Why Do the Arabs Oppose Recognizing a Jewish State?

Prime Minister Netanyahu suggested to US  secretary of state John Kerry that the framework he was drawing up for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority include Palestinian Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Kerry did intend to include this Israeli proposal but since has backed away from it in view of Arab opposition, first of all from Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah and Palestinian Authority. Just today, the Arab League voted its support for Abbas' position.

One of the justifications for this opposition that apologists for the PA/PLO present is that by Israel being a Jewish state, the civil rights of Arab citizens of Israel would be adversely affected. However, all states belonging to the Arab League define themselves as Arab states. All Arab League member states but Lebanon define themselves constitutionally as Islamic states in one way or another. This does not stop them from opposing Israel being defined as a Jewish national state. The arguments against Israel as a Jewish state could logically be applied to Arab and Islamic states, and with more justification, since we have the benefit of hindsight to know just how non-Arabs and non-Muslims have been treated in Arab states.

The explanation for the Arab position lies, I believe, in the traditional Arab-Muslim view of Jews as an inferior dhimmi people, a millet [see below] devoid of national rights, and only entitled to live if they pay a yearly head tax on dhimmis called the jizya. The dhimma system applied to all non-Muslims who were subjects of the Islamic state, with individual exceptions. Within this system, the Jews were at the bottom of the barrel, at least in the Fertile Crescent  countries, including the Levant, where the Jews' status was inferior to that of their fellow dhimmis, the Christians.

Whereas the Quran and medieval Arab historiography, such as the writings of Ibn Khaldun, recognize the Jews as a nation or people, the entrenched Islamic view of Jews as an evil, inferior contemptible millet is now dominant. Moreover, in fact, in practice, that was the actual status of Jews in the Arab-Muslim countries for centuries. Even today in the 21st century Muslims believe that Jews do not deserve the dignity of having a national state of their own, the Quran and the old Arab historians notwithstanding.

This contemptuous view of Jews is clearly stated by the PLO in its charter. Article 20, already denies that the Jews are a people, claiming that they are merely a "religious" group. Jewish tradition holds that the Jews are both a people and a  religious group. Here is the relevant text of Art. 20:

"The claim of historical or religious ties between Jews and Palestine does not tally with historical realities nor with the constituents of statehood in their true sense. Judaism in its character as a religion is not a nationality with an independent existence. Likewise the Jews are not one people with an independent identity. They are rather citizens of the states to which they belong."

Note the contempt for Jews which oozes from this text. The history of Israelite/Jewish kingdoms in the country, as well as of the Roman province of Judea, is denied. The setting of much of the Hebrew Bible lies in the Land Of Israel which the PLO denies in a way reminiscent of Holocaust denial. Further, Jews do not have "the constituents of statehood in their true sense." Just by the way, the Nazis and other German Judeophobes claimed that the Jews were not capable of being a "state-forming nation." [see Francis R  Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press 1985)].

For texts of the PLO charter and the  Hamas charter, see here.
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Addition: in ancient Greek Jews were sometimes referred to as Ethnous Ioudaion, Jewish nation.
millet -- Turkish word referring to a recognized, organized religio-ethnic community within the Ottoman Empire [from the Arabic word milla or millatun, meaning originally people or nation but in Turkish usage referring specifically to the legally inferior communities of dhimmis (zimmis in Turkish), who were in turn the non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic states]. The millet was charged with keeping order among its members and often charged with collecting the jizya tax from them, and the millet enjoyed a certain religious autonomy and authority over its members, provided that Islamic restrictions on dhimmis were not violated. The traditional millets were the Armenians, Ermeni millet, like the Jews a religio-ethnic community, the Jews, a millet within the Ottoman Empire and also including Samaritans defined as Jews in Muslim tradition; as well as Greek Orthodox Christians, who were called I believe Rumi millet. The Greek Orthodox millet included Arabic-speaking Christians as well as other Eastern Orthodox Christians, such as Vlakhs [the old name for Rumanians], Bulgars, Serbs, etc. In the 19th century up to 1914, eleven millets were added to the original three, with the new millets representing ethnic subdivisions of the Greek Orthodox.There were no doubt nuances of the law in effect in different places.

What Motivates Arabs & Muslims in the Struggle against Israel?

The Muslim religion has been a chief motivating factor for Arabs opposing a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. The Ottoman Empire settled Europeans in Israel in the late 19th century and they were welcomed by the local Muslim Arabs. Why? Because they were Muslims. The Ottoman state, in which Arabs --including Palestinian Arabs-- held high posts was a Sunni Muslim state. When the European great powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 assigned Austria-Hungary to take over Bosnia --then as now dominated by the Muslim minority-- from the Ottoman state, many of the Bosnian Muslims did not want to remain in Bosnia that was coming under Austro-Hungarian --that is, infidel-- rule. Thousands of Bosnian Muslims were resettled elsewhere in Ottoman territory, including a couple of thousand in Israel. They were welcomed as fellow Muslims, although they did not speak Arabic and many of them were blonds.

On the other hand, Jews were coming to Israel in the same period from many parts of the Jewish Diaspora, from Ukraine, Belarus and Rumania [an Ottoman possession up to 1878] as well as from Yemen, Morocco, Georgia, Bukhara, Iraq and so forth. Indeed, the Arab-Muslims were not so much opposed to Jews immigrating into the country in the 19th century, as they were to Jews having power, Jews not acting like inferior, oppressed and humiliated dhimmis. As long as Jewish immigrants knew their place --their inferior place-- as Jews, and paid the Islamically ordained head tax on non-Muslims, the jizya, they were treated with the usual contempt but not prevented from immigrating. However, the jizya and some of the other disabilities on dhimmis in Muslim law were abolished in the late 19th century due to European pressure on the Ottoman Empire. The local Muslim resentment of Jews increased years after abolition of the jizya and of the full dhimma [parts of the dhimma remained in effect] in the last decade of the century. Abolition of the dhimma was part of the reason for the resentment.

When the Arab League secretary general, Abdul-Rahman Azzam Pasha, threatened Jews with war if a Jewish state were set up [October 1947], he spoke in terms of a jihad lasting scores of years, like the crusader wars and the Mongol invasions. He spoke in terms of Muslim volunteers --not only Arabs-- coming from far flung zones of the domain of Islam in order to fight the Jews. Why was this so?

Robert Reilly has explained the core motives for Muslim opposition to a Jewish state within any borders. Reilly attempts to:

elucidate the source of Arab intransigence in refusing to reach an accommodation with Israel short of the restoration of all that was lost in the repeated attempts to destroy it. In fact, even that restoration may not be enough. Anyone familiar with Al Manar (. . .) TV and the general propaganda against Israel throughout the Middle East might reasonably ask if there are any conditions under which the Arab world would allow Israel to continue to exist, other than by the strength of its own arms. And if not, why not? Organizations such as Hamas, quoted above, and Hezbollah repeatedly make clear that the real problem is the very existence of Israel. But why is this a problem, and is its nature political or religious and theological? If it is the former, a negotiated settlement may be possible. If it is the latter, this is highly unlikely, if not impossible. Which is it? The answers to these questions must be sought in the heart of Islamic revelation – in the Qur’an.

Islam says nothing about states, only peoples, and these it defines through religion. How does Islam regard Judaism? In Surah 5, Allah says that He established a Covenant with the Jews and gave them His revelation. The Jews possessed the Holy Land by virtue of this Covenant. But then the Qur’an cites the offence for which the Jews are forever cursed: “they changed my words.” The Jews changed God’s words; they changed His revelation. One can only appreciate how great and unforgivable this offence is by grasping the orthodox Muslim understanding that the Qur’an has co-existed eternally with God, in heaven, in Arabic, exactly as it exists today. Within this understanding of the Qur’an, the enormity of the Jewish offence becomes clear as a blasphemous act of colossal pride, for which they lost their right to the Holy Land.

Therefore, the Jewish claim to, and exercise of, sovereignty over the Holy Land and, indeed, sovereignty over some Muslims there, on the basis of Surah 5, is an incalculable offense and, for many Muslims, simply unacceptable. This is what drives the animus against Israel’s very existence. Until someone comes up with a new interpretation of Surah 5 that is widely accepted in the Muslim world, it is hard to have a great deal of hope for the sort of peace in the Middle East that we see in Europe.

If Jewish sovereignty in Israel is incompatible with the Qur’an, the rest becomes clear. Then one sees why, when Gaza was given the chance for self-rule, it was not used to display Palestinian capacity and desire for the rule of law and democratic constitutional government, but was turned into a weapons platform against Israel. It is why, at the 2000 Camp David summit, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat turned down Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer of more than 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem, without even bothering to make a counter offer. By proffering a Palestinian state and substantial reparations, Israel was interested in ending the conflict. Arafat was interested in using the conflict to end Israel. Little has changed since then, including the recent Palestinian attempt to declare a state unilaterally.

Reilly contradicts the usual hokum about the Arab struggle against Israel being motivated by nationalist causes, hatred of "European colonialists" or "European intruders" [as if the Jews living in Europe were simply considered "Europeans" by the majority of Europeans], and so on. As I noted at the beginning, the Arab Muslims in the country welcomed the settlement of Europeans in the country provided that they were Muslims. The Ottoman Empire sometimes sent natives of Europe to govern parts of the country [not a distinct entity in Ottoman times]. One of these was Ahmad al-Jazzar Pasha. He was not liked but not because he was a native of Europe. So the colonialism charge against the Jews/Israelis is a red herring. Moreover, for many years about half of the Israeli Jewish population has been Oriental Jews, usually defined as Jews from Muslim countries. That didn't make a difference to Arab enemies of Israel. The Oriental Jews were fleeing Muslim lands where they had been oppressed as dhimmis for centuries. The charge of being "Europeans" is another red herring. Likewise, the charge of having a different skin color, of being "white" compared to the "non-white" Arabs made against the Jews. Indeed there is a broad range of skin colors among both Jews and Arabs, and that includes the Ashkenazi Jews who also show a range of skin colors. Reilly has explained the Muslim religious motives which keep Arabs from recognizing and making peace with Israel [here]. That said, some Arabs of Muslim background have supported Israel on Quranic or other grounds. More on one of those Arabs in another post.

Sociology of Arab Imperialism (according to Schumpeter) -- Part Seven

This is the last excerpt from Schumpeter on Arab imperialism. Here he explores psychological and religious motives for holy war, jihad.

[p 42]
This does not, of course, mean that we deny the signifigance of religious commandments in the consciousness of the people. Had an Arab been asked why he fought, he might, as a born warrior, on proper reflection have countered with the question as to why one lived. That is how self-evident, how far above all rational thought, war and the urge for expansion were to him. But he would not have given such a reply. He would have said: "I fight because Allah and his Prophet will it." And this reply gave him an emotional prop in his struggle, provided him with a mode of conduct that preserved his character as a warrior. Religion was more than a mere reflex, certainly within the body social. It is not my intention to pursue this approach to the extreme, particularly since we here touch on problems that reach far too deeply to be disposed of within the framework of our topic. It was for that reason that I emphasized just now the possibility of the religious idea's taking on a social life of its own, in the example of Christianity. But the imperialism of a people or a state can never be explained in this fashion.

Arab imperialism was, among other things, a form of [p 43] popular imperialism.

Here we have it. Arab imperialism was an imperialism of the people. Democratic no doubt. The people wanted it. The Arabs seem to have enjoyed living off the labor of others, the dhimmis who paid tribute. To sum up Schumpeter's views on Arab imperialism: 1) the warlike, conquest-seeking nature of Islam flows from the warlike nature of the pre-Islamic Arabs; 2) the early Arab-Muslim empire was concerned with living as a superior, parasitic warrior caste ruling over non-Muslim subject peoples and exploiting their labor and economic productivity.
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coming soon: oppression of Jews in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Land of Israel

The Sociology of Arab Imperialism, according to Joseph Schumpeter - Part One

Arab imperialism had specific sociological-economic features which are described by Joseph Schumpeter. This author was a famous economist in the early and mid-20th century. He belonged to the so-called Austrian School of economics and he was not a socialist, although at certain periods he associated with some Marxian socialist economists on a committee. His important work was written from the first decade of the 20th century up to 1950 when he died in the United States. I agree with most of what he says about Arab imperialism, although there are probably a few minor points that I would not agree with. Without being a socialist or Marxist, he was influenced by them at least in the sense that he was interested in exploring some of the same categories and phenomena that they considered important.

His writings on imperialism quoted here seem to go back to the 1930s.

In order to illuminate especially the character of the religious brand of imperialism, let us briefly discuss the case of the Arabs. The relevant facts are simple and uncontroverted. The Arabs were mounted nomads, a persistent warrior type, like the nomadic Mongol horsemen. At heart they have remained just that, despite all modifications of culture and organization. Only at a late date and incompletely did portions of the Arab people relinquish the equestrian profession --no one readjusts so slowly and with such difficulty as the mounted nomad. Such people are never able to support themselves alone, and in Arabia they constituted a master class that systematically exploited for its own purposes, sometimes by means of outright robbery, the (likewise Semitic) population that had settled here and there and was engaged in agriculture and trade. Internally the Arabs were organized along thoroughly democratic lines, again like all mounted nomads. It was a gentile [clan] and patriarchal type of democracy, in keeping with the "relations of production" that prevailed among a nation of herdsmen and horsemen, and quite different from agrarian and urban democracy -- but democracy all the same in the sense that all members of the nation carried political weight and that all political expression grew from the people as a whole. The Arabs were divided into loosely knit tribes, headed by a freely elected sheik or emir who was dependent, in all affairs of importance, on the assent of the clan chiefs. The stock from which the tribes developed constituted the primary community, the fundamental social bond.
[Joseph Schumpeter, Imperialism / Social Classes (New York: Meridian, 1955), pp 34-35]

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to be continued
Coming soon: more on the status of Jews in Arab-Muslim society