

              1. I honestly believe we are saying the same thing. I agree that leaving Spain under threat of death from the Catholics was a good choice for the Jews. There was no Jewish state at the time and they really had no good choices of where else to go in the world. North Africa was the closest and, for most Jews, was the most practicable choice to make.

                1. 1Biodegradable1

                  OK Jim, I only took issue with you saying, “Jews went with the Muslims to North Africa rather than live under Christian oppression” as if that was the choice.

                  There was no living (as a Jew) “under Christian oppression” – you either left or became a Christian.

            2. Barney Sternfield

              You all need to read some history yourself, especially the life of Maimonides. The Almohades who took over Cordoba ruled that the Jews could become Muslims. leave. or be killed, so he went to Morocco. The Almohades seized Morocco so he fled to Egypt which was ruled by the Ayoubis (who were Kurdish) The ‘Golden Age of Tolerance” of Spain was because a Prince of the Umayads esaped the slaughter when they were overthrown by the Abbasids and fled to Spain and set up a renegade Caliphate. He tolerated everyone to keep their loyalty. Mostly the history of Jews in the Arab world is that of expulsion, humiliation, and 3rd class status, and being massecred by the hundreds instead of by the thousands like in Europe. There are a number of good histories about this that are not too hard to find. Especially relevant to this is Maimonides’ “Epistle to the Yemenites.” The difference between the two was mereley a matter of degrees. By the way I’m married into one of these Arabic speaking Jewish families.

        1. Read lots of them and 100% agree that pogroms and abuse was the norm among the Islamofascists.

          They had no choice but to move there after the Christians forced them out, but it wasn’t by choice nor was the life much better. Robbery, rape and murder were common by the Islamofascists, but that was actually better than the Christians.

          Again I factually state, that their treatment of Jews was marginally better but nothing to brag about and the Islamofascists haven’t even done that much for Jews in centuries

        2. ahad_ha_amoratsim

          Not exactly. Jews welcomed the Christian victory, saying “better under Esau than under Yishmael. Then Spain expelled its Jews and Portugal followed a few months later. Some Jews left for N. Africa, some for other parts of Europe.

    2. So what’s stopping them, or in ’67 for that matter when the victorious Israelis unilaterally returned the authority of the Mount to the Islamic Waqf?

      1. “Muslims protected Jews from Christians for longer than anything called zionism ever existed”
        .
        That’s a true statement.

        1. Since Zionism pre-dates Islamofascism by a few centuries it is a false statement. The facts are the most anti-Semitic cult in the entire world is Islamofascism.

          1. “””””””””””””Since Zionism pre-dates Islamofascism by a few centuries it is a false statement. The facts are the most anti-Semitic cult in the entire world is Islamofascism”””””””

            .

            Zionism is not Judaism because Jews DO NOT need the idolatry of a temple.

            .

            The central issue fueling the divide of hate between zionist and Palestinians, is that the Palestinians have the gold domed building as king of the hill in Jerusalem and there is no temple there for zionist to sacrifice animals.

            .

            Christians murdered more Jews than muslims have by a huge margin.

            I said:”Muslims protected Jews from Christians for longer than anything called zionism ever existed”.
            .

            1. Catholics murdered the Jews. Catholics are Catholics, not Christians. They use the name of Christ but are not of him.. They also murdered over 50 millon Christians during these times. Baptize your babies or die was their mantra. Catholics and Muslims have one thing in common, they are all children of the devil. He is their father and they works of their father they will do. Murder and mayhem.

  3. Nice post, Rose, but Islam and its medieval fanatical hatred towards Jews and other supposed unbelievers is undoubtedly the root of this conflict. The sooner this part of the world realizes this, the quicker a genuine peace can hopefully be negotiated and reached.

      1. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure it’s legit (because I’m familiar with your good work), but the neutral or unfamiliar reader will be less certain.

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