Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 18:15:06 -0800 (PST)
From: Wolf Factory <wolf_factory-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: holy cities, part one of two


Charles,

I read your e-mail with astonishment. I kept
wondering, as my eyes went over the words and
sentences, ‘what is wrong with this man?’ 

Your long message did not constitute a reply to the
points I raised. Instead you just shifted the subject
onto eastern Jews and the origin of Moses. Who can
think, let alone care at these times whether Moses was
an Egyptian, a Jew or a Martian? 
Of course you are entitled to think about any subject
you like. However, you are making a specific point
against the background of the current middle east
conflict. 
Everything you say has added significance (akin to the
silence of the pope during the Holocaust).

Once again you assert: #Jerusalem…was not accessible
to Jews -of Israeli or other citizenship- for many
years pre-1967#. And once again, I have to point out
that Arabs and Israelis were at war from 48 to 67 and
beyond. I.e. Jerusalem was closed to Jews, and here I
am taking your assertion of this fact for granted just
for the sake of argument, not for religious reasons
but for political ones.

Then you put a question that shows what can only be
described as either profound or willful ignorance:

#All this made me wonder about why Mecca and Medina
had been closed (and whether, should Moslems ever
regain control of East Jerusalem, there would be
voices raised advocating the same for that place)#

First of all you use an Israeli technique here which
is so old hat and obvious, I am surprised you have the
gall to try it on this list. You lump all Muslims
together as if they are a homogeneous entity with a
single characteristic (like bacterial clones). So
allow me to point out the obvious: just because Saudi
Arabians might be close minded about Mecca and Medina
does not mean that the Palestinians will be close
minded about Jerusalem. In fact, the Palestinian
authority has said time and again that  Jerusalem does
not belong to one religion. It is a city for Jews,
Christians and Muslims. They have continued to assert
this to this day, even as countless Palestinians are
being exterminated by the sadistic and out-of-control
Israeli army under orders by the war criminal and
racist psychopath, Ariel Sharon.

Finally, towards the end of your message, you reveal
how your interest in Mecca and Medina is nothing but a
thinly veiled attempt at covering up and providing
justification for the crimes Israel is currently
committing.  This is demonstrated in a paragraph that
is hyperbolic, short on facts, and that tries, as all
recent Israeli propaganda is desperately trying, to
lump ALL Palestinians in the same camp as the Wahabi
9/11 terrorists:

#Adherents to Wahabism (which seem to control
religious and other aspects of Saudi society, and from
whose ranks came some of the terrorists who killed
thousands of civilians in the United States on
September 11), are taught an ingrained intolerance and
a profound lack of respect for anyone not of their
faith.  I wonder if this type of realization, which
may just be dawning on some of us in the west, has
been common, assumed knowledge of the sort passed from
generation to generation by those Middle Eastern
Jewish families who have lived in proximity to Arab
Moslems for centuries, and who have backed the Likud
party and its hard line on Palestinian issues.#

Why are you not similarly shocked by # the ingrained
intolerance and profound lack of respect for anyone
not of their faith# that orthodox Jews in Israel (and
elsewhere) display? There are religious hardliners and
fanatics on both sides but your skewed views and
opinions do not allow you to see that.

Finally you assert, out of thin air, that Middle
Eastern Jewish families may have passed some special
kind of knowledge (which you did not specifiy) about
the so-called intolerance of Arab Moslems from
generation to generation. If one reads your paragraph
carefully, one can see how you started it by talking
about the Wahabis, who form a minority amongst Muslims
and then skillfully widened the discussion to include
All Muslims. 

This gives the impression that all Muslims, everywhere
and throughout history have displayed the same brand
of intolerance that the current Saudi Wahabis suffer
from. It makes me depressed and angry to have to point
out, again, for I have had to make the same argument a
thousand times in recent months, that this assumption
about Islam’s intolerance is not supported by
historical fact. It is well established that Middle
Eastern Jews experienced far less hostility and
intolerance than European Jews. Nothing remotely on
the scale of the Holocaust ever took place in the
middle east. Jewish scholars were venerated, for
example, in the Arabic Andalus (Southern Spain). That
is not to say that Arabic and Islamic histories do not
contain many shameful episodes, they does, but so does
for that matter the history of Europeans, Chinese,
Americans, etc, etc.

After 1948, when Israel was established, hostilities
against the Jews shot up rapidly in Arab countries and
many Jewish communities were left with no choice but
to leave for Israel.  This was unfortunate but
considering that Israel was founded through the
massacre and terrorization of Palestinians causing one
of the 20th Century’s biggest refugee problems, it is
not entirely beyond our understanding. 

Finally, I truly hope no one will take what you say
about linking the opening of Mecca and Medina to
non-Muslims and the resolution of the middle east
conflict seriously. If that is your idea of what
constitutes a solution, then please keep it a closely
guarded secret, especially if you are serious about
stopping further bloodshed as you claimed at the start
of your e-mail.

For those who might still not see why this is a
hopeless suggestion, let me spell it out: the last
thing the middle east conflict needs is to introduce
further issues pertaining to religion. I am all for
the idea of a more open, and dare I say it, democratic
Saudi Arabia but let us not for god’s sake tie that to
the middle east peace negotiations. 

Only one point you made had any value for me. Yes I
agree there should be more respect between both sides.
Arabs need to learn more about Israelis and Jews in
general, particularly about  the terrible persecutions
they have faced over the centuries and Jews need not
so much to learn more about Arabs, for they already
know a lot, but to stop misrepresenting Arabic history
and the diversity of Arabic culture before the western
public. And above all to recognize that Palestinians
have an independent, national identity,
distinguishable from that of other Arabs and Muslims. 

Notice for example, how non of the Israeli apologists
talk about the Christian Palestinians who are fighting
bravely for their lives alongside their Muslim
brothers and sisters. No, much better to keep the
focus on the fanatical Muslims (to the exclusion of
all others) in these ever so convenient, post 9/11
days.

W.F.


--- Charrl-AT-aol.com wrote:
> Let me begin by addressing the good question of why
> ask about access to Saudi 
> holy cities when there are obviously more pressing
> matters at hand of 
> (literally) life and death.  I wish I knew how to
> approach a cessation of 
> hostilities to prevent more bloodshed today, or
> tomorrow, but I really do not 
> know where to start.  I do, however, have another
> idea which may not produce 
> results right away, but rather put the parties
> concerned on a faster track 
> toward productive discussions.  The idea started
> with thoughts about who in 
> Israel tend to be hard liners toward the
> Palestinians.
> 
> Those Jews of Middle Eastern or North African origin
> (one post spoke of 
> "Mizrahi" Jews) have over the years tended to
> vigorously support the Likud 
> party in Israel (though many leaders are Ashkenazim
> - of central/eastern 
> European background).  Intuitively, you might think
> that because these Middle 
> Eastern Sephardic Jews have less status they would
> feel a greater affinity 
> for Palestinians.  You might even think,
> intuitively, that these Jews, having 
> absorbed a cultural context similar to that of
> Arabs, would be more 
> understanding of, and sympathetic to, the plight of
> Palestinians.  In fact, 
> it is these Middle Eastern Jews who have tended to
> form the rank and file 
> backbone of Israeli political support for a hard
> line against Palestinians.
> 
> Do these Middle Eastern Jews know something the more
> westernized Jews do not?
> 
> I first asked myself that question when it was
> pointed out that in Israel 
> there were no physical depictions of Moses.  When we
> asked some Israelis 
> about it, their response was to talk about not
> encouraging idolatry, or that 
> Moses never actually set foot in ancient Israel (in
> the Bible he was denied 
> the privilege on what seemed to be a small pretext).
>  There was something 
> specious about these responses, and I remember
> mentioning that Abe Lincoln 
> never visited Israel, but there is at least one
> prominent statue of him 
> there!
> 
> Years later, through a dream followed the next
> evening by the chance 
> discovery of a book written by Freud, Moses and
> Monotheism, I discovered 
> there was and is significant evidence that Moses was
> an Egyptian.  I cannot 
> help but think the precedent of not showing
> depictions of Moses was begun by 
> Jews whose families have always lived in the Middle
> East, and who somehow 
> knew (even if some of their descendants may have by
> now lost the 
> informally-taught knowledge) that Moses was not a
> Jew.
> 
> When the Saudi peace proposal came to light I was
> encouraged, like many of 
> you, and wanted to believe it was a serious
> proposal.  Yet I couldn't help 
> but feel there was something that did not quite add
> up about this either.
> 
> I began to wonder what other things Middle Eastern
> Jews knew, or had been 
> informally taught, which the Ashkenazim or
> westerners in general didn't know, 
> and what things about the Middle East exist for
> which I had never really 
> heard a plausible explanation.  And first and
> foremost I thought of 
> Jerusalem, which really was not accessible to Jews
> -of Israeli of other 
> citizenship- for many years pre-1967.  And then I
> thought of Mecca and 
> Medina, and how those cities have been completely
> closed off to anyone not a 
> Moslem.  And Jerusalem, though it does have sites
> considered important by 
> Moslems and Christians, is THE holy city for the
> Jews, the Jewish equivalent 
> of Mecca, if ever there was one.
> 
> All this made me wonder about why Mecca and Medina
> had been closed (and 
> whether, should Moslems ever regain control of East
> Jerusalem, there would be 
> voices raised advocating the same for that place). 
> I did some research on 
> the web to try to understand why the Islamic holy
> cities were closed and, 
> when that effort didn't shed much light on the
> issue, I asked members of this 
> listserv about it; I also consulted one of my old
> professors who is an Arabic 
> scholar and expert on Islamic  religious writings
> and philosophy.  
> 
> Some responses I had spoke of assertions of power,
> and others spoke of not 
> really knowing why these cities were closed.  Only
> Suha Kudsieh, who posted a 
> message to this listserv March 4, said that the
> Khutbat al-Wada, or 
> Mohammed's last sermon or speech, "declared these
> areas sacred and allowed to 
> Muslims only".
> 
> After reading this sermon, I responded to the list,
> in part:
> 
> 
>  "In the translations I found of the Khutbat
> al-Wada'ah, the final sermon of 
> Mohammed, I found no explicit declaration that Mecca
> and Medina were to be 
> allowed to Moslems only.  The only possible
> reference to exclusivity is this 
> passage, which refers only to Mecca:
> 
> 'O People, just as you regard this month, this day,
> this city as sacred, so 
> regard the life and property of every Muslim as a
> sacred trust'
> 
>  Is this the passage, which seems to single out the
> legitimacy of Muslim life 
> and property to the exclusion of those of other
> peoples, the one to which you 
> referred?  Is this passage used, to this day, as
> justification for 
> prohibiting non-Moslems from entering either of the
> holiest cities?" 
> 
>  
> No one has responded to this.  So I'm coming to the
> realization that while 
> many Moslems do not know why the cities are closed,
> other more traditional 
> Moslems, and especially adherents to Wahabism (which
> seem to control 
> religious and other aspects of Saudi society, and
> from whose ranks came some 
> of the terrorists who killed thousands of civilians
> in the United States on 
> September 11), are taught an ingrained intolerance
> and a profound lack of 
> respect for anyone not of their faith.  I wonder if
> this type of realization, 
> which may just be dawning on some of us in the west,
> has been common, assumed 
> knowledge of the sort passed from generation to
> generation by those Middle 
> Eastern Jewish families who have lived in proximity
> to Arab Moslems for 
> centuries, and who have backed the Likud party and
> its hard line on 
> Palestinian issues. 
> 
> (On the issue of property rights of non-Moslems, a
> recent issue of World 
> Press Review reprinted a piece from the October 23,
> 2001 issue of Outlook - 
> described by the Review as an independent weekly
> published in New Delhi.  
> Discussing fears of a US presence in oil and gas
> extraction in an area 
> covering Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and
> Uzbekistan, the piece says 
> moves by US interests there "would be ruthlessly
> resisted by Islamic 
> fundamentalists who claim that all oil and gas
> reserves across the Asian 
> crescent are 'a gift from Allah to the faithful'.")
> 
> If your prospective negotiating partners really
> think you are impure and 
> undeserving of basic guarantees relating to life and
> property, why would Jews 
> think you could have serious discussions in an
> atmosphere of mutual respect, 
> or some semblance therof?  Perhaps if Jews felt
> there was a greater respect 
> for them, it would make the start of talks more
> attainable and the 
> 
=== message truncated ==


===="All the wolves in the wolf factory paused at noon, 
for a moment of silence."
........from laughing Gravy by John Ashbery.
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