Understanding Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'Or

Author:Bat Ye'Or
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781618613356
Publisher: RVP Press
Published: 2013-06-04T22:00:00+00:00

On a historical level, European Jewry—the target of a millenary theological persecution—is the remnant of genocide. This is not the position of Muslim immigrants, but it is similar to the condition of Christians in Islamic lands, although European Jewry was never a majority. The theological Christian accusations against the Jews are not yet suppressed and Judeophobia—mainly in the form of anti-Zionism—is not uncommon, although progress has been achieved since 1992. The horrors of the Shoah have traumatized not only the Jewish survivors but also the Christian conscience. It has created a bond of sorrow and reflection expressed by the Judeo-Christian dialogue and it initiated a movement of moral purification in the Church through a discipline of self-criticism. Such an attitude is unthinkable in the Muslim world concerning jihad and dhimmitude, which are still considered by the overwhelming majority and their leaders as having been a legitimate and equitable system.

Let us turn now to the State of Israel, a very small spot on the globe compared to the vast Christian regions and the Islamic Empire, which were conquered at the point of the sword and where hardly any pre-Islamic cultures remain. The Jewish population of Israel (eighty-two percent) is mainly composed of two groups, the survivors of Christian antisemitism and the survivors of dhimmitude. With such backgrounds, coupled with Islamic jihad and Hamas terrorism, one should not be surprised that now and again fanatic and xenophobic Jewish trends develop. In Israel (population: five and a half million), there are four principal minorities: Muslims, including the Bedouins (about fifteen percent), Druses (about one percent) and Christians (about two percent). Most fought hard against the establishment of the Jewish State. Many Christians joined forces with Muslims to destroy Israel which, on a theological basis, they deem to be illegal, since for traditionalist Christians—as for traditionalist Muslims—Jews must be dhimmis. The Palestinian Church itself has strongly forbidden Palestinian Christians from integrating into Israeli society.6

From the outset throughout the twentieth century the Vatican and mainstream Church thinking were totally opposed to Zionism.7 Hence, there was forged a holy Muslim-Christian alliance against Zionism, of which the Palestinian Christians were both the backbone and the vanguard.8 The Palestinian Church has always had a fateful role in Jewish history. After the Christianization of the Roman Empire in 323, it was the Palestinian Church that maintained the Roman interdiction against the Jewish presence in Jerusalem.9 Its clergy were intent on burning and destroying synagogues throughout Palestine.10 It was the Palestinian Church that transformed the Temple Mount in Jerusalem into a public place for garbage on which the whole population was invited to throw its most noxious refuse.11 The Byzantine emperor Heraclius in 628 ordered the extermination of the Jews at the instigation of the Palestinian clergy.12 When, soon after, the country was conquered by the Arabs, it was the Bishop Sophronius of Jerusalem who asked Umar Ibn al-Khattab to maintain Christian laws that forbade Jews to live in Jerusalem.13 A small number was allowed by the caliph, at the demand of the Jews, and this was the rule until the middle of the nineteenth century.

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