OUR HISTORY

Dajjal History

2009-04-28T07:04:00.002-07:00

Dajjal

From New World Encyclopedia

ad-Dajjal sometimes spelled Dajal, (Arabic: الدّجّال, ad-dajjāl) ("The Deceiver/impostor"), also known as the false Messiah (see also: Antichrist) is an evil figure in Islamic eschatology. He is to appear at a time in the future, before Yawm al-Qiyamah (The Day of Resurrection, Judgment Day).

"Dajjal" (compare to "Devil") is a common Arabic word, used in the sense of "false prophet," but "Ad-Dajjal," with the definite article, refers to "The Impostor," a specific end-of times deceiver. The term Al-Masih Ad-Dajjal (Arabic for "The False Messiah") is a literal translation of the Syriac term "Meshiha Deghala," which had been in the common vocabulary of the Middle East and adapted into the Arabic language 400 years prior to the Qur'an via the Peshitta (which uses that term instead of the Greek "antichristos").

Muslims believe that prior to the Day of Judgment around about the time that Jesus will return to earth, ad-Dajjal shall gather an army of those he has deceived and lead them in a war against Jesus and the Mahdi (the guide), accompanied by an army of the righteous. Traditions attributed to Muhammad describe the appearance of Jesus and of the Dajjal, least the one be mistaken for the other. The idea of a final clash between the forces of good and of evil with the former vanquishing the latter recurs in religious thought. While for some, what follows involves the end of history as presently experienced, and the start of a spiritual reality, for others what follows is an era of peace and justice on a restored planet earth. This may be a fundamental expression of the human conviction that given cooperation and good will, evil need not triumph. For some, such figures as the Anti-Christ, ad-Dajjal and their righteous opponents are real, for others this is a symbolic scenario representing the very real possibility that humanity might rise above greed, selfishness, ignorance and hatred and build a world in which all people have due regard for the welfare of the whole of humanity, as well as for the health of the planet itself.

Islam's description

The Dajjal is not referred to in the Qur’an but belongs to the more extensive material on the End found in the collections of the sayings of Muhammad, which Muslims believe to be inspired, like the Hadith. The following of among hadith describing the Dajjal:

Once Allah's Apostle stood amongst the people, glorified and praised Allah as He deserved and then mentioned the Dajjal saying, "l warn you against him (i.e. the Dajjal) and there was no prophet but warned his nation against him. No doubt, Noah warned his nation against him but I tell you about him something of which no prophet told his nation before me. You should know that he is one-eyed, and Allah is not one-eyed."^[1]
Allah's Apostle said, "Shall I not tell you about the Dajjal a story of which no prophet told his nation? The Dajjal is one-eyed and will bring with him what will resemble Hell and Paradise, and what he will call Paradise will be actually Hell; so I warn you (against him) as Noah warned his nation against him."^[2]
'Abdullah reported on the authority of his father 'Umar b. Khattab that he heard from the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say: I was sleeping when I saw myself making circuit around the Ka'bah, and I saw there a man of fair complexion with straight hair between two men. Water was flowing from his head or water was falling from his head. I said: Who is he? They answered: He is the son of Mary. Then I moved forward and cast a glance and there was a bulky man of red complexion with thick locks of hair on his head, blind of one eye as if his eye was a swollen grape. I asked: Who is he? They said: He is Dajjal. He had close resemblance with Ibn Qatan amongst men. ^[3]

The Mahdi, Jesus and the Anti-Christ

The Mahdi is also not a Qur’anic figure. Among Twlever Shi’a, the Mahdi is associated with the twelfth Imam, who went into heavenly “occultation” around about 874 C.E. and who will return one day to establish everlasting peace and justice. This concept is similar to the idea within Christianity that when Jesus returns, there will be 1,000 years of peace on earth. Among Sunnis, belief in the Mahdi also evolved as an End-time figure that will assist Jesus in defeating the agents of Satan before the Day of Judgment.

It is said that the Dajjal will be unable to enter the sanctuaries of Mecca or Medina but that he will make his final stand in Jerusalem, the third sanctuary. He will appear during a troubled time in human affairs, a time of crises perhaps consisting of wars and other crises. He will reign for either 40 days or 40 years, declaring his own divinity. By appearing to work miracles, he will succeed in deceiving many people, hence his name. Then, on the eve of the Day of Judgment, the best and most faithful of believers will gather there to support Jesus and the Mahdi, whose return or coming corresponds with ad-Dajjal’s false claim to divinity. The Rock itself, on which the Dome of the Rock stands, will provide a refuge for the righteous. Several historical figures have been acclaimed as the Mahdi, such as Shah Ismail I the foiunder of the Safavid Empire among Shi’a and the Mahdi of Sudan (1848-55) among Sunni. The idea of Jesus’ return is not explicitly Qur’anic although it is implied in several verses, such 3:55 which refers to Jesus in the context of the Day of Judgment, and 4:159 which says that Jesus will be a witness “against them on the Day of Judgment.”

Who Is Imam al-Mahdi?

2009-04-28T07:04:00.001-07:00

Who Is Imam al-Mahdi?

I'm writing this document as a respond to requests from many Muslims and non-Muslims. I found many documents about this subject that contains a lot of false Hadeeths. This document is a result for a long research in evaluating every Hadeeth (true or false). Arabic version is also availavble.

The term "MAHDI" is a title meaning "The Guided one". Mahdi is a normal man who is going to follow the true Islam. His name will be Muhammad and his father name will be 'Abdullah. He is a descendant from Ali and Fatima (daughter of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh)) so he will be descendant from al-Hasan or al-Husain. Mahdi will be very just and his capital will be Damascus. Allah told us that Jews will master the world two times (we live now 1998 during the first one) and Mahdi will appear between those two periods and will rule through the last one. Mahdi is NOT a prophet but he is the final Rightly Guided Khalifa. Mahdi will lead Muslims to a great victory against the Christian Romans (i.e. All the white Europeans including the Americans). This great war is called al-Malhamah al-Kubrah or Armageddon. It will end up with a great victory to Muslims against Romans after six years. Muslims will take over their capital Rome (this can be any city). In the seventh year, the Anticrist will apear and a greater war will start between Jews and Muslims for 40 days (longer that usual days) and will end when Jesus (pbuh) will come and Muslims will kill all Jews. All people will convert into Islam. Peace will pervade the whole world.

As Muslims, we should remember that the prophecy about Mahdi is one that will come to pass. This prophecy, however, does not absolve the Muslim Ummah from its duty to strive in the cause of Allah, oppose injustice, and seek peace and betterment of human condition. Centuries have passes from the time of the holy Prophet and there is a good possibility that many more will expire before the advent of the Mahdi. Muslims who are negligent in their duty hoping for a savior are committing a grave mistake and are not following the divine decrees ordained in Quran or taught by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

Correct Hadeeths (AHadeeth SaHiHa)

Narrated Jabir ibn Samurah:
The Prophet (pbuh) said: The religion will continue to be established till there are twelve caliphs (Khalifas) over you, and the whole community will agree on each of them. I then heard from the Prophet (pbuh) some remarks which I could not understand. I asked my father: What is he saying: He said: all of them will belong to Quraysh.

Disagreement will occur at the death of a caliph (khalifa) and a man of the people of Medina (Madina) will come flying forth to Mecca (Makka). Some of the people of Mecca will come to him, bring him out against his will and swear allegiance to him between the Corner and the Maqam. An expeditionary force will then be sent against him from Syria (Al-Sham) but will be swallowed up in the desert between Mecca and Medina. When the people see that, the eminent saints (Al-Abdal) of Syria and the best people of Iraq will come to him and swear allegiance to him between the Corner and the Maqam.
Then there will arise a man of Quraysh whose maternal uncles belong to Kalb and send against them an expeditionary force which will be overcome by them, and that is the expedition of Kalb. Disappointed will be the one who does not receive the booty of Kalb. He will divide the property, and will govern the people by the Sunnah of their Prophet (pbuh) and establish Islam on Earth. He will remain seven years, then die, and the Muslims will pray over him.

An army would attack this House in order to fight against the inhabitants of this House and when it would be at the plain ground the ranks in the centre of the army would be sunk and the vanguard would call the rear flanks of the army and they would also be sunk and no flank would be left except some people who would go to inform them (their kith and kin).

Narrated Mustawrid al-Qurashi: I heard Allah's Apostle (pbuh) said: The Last Hour would come (when) the Romans would form a majority amongst people (This is exactly the situation today since Europeans and Americans are the largest group). Amr said to him (Mustawrid al-Qurashi): See what you are saying? He said: I say what I heard from Allah's Apostle (pbuh) Thereupon he said: If you say that, it is a fact for they have four qualities. (1) They have the patience to undergo a trial and (2) immediately restore themselves to sanity after trouble and (3) attack again after flight. (4) They (have the quality) of being good to the destitute and the orphans, to the weak and, fifthly, the good quality in them is that (5) they put resistance against the oppression of kings.

"You will invade the Arabian Peninsula and Allah will grant it (to you). Then (you will invade) Persia and Allah will grant it (to you). Then, you will invade Rome (the Romans) and Allah will grant it (to you). Then, you will invade The Dajjal (and Jews) and Allah will grant him (to you)." (So the Dajjal would not appear until Rome is conquered.)

The Prophet (pbuh) said: The time between the great war and the conquest of the city (Constantinople) will be six years, and the Dajjal (Antichrist) will come forth in the seventh.

AbuNadrah reported: We were in the accompany of Jabir and he said: It may happen that the people of Iraq may not send their qafiz and dirhams (their measures of food-stuff and their money). We said: Who would be responsible for it? He said: The non-Arabs would prevent them (this is exactly what happens today). He again said: There is the possibility that the people of Syria may not send their dinar and mudd. We said: Who would be responsible for it? He said: This prevention would be made by the Romans (i.e. All the white Europeans including the Americans).
He (Jabir ibn Abdullah) kept quiet for a while and then reported Allah's Apostle (pbuh) having said: There would be a caliph in the last (period) of my Ummah who would freely give handfuls of wealth to the people without counting it.
I said to AbuNadrah and AbulAla: Do you mean Umar bin AbdulAziz? They said: No. (he would be Imam Mahdi)

Good Hadeeths (AHadeeth Hasana)

If only one day of this world remained. Allah would lengthen that day, till He raised up in it a man who belongs to me or to my family whose father's name is the same as my father's, who will fill the earth with equity and justice as it has been filled with oppression and tyranny. (Abu-Dawud)

The Mahdi will be of my family, of the descendants of Fatimah (the daughter of the Prophet (pbuh) who married Ali and begot Hasan and Hussein). (Abu-Dawud)

The Mahdi will be of my stock, and will have a broad forehead a prominent nose. He will fill the earth will equity and justice as it was filled with oppression and tyranny, and he will rule for seven years. (Abu-Dawud)

Week Hadeeths (AHadeeth Da3ifa, probably they were fabricated)

AbuIshaq told that Ali looked at his son al-Hasan and said: This son of mine is a sayyid (chief) as named by the Prophet (pbuh), and from his loins will come forth a man who will be called by the name of your Prophet (pbuh) and resemble him in conduct but not in appearance. He then mentioned the story about his filling the earth with justice. (Abu-Dawud)

Fabricated Hadeeths (AHadeeth MauDu3a)

A man called al-Harith ibn Harrath will come forth from Ma Wara an-Nahr (Middle Asia). His army will be led by a man called Mansur who will establish or consolidate things for Muhammad's family as Quraysh consolidated them for the Apostle of Allah (pbuh). Every believer must help him, or he said: respond to his sermons.

The Prophet (pbuh) said: "We (I and my family) are members of a household that Allah (pbuh) has chosen for them the life of the Hereafter over the life of this world; and the members of my household (Ahlul-Bayt) shall suffer a great affliction and they shall be forcefully expelled from their homes after my death; then there will come people from the East carrying black flags, and they will ask for some good to be given to them, but they shall be refused service; as such, they will wage war and emerge victorious, and will be offered that which they desired in the first place, but they will refuse to accept it till they pass it to a man from my family (Ahlul-Bayt) appears to fill the Earth with justice as it has been filled with corruption. So whoever reaches that (time) ought to come to them even if crawling on the ice/snow since among them is the Vice-regent of Allah (Khalifatullah) al-Mahdi."

(Armies carrying) black flags will come from Khurasaan (east of Iran). No power will be able to stop them and they will finally reach Eelia' (Baitul Maqdas) where they will erect their flags.

"There will be many armies after me. You must join that army which will come from Khurasaan." (Ibn Adi)

The Prophet (pbuh) said: The greatest war, the conquest of Constantinople and the coming forth of the Dajjal (Antichrist) will take place within a period of seven months. (Actually, it is seven years.)

"At the time when Nafs al-Zakiyya is killed a caller from the heaven will say: 'Your commander is so-and-so.' (announce Mahdi) Following it the Mahdi will emerge and fill the earth with justice and equity." (Ibn Tawus, Kitab al-malahim wa al-fitan, P. 179)

Barack Obama Biography

2009-04-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama Biography

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, to Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. His mother was from heartland-of-the-U.S. Kansas, and his father from Kenya. Barack's parents eventually divorced, and after his mother remarried, he lived in Indonesia for a time before returning to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. He later moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

True to the values of empathy and service that his mother instilled in him, Barack put law school on hold after college and moved to Chicago, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group that was dedicated to improving living conditions in poor neighborhoods. For example, helping poor people work with service agencies to get their plumbing and heating fixed and to find jobs for unemployed. It was here that he realized it would take changes in our laws and politics to truly improve the lives of the people in these impoverished neighborhoods. A little known but impressive fact is that when Barack applied to Harvard Law School, he did not even indicate his race on his Harvard application.

Barack earned his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He then returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. His advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years beginning in 1996. While in the Illinois State Senate, Barack served as chairman of the Public Health and Welfare Committee. In 2004, well into his U.S. Senate campaign, Barack wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, and became a rising star in U.S. politics. A few months later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate with a landslide 70% of the vote. Four months into his senate career, Time magazine named him "one of the world's most influential people," calling him "one of the most admired politicians in America." Barack formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election in Springfield, Illinois on February 10, 2007.

Barack is also an accomplished author. His 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, is a memoir of his youth and early career. The book was reprinted in 2004 with a new preface and an annex containing the text of his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech. The audio book edition earned Barack the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.

In December 2004, Barack signed a contract to write three more books. The first, The Audacity of Hope, was published in October 2006. The book has remained at or near the top of the New York Times Best Seller list since its publication. It was also the theme of his 2004 keynote address. The second book will be a children's book to be co-written with his wife Michelle and their two daughters, with profits going to charity. The content of the third book has yet to be announced.

In August 2008, Barack was nominated by the Democratic party as their candidate to be President of the United States. Barack selected long-time and well-respected U.S. Senator Joe Biden as his running mate.

The Essentials

Barack is married to Michelle Robinson, whom he met in 1988 while working at a law firm. They were married in 1992 and have two daughters: Malia, born in 1999, and Sasha, born in 2001.

Born: August 4, 1961

Died: --

Famous For: Candidate for Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nomination.

Key Accomplishments: Graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law. Fifth African-American senator in U.S. history. His book, The Audacity of Hope, has been at or near the top of the New York Times Best Seller List since its publication in October, 2006.

Significant Quote: "If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress."

Fun Quote: "That's silly talk... Talk to my wife. She'll tell me I need to learn to just put my socks on the hamper."

History of Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim, Short Story

2009-02-07T09:53:00.000-08:00

Please give the history of Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim

Praise be to Allaah.

There follows a brief biography of these two great imams.

1 – Imam al-Bukhaari (may Allaah have mercy on him)

He is the great imam, scholar, leader of the believers in hadeeth, Abu ‘Abd-Allaah Muhammad ibn Ismaa’eel ibn Ibraaheem al-Bukhaari. He was born in Bukhaara in Shawwaal of 194 AH, and grew up as orphan. He lost his sight as a child, then Allaah restored to him his sight. He memorized hadeeth as a child, and he was a prodigy in that, may Allaah have mercy on him.

The imams attested to his good memory, precision, knowledge, asceticism and worship. Imam Ahmad (may Allaah have mercy on him) said of him: Khorasan has never produced anyone like him.

Ibn Khuzaymah (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: I have never seen anyone beneath the canopy of heaven who has more knowledge of the hadeeth of the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and who has memorized more (hadeeth) than al-Bukhaari.

Al-Tirmidhi (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: I have never seen in Iraq or in Khorasan anyone with more knowledge of hadeeth criticism, history and isnaads than al-Bukhaari.

Al-Bukhaari had more than one thousand shaykhs whom he met in the countries and cities to which he travelled. Among them were: Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Hammaad ibn Shaakir, Makki ibn Ibraaheem and Abu ‘Aasim al-Nabeel.

Among those who narrated from al-Bukhaari were:

Muslim ibn al-Hajjaaj the author of al-Saheeh; al-Tirmidhi; al-Nasaa’i; Muhammad ibn Nasr al-Marwazi; and many others.

Al-Bukhari wrote many books, the most famous of which are: al-Jaami’ al-Saheeh; al-Tareekh al-Kabeer; al-Adab al-Mufrad; Khalq Af’aal al-‘Ibaad.

He died, may Allaah have mercy on him, on the night of Eid al-Fitr, 256 AH.

2 – Imam Muslim (may Allaah have mercy on him)

He is the great imam, hafiz and scholar, Abu’l-Husayn, Muslim ibn al-Hajjaaj ibn Muslim al-Nisaboori. He was born in 204 AH, or it was said in 206 AH.

He devoted his time to hadeeth, and he travelled in search of hadeeth and strove hard in that field, until he became very prominent. His contemporaries attested to his virtues. His shaykh Muhammad ibn Bashshaar (Bandaar) said: The haafiz of this world are four: Abu Zar’ah in al-Ray, Muslim in Nisapur, ‘Abd-Allaah al-Daarimi in Samarqand, and Muhammad ibn Ismaa’eel in Bukhaara.

Ahmad ibn Salamah al-Nisaboori said: I saw Abu Zar’ah and Abu Haatim giving precedence to Muslim ibn al-Hajjaaj in knowledge of saheeh over the shaykhs of their time.

Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr said of him: They were unanimously agreed on his eminence, leadership and high status. The greatest evidence of that is his book al-Saheeh; no book before it or after is as well organized or precise in the isnaads of its hadeeth.

His shaykhs included: Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Bukhaari, Yahya ibn Yahya al-Teemi, Ishaaq ibn Raahawayh, Yahya ibn Ma’een, Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shaybah and many others.

His students included: Abu Haatim al-Raazi, Abu ‘Eesa al-Tirmidhi, Ibn Khuzaymah, Abu ‘Awaanah al-Isfaraayeeni and Makki ibn ‘Abdaan.

His well known books include: al-Jaami’ al-Saheeh; al-Kuna wa’l-Asma’; al-Tabaqaat; al-Tamyeez; and al-Munfaridaat wa’l-Wahdaan.

He died, may Allaah have mercy on him, in Rajab 261 AH.

For more information on the lives of these two imams, see their biographies in Siyar A’laam al-Nubala’, 12/391-471; 557-580.

See also question no. 21523.

Islam Q&A (www.islam-qa.com

HISTORY OF MUHAMMAD

2009-02-07T09:49:00.000-08:00

Mecca and Muhammad: AD c.570 - 622
A child, Muhammad, is born in a merchant family in Mecca. His clan is prosperous and influential, but his father dies before he is born and his mother dies when the boy is only six. >> Test your knowledge of world history now << Entrusted to a Bedouin nurse, Muhammad spends much of his childhood among nomads, accompanying the caravans on Arabia's main trade route through Mecca.		ahy

A widow, Khadija, considerably older than Muhammad, has sufficient faith in him to entrust him with her business affairs; and when he is twenty-five, they marry. For the next fifteen years or so he lives the life of a prosperous merchant. But he develops one habit untypical of merchants. From time to time he withdraws into the mountains to meditate and pray. In about the year 610 he has a vision which changes his life; and changes world history.		ahya

It is on Mount Hira, according to tradition, that the archangel Gabriel appears to Muhammad. He describes later how he seemed to be grasped by the throat by a luminous being, who commanded him to repeat the words of God. On other occasions Muhammad often has similar experiences (though there are barren times, and periods of self doubt, when he is sustained only by his wife Khadija's unswerving faith in him). From about 613 Muhammad preaches in Mecca the message which he has received.		ait

Muhammad's message is essentially the existence of one God, all-powerful but also merciful, and he freely acknowledges that other prophets - in particular Abraham, Moses and Jesus - have preached the same truth in the past. But monotheism is not a popular creed with those whose livelihood depends on idols. Muhammad, once he begins to win converts to the new creed, makes enemies among the traders of Mecca. In 622 there is a plot to assassinate him. He escapes to the town of Yathrib, about 300 kilometres to the north.		aita

Muhammad and the Muslim era: from AD 622
The people of Yathrib, a prosperous oasis, welcome Muhammad and his followers. As a result, the move from Mecca in 622 comes to seem the beginning of Islam. The Muslim era dates from the Hegira - Arabic for 'emigration', meaning Muhammad's departure from Mecca. In the Muslim calendar this event marks the beginning of year 1.		aiu

Yathrib is renamed Madinat al Nabi, the 'city of the prophet', and thus becomes known as Medina. Here Muhammad steadily acquires a stronger following. He is now essentially a religious, political and even military leader rather than a merchant (Khadija has died in 619). He continues to preach and recite the words which God reveals to him. It is these passages, together with the earlier revelations at Mecca, which are written down in the Arabic script by his followers and are collected to become the Qur'an - a word (often transliterated as Koran) with its roots in the idea of 'recital', reflecting the oral origin of the text. The final and definitive text of the Qur'an is established under the third caliph, Othman, in about 650.		aiua

The Muslims and Mecca: AD 624-630
Relations with Mecca deteriorate to the point of pitched battles between the two sides, with Muhammad leading his troops in the field. But in the end it is his diplomacy which wins the day. He persuades the Meccans to allow his followers back into the city, in 629, to make a pilgrimage to the Kaaba and the Black Stone.		aiv

On this first Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Muhammad's followers impress the local citizens both by their show of strength and by their self-control, departing peacefully after the agreed three days. But the following year the Meccans break a truce, provoking the Muslims to march on the city. They take Mecca almost without resistance. The inhabitants accept Islam. And Muhammad sweeps the idols out of the Kaaba, leaving only the sacred Black Stone.		aiv1

An important element in Mecca's peaceful acceptance of the change has been Muhammad's promise that pilgrimage to the Kaaba will remain a central feature of the new religion. So Mecca becomes, as it has remained ever since, the holy city of Islam. But Medina is by now where Muhammad and his most trusted followers live. And for the next few decades Medina will be the political centre of the developing Muslim state.		aiv2

Muhammad lives only two years after the peaceful reconciliation with Mecca. He has no son. His only surviving children are daughters by Khadija, though since her death he has married several younger women, among whom his favourite is A'isha.		aiw1

Muhammad and the caliphate: from AD 632-656
There is no clear successor to Muhammad among his followers. The likely candidates include Abu Bakr (the father of Muhammad's wife A'isha) and Ali (a cousin of Muhammad and the husband of Muhammad's daughter Fatima). Abu Bakr is elected, and takes the title 'khAlifat rasul-Allah'. The Arabic phrase means 'successor of the Messenger of God'. It will introduce a new word, cAliph, to the other languages of the wo

History of Jesus

2009-02-07T09:46:00.000-08:00

Richard N. Longenecker
Yorkminster Park Theological Forum

Yorkminster Park Baptist Church, Toronto

February 11, 1999

The title for our lecture, "The Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith," was coined over a hundred years ago, in 1892, by Martin Kähler to distinguish between the historical Jesus, or the Jesus of Historie, and the Christ whom the church proclaimed in its Gospels, or the Christ of Geschichte.1 Fortunately, English has only one word for History, and so English-speaking scholars cannot on a linguistic basis easily make the distinction between "history" and so-called "meta-history." Theologically, however, Christians have always asked the question: How are we to understand relations between the historical Jesus and the Christ proclaimed in the New Testament?

The question includes issues regarding the relationship of an academic study of Jesus and a confessional affirmation of Jesus. It is also part of the larger question regarding how to understand the humanity of Jesus and the divinity of Jesus in speaking about Jesus as the God-man. It is, in fact, implicit in the question that Jesus himself first asked his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?" (Mark 8:29, par); that he then asked the Pharisees: "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" (Matt 22:41, par.), and that he continues to ask all people today: What do you think of Jesus? How should he be understood both historically and religiously? Of what significance is he for our lives - and for the Church and the world today?

The attempt to understand Jesus has produced a massive number of critical studies during the past two centuries, with certain distinctive approaches evident. In what follows I would like to divide my lecture into two parts: first, setting out a brief history of some of the most significant approaches in the critical study of Jesus; then, second, offering "some contemporary reflections" (as our title has it) on the matters raised - with a short appended "affirmation of my own convictions" at the end.

I. The "Jesus of History and Christ of Faith" Debates: Significant Approaches in the Critical Study of Jesus during the Past Two Centuries

1. Past Approaches in the Critical Study of Jesus - 1800-1975 (i.e., during most of the past two centuries):

To understand the situation today, one needs the broader perspective and background of the past two centuries. Four approaches, in particular, need be noted.

1. The Approach of Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834): Jesus was the proclaimer of such great universal truths as (a) the Kingdom of God, (b) the Fatherhood of God, (c) the brotherhood of man, (d) the infinite value of the soul, and (e) the higher righteousness of love - and he called on his followers to establish God’s kingdom on earth through love and good will.

Schleiermacher was born into a family of clergymen. His father was a chaplain in the Prussian army and both grandfathers were Reformed pastors. Upon ordination, he served as a private tutor for four years, a hospital chaplain for five years, the pastor of a small Reformed church for three years, and a Professor of Theology in the University of Halle for three years. He was one of the founders of the University of Berlin, and from 1807 until his death in 1834 (about 27 years) he served as both a professor in the university and the pastor of Trinity Church in Berlin.

Schleiermacher is usually viewed as a systematic theologian - in fact, he has often been called the father of modern theology (or, the father of liberal theology). His book on systematic theology, The Christian Faith (first published in German [Berlin: Reimer, 1821; ET 1928]), is the best known of his writings. Yet beginning in 1804 at the University of Halle and continuing on throughout all of his time at the University of Berlin, Schleiermacher lectured mostly on the New Testament and hermeneutics, and, as a pastor, he preached almost every Sunday on a text of Scripture. From 1804-1834 (for thirty years or so) he repeatedly offered courses on almost all of the Pauline epistles (and Hebrews), and he was the first to offer courses in an academic setting on the life of Jesus.

Schleiermacher’s attempt in all of his New Testament study was to teach the Church how to read the Gospels and Paul’s letters. It was, for him, a task in what he called "church leadership." So he is thought of in many circles as the founder of modern hermeneutics.

In so doing, Schleiermacher argued (a) that Christianity was a genuinely new faith (thereby setting aside the Old Testament as prolegomena to Christian faith; though he wanted to retain the Jewish Scriptures in the Bible as an Appendix to the New Testament, since early Christian preaching used the vocabulary and themes of the Old Testament for its own purposes), (b) that the only historically reliable accounts of Jesus are those given about the time after his baptism and before his arrest (thereby setting aside as non-historical accounts of his birth, baptism, judicial trials, death, and resurrection), and (c) that in those accounts of Jesus between his baptism and his arrest, it is only the underlying universal principles of what he taught that are important (thereby setting aside whatever Jewish features might appear, the miracle stories that were added later, and all later ecclesiastical teaching that had intruded into the texts).

Schleiermacher was heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. Thus he denied that Christianity rested on the historical and doctrinal claims of the New Testament; rather, he insisted that it had to do only with the inward religious consciousness of Jesus, which was a consciousness of being in relation with God and absolutely dependent on God.

Orthodox critics denounced him as denuding the biblical narratives; radical critics (such as David Friedrich Strauss) thought he had not gone far enough and should have also denied theism. But it was Schleiermacher’s brand of philosophical theology, biblical criticism, and hermeneutics that gained ascendancy on the European continent during the nineteenth century. And it was the rise of the religionsgeschictliche school in the latter part of the nineteenth century - with its claims for Hellenistic encrustations as having obscured the message of the simple Galilean preacher - that gave an explanation in support of Schleiermacher’s thesis for how Jesus had been so grievously misrepresented in the New Testament.

2. The Approach of Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) and the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Jesus was an apocalyptic, eschatological Jewish Messiah figure, whose message of total commitment, while bizarre in its details, has had a profound effect on all humanity and continues to inspire today.

Schweitzer was the son of a Lutheran pastor in the Upper Alsace of Germany. He studied philosophy, music, theology and medicine at the University of Strasbourg, earning Ph.D.’s (or their equivalent) in philosophy, music and theology, and an M.D. in medicine. He published more than thirty books on philosophy, music, theology, and biblical studies - with ten or so being on theology and biblical studies. He was also an accomplished organist. But he is probably best known as a missionary doctor at Lambaréné in the (then) province of Gabon in French Equatorial Africa, where he ministered for over fifty years and established a jungle hospital and leper colony (and was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1952 for his efforts on behalf of "the brotherhood of nations").

Schweitzer studied at Strasbourg under H. J. Holtzmann, who taught that Jesus was essentially a pious teacher of social ethics (à la Schleiermacher’s view) and that all of the eschatological elements and "high" Christology of the Gospels were added later by the evangelists.

But at the age of 19, while serving as a conscript in the German army, Schweitzer was reading Matthew 10, where Jesus sent out his disciples to announce his presence throughout Galilee. And while reading he came across Matt 10:23b: "You will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes." Professor Holtzmann had taught him that ASon of Man" in the Gospels always referred to the eschatological Judge at the end of time and that Jesus is here represented as saying that the end of the world would come soon. But this, according to Holtzmann, was obviously an addition by a later church editor, and so could safely be removed from the Gospel story and expunged from our view of Jesus’ own self-consciousness; for Jesus was too sane to have believed such nonsense. But Schweitzer’s question was: Why would the evangelist Matthew, writing thirty or forty years after Jesus’ ministry and seeking to extol him through his Gospel, have placed such a statement on the lips of Jesus - that is, that the end of the world would come at the close of his Galilean ministry - when that certainly did not happen and so was patently false? It must be, Schweitzer concluded, that Matt 10:23b represents not a perversion of Jesus’ teaching but, rather, the very essence of Jesus’ self-consciousness: that he had high eschatological expectations and that he saw himself as the prophesied Son of Man - the expected Messiah of the final days.

In 1906, when he was 26 years old, Schweitzer published a withering attack against the Friedrich Schleiermacher - Adolf Harnack - Wilhelm Wrede consensus of his day in a book he entitled Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu Forschung, which was published in English in 1910 under the title The Quest of the Historical Jesus. In it, he denounced the renaissance views of Jesus made popular by Schleiermacher and Harnack (which he saw as having begun with Hermann Reimarus in the eighteenth century), the claimed Hellenistic accretions of the Religionsgeschichte school, and the rationalistic criticism of Wilhelm Wrede. Somewhat sarcastically he asked regarding the nineteenth century "Life of Jesus" investigators: "Have they hunted down their game according to fair forest law, or has their bag been poached?" And he answered his own rhetorical question with the dictum: "Their bag has been poached!"

But Schweitzer’s own positive proposals regarding Jesus were no less radical than those he denounced. For while he directed attention back to the world of first century Judaism as the proper context for Jesus and his ministry, his focus was entirely on the apocalypticism of first century Judaism. In fact, he insisted (1) that a rabid apocalypticism was the controlling feature of the Judaism of Jesus’ day (all other forms of Judaism being insignificant or of a later time), and (2) that Jesus’ own self-consciousness and ministry were entirely controlled by apocalyptic expectations.

Thus the ministry of Jesus, as reconstructed by Schweitzer, is set out in the Gospels in two parts: (1) in the first part, believing himself to be Israel’s Messiah, Jesus tried single-handedly to call Israel to repentance and to turn the people back to God, but the nation was too wicked to respond; (2) then in the second part, beginning at Caesarea Philippi, he purposely began a program of confrontation with the nation’s rulers, believing that at a crucial and strategic moment God would vindicate him and the nation would accept him as its Messiah. So from Caesarea Philippi on he "set his face to go to Jerusalem," and at Jerusalem he confronted the Jewish leaders and arranged his own arrest, trial and crucifixion - expecting at the last moment that God would intervene on his behalf. But on the cross as he was dying he finally realized the folly of it all, and so cried out in the famous cry of dereliction: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Or as Schweitzer characterized the ministry of Jesus in The Quest: Jesus in the first part of his ministry attempted to turn the wheel of history singlehandedly, but it would not budge; then he threw himself upon it, and it turned and crushed him in its turning. That is his victory and that is his reign!

What Schweitzer means is that (1) Jesus was terribly deluded in his own apocalyptic understanding, which was the understanding of his day, but that (2) he used that apocalyptic understanding, even though it was utter folly, to effect tremendous good.2 Nonetheless, Schweitzer still called on people to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth - not by holding to what he believed about himself or to the specifics of what he taught, but by following him in his willingness to give himself for the sake of humanity. Thus the final words of The Quest of the Historical Jesus set out the challenge of Jesus for today:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name - as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.3

For Schweitzer, it is not Jesus’ antiquated and mistaken teachings that are to be proclaimed, but Jesus’ heroic spirit - which is also latent in the hearts of people generally - that inspires and is to be lived out in our lives. So he called on people to be followers of Jesus and to have "reverence for life."

This "thoroughgoing eschatological understanding" of Jesus (or, so-called "Consequent Eschatology" or "Consistent Eschatology") was not immediately well received by most in Schweitzer’s day. But it soon became, in somewhat revised form, a dominant scholarly interpretation of Jesus and has framed much of subsequent discussion.

3. The Approach of Ernst Käsemann (1906-1998) and the New Quest for the Historical Jesus: While the historical details of Jesus’ life and ministry cannot be recovered, certain central features of his consciousness and teaching can - such as his consciousness of standing at the turning point of the ages, his announcement of the imminent kingdom of God, his unrivaled authority, his attitude towards the law, and his offer of forgiveness to the ungodly and outcasts.

Käsemann was a student and protégé of Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) at the University of Marburg. At a time when the historical facticity of the Gospels was commonly denied, Bultmann endeavored to preserve the essence of the Christian gospel as he found it in Paul’s letters and John’s Gospel - all the while acknowledging the impossibility of reconstructing a "Life of Jesus." He did this, as we know, by a program of "demythologizing" the New Testament accounts - that is, by divorcing the proclamation of the gospel from the specific details ("myths" or "mythos") in which it is cast. As he saw it, what he was doing was an act of pastoral theology: for he wanted to preserve the message of the gospel while denying the facticity of the Gospel accounts. In the process, however, he made the personality of Jesus dispensable and denied any saving significance to the portrayals given in the Gospels as to how Jesus acted in Galilee and Jerusalem.

While agreeing at many points with Bultmann, Käsemann objected strongly to Bultmann’s excessive negativism towards the Gospel portrayals of Jesus. For Käsemann, the logical outcome of Bultmann’s denials was to make Christianity into a type of "docetism" (something that only appeared to have substance) - that is, to view the historical Jesus as merely a datum in history, but without any character; and his message and ministry as merely a cipher in history, but without any content. Rather, Käsemann began a movement that attempted to reconstruct the essence of Jesus’ self-consciousness and certain central features of his message from the Gospels, but without giving too much credence to the historical details given in the Gospels.4

Thus, as for his self-consciousness, Käsemann proposed that Jesus saw himself as situated at the turning point of the ages, and that he spoke with the authority of God. As for his message, Käsemann believed that he could distill the central features of Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God, his attitude towards the law, and his offer of forgiveness to the ungodly and outcasts.

But though the endeavors of Bultmann and Käsemann were pastorally motivated - and though both were people of faith and thought that they were saving the essence of the gospel in Paul and John from the ravages of criticism in the Gospels - most people today believe the Christian gospel cannot long endure if it is cut off from its historical roots. Nonetheless, "demythologizing" and "the New Quest of the Historical Jesus" continue on today within the Church in many popular forms.

4. The Approach of such scholars as Oscar Cullmann, W. D. Davies and George B. Caird: The New Testament generally and Jesus in particular must be understood in light of a Jewish background, and when so understood the Gospel portrayals are historically credible and the proclamation of Jesus religiously significant - both for that day and today.

Oscar Cullmann (1902-1999) was born and educated in Strasbourg. At first he was enamoured with the liberal theology of his day, but he became disillusioned in his studies with the positions of Schleiermacher and Harnack. And the stance of Albert Schweitzer, a fellow Strausborgian, repelled him. In concert with Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, his contemporaries, he felt that German theology had become captive to Enlightenment perspectives and German culture. But while sympathetic to the endeavors of Barth and Bultmann, Cullmann developed much more respect for the historical data presented in the Gospels and for the Jewish background of the Christian faith. These emphases come to the fore in his The Earliest Christian Confessions (ET London: Lutterworth, 1949) and The Christology of the New Testament (ET London: SCM, 1959).

W. D. Davies (1911 - ) was born in Wales and educated at the University of Wales and the University of Cambridge. He served for a time as a congregational minister in a parish outside Cambridge, then for four years as Professor of New Testament at Yorkshire United College, Bradford, England. But in 1950 he moved to the United States, where he served as Professor of New Testament at three institutions: Duke University (1950-1955; 1966-1981); Princeton University (1955-1959), and Union Theological Seminary in New York (1959-1966).

Probably the most important intellectual influences on Davies in his formative years were C. H. Dodd at Cambridge and the Jewish scholar David Daube, who was then teaching at Oxford. The impact of Dodd’s careful, non-spectacular scholarship and Daube’s Jewish orientation have remained hallmarks of Davies’ work through his long teaching and writing career - as witness his Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London: SPCK, 1948) and Christian Origins and Judaism: A Collection of New Testament Studies (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1962).

"Davies’s work," as E. P. Sanders has noted, "clearly caught the tide at its turning."5 For in the rising tide of dissatisfaction in the 1950’s and 60’s with the stances of Schleiermacher, Schweitzer, and Bultmann or Käsemann, W. D. Davies articulated a Jewish background for the New Testament - first with regard to Paul, but also with respect to Jesus - that, while not unanimously accepted, at least clearly has become dominant in the last twenty or thirty years.

George B. Caird (1917-1984) was a Scot, born in London, who studied at Birmingham, Cambridge and Oxford. After pastoring a Congregational church in London during the war, he moved to Canada and became first Professor of Old Testament at St. Stephen’s College, Edmonton, and then Professor of New Testament at McGill University and Principal of the United Theological College of Montreal. In 1959 he returned to Mansfield College, Oxford, where he served until his death as Professor of New Testament and also from 1970-1979 as Principal.

Caird always insisted on the importance of history within the theological enterprise and accepted the essential trustworthiness of the apostolic witness of the New Testament. In particular B with some qualifications B he believed that the Gospel accounts of Jesus provide good and accurate history. For him, the most important continental scholars were Bo Reicke, Martin Hengel and (especially) Joachim Jeremias, scholars whose historical criticism was constructive and positive. Most of the other German theologians and New Testament professors, however, he treated with "enlightened disdain," often marveling at their influence when their work had so little to commend it.

One of Caird’s lifelong preoccupations was with ALife of Jesus" research and the importance of Judaism for an understanding of Jesus, as witness his book Jesus and the Jewish Nation (London: Athlone Press, 1965). Caird was not a "New Quester," for he had never given up on the "old quest." What he argued was that, using proper historical and critical tools, the life and teaching of Jesus shine through the Gospels not only with remarkable uniformity but also with a high degree of historical credibility - that is, if the Gospels’ portrayal of Jesus is seen in the context of first-century Jewish thought and politics.

2. Current Approaches in the Critical Study of Jesus - 1975-Present:

The past twenty to twenty-five years have been particularly turbulent in discussions regarding "the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith." Some call this period the days of the Third Quest (the "First Quest" by Albert Schweitzer; the "Second Quest" that of Ernst Käsemann, et al.).

Four important developments deserve mention - though, in many cases, what we see today tend to be revisions and reaffirmations of positions that were already taken during the past two centuries, from 1800 to 1975, as set out above.

1. One prominent position today is that of Marcus J. Borg, who in his book Jesus, A New Vision6 argues that Jesus was a charismatic healer or "holy person," a subversive sage who undermined conventional wisdom and taught an alternative wisdom, a social prophet, and an initiator of a movement the purpose of which was the revitalization of Israel. In effect, he was the revealer of a new experience of God and his Spirit, a vision that was first revealed by Jesus to Judaism. But since Judaism was not prepared to receive Jesus’ message, that message is now given to the whole world.

Borg completed his doctorate under Caird at Oxford, defending in 1972 a dissertation7 that followed closely the approach of his mentor, and argued for Jesus as a social prophet whose vision was the revitalization of the nation Israel. But after graduating from Oxford, Borg came to what he calls a profound "conversion experience," an experience that led him (1) to focus solely on the religious experience of Jesus himself, apart from the historical details and confessional statements about Jesus in the Gospels, (2) to see Jesus’ religious experience as a new experience that was divorced from his Jewish background, (3) to turn for an analysis of Jesus’ experience to the religious experiences and spiritual formation of people today, and (4) to proclaim a gospel that builds on the latent religious impulses of people (especially those of a more pluralistic persuasion) and that parallels closely the theological tenets of Schleiermacher and Harnack. It is a vision of Jesus that resonates with much of liberal theology today and is widely proclaimed.8

2. Another stance is that of Richard A. Horsley, who presents Jesus as a social revolutionary in the Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds of his day, whose message in its principles has important ramifications for our day.9

Horsley works primarily from the sayings of Jesus, and - based on an analysis of ancient society in the Greco-Roman world -he engages in a rigorous social reading of Jesus’ teaching. Thus as Horsley reads Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels, he views him as a prophet of his day whose message had far greater implications than for his day alone: Jesus had primarily a social vision for the renewal of Judaism; his vision, however, was too great for the "confines" of Judaism alone, but rather was destined ultimately to alter the entire fabric of human society. Included in Jesus’ vision, as Horsley spells it out, were (1) egalitarian relationships, (2) economic cooperation and autonomy, (3) inclusion of all ethnic groups, and (4) realignment of family relations. It is a view of Jesus that overlaps somewhat with that of Borg, and is no less compatible with the thought of many today.

3. Also working from the Sayings of Jesus is the approach of Robert W. Funk, John Dominic Crossan, and the "Jesus Seminar"10: Jesus was a Cynic-like Jewish charismatic peasant, whose teaching was witty, clever and counter-cultural, but not eschatological and certainly not focused on himself. All portrayals of Jesus of a messianic, sacrificial, redemptive, or eschatological nature in the Gospels (and in the rest of the New Testament) are the products of later church theology, which grew up around the figure of this Mediterranean cynic-like teacher and turned him into a cult figure.

The work of the Jesus Seminar highlights three lines of evidence:

1. What is known about wandering Cynic teachers in the Greco-Roman world (thereby establishing the category);

2. Our knowledge of Q (the so-called Sayings source, consisting of approximately 230 verses of Sayings found in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark) - though with these sayings arranged by vote into four categories:

Red = Jesus said it, or something like it (‘That’s Jesus!’)

Pink = Not quite sure that Jesus said it (‘Sounds like Jesus’)

Gray = Probably Jesus didn’t say it (‘Well, maybe’)

Black = Certainly not what Jesus said (‘There’s some mistake’)

3. The Nag-Hammadi Gospel of Thomas, with its 114 Sayings of Jesus, viewed as an important fifth Gospel alongside the four Gospels of the New Testament - and, in some cases, as providing evidence of greater significance than that of the four canonical Gospels.

The position of the Jesus Seminary is eminently attractive to many academics in the North America scene, particularly those who come to the data of the New Testament with a "hermeneutic of suspicion." All three of the positions outlined so far have, in effect, largely separated Jesus from his Jewish roots and divorced New Testament interpretation from its Jewish background.

4. A fourth approach today, however, sees Jesus firmly rooted in the Judaism of his day and a prophet to his own nation, but also accepts him as having had a Messianic consciousness, as rightly proclaimed by the Gospels as the nation’s Messiah, and as acting redemptively for his people and for the world.

Carrying on the stances of Oscar Cullmann, W. D. Davies and George B. Caird (cited above), and often appealing for support to the work of Bo Reicke, Joachim Jeremias, and Martin Hengel, this view is argued today (with varying emphases) by such scholars as Ben Meyer (recently deceased) of McMaster University11, Bruce D. Chilton of Bard College12, New York, and N. Thomas Wright, Dean of Lichfield Cathedral in England.13

Wright, for example, sets out the following scenario: Jesus saw himself as the eschatological prophet of the nation, who offered to Israel redemption and the end of exile. He presented himself to the nation as its Messiah. He died to counter the temple system and entered Jerusalem to fulfill the end-time Jewish hope of the return of God to Zion. In so doing, he acted out what God would do at the end of history; and in so doing, he provided redemption for all people.

There are many who generally favor such a Jewish approach to Jesus and the New Testament writings - even though there are a variety of views among them with respect to the specifics (as, e.g., the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes, and E. P. Sanders).14

II. Some Contemporary Reflections

The title of our lecture, however, also commits me to offer "some contemporary reflections" on the history of Jesus discussion and the issues outlined above. Much of what I would like to say should be given in a course in "The Christology of the New Testament," such as the one I offered a year and a half ago at McMaster Divinity College. But some comments need be made - perhaps best more anecdotally than in detail.

1. With respect to Schleiermacher’s position of the early nineteenth century and its continuance today.

In many respects I agree with James S. Stewart (1896-1990), my Professor at New College, Edinburgh, who, after reading the classics and English literature at the University of St. Andrews, read theology at the Universities of Edinburgh and Bonn and became convinced that Schleiermacher was right. In fact, it was Stewart who translated and co-edited (with H. R. Mackintosh) Schleiermacher’s massive systematic theology of 1821 (translated as The Christian Faith [1928]), thereby making it available to the English-speaking world . But he later came to believe that Schleiermacher’s treatment of the New Testament was cavalier and his vision of the Christian faith, while idealistic, quite impossible.

World War I ended Stewart’s studies at Bonn, and he returned to enlist in the British army, serving on the Western Front from 1916 to the war’s end in 1918. From that experience he carried with him a profound consciousness of human depravity and an acute realization of the depth of injustice to which we as humans can sink, apart from God’s grace. And though in his early pastoral ministry he carried on much of Schleiermacher’s theology, he began to feel more and more troubled. As Stewart frequently said in class: What he found in Schleiermacher was a liberal theology that was exciting in its advocacy of Jesus as some bright shining star - but he came to believe that that message, like any bright star of the heavens, was aloof, distant, and far removed from humanity’s real needs. So Stewart re-read his New Testament and came to appreciate anew the realism, historical truthfulness, and life changing power of the New Testament’s proclamation. And having experienced such a conversion in his own thinking, he was driven to write the two books for which he is best known: The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1932; rpr. Nashville: Abingdon Press) and A Man in Christ: The Vital Elements of St. Paul’s Religion (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935).15

With Stewart, and a host of others, (1) I cannot treat the message of the Gospels as something like a bunch of cut flowers, however beautiful, but must always see it rooted in the Jewish soil of its day; (2) I cannot deal with the historical and doctrinal details of the Gospels in any cavalier fashion (i.e., any offhand, carefree, "ham-fisted," or incidental manner), but must always bow before their presentations in my efforts at criticism (like a discerning gardener dealing with prize roses); and (3) I cannot bring myself to understand Jesus and his ministry as simply the concentration of the universal principles of love and goodness, which need only be deculturalized and applied to the social conditions of our day, but must stand in awe in face of the realism, divine action, and life-changing message that the Gospels proclaim.

2. With respect to Schweitzer’s position of the early twentieth century and its continuance today.

In the spring of 1958 I had the opportunity to attend the lectures of Karl Barth and Oscar Cullmann at Basel. Barth was a very warm, out-going, even volatile person; whereas Cullmann in his public lectures was deliberate and fairly reserved. And whereas Barth was peripatetic and seemingly extemporaneous, Cullmann usually sat at a desk beside the lectern and read his lecture. But once during the course of that semester when referring to Albert Schweitzer, Cullmann got up from behind his desk, walked to the side of the platform, and said with evident agitation: "Imagine the nerve of the man! He denies the validity of Jesus" own self-consciousness, calling it all some bizarre hallucination of the day. Yet he still wants to call himself a follower of Jesus, and so a Christian. What he should call himself is a "Schweitzerian", for he finds his controlling thought within himself and only tries to enlist Jesus in support."

Schweitzer, of course, was a great humanitarian, who saw in Jesus a man with total commitment and whose radical attempt to express the thought of his day (however bizarre it may have been) for the benefit of others sets an example to be followed. Schweitzer had no problem with the facticity of the evangelists" accounts of Jesus in their Gospels. Theirs was an accurate depiction of what Jesus did, what he thought, and what he taught. It was not a question of historical or literary criticism for Schweitzer, but of interpretation. For in Schweitzer’s view, Jesus was saturated in the apocalyptic thought of the day and he really did think of himself as Israel’s Messiah and of his ministry as redemption for his people. But that was all part-and-parcel of the delusion of the day, which certainly cannot be accepted in our day. Rather, what we need today is to plumb the depths of our own existence and there to discover humanity’s basic religious orientation, that of "reverence for life" - which Schweitzer tended to spell out in a Pantheistic fashion - and then (like Jesus in his day) apply those convictions in a manner helpful to others.

Schweitzer, indeed, can be commended for redirecting our attention back to the world of Judaism. And he can be applauded for insisting that the Gospels have not misrepresented either the self-consciousness of Jesus or the record of what he did in carrying out that Messianic consciousness. But his understanding of both Judaism and Jesus was, I believe, terribly flawed - so much so, that both the Judaism of the first century and Jesus have been made into caricatures beyond recognition.

3. With respect to Bultmann"s "demythologizing" of the New Testament, which seeks to preserve the essence of the Christian gospel amidst the destructive effects of contemporary criticism, and Käsemann"s "New Quest," which seeks to discover Jesus’ self-consciousness and the essence of his teaching apart from any real reliance on the portrayals of the Gospels - both of which are phenomena of the mid-twentieth century.

While sympathetic to their pastoral concerns, I believe such stances to be unstable, both critically and religiously. This kind of approach is terribly schizophenic in its separation of religious reality from historical-critical concerns - often causing its proponents to live in one world religiously and another world historically. In many ways it has turned the Christian gospel into something that Käsemann himself feared: a type of docetic religiosity. While seeking to protect the gospel apart from its historical trappings, it has, in effect, cut the cord of communication between the gospel and the world of humanity, with the result that the message of the gospel has seemed irrelevant to many outside the Church. While seeking to uphold the gospel within the Church, it has in effect emptied the churches.

4. With respect to those endeavors that (a) attempt to understand Jesus and his ministry apart from his rootage in Judaism, and/or (b) propose an interpretation which differs from that of the New Testament writers - which are stances frequently taken in the past and very common today.

History is not self-interpreting. There are many ways to interpret the same historical data, whatever the subject - as the plethora of works entitled "A History of This" or "A History of That" attests. The questions of history are not only "What is the data?", but also "Where does one start in accounting for the data?" and "What perspective does one have in understanding the data?" For my part, F. J. A. Hort of Cambridge long ago succinctly characterized the proper attitude towards the New Testament portrayals when he said:

Our faith rests first on the Gospel itself, the revelation of God and His redemption in His Only begotten Son, and secondly on the interpretation of that primary Gospel by the Apostles and Apostolic men to whom was Divinely committed the task of applying the revelation of Christ to the thoughts and deeds of their own time. That standard interpretation of theirs [i.e. that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor 5:19a)] was ordained to be for the guidance of the Church in all after ages, in combination with the living guidance of the Spirit.16

We may, of course, debate regarding the content of the apostolic message and the nature of its development in the New Testament, as well as the various writers’ intentions in presenting certain portions and the extent of their shaping of that material. I have no assurance we will all agree on everything, for interpretation is a human enterprise. Nonetheless, that is where I start - with (1) Jesus situated in a first century Jewish milieu, and (2) the apostolic interpretation of what he did, what he taught, and who he was given us in the New Testament Gospels. Without such a start and such a perspective, one should not be surprised at the multiplicity of approaches and theses proposed.

5. With respect to the methods and theses of the so-called "Jesus Seminar," which has made headlines for the past twelve to fourteen years.

As for its methods, the Jesus Seminar seeks via agreed-upon literary critera to determine which sayings of Jesus in the Gospels are authentic, rating the credibility of each saying on a scale of red (probably), pink (possibly), gray (perhaps not), and black (certainly not).

The developing of literary criteria to test the various sayings of Jesus has a long history, with C. H. Dodd, for example, focusing on the criterion of "multiple attestation" and Joachim Jeremias on "semitic features" to support the authenticity of many of the sayings of Jesus. In 1967, however, Norman Perrin in his Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus,17 argued that the "burden of proof" must now be on authenticity and not on non-authenticity (that is, that one must start with the supposition that a particular saying is not authentic unless it can be proved to be authentic). And he proposed further literary criteria to be used in making such decisions - such as "dissimilarity" or "distinctiveness" (which usually means that a credible Jesus saying must be different from anything in the Judaism of Jesus’ day and different from all the church’s confessions) and "coherence" or "consistency" (which usually means that a saying that agrees with another saying can be accepted or rejected depending on what we have determined about that previous parallel saying). There is much we can learn when we apply such criteria to the Gospel portrayals.18 But when used in a "ham-fisted" manner, they leave us with very little on the lips of Jesus. For somewhere in the writings of Early Judaism or the later Church, it is not difficult to find parallels to something Jesus is reputed to have said or to relate the material in some fashion to other material we have previously rejected.

And as for its working theses (1) that the hypothetically reconstructed Q is our earliest witness to Jesus’ teaching and self-consciousness, and (2) that the Gospel of Thomas must be accepted on a par with Q - and thus (3) that Jesus must be considered to have been originally only a peasant teacher of witty, confrontational, wisdom maxims - these claims, as stated, need a great deal of further nuancing. For, you see, I personally believe Q (i.e., the 230 or so Sayings or Logia of Jesus contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark) to have been one of the literary sources used in the composing of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But I don’t believe it was the only source, nor am I prepared to say that the Gospel of Thomas, with its 114 Sayings, antedates our Synoptic Gospels. Rather, I argue that it is a derivative collection of Sayings, which has a different form, different background and different theology than they do.

III. An Affirmation of My Own Convictions

What, then, do I believe to be the situation with regard to the "Jesus of History and Christ of Faith"? Allow me to highlight the following seven affirmations:

1. That Jesus acted and taught with such authority that those closest to him began to think of him in an exalted sense, believing that through him they were in touch with God but not really understanding what it all meant.

2. That because of God having raised him from the dead (not just after the resurrection, but because of the resurrection) those closest to him began to confess him as Messiah and Lord and to apply such a confession to their lives.19

3. That they defended their confessions of Jesus by reference to the Old Testament Scriptures, which they used in a manner compatible to the procedures and exegetical norms of the Jewish world of their day.20

4. That in their proclamation of Jesus they had such materials as a Passion Narrative, an Eschatological Discourse, and a Sayings Collection, whether in written or oral form, which they used in their preaching.

5. That in constructing their Gospels, each of the four evangelists used these materials in his own manner and to contextualize the Jesus tradition for his respective audience - thus the numerous differences between them of the selection of material, arrangement of material, and wordings, even while giving a generally unified portrayal.

6. That while the portrayals of the four evangelists differ between themselves on many matters (both of event and language), they are to be seen as presenting a credible, historical portrayal of Jesus’ ministry and person.

7. That the Gospels were written "out of faith and for faith" - that is, with a faith perspective in order to engender faith and support faith in Jesus as Messiah and Lord - and so their readers are called on to respond in faith.

This is not to suggest that the simple abundance of historically-credible data necessitates a faith response on the part of anyone. Historical-rational probability and religious-psychological certainty are two factors that, while they must always go together, are not simply the same.

As Matthew’s Gospel has it, when Peter made his great confession of Jesus ("You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"), Jesus’ reply was "Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven" (Matt 16:16-17). Even having been with Jesus and having been assured by his actions and teaching were not enough. Real conviction, Jesus is presented as saying, comes only by revelation from the Father in heaven - or, to say it more prosaically: History and reason may pile up the dry wood, but it takes the heavenly fire of revelation from God to ignite the tinder.

The Gospels present us with a person who goes much beyond our expectations and often beyond our comprehension. Furthermore, they depict a redemptive scenario that, on the one hand, exceeds our fondest hopes, yet on the other is often a scandal to our innate religious sensibilities and seemingly foolish to our minds. While we want a historically credible and rationally compatible faith, we as Christians often find ourselves much like the disciples of old who, when faced with certain "hard teachings" of Jesus - and observing that many thereafter backed off from following Jesus - could only respond to Jesus’ query about wanting to leave him too: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God" (John 6:68-69). And it is this response that continues to be our response today.

Inside Al-Qaeda

2009-01-06T03:40:00.000-08:00

Inside Al-Qaeda

Introduction

Al-Qaeda (or Al Qaida) means "the base." It has been described as many different things, and it includes a "federation" of different Islamic groups, all dedicated to mayhem against the West, Christians, Jews and Muslim regimes that do not conform to its ideas. It may have only a few thousand members, but seems to have many supporters and sympathizers, some of whom may be inspired to terrorist deeds by Al-Qaeda "fatwas" (judgements). Al-Qaeda became a household word in the United States following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, apparently timed to coincide with the anniversary of the abolition of the Caliphate by Kemal Ataturk in 1922.

Al-Qaeda is a shadowy terrorist network organized by Osama Bin Laden as detailed below, and probably consists of cells of terrorists and support groups that provide financial aid, publicity, shelter and recruiting facilities for Al Qaeda. The Al-Qaeda political philosophy is radical Islamism - the doctrine that governments must be forced to conform to Islamic law as they conceive it to be. It is unlikely that all Islamists are affiliated with Al Qaeda, though it is probable that most such groups cooperate. Groups such as the Lebanese Hizbolla, Palestinian Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are suspected of affiliations with Al Qaeda, but there is a lack of evidence supporting those suspicions. Al-Qaeda believe in Jihad (Holy War) to remove Western influences from Muslim areas, especially Saudi Arabia and Palestine, and reestablishment of the Caliphate (Khalifa) which will then wage Jihad against the remainder of the non-Muslim world with the aim of conquering it. The activist ideology of Islamism is based on the writings of Sayyid Qutb, Sayed Abul Ala Mawdudi and to some extent by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. Osama Bin Ladin has added some twists, emphasis and further radicalization of his own. (for a history of the rise of Islam and a brief overview of Islamism click here). Islamism is not orthodox Islam as generally practiced, but Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Ladin have won a great deal of admiration throughout the Middle East because they are perceived as heros who stand up to the West.

Al-Qaeda groups may cooperate with other Muslim fundamentalists and draw followers from them, but it is is not ideologically close to the Wahhabi of Saudi Arabia or the Shi'ite Islamist regime in Iran, nor is there evidence of organizational links, though many Al-Qaeda activists were recruited from Saudi Arabia. Wahhabis are intimately connected with support for the Saudi regime and do not believe in overthrowing governments, unlike Al-Qaeda. Nor is there evidence, despite some claims by Laurie Mylroie and other analysts, that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had a central role in encouraging Al-Qaeda terror, though Iraq may have sheltered and trained some Al-Qaeda terrorists, and may have used Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group, against the Kurds.

Al-Qaeda was founded about 1988 or 1989 by the Saudi Arabian militant Osama bin Laden (or Usama bin Laden or bin Ladin). Prior to the fall of 2001, Al-Qaeda was based in of Afghanistan and sheltered by the Taleban regime there. Following the terror attacks it initiated against the USA on September 11, 2001, and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October of 2001, Al-Qaeda has gone further underground. Leaders are currently (April, 2004) believed to hiding in a region of Afghanistan along the Pakistani border. Relatively large scale military operations have failed to dislodge them or capture or kill the leaders, and Al-Qaeda has struck at targets in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Spain and elsewhere since 2001. Bin Laden uses an extensive international network to maintain a loose connection between Muslim extremists in diverse countries. Working through high-tech means, such as faxes, satellite telephones, and the internet, he is in touch with an unknown number of followers (estimated at about 1,500) all over the world.

The organization's main immediate goal is the overthrow of what it sees as the corrupt and heretical governments of Muslim states, and their replacement with the rule of Shari'a (Islamic law). Al-Qaeda is intensely anti-Western, and views the United States in particular as the prime enemy of Islam. Bin Laden has issued several "fatwas" or religious rulings calling upon Muslims to take up arms against the United States. He, or stand-ins for him, continue to release videotaped messages threatening or calling for attacks against the United States, Western regimes, Israel and Muslim regimes that do not subscribe to his dogmas. They attempts to radicalize existing Islamic groups and create Islamic groups where none exist. They advocate destruction of the United States, which is seen as the chief obstacle to reform in Muslim societies. They supports Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya, Eritera, Kosova, Pakistan, Somalia, Tajikistan and Yemen.

In February 1998, Bin Laden announced the formation of an umbrella organization called “The Islamic World Front for the struggle against the Jews and the Crusaders” (Al-Jabhah al-Islamiyyah al-`Alamiyyah li-Qital al-Yahud wal-Salibiyyin) Among the members of this organization are the Egyptian al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian al-Jihad. Both of these groups were have been active in terrorism over the past decade.

Though the organization was not well known to the European and American public before September 11, 2001, they were apparently involved in a long series of terror attacks against American and other targets, dating back at least to 1993 (see timeline, below).

Personnel

Following is a partial list of known Al-Qaeda operatives.

Ayman Zahahiri, who was a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and later a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, is considered to be the second in command of Al-Qaeda. He is Osama Bin Laden's doctor and is also apparently responsible for Al-Qaeda financial operations.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Kuwaiti-Pakistani, suspected mastermind of Sept. 11 attacks. Aliases: Ashraf Refaat Nabith Henin, Khalid Adbul Wadood, Salem Ali, Fahd Bin Adballah Bin Khalid At large.

Abu Zubaydah, Palestinian-Saudi, terrorist coordinator: Captured.

Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi (Aka Saif Al-Adil_ Egyptian, bin Laden security chief: At large. Reputedly ordered bombings in Saudia from Iran.

Shaikh Saiid Al-Sharif, Saudi, bin Laden's brother-in-law and Sept. 11 financier: At large.

Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, Saudi, Persian Gulf operations chief: Captured.

Tawfiq Attash Khallad, Yemeni, operational leader, suspected mastermind of USS Cole bombing in October 2000: At large.

Qaed Salim Sinan Al-Harethi, Yemeni, Yemen operations chief: Killed in U.S. airstrike.

Omar Al-Farouq, Kuwaiti, Southeast Asia operations chief: Captured.

Ibn Al-Shaykh Al-Libi, Libyan, training camp commander: Captured.

Saad bin Laden, Saudi, bin Laden's son: At large.

Abu Mohammad Al-Masri, Egyptian, training camp commander: At large.

Tariq Anwar Al-Sayyid Ahmad, Egyptian, operational planner: Killed in U.S. airstrike.

Abu Mohamed El Masri, reputed East African operations chief.

Mohammed Salah, Egyptian, operational planner: Killed in U.S. airstrike.

Abd Al-Hadi Al-Iraqi, training camp commander: Captured.

Ahmad Fadeel Nazal Al-Khalayleh Aka Abu Musab Zarqawi - Jordanian, operational planner: At large. Zarqawi is reputed to have been sheltered in Iraq by Saddam Hussein after escaping from Afghanistan and later fled to Iran. He and supposedly directed the assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan, as well as the attack on the synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia. Zarqawi is blamed by Washington for organizing several attacks against Iraqi civilians and coalition targets in Iraq.

Abu Zubair Al-Haili, Saudi, operational planner: Arrested.

Abu Hafs The Mauritanian, (aka Mahfouz Ould Al-Walid, Khalid Al-Shanqiti, Mafouz Walad Al-Walid, Mahamedou Ouid Slahi) operational and spiritual leader: At large.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, Kuwaiti, Al Qaeda spokesman: At large.

Midhat Mursi, Egyptian, responsible for research on weapons of mass destruction: At large.

Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Saudi, financier: At large.

Hamza Al-Qatari, financier: Killed.

Ahmad Said Al-Kadr, Egyptian-Canadian, financier: At large.

Zaid Khayr, operational leader: At large.

Abu Salah Al-Yemeni: responsible for logistics, Killed.

Abu Jafar Al-Jaziri, aide to Abu Zubyadah: Killed.

Abu Basir Al-Yemeni, Yemeni, aide to Usama bin Laden: At large.

Abd Al-Aziz Al-Jamal, aide to al-Zawahri: At large.

Ramzi Binalshibh, Yemeni, planner and organizer of Sept. 11 attacks: Captured.

Zacarias Moussaoui, charged as conspirator with Sept. 11 hijackers: Arrested.

Zakariya Essabar, member of cell with Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta: At large.

Said Bahaji, member of cell with Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta: At large.

Afghanistan

Osama Bin Laden, scion of a wealthy Saudi family of Yemeni origin, and a construction engineer with a fortune estimated at $300 millions, began his career as holy warrior in 1979, when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. He transferred his business to Afghanistan, including several hundred loyal workmen and heavy construction tool, -and set out to liberate the country from the atheistic infidel Soviet invaders. Together with Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood leader Abdullah Azzam, he organized a recruiting office--Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK - Services Office) in 1984.

MAK advertised for Muslim youth to join the fight in Afghanistan. It set up recruiting offices throughout the world, including in the U.S. and Europe. Bin Laden paid for the transportation of the new recruits to Afghanistan, and set up training camps. The anti-Soviet Afghan government donated land and resources, while Bin Laden recruited experts from all over the world on guerilla warfare, sabotage, and covert operations. After about a year, he had thousands of volunteers in training in his camps. Large numbers of fighters got training and combat experience in Afghanistan, but most were not native Afghanis. Nearly half of the fighters came from Saudi Arabia. About 3,000 came from Algeria, 2,000 from Egypt, with thousands more coming from other Muslim countries such as Yemen, Pakistan and the Sudan.

The Americans had the same goal as Bin Laden: to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan. The US Central Intelligence Agency launched a $500 million-per-year program to arm and train the poor and outgunned Mujahedin guerrillas to fight the Soviet Union. The most promising leaders were found and “sponsored” by the CIA. Bin Laden’s group was one of seven major Mujahedin factions. A significant quantity of high tech American weapons, including and especially “Stinger” anti-aircraft missiles, were acquired by his fighters.

In ten years of fighting the Mujaheddin vanquished the Soviet Union and forced the USSR to leave Afghanistan. The guerilla groups became a well-organized and equipped modern army. The Mujaheddin inherited from the Soviets a huge arsenal of sophisticated weapons, and there were now thousands of seasoned Islamist warriors from a variety of countries.

Osama Bin Laden After Afghanistan
In the late 1980s, when the war was drawing to a close, Bin Laden split with MAK co-founder Azzam, and in 1988 or 1989 formed al-Qaeda to continue the work of the Jihad. Bin Laden decided to carry the war to other countries. Late in 1989 Abdallah Azzam died in the explosion of a car bomb, possibly instigated by Bin Laden..

Osama Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia to fight against the infidel government there .In April 1994, his Saudi citizenship was revoked for “irresponsible behavior,” and he was expelled from the country. With his immediate family and a large band of followers, Bin Laden moved to Khartoum in Sudan. There he set up factories and farms, some of which were established solely to supply jobs to out-of-work Mujahedin. He built roads and infrastructure for the Sudanese government and training camps for the Afghan veterans. Bin Laden’s numerous Sudanese commercial interests included: a factory to process goat skins, a construction company, a bank, a sunflower plantation, and an import-export operation.

His construction company “el-Hijrah for Construction and Development Ltd.”--in partnership with the National Islamic Front and the Sudanese military--built the new airport at Port Sudan, as well as a 1200 km-long highway linking Khartoum to Port Sudan.

For many years, Bin Laden lived in Khartoum, in a residence guarded by the local security forces, while he was arranging for many of the “Afghan veterans” to move to Sudan. Bin Laden is said to be close to Sudanese leader Omar Albashir, and to Hassan Turabi, the head of the National Islamic Front (NIF) in Sudan.

However, Sudan, which was on the U.S. State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, began to thaw toward the West. Responding to US pressure, the Sudanese government requested that Bin Laden leave. In May 1996, he moved to Afghanistan, leaving behind a network of Afghan veterans and several successful factories and corporations. In August of 1996, he issued a "Declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places."

The Islamic Front for the struggle against the Jews and the Crusaders
In February 1998, Bin Laden announced the formation of an umbrella group called “The Islamic World Front for the struggle against the Jews and the Crusaders” (Al-Jabhah al-Islamiyyah al-`Alamiyyah li-Qital al-Yahud wal-Salibiyyin) Among the members of this organization are the Egyptian al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya and the Egyptian al-Jihad. The founders of the Front included, besides Bin Laden; Dr. Ayman al- Zawahiri, leader of the Egyptian Jihad; Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, a leader of the Islamic Group.

Bin Laden argued that Muslims everywhere in the world were suffering at the hands of the U.S. and Israel. He said the Muslims must wage holy war against their real enemies, not only to rid themselves of unpopular regimes backed by the Americans and Israelis. but also protect their faith. Bin Laden asserted that the US was vulnerable and could be defeated in war. This would happen in the same way as the USSR suffered humiliation at the hands of the Afghan and Arab “mujahideen” in Afghanistan and was eventually dismembered

On 14 May 1998, The London Al-Quds al-'Arabi reported that clerics in Afghanistan had issued a fatwa requiring the removal of U.S. forces from the Gulf region. Addressing Muslims around the world, the Afghan ulema said: “The enemies of Islam are not limited to a certain group or party; all atheists are enemies of Islam, and they take one another as friends.” The Afghan ulema declared “jihad -- based on the rules of the Shari'a -- against the United States and its followers.” They urged Islamic governments to perform the duty of “armed jihad against the enemies of Islam,” pointing out that “if Muslims are lax in their responsibility, the enemies of Islam will occupy the two holy mosques as well, just as they occupied the al- Aqsa Mosque.” They stressed, in a statement attached to the fatwa, that: “This fatwa--with the evidence and the rulings issued by early and current ulema, on which it is based--is not merely a fatwa issued by the ulema of a Muslim country, but rather a religious fatwa that every Muslim should adopt and work under.”

Member Organizations

Among the organizations whose membership in the Islamic Front is known are the Egyptian Jihad, the Egyptian Armed Group, the Pakistan Scholars Society, the Partisans Movement in Kashmir, the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh, and the Afghan military wing of the “Advice and Reform” commission led by Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda is also believed to be linked with: militant Kashmiri groups, The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, ( IMU), the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, the GIA, or Armed Islamic Group, in Algeria and a radical offshoot known as the Salafist group, or GSPC. In addition, groups such as the Hizb-ut-Tahrir, are probably favorably disposed toward Al-Qaeda without being formal members. Hizb ut Tahrir is a group centered in Central Asia, but with branches elsewhere and in particular in Denmark and is believed to have sent fighters to aid the Taleban against the Northern Alliance. Officially, Hizb ut-Tahrir is against use of violence for regime change in Muslim countries.

Characteristic Declarations of Al-Qaeda Prior to 9-11

According to the “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,”

“the latest and the greatest of [the] aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet . . .is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places - the foundation of the house of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of all Muslims - by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies.”

The declaration is supposed to be the first step in “correcting what had happened to the Islamic world in general, and the Land of the two Holy Places in particular. . . Today . . . the sons of the two Holy Places, have begun their Jihad in the cause of Allah, to expel the occupying enemy out of the country of the two Holy places.”

In an interview with Nida’ul Islam several months later Bin Laden detailed the work that has been done in this direction after terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, and underlined their strategic importance:

“There were important effects to the two explosions in Riyadh on both the internal and external aspects. Most important amongst these is the awareness of the people to the significance of the American occupation of the country of the two sacred mosques, and that the original decrees of the regime are a reflection of the wishes of the American occupiers. So the people became aware that their main problems were caused by the American occupiers and their puppets in the Saudi regime.”

“. . . these missions also paved the way for the raising of the voices of opposition against the American occupation from within the ruling family and the armed forces; in fact we can say that the remaining Gulf countries have been effected to the same degree, and that the voices of opposition to the American occupation have begun to be heard at the level of the ruling families and the governments of the . . . Gulf countries.”

Bin Laden claimed the new Islamic Front was the force that will eventually vanquish America:

“The movement is driving fast and light forward. And I am sure of our victory with Allah’s help against America and the Jews. . . After the Americans entered the Holy Land, many emotions were roused in the Muslim world, more than we have seen before. . .The co-operation is expanding between general supporters of this religion. From this effort, the International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders was formed, which we are a member of with other groups.”

Western Awareness of Al-Qaeda

Despite the European newspaper coverage noted above, most people in the West, and in the USA in particular, were blissfully ignorant of the existence of Al-Qaeda prior to September, 2001. In fact, according to Cofer Black, at one time Director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, the CIA had been tracking Osama Bin Laden at least since his arrival in Sudan in 1991. They knew all about the fatwahs, the organizations and the threat. In his testimony given after the attacks of 9-11, Cofer listed details of some of the early information:

In December 1992, bin Ladin financed Islamic extremists who attacked a hotel in Yemen housing US military personnel.

In 1993, we learned that bin Ladin was channeling funds to Egyptian extremists.

In 1994, al-Qa'ida was financing at least three terrorist training camps in northern Sudan.

So the CIA had known about Al Qaida for quite a while, yet the American people had not even heard the word "Al-Qaeda" and were not to hear it until 1999.

By January 1996, the US FBI and CIA had established a joint intelligence station codenamed Alex, and were zealously tracking the activities of Al-Qaeda. Eighteen months later, according to Richard Clarke, they had found cells of Al-Qaeda in 56 countries. In August of 1996, Bin Laden had issued his ""Declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places," but the declaration did not get very much publicity, and Al-Qaeda was apparently considered to be one among many threats.

In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on January 28, 1998, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said the US faced three types of international terror:

The first category, state-sponsored terrorism, violates every convention of international law. State sponsors of terrorism include Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea. Put simply, these nations view terrorism as a tool of foreign policy. In recent years, the terrorist activities of Cuba and North Korea have declined as their economies have deteriorated. However, the activities of the other states I mentioned continue and, in some cases, have intensified during the past several years.

The second category of international terrorist threat is made up of formalized terrorist organizations. These autonomous, generally transnational organizations have their own infrastructures, personnel, financial arrangements, and training facilities. They are able to plan and mount terrorist campaigns on an international basis, and actively support terrorist activities in the United States.

Extremist groups such as Lebanese Hizballah, the Egyptian Al-Gamat Al-Islamiya, and the Palestinian Hamas have placed followers inside the United States who could be used to support an act of terrorism here.

The third category of international terrorist threat stems from loosely affiliated extremists--characterized by the World Trade Center bombers and rogue terrorists such as Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. These loosely affiliated extremists may pose the most urgent threat to the United States at this time because their membership is relatively unknown to law enforcement, and because they can exploit the mobility that emerging technology and a loose organizational structure offer.

This testimony came two years after the establishment of Station Alex. Theoretically, the FBI knew all about Al-Qaeda and bin Ladin. Nonetheless, Al-Qaeda was not mentioned anywhere in his testimony. Osama Bin Laden was just one of many threats according to Feeh, and he didn't see any connection between separate incidents and persons such as Khobar towers, Ramzi Yousef and the World Trade Center bombers. Freeh was not asking for more money to fight urgent threats from Al-Qaeda apparently. In fact, his major concern seems to have been to combat the bill that finally removed US export controls from encryption technology, which had long since been stolen by any terrorist who wanted it.

In his speech following the US attacks on Afghanistan in Sudan in 1998, after the bombings of the embassies in Africa, President Clinton spoke of "the network of radical groups affiliated with and funded by Osama bin Ladin,'' but did not name Al Qaeda at all. Likewise, Freeh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, in September of 1998. His testimony was in many places a word for word duplicate of the testimony of January. He added a mention of Bin Laden however, only to belittle his importance as a "rogue" terrorist:

"As attention focuses on Usama bin Ladin in the aftermath of the East African bombings, I believe it is important to remember that rogue terrorists such as bin Ladin represent just one type of threat that we face. It is imperative that we maintain our abilities to counter the broad range of threats that confronts us."

There was no mention of Al Qaeda in this testimony. There was no mention of Islamism either in his testimony or in the speech of President Clinton. The uninitiated listener could have no idea that there was an ideology that today we call "Islamism," or a large number of groups including Al Qaeda which followed this radical ideology. Osama Bin Laden was described as a "rogue," a lone wolf. By this time the FBI had all of the Fatwas, the information gathered by Station Alex, and Israeli intelligence reports that had fingered Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

By November 1998, Osama Bin Laden was being indicted for terrorist acts against the USA, yet there was still little talk about a major threat. Osama Bin Laden was only added to the FBI's 10 most wanted list on June 7, 1999. In the FBI press release, Al-Qaeda is also mentioned as his organization in that press release.

According to one analyst, Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism, Terry Turchie, appearing before the House Subcommittee on National Security, said on July 26, 2000, "FBI investigation and analysis indicates that the threat of terrorism in the united states is low." Turchie did not mention al Qaeda, Islamic militants, or even "religious" extremists. Rather, he cited the "serious terrorist threat" posed "animal-rights and environmental extremists," and by "right-wing groups." All of the 9-11 conspirators were in the United States by then.

Al-Qaeda was held responsible for the attacks on the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, for the bomb that exploded in the Twin Towers in 1993, and for the attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar as -Salaam in August 1998 and other terror attacks (see timeline below). However, the American public was largely ignorant of the existence of Al-Qaeda. It was not often mentioned publicly as a terrorist organization by administration spokespersons, and it appeared only rarely in reports in the US media.

It was only after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 that administration spokespersons and USA media began focusing on Al-Qaeda publicly as responsible for terror attacks and media and most analysts began describing it with varying degrees of accuracy. In fact, it was late in September 2001 before FBI chief Robert Mueller publicly blamed the attacks of September 11 on Al-Qaeda.

Timeline of Al Qaeda terror attacks

The following are probably or certainly the work of Al-Qaeda:

February 26, 1993: Six people killed and about a thousand injured after a truck bomb explodes in the basement of the World Trade Center towers in New York.

October 3, 4 1993: Eighteen American soldiers are attacked and killed in Mogadishu, Somalia. A U.S. indictment later charged bin Laden and his followers with training the attackers. This is the incident described in the movie Black Hawk Down.

January, 1995: Following an explosion in a Manila apartment, Philippine police uncover a plot, code-named Bojinka or “Big Bang,” to blow up 12 airplanes bound for the U.S. Authorities arrest Abdul Hakim Murad, a Pakistani who is an associate of Ramzi Yousef, implicated in the Twin Towers bombing.

November 13, 1995: Five US soldiers and two Indian nationals are killed and more than 60 people wounded when a car bomb explodes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

June 25, 1996: Nineteen killed and 386 wounded when a truck bomb explodes at the US military base of Khobar near the town of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia.

August 7, 1998: 224 people killed and over 5000 injured, mostly Africans, when US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in east Africa are bombed.

October 12, 2000: 17 US sailors killed and 38 injured when a suicide attack on USS Cole in Aden is carried out.

September 11, 2001: Nearly 3,000 killed as hijacked airliners destroy the Twin Towers in New York city and crash into the Pentagon.

April, 2002 : Explosion at historic synagogue on the island of Djerba, in Tunisia leaves 21 dead, including 14 German tourists.

May, 2002: A car explodes outside hotel in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 14, including 11 French citizens.

June, 2002: A bomb explodes outside American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 12.

October 12, 2002: A bomb explodes in a Bali nightclub killing 202 people, many of them Westerners. Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) is blamed for the blasts. In the months following the attacks about 30 alleged JI members are arrested and put on trial. This group is widely believed to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Recently (April 3, 2004) suspects in the bombing said they were inspired by Fatwas of Bin Laden, but the leader of Jemaah Islamiah denies any connection to Al-Qaeda or Bin Laden:

Mohamed Nasir Abbas, one of the four men interviewed by Malaysia's TV3, said the bombings were inspired by religious edicts, known as fatwas, attributed to bin Laden.

"People who believed in the fatwa carried out bombings," Nasir said. "Therefore they bombed churches. The bombing in Bali was based on a policy to take revenge against America."
(smh.com.au April 3, 2004 - Bali bombs 'inspired' by bin Laden)

November 28, 2002: Two attacks are launched against Israeli targets in Mombasa, Kenya. A hotel blast kills 16 - including the three suicide bombers - and a missile is fired but misses an Israeli plane. A message on a website purporting to come from al-Qaeda claims responsibility for the attack.

May 12, 2003: At least 34 people are killed in a series of bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh, hitting luxury compounds housing foreign nationals and the offices of a US-Saudi company. The US and Saudi Governments say al-Qaeda is the prime suspect for blasts, which coincide with a visit to the kingdom by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

May 16, 2003: Casablanca is hit by a series of suicide bombings that kill 41 people, including 12 attackers. Moroccan authorities say that the attacks are linked to "international terror". Four men convicted and sentenced to death in September for the attacks are said by the Moroccan authorities to be members of the Salafia Jihadia. This group is widely believed to be linked to al-Qaeda.

August 5, 2003: Twelve people die and 150 are injured in a suicide bomb attack at a US-run luxury hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia. Indonesia's defense minister blames Jamaah Islamiah militants for the attack

October 6, 2002: A crew member dies after an apparent suicide bomb attack on a French oil tanker off the coast of Yemen. The US Government links the attack to al-Qaeda.

October 28, 2002: U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley is gunned down in front of his house in Amman as he walks to his car. Two men were involved. They were identified as Salem Sa'ed Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan national, and Yasser Fathi Ibraheem, a Jordanian. They confessed to membership in al Qaeda and confessed that they received their orders from a senior al Qaeda leader, Ahmad Fadeel Nazal Al-Khalayleh, known as Abu Musa'ab Al-Zarqawi.

November 15, 2003: At least 23 people are killed and more than 300 injured in two attacks on synagogues in Istanbul.

November 20, 2003: In coordinated attacks on the British Consulate and the HSBC bank offices in Istanbul, 27 people die and more than 450 are injured.

March 11, 2004: Bombs in Madrid city trains kill 192. The Abu Hafs al-Masri group took credit and claimed it was affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Apparently, this is the same group that was involved in Turkish and Saudi bombings. Spanish government claims that the blasts were the work of the Basque ETA separatists were subsequently totally discredited. The announced aim of the terrorist acts is to persuade the Spanish government to withdraw its troops from Iraq. The opposition unseats the government in the subsequent election, and opposition leader Zapatero announces that Spain will withdraw its troops if the Iraq occupation is not put under the aegis of the UN by June 30, 2004.

At least some of the mass terror attacks in Iraq and Russia (associated with Chechnya) are also attributable to Al-Qaeda or groups close to Al-Qaeda.

Ami Isseroff

Links

A concise history of Islam and the Arabs

Who is Osama Bin Laden?

Osama Bin Laden's Latest message

Al Qaeda Timeline - Before September 11, 2001

Links to additional background about Al-Qaeda after 9-11

Dossier of documents on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Al-Qaeda Training Manual Part I

Al-Qaeda Training Manual Part II

Main History Page Mewnews Main Page

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Middle East Gateway

The Iraq Crisis - An Overview

2009-01-06T03:39:00.000-08:00

This page provides an overview of Iraqi history and the history of the conflict between Iraq, the US and the UN, Iraqi production of weapons of mass destruction, obstruction of UN inspections and provides some key resource links.

A detailed timeline of Iraqi history is given here, including links to UN resolutions Iraq books
Map of Iraq Map of Kuwait Detailed Map of Iraq Map of Baghdad Street Map of Baghdad
Iraq- Source Documents Master Document and Link Reference for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Zionism and the Middle East

Government of Iraq 2006 - Who's who

The Iraq Crisis - An Overview

Iraq and other "Persian Gulf" countries were created following World War I as protectorates of Great Britain. They were carved out of Mesopotamia, formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. Iraq itself includes three major groups: Sunni Muslim Arabs in the center surrounding the capital of Baghdad, Kurds in the north and Shia Muslims in the south. About 15% of the population is Kurdish, 80% Arab. Some 60% are Shi'ite Arab Muslims like their neighbors in Iran, but they are Arabs, not Persians. There are also significant Assyrian and Turkomen minorities in the north. None of of these groups were given any national rights in the League of nations settlement. National and tribal disputes, as well as friction with Western powers trying to control Iraqi oil, have played a great part in Iraqi history.

Click for a detailed chart of the Shi'ite political groups (PDF).

Click on map to display a larger map.

British and US interests were fixed on Iraq after early discoveries of petroleum there, and the US succeeded in pressuring Great Britain to share petroleum rights in Iraq. In 1931, Iraq became independent with a pro-British regime under King Feisal and Nuri-as-Said. A pro-Axis coup in 1941 was reversed by British intervention. After World War II, the US, worried about Soviet influence, tried to make Iraq the anchor of a NATO-like pro-Western alliance, the Baghdad pact. In 1958, the pro-West government was overthrown by ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim. Qasim survived a Ba'athist coup that included participation of Saddam Hussein in 1959. Kuwait and other neighboring protectorates became independent of Britain beginning in 1961, and Iraq laid claims on them owing to oil resources and the need for outlets to the sea. Qasim was overthrown in 1963 by Abd al-Salam ‘Arif, apparently with the help of the CIA. Arif's government was overthrown by a Baathist coup in 1968 with the aid of the US Central Intelligence Agency, which had supposedly been encouraging the Baath and Saddam Hussein for many years. By 1979, Saddam Hussein had become Prime Minister and began consolidating a dictatorial regime. Saddam appointed most high officials from among members of his family and natives of his home town village of Tikriti.

Saddam Hussein

Iran and Iraq have had a running border dispute that involves the delineation of the border, water rights along the Shatt-El-Arab waterway and navigation rights. The Shat El-Arab constitutes Iraq's only outlet to the sea. Iran had laid claims to border territories and and taken them by force, and had also supported a Kurdish revolt. A 1975 treaty following the Algiers accord of that year had supposedly settled the dispute. The Shah withdrew support for the Kurdish revolt, which collapsed. However, the agreement was not honored in full and Iran did not return all the land that Iraq considered to be its own.

Saddam decided to capitalize on the disorder of the Iranian revolution, and the antipathy to Iran that had been generated in the West and especially in the US, in order to pursue a war for territory and navigation rights with Iran. He invaded Iran in 1980, initiating an eight year war that cost about a million casualties. During the war, Saddam used chemical warfare against Iran as well as in suppressing internal revolts by the Kurds in the north. The Iranians used gas warfare as well. Saddam's suppression of Kurds, known as the anfal, began in 1987 and killed an estimated 182,000, destroying thousands of villages and creating about 400,000 refugees. The United States and Western powers supported Iraq with arms and Western companies helped Saddam build chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities. In 1981, Israel attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor supplied by France, where Saddam had hoped to produce enough fissionable material to make a bomb. Subsequently, Iraq concentrated on trying to obtain fissionable materials from abroad apparently. A secret 1988 document revealed a plan to use radioactive Zirconium as the basis of "dirty bombs." The war with Iran came to an end in 1988 after both sides were exhausted. Saddam was heavily in debt because of the war, and sought financial aid from different countries. When that was not forthcoming, he began charging that Kuwait was illegally pumping oil that actually belonged to Iraq.

In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait despite warnings from the US and Egypt, and it conquered and annexed Kuwait. Iraq did not respond to US, Arab country and UN warnings to withdraw from Kuwait. Accordingly, UN allies led by the USA launched operation Desert Storm in February 1991, successfully reversing the invasion of Kuwait. However, the US did not try to remove Saddam Hussein from power and allowed him to suppress Kurdish and Shi'a revolts. Under terms of the UN resolutions terminating the war, Iraq was to have destroyed all stockpiles and development facilities for nonconventional weapons. A UN inspection mechanism was created to verify the destruction. A mechanism of economic sanctions against Iraq was put in place in an attempt to get Saddam to comply with the disarmament provisions of previous resolutions. A long series of UN resolutions cited Iraqi violations and attempted to obtain Iraqi compliance with previous resolutions. Iraq did not disclose much of its chemical biological and nuclear weapons capabilities voluntarily, but the UN inspections by UNSCOM and reports by defectors did disclose stockpiles of VX and other agents. In 1998, after the discovery that Iraq was weaponizing VX, Iraq halted cooperation with inspectors. Despite sporadic allied bombing raids, no concerted effort was made to return the inspectors to Iraq (in 1999 UNSCOM was dissolved and replaced by UNMOVIC)

According to critics, the UN-imposed economic sanctions caused extreme hardship and poverty in Iraq. An oil for food program established in 1995 by UN Security Council Resolution 986 allowed Iraq to export limited quantities of oil to pay for food and medicines. However, Iraq diverted part of the income from this program to weapons development by charging a clandestine surcharge. Credits for cheap oil were also distributed to foreign politicians and others who could be helpful to Saddam's regime. Jordan was an active trading partner with Iraq. According to the dossier released by the British government in 2002, Iraq earned an estimated $3 billion in illicit revenues in 2001 (CIA estimates are much higher), used for developing weapons capabilities and other aggressive activities. According to the U.S. State department, Iraq has been exporting food received under the oil for food program, and has earned revenues from this program that should have been more than adequate to provide food, clothing and medical supplies for the Iraqi populace.

Iraq was linked to an attempted assassination of former US President George Bush, and supported Palestinian suicide bombings and other violence openly, in return for Palestinian support of Iraq. Saddam Hussein paid rewards of $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Iraq under Saddam was known to sponsor Palestinian terrorist groups, including (until recently at least) the Fatah Revolutionary Council, known as the "Abu Nidal group." The Ansar Al-Islam group, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, was based in northern Iraq, but its relation to the Saddam regime was unclear.

Following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center, the United States began making it successively more clear that it intended to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein, and toward the end of 2002, it became increasingly apparent that the US intended to launch a renewed invasion of Iraq.

US government officials, including Condoleeza Rice, charged that Iraq is linked to the Al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden, and may have been implicated in the World Trade Center attacks. Specific charges include evidence from defectors that hijackers trained on a mock-up Boeing 707 at Salman Pak base, and evidence that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi diplomat in Czechoslovakia. The US believed that Saddam had substantial quantities of chemical and biological weapons, and was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. However, the US government has yet (January 2004) to release any official document providing evidence that links Saddam to Al-Qaeda or the World Trade Center attack, and in fact, the US government has all but admitted that these charges were unfounded.

Iraq attempted to mend relations with key Muslim states including Iran and Syria, in order to prevent formation of a second coalition to support a war against it. In September 2002, the question of Iraq was returned to the UN as rumors and signs of US war preparations increased. President Bush addressed the UN September 12, 2002 and asked for multilateral action against Iraq based on a new resolution to be proposed by the United States and others. Iraq responded by promptly agreeing to unconditional renewal of inspections provided that no resolution was passed. The US effort to gather support for an attack on Iraq faced opposition on the following grounds:

Arab countries and supporters who claimed that any action against Iraq is an action aimed at all Arabs, and serves Israeli interests.

Those who believed that the inspections should be renewed and continued.

Those who believed that the US should not act without UN backing. Many people of this opinion also opposed a UN resolution.

The US and Britain obtained an initial resolution (1441) authorizing inspections, and Iraq complied. Inspectors reported slow progress since the resolution was passed in October 2002. Both Hans Blix, head of the UNMOVIC inspection team and Mohamed El-Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency insisted that they needed more time to continue inspections. Blix noted that Iraqis were not cooperating fully and did not allow any examination of scientists outside Iraq. He also noted that the initial report issued by Iraq did not account for WMD and weapons that were found in previous inspections and supposedly destroyed. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, claimed there was no evidence that Iraq possessed any nuclear capability. At least one intelligence report that had formed the basis of the case made by the US that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear capabilities turned out to be based on forged documents. The US and Britain were not able to get agreement on a second UN resolution that would authorize force. France and Russia threatened to veto any such resolution, while Germany, which does not have a seat on the Security council, also opposed it. Nonetheless, US President Bush made a speech giving Iraq 48 hours to prove that it was disarming, and when they failed to comply. The US claimed it had assembled a "coalition" of over countries that supported the attack, but most countries opposed it, including almost every country in Europe and all countries in the Middle East except Israel. US and British forces that had massed around Iraq, attacked. The attack opened on the evening of March 18 with a failed attempt to kill Saddam Hussein and other top officials who were meeting in Baghdad. For several days, the US continued to claim that Saddam was dead, and that Iraqi forces were disorganized, though Saddam appeared and spoke on Iraqi television. The initial cruise missile attack was followed several hours later by bombing of Baghdad and advances of US and British troops from Kuwait northward, taking the port city of Umm Qasr and the Fao peninsula, and besieging Basra.

The allied attack was hampered by the fact that Turkey did not allow US forces to enter Iraq from its territory, virtually eliminating a northern front in the first days. However, it is now believed that this was a ruse to keep Iraqi attention away from the main attack, which came from the south. By March 27, the US had landed about 1,000 paratroops near Irbil in the north, and promised that more were on their way. Kurdish forces crossed out of the "safe zone" established for Kurds in 1991 and into Iraq-held territory near Chamchamal. However, the long columns of willing deserters that the Americans expected did not immediately materialize. The advance was held up by sand storms that prevented air support and plagued by casualties from friendly fire. Americans were dismayed when US helicopter pilots were taken prisoner and shown on Iraqi television. Coalition forces were also massacred after they had surrendered Americans charged. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in besieged Basra became very difficult. Allies could not get relief ships into Umm El Qasr because the harbor had to be cleared first. Oil fires were set by Iraqis in several locations. US forces reported that Iraqis had shot prisoners of war who had surrendered, while Iraqis claimed that the US had bombed a market in Baghdad, kill 15 and wounding many more. The war ignited opposition in the Arab world. Large crowds clashed with police and attacked US embassies.

The Iraqi Information Minister Mohamed as Sayyaf, later known as "Baghdad Bob," appeared daily on Iraqi television, even as US forces had entered Baghdad, ensuring correspondents that all was well, and that the Iraqi forces loyal to Saddam would repel the "homosexuals and cowards" and save Saddam's regime. NBC (formerly CNN) correspondent Peter Arnett insisted that the US was losing the war and broadcast for the Iraqi government, a move that got him fired from NBC. Arnett was hired by the Daily Mirror, where he continued to insist on "the truth" - that the war was lost for the allies.

In reality however, the US and Britain were advancing steadily, exploiting opportunities as they opened up.

By April 9, the US was in control of Baghdad. A small but enthusiastic crowd cheered as US Marines helped them tear down a statue of Saddam in the city center. BBC correspondent Rageh Omar commented: .

as the image of the Iraqi leader tumbled to the ground the decades of pain and anger welled up and the crowd surged forward to jump on the statue to smash it to pieces. It is a true expression of their anger at over 25 years of rule, they are seeking to vent their anger at the government and joy that it has now fallen.

This is an historic moment and it took place in front of ordinary Iraqi people, US marines and the gathered media of the world.

Despite the early setbacks, the speed of the victory astounded the Arab world. Conspiracy theories were promptly advanced to account for it. Al Jazeera television claimed that the US had used nuclear weapons in Baghdad to wipe out the Republican Guard divisions, and later claimed that the victory was made possibly by a deal concluded between a Republican Guard commander and coalition forces. There is no evidence for any of these claims.

The victory was marred by widespread looting as well as destruction wrought by coalition bombings. The Baghdad museum and other institutions were looted of priceless archeological finds, and Mosul university was trashed by looters as well, while US forces looked on without intervening. As it turned out, looting of museum artifacts was not as widespread as had been assumed. However, it subsequently became evident that the US had allowed large quantities of explosives and nuclear materials to disappear from sites sealed by the IAEA and had left those sites unguarded, despite repeated warnings from the IAEA and other sources. Several thousand tons of explosives disappeared from the Al-Qaaqa base and presumably fell into the hands of Iraqi resistance..

Meanwhile, resistance to the US occupation grew. After Friday prayers, angry crowds gathered and chanted "No to Saddam, No to Bush" and other such slogans. The crowds were incited by Sunni and Shi'a imams who told them that the war was waged to protect Israel.

By April 22-23, the situation had calmed sufficiently to allow a huge traditional pilgrimage of Shi'ite Muslims to their shrine in Karbala. This was the first such pilgrimage on foot allowed in many years. The pilgrims were grateful for their freedom and cursed Saddam, but not many connected their new found freedom with gratitude for the US.

Wanted Iraqi government figures continued to turn themselves in or were caught by US/British forces and Iraqi allies. Former foreign minister Tariq Aziz turned himself in on April 24. However, reports continued to indicate that despite several allied attempts on his life, Saddam Hussein was alive and was in fact in Iraq.

Critics of the war continued to point out that no definitive evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, the reason for the war, had been found at all. US teams continued to search for evidence of WMD, finding only suggestive clues and some "promising leads." Ultimately, several reports determined that there were no WMD in Iraq, and probably had been no WMD before the war. Intelligence suggesting that Iraq had been purchasing aluminum tubes and other materials for a nuclear weapons program and was intent on creating an atomic bomb turned out to have been based on forgeries and inventions of defectors, and may have been "improved" by US government officials anxious to find a rational for invading Iraq.

US and British forces did uncover evidence of the brutality and corruption of Saddam Hussein's regime, including mass graves for thousands of political prisoners and huge stashes of cash, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Embarrassing intelligence documents implicated Russian and German intelligence in aiding and abetting Saddam, and reportedly showed that British MP Galloway, a prominent war opponent had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Saddam's regime. Subsequently, these charges proved to be apparently unfounded, but many other politicians and businessmen were shown to have received bribes from the Saddam regime in the form of oil coupons, and other documentation involving Galloway emerged.

France and Germany, formerly outspoken and bitter critics of the war, initially hurried to align themselves with the United States in the hope of participating in lucrative post-war reconstruction contracts, but were disappointed when the US and the Provisional Iraqi Ruling Council announced that no bids for reconstruction would be given to France or Germany. Europe again distanced itself from the war when it became apparent that the US would not succeed in restoring order quickly in Iraq, and French President Chirac continued to insist that the war and US occupation were illegal.

Some of Iraq's Muslim neighbors, in particular Syria, were quite bitter at the US victory. Syrian President Bashar El-Assad told a Lebanese daily that the Arab people would resist the Iraqi occupation. The Pentagon reported that Syria send busloads of Arab fighters, including Palestinians, returning Iraqis, Egyptians and others into Iraq, that Syria was hiding escaped Iraqi government figures, and that Syria might be storing Iraqi WMD. Syria denied these allegations, but the US captured many non-Iraqi fighters in Iraq, and intercepted busloads of such fighters coming from Syria. Opponents of the war insisted that US complaints against Syria were part of an Israeli inspired conspiracy to get the US to attack Syria, a view that was also voiced by the Syrian government.

On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared the war over. The US had still not succeeded in installing an interim government, despite two meetings held for this purpose. Some services were restored in the destroyed cities of Iraq, but numerous people remained destitute and hungry. In Faluja, anti-US riots broke out and marines were forced to fire on crowds on different occasions resulting in about 20 civilian deaths in total.

In June, the US announced that it was giving up on the plan to have Iraqis from a provisional government because of internal rivalries, and would instead appoint a government. This interim government took office in July, but bombings and sabotage continued, and reconstruction work lagged behind forecasts. US morale was bouyed when Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay were killed in a shootout with US troops, but Saddam remained at large throughout the summer. despite a huge monetary reward offered for information leading his capture. A number of videotapes supposedly made by Saddam were aired. An explosion in the Shi'a holy city of Najaf killed an important Shi'a religious leader and over 90 other worshippers, after another explosion at a UN compound had killed over 20. Not a day passed without some act of violence against US troops or Iraqis who supported them or were opposed to the regime of Saddam. The coalition failed to find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction and in August 2003, evidence emerged that both US and British officials had distorted intelligence estimates to help make a case that there were WMD still in Iraq.

UN Security Resolution 1511 on Iraq recognized the legitimacy of the coalition appointed interim government, while calling for a timetable for Iraqi self-governance. The coalition announced that Iraq self-governance would be achieved in June of 2004, though the coalition forces would remain in Iraq.

On December 13, 2003, US forces captured Saddam Hussein alive in a small underground hideout. No shots were fired during the capture. Saddam had grown long hair and a beard. The capture was greeted with jubilant celebrations in Iraqi cities. Provisional government officials promised that Saddam would be tried for crimes against the Iraqi people. More about the capture of Saddam.

The capture of Saddam did not immediately stop the resistance to the coalition, though resistance attacks began to abate soon after. In January, it was announced that the Kurds would be allowed at least initially to maintain their semi-autonomous status, achieved in 1991 after desert storm, even after June 1994.

After it became clear that th US could not bring about a stable government in Iraq, the US asked for the help of the UN. On January 1, 2004, Lakhdar Brahimi was appointed as a special envoy. He recommended a government that would be based on technocrats rather than reflecting the political power structure.

By March, 2004, factions had agreed on an interim constitution, which was approved by the coalition partners despite clauses that specify Islam as a source of legislation. However, on March 2, explosions in Karbala and Baghdad during the Shi'a Ashura holy day killed as many as 271 Shi'a worshippers. US authorities remained powerless to stop or control terror attacks in Iraq. For the most part, the perpetrators of the attacks remained unknown, and the attacks were variously attributed to foreign fighters including Al-Qaeda and to dissident Iraqis, including elements loyal to Saddam Hussein.

Terror attacks mounted in the spring of 2004, as the date for handing over sovereignty to the interim government approached. In Falluja, gangs attacked and killed US security employees, prompting a bloody reprisal by the US. Eventually, the US withdrew and handed over official control to the Iraqi army and police, but reports claimed that Falluja was ruled by armed gangs of religious fanatics who terrorize those who commit infractions against religious rules. In Najaf, Shi'ite extremist Moqtada Sadr and his Mehdi army took refuge in holy places, and the US besieged the city, but eventually the Mehdi army left the holy places under a truce agreement. Groups apparently affiliated with Al-Qaeda kidnapped foreigners including an American and a South Korean, whom they beheaded. Most alarming, the newly recruited and trained Iraqi troops and police proved to be largely ineffective against insurgents, often running away or deserting to enemy forces where there was fighting, or keeping to their bases and doing nothing, as in Falluja.

By June, terror attacks were occurring almost every day in numerous cities in Iraq. Oil exports were crippled by sabotage of the pipelines and storage facilities. On a single day, over 100 people, mostly Iraqis, were killed in a series of coordinated attacks. The attacks caused revulsion even among Jihadist leaders, who denounced those who killed civilians.

On June 7, the UN Security council unanimously passed resolution 1546, which legitimized the authority of the interim government that was about to take over power in Iraq. The resolution endorses the new interim government of Iraq, allows the multinational force to provide security in partnership with the new government, sets out a leading role for the U.N. in helping the political process over the next year, and calls upon the international community to aid Iraq in its transition. This resolution represented a compromise that was supposed to end the bitter controversy between France and Russia, on the one hand, who opposed the US war in Iraq, and the US, Britain and coalition partners on the other. It supposedly opened the way for greater international cooperation in solving the Iraq crisis. On June 28, Nato announced that it would accede to the request of the Iraqi government and help provide training for security forces, but there was little real NATO involvement in Iraq.

Possibly to preserve its political power against the technocratic government that Lakhdar Brahimi wished to install, the interim governing council, which was previously unable to agree about very much, united to chose Iyad Allawi as Iraqi Prime Minister. Allawi is a Shi'ite and was at one time a member of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party. Al-Qaeda threatened to kill Allawi. In a surprise move to forestall terror attacks, the handover of power to the new government was moved up by two days. On June 28, in an informal ceremony, US administrator Paul Bremer handed over authority to Iyad Allawi and left the country.

The installation of the new government did not cause an abatement in terror attacks. On the contrary, blasts killed Iraqi police and police trainees as well as US military personnel almost every day. Foreign personnel were frequently kidnapped and held for ransom or in order to force their governments to leave the coalition forces or to induce their employers to leave Iraq. Several such hostages were beheaded and their beheadings shown on videotape.

A second truce was negotiated with the Mehdi army of Moqhtada Sadr in Najaf and in Baghdad. However, in Falluja, the situation was deemed intolerable. The town, as noted above, had been taken over by insurgents, and the US insisted that it was the hiding place of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, supposedly an Al-Qaeda leader responsible for extensive terror operations. The US gathered troops for an offensive in Falluja, while the Iraqi government tried to negotiate a peaceful takeover of the city.

By 2006 it was evident even to the US administration that the Iraq war effort was in trouble. The Iraqi government had not implemented most of the reforms agreed with the US. The incidence of violence and suicide bombings was rising. Outside factors, especially Syria, Iran and al-Qaeda were implicated in the violence. Iraqi army troops were not being readied to replace US troops. The Iraq Study Group Report: recommended setting deadlines for Iraqi government action, and a series of other steps, including progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace, which was assumed to be linked to the Iraq war. It also recommended deadlines for US withdrawals from Iraq. Congress subsequently tried to set such deadlines, but the move was vetoed by the US administration. The US began a "surge" - sending more troops to Iraq to attempt to contain violence and pacify major areas. By August 2007, most observers agreed that the surge was not particularly effective. The Iraqi government meanwhile continued to lose support as Shi'a and Sunni factions left over sectarian policy disagreements.

A new reality emerged in 2008. While the surge did not immediately eliminate terrorism in Iraq, unbridled terror by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, kindled a spontaneous "awakening" by Sunni tribesman that was judiciously encouraged by the United States. The awakening also helped US intelligence efforts as tribesman cooperated with government and coalition forces, and the Iraqi army itself began to take charge of the situation. Suicide bombings continued, but at a slower pace. The Maliki government faced down the Shia "Mehdi Army" and forced it to accept a truce. Province after province was turned over to Iraqi government control as the Iraqi government appeared to grow stronger and the army more competent. A US political debate over continued involvement in Iraq, once the central issue of the US presidential race, seemed to become a moot point after the Iraq government itself set a deadline of 2011 for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

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Zionisme

2009-01-06T03:37:00.000-08:00

Zionism - Definition and History

Note - The Zionist movement developed against the background of events in Palestine/Israel and influenced those events. This account of Zionism is meant to be read together with the brief history of Israel and Palestine and History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict since the Oslo Accords. Likewise, the Labor Zionist movement was a major force in the early implementation of Zionism, and therefore the history of Zionism cannot be intelligible without understanding the history of Labor Zionism.

Definition of Zionism history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism *

The word "Zionism" has several different meanings:

1. An ideology - Zionist ideology holds that the Jews are a people or nation like any other, and should gather together in a single homeland. Zionism was self-consciously the Jewish analogue of Italian and German national liberation movements of the nineteenth century. The term "Zionism" was apparently coined in 1891 by the Austrian publicist Nathan Birnbaum, to describe the new ideology, but it was used retroactively to describe earlier efforts and ideas to return the Jews to their homeland for whatever reasons, and it is applied to Evangelical Christians who want people of the Jewish religion to return to Israel in order to hasten the second coming. "Christian Zionism" is also used to describe any Christian support for Israel.

2. A descriptive term - The term "Zionism" was apparently coined in 1891 by the Austrian publicist Nathan Birnbaum, to describe the new ideology. It is also used to describe anyone who believes Jews should return to their ancient homeland.

3. A political movement - The Zionist movement was founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897, incorporating the ideas of early thinkers as well as the organization built by Hovevei Tziyon ("lovers of Zion").

(more Definitions of Zionism )

"Zionism" derives its name from "Zion," (pronounced "Tzyion" in Hebrew) a hill in Jerusalem. The word means "marker" or commemoration. "Shivath Tzion" is one of the traditional terms for the return of Jewish exiles. "Zionism" is not a monolithic ideological movement. It includes, for example, socialist Zionists such as Ber Borochov, religious Zionists such as rabbi Kook, revisionist nationalists such as Jabotinsky and cultural Zionists exemplified by Asher Ginsberg (Achad Haam). Zionist ideas evolved over time and were influenced by circumstances as well as by social and cultural movements popular in Europe at different times, including socialism, nationalism and colonialism, and assumed different "flavors" depending on the country of origin of the thinkers and prevalent contemporary intellectual currents. Accordingly, no single person, publication, quote or pronouncement should be taken as embodying "official" Zionist ideology.

Background history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism *

Zionism did not spring full blown from a void with the creation of the Zionist movement in 1897. Jews had maintained a connection with Palestine, both actual and spiritual, even after the Bar Kochba revolt in 135, when large numbers of Jews were exiled from Roman Palestine, the remains of their ancient national home. The Jewish community in Palestine revived and, under Muslim rule, is estimated to have numbered as many as 300,000 about 1000 AD, prior to the Crusades. The Crusaders killed most of the Jewish population of Palestine or forced them into exile, so that only about 1,000 families remained after the reconquest of Palestine by Saladin. The Jewish community in Palestine waxed and waned with the vicissitudes of conquest and economic hardship, and invitations by different Turkish rulers to displaced European Jews to settle in Tiberias and Hebron. At different times there were sizeable Jewish communities in Tiberias, Safed, Hebron and Jerusalem, and numbers of Jews living in Nablus and Gaza. A few original Jews remained in the town of Peki'in, families that had lived there continuously since ancient times.

In the Diaspora, religion became the medium for preserving Jewish culture and Jewish ties to their ancient land. Jews prayed several times a day for the rebuilding of the temple, celebrated agricultural feasts and called for rain according to the seasons of ancient Israel, even in the farthest reaches of Russia. The ritual plants of Sukkoth were imported from the Holy Land at great expense.

From time to time, small numbers of Jews came to settle in Palestine in answer to rabbinical or messianic calls, or fleeing persecution in Europe. Beginning about 1700, groups of followers led by rabbis reached Palestine from Europe and the Ottoman Empire with various programs. For example, Rabbi Yehuda Hehasid and his followers settled in Jerusalem about 1700, but the rabbi died suddenly, and eventually, an Arab mob, angered over unpaid debts, destroyed the synagogue the group had built and banned all European (Ashkenazy) Jews from Jerusalem. Rabbis Luzatto and Ben-Attar led a relatively large immigration about 1740. Other groups and individuals came from Lithuania and Turkey and different countries in Eastern Europe.

At no time between the Roman exile and the rise of Zionism was there a movement to settle the holy land that engaged the main body of European or Eastern Jews. The condition of Jews both in Europe and Eastern countries made such a movement unimaginable. Many, however, were attracted to various false Messiahs such as Shabetai Tzvi, who promised to restore Jews to their land. For most Jews, the connection with the ancient homeland and with Jerusalem remained largely cultural and spiritual, and return to the homeland was a hypothetical event that would occur with the coming of the Messiah at an unknown date in the far future. European Jews lived, for the most part in ghettos. They did not get a general education, and did not generally engage in practical trades that might prepare them for living in Palestine. Most of the communities founded by these early settlers met with economic disaster, or were disbanded following earthquakes, anti-Jewish riots or outbreaks of disease. The Jewish communities of Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem and Hebron were typically destroyed by natural and man-made disasters and repopulated several times, never supporting more than a few thousand persons each at their height. The Jews of Palestine, numbering about 17,000 by the mid-19th century, lived primarily on charity - Halukka donations, with only a very few engaging in crafts trade or productive work.

Proto-Zionism history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism *

Following the French Revolution and the emancipation of European Jewry however, the vague spiritual bonds of the Jews to the "Holy Land" began to express themselves in more concrete, though not always practical ways. About 1808, groups of Lithuanian Jews, followers of the Vilna Gaon (a famous rabbi and opponent of Hassidism) arrived in Palestine and purchased land to begin an agricultural settlement. In 1836, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer petitioned Anschel Rothschild to buy Palestine or at least the Temple Mount for the Jews. In 1839-1840, Sir Moses Montefiore visited Palestine and negotiated with the Khedive of Egypt to allow Jewish settlement and land purchase in Palestine. However, the negotiations led to nothing, possibly frustrated by the outbreak of an anti-Semitic blood-libel in Damascus. Thereafter, Montefiore continued with less ambitious philanthropic schemes in Palestine and in Argentina. In the 1840s,

Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer

British Zionism - The idea of a Jewish restoration also took the fancy of British intellectuals for religious and practical reasons. It had been championed by Protestants since the seventeenth century. The restoration was championed in the 1840s by Lords Shaftesbury and Palmerston, who in addition to religious motivations, thought that a Jewish colony in Palestine would help to stabilize and revive the country, Jewish national stirrings were also voiced by novelists and writers such as Lord Byron, Benjamin Disraeli, George Eliot and Walter Scott. (see also British Zionism and off-site: Christian Zionism)

Role of Sephardic Jews - Through an accident of history, European (Ashkenazy) Jews took the lead in organized Zionism for many years. However, Sephardic (Spanish) Jews and Jews in Arab lands maintained a closer practical tie with the holy land and with the Hebrew language than did Ashkenazy Jews and also influenced and participated in the the Zionist movement from its inception. Sarajevo-born Judah ben Solomon Hai Alkalai (1798-1878,) is considered one of the major precursors of modern Zionism. Alkalai believed that return to the land of lsrael was a precondition for the redemption of the Jewish people. Alkalai's ideas greatly influenced his Ashkenazy contemporary, Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Kalischer. Alkalai was also a friend of the grandfather of Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. Another Sephardi Jew, David Alkalai, a grand-nephew of Judah Alkalai, founded and led the Zionist movement in Serbia and Yugoslavia., and attended the first Zionist Congress in Basel (1897).

Rabbi Solomon Hai Alkalai

Early Zionists

The modern formulation of Zionism was at least partly divorced from religious aspirations. The 19th century enlightenment allowed the Jews to leave the ghettos of Europe for the first time. Some converted to Christianity and assimilated to surrounding society. Others, exposed to a general education, dropped their religious beliefs, but considered themselves Jews, and understood that others still considered them to be Jews. This suggested a conundrum. If one could be a non-believer and still be a Jew, then "Jew" must be more than just the name of a religion. German racists solved this conundrum by inventing a racial theory, which lacked any real scientific basis. Socialists cited the aberrant class structure of Jewish society and labeled Jews a "caste." Zionists solved the conundrum by declaring that Jews are a people, a fact implicit and explicit in the Jewish biblical and cultural concept of "am Yisrael." The Jews were a people without a country however, and would remain politically powerless as long as they did not have a national home. They would be guests everywhere and at home nowhere, according to Zionist ideology. This homelessness was the cause of the "Jewish Problem," and it could not fail to be exacerbated by the rise of nationalism and nations in the 19th century. This explained why, paradoxically, anti-Jewish sentiment might become more pronounced in "enlightened" Europe than it had been in previous centuries, when nationalism had been less pronounced.

Moses Hess, a relatively secular Jew and a socialist, was probably the first to enunciate these ideas in so many words in his book Rome and Jerusalem: The Last National Question, published in 1862, calling for a Jewish national movement similar to the Italian risorgimento nationalist movement. These and similar sentiments were adopted by numerous small groups that formed primarily in Eastern Europe, but also in Britain and in the United States.

The "first aliya" - The first groups of immigrants who came to the land of Israel (it had no official name in the Ottoman Empire) with the idea of turning the land into a national home for the Jews are known as the "first Aliya." "Aliya" literally means "going up" and it is a term Jews have used for a long time for coming to the holy land. Beginning in the 1870s, religious and nonreligious Jews established several study groups and societies for purchasing land in Palestine and settling there. In 1870 the Alliance Israelite, an ostensibly non-Zionist organization, founded the Miqveh Yisrael agricultural school near Beit Dagan.

In 1882, the BILU (an acronym for "Beyt Ya'akov Lechu Venelcha" - House of Jacob let us go) and Hibbat Tziyon (love of Zion) groups were established. They were inspired by the impetus of the wave of anti-Jewish violence that had swept Russia in 1881. Hibbat Tziyion began as a network of independent underground groups. These and similar groups established a number of early Jewish settlements including Yesod Hamaalah, Rosh Pinna, Gedera, Rishon Le Tziyon, Nes Tziyonna and Rehovot on land purchased from Arab owners with the aid of Jewish philanthropists, chiefly Lord Rothschild. Joel Solomon led a group of orthodox Jews out of Jerusalem to found Petah Tikva in 1878.

Petah Tiqva

The settlements were characteristically vineyards and orange orchards. The settlers were mostly religious Jews at least nominally, though the religious Jewish establishment frowned on Zionism. In 1882, 150 Yemenite Jews also found their way to Palestine. The first Aliya numbered about 25,000 persons, primarily from Eastern Europe. Many of them returned home defeated by disease, poverty and unemployment.

Revival of Hebrew - Among the first arrivals of the first Aliya was Eliezer ben Yehuda (Perelman). Inspired by European, particularly Bulgarian nationalism, Ben Yehuda was moved to settle in Palestine. He arrived in 1881 and undertook to revive the Hebrew language. With the help of Nissim Bechar, principal of a school operated by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Ben Yehuda began teaching Hebrew. Later he founded and published the Hatzvi newspaper, and set up a linguistic council. Ben Yehuda's work was the major force in the revival of Hebrew as a modern language.

Leon Pinsker and Hovevei Tziyon - Inspired by the anti-Semitic violence in Russia, Leon Pinsker formulated the modern idea of Zionism in a small pamphlet called Auto-Emancipation, published in 1882. Pinsker believed that anti-Semitism was inevitable as long as Jews were guests in every country and at home nowhere, and wrote that the Jews' only salvation lay in liberating themselves and settling in their own country. Pinsker favored Argentina or other countries as sites for the Jewish homeland. However, Western Jews who might have favored this idea rebuffed him. In his native Russia, however, his ideas were well received, but they were channeled to settlement in Palestine. In 1882, Pinsker was made head of the Hovevei Tzion organization, which united many small and scattered groups, primarily in Russia, into a single organization. Pinsker favored "political Zionism," that is, organization of Jews in Europe and petitioning the great powers for land on which to establish a national home. However, his efforts in this direction were rebuffed by the Russian government. Instead, he directed his energies to the gradual purchase of land and settlement of small groups in Palestine.

Early settlers faced innumerable cultural and economic difficulties. In 1800, the ravages of misadministration and war had reduced the population to about 200,000. By the 1880s, the land had recovered somewhat, but it was still poor and disease ridden. The total population was about 450,00. Jerusalem was a small town of 25,000 inhabitants, slightly more than half Jewish. The first settlement of Petah Tikva in 1878 failed and was later refounded. The Ottoman government barely tolerated the settlers, especially those who retained their foreign nationality, and occasionally the government restricted immigration. Settlers who adopted Ottoman nationality were liable for the Turkish draft. Disease, poverty and unemployment caused many to leave.

Early Jewish Settlers

Theodore Herzl and the Foundation of the Zionist Movement

The Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish officer of the French army was falsely convicted of treason in 1894, initiated waves of anti-Semitism in the French press and in the street. It cast doubt on the notion that Jews could achieve acceptance in modern liberal democracies, and made Western European Jews conscious of their national identity. In particular, it affected a young Vienna journalist, Theodor Herzl . His pamphlet Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State, was published in 1896. Herzl's plan for creating a Jewish State, arrived at after contemplating other solutions as well, provided the practical program of Zionism, and led to the first Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in August, 1897.

After the first Basle Congress, Herzl wrote in his diary, “Were I to sum up the Basle Congress in a word- which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly- it would be this: ‘At Basle, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. If not in 5 years, certainly in 50, everyone will know it.’”

Theodor Herzl

There had been lesser Zionist political gatherings with the same aims in the years just prior to the Zionist Congress, but they did not attract the attention that Herzl's congress did, and were largely forgotten. The Basle congress marked the foundation of Zionism as a world political movement.

In 1902, Herzl published a utopian novel to popularize the Jewish state, Altneuland, (old-new land) a vision complete with monorails and modern industry. The novel concludes, "If you will, it is no legend."

Herzl thought that diplomatic activity would be the main method for getting the Jewish homeland. He called for the organized transfer of Jewish communities to the new state. Of the location of the state, Herzl said, "We shall take what is given us, and what is selected by public opinion."

Herzl attempted to gain a charter from the Sultan of Turkey for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, then ruled by the Ottoman Empire. To this end he met in 1898 with the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, in Istanbul and Palestine, as well as the Sultan, but these meetings did not bear fruit.

Herzl negotiated with the British regarding the possibility of settling the Jews on the island of Cyprus, the Sinai Peninsula, the El Arish region and Uganda. After the Kishinev pogroms, Herzl visited Russia in July 1903. He tried to persuade the Russian government to help the Zionists transfer Jews from Russia to Palestine. At the Sixth Zionist Congress Herzl proposed settlement in Uganda, on offer from the British, as a temporary "night refuge." The idea met with sharp opposition, especially from the same Russian Jews that Herzl had thought to help. Though the congress passed the plan as a gesture of esteem for Herzl, it was not pursued seriously, and the initiative died after the plan was withdrawn. In his quest for a political solution, Herzl met with the king of Italy, who was encouraging, and with the Pope, who expressed opposition. A small group, the Jewish Territorial Organization ("Territorial Zionists") led by Israel Zangwill, split with the Zionist movement in 1905, and attempted to establish a Jewish homeland wherever possible. The organization was dissolved in 1925.

The insistence of Eastern European Jews on Palestine as the Jewish homeland, coupled with the failure of alternatives, maintained the focus of the Zionist movement on Palestine.

The Second Aliyah and Socialist Zionism ry zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism *

The "political Zionism" approach originally tried by Montefiore, Pinsker and Herzl, which attempted to obtain a Jewish homeland from colonial powers, failed to attain results at least initially. Meanwhile, however, practical settlement efforts gradually increased the Jewish population of Palestine from about 25,000 in 1882 to approximately 85,000 to 100,000 just prior to World War I.

A fresh wave of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia provided the impetus for a second wave of immigration, beginning about 1904 and called the Second Aliyah. At the same time, the rise socialist - Zionist stirrings had inspired several socialist Zionist movements. Thousands of new immigrants dedicated to the conquest of labor ethic and socialist ideals arrived in Palestine. Their Zionism was typified by the thinking of men like Ber Borochov andA.D. Gordon,. Hapoel Hatzair, ("The young worker") was founded by A.D. Gordon, Poalei Tziyon ("workers of Zion") , and later Hashomer Hatzair ("the young guard) were inspired by Ber Borochov. Borochov, an ideologue of the Poalei Tziyon movement, did not cite anti-Semitism as the basis or motivation of Zionism. According to him, the Diaspora produced aberrant social conditions that made Jews economically inferior and politically helpless. The normal organization of society was a pyramid, according to Borochov, with a large body of workers and smaller groups of intelligentsia, land owners and capitalists. The Diaspora had created an 'inverted pyramid' in Jewish society, with no Jewish peasant or worker class. Self-liberation of the Jews would come about by proletarianization of the Jews in their homeland, and the nascent Jewish proletariat would join the socialist international. Similarly, A.D. Gordon, inspired by 19th century romanticism, called for a Jewish return to the soil and virtually made a religion of work. These ideas fused into the ideals of "productivization" (returning the Jews, who engaged mostly in professional and mercantile trades, to productive labor) and "conquest of labor" ( Kibbush Haavoda). "Conquest of labor" later took on additional meanings. (See also Labor Zionism and Socialist Zionism )

Labor Zionism - Detail of photo showing delegates to the fourth meeting of the Hapoel Hatzair, about 1909. Click here for full photo and more about Labor Zionism and socialist Zionism.

The new immigrants arrived with the ideals of socialist Zionism, but reality was not favorable to implementing those ideas. The Zionist movement attempted to find them work. but the new immigrants , who had no training in agriculture and poor physical stamina, were unable to compete with Arab peasants. Arabs certainly would not hire Jewish workers, who could not work well and could not speak Arabic. Arab labor was also preferred by the plantation and vineyard owners of the first Aliya. Arabs were experienced and hard workers, and were able to work for much lower wages because they were often members of an extended family that made its main income from sharecropping. The plantation owners had also developed a superior colonialist mentality which suited the hiring of "natives," and clashed with the egalitarian ideas and social demands of the newly arrived socialists.

The socialist Zionist movements tried to force plantation owners to grant higher wages, and also began to insist that plantation owners hire only Jewish workers. This aspect of "conquest of labor" was controversial within the socialist-Zionist movements because it engendered lack of solidarity with the Arab working class and was discriminatory. One labor Zionist leader wrote:

"How can Jews, who demand emancipation in Russia, rob rights and act selfishly toward other workers upon coming to Eretz Israel? If it is possible for many a people to hide fairness and justice behind cannon smoke, how and behind what shall we hide fairness and justice? We should absolutely not deceive ourselves with terrible visions. We shall never possess cannons, even if the goyim shall bear arms against one another for ever. Therefore, we cannot but settle in our land fairly and justly, to live and let live. "
(Meir Dizengoff (writing as "Dromi") "The Workers Question," Hatzvi, September 21, 22, 1909)

At the same time, Conquest of Labor was a central part of Labor Zionist ideology, as a means of rebuilding the Jewish people, not a discriminatory ideology. A.D. Gordon wrote:

But labour is the only force which binds man to the soil… it is the basic energy for the creation of national culture. This is what we do not have, but we are not aware of missing it. We are a people without a country, without a national living language, without a national culture. We seem to think that if we have no labour it does not matter - let Ivan, John or Mustafa do the work, while we busy ourselves with producing a culture, with creating national values and with enthroning absolute justice in the world.

(A.D. Gordon, "Our Tasks Ahead" 1920)

The boycott of Arab labor, only partly successful, was carried out reluctantly as a matter of necessity, and because the establishment of Jews as a class of colonial plantation owners seemed worse than the alternative. The discriminatory program of "conquest of labor" also provoked bitterness among some Arabs, particularly watchmen who lost their jobs to Jews. In the main however, the "conquest of labor" movement was initially unsuccessful, nor could it have much real influence on the economic prospects of Arabs. Only a few thousand Jewish workers were involved. Gershon Shafir (Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914, University of California Press, 1996) estimates that about 10,000 such workers passed through Palestine in the second Aliya, many leaving in discouragement. Other sources claim there were about 3,000 workers out of approximately 33,000 who came to Palestine in the second Aliya. Because of the wage differential and because of the expertise of Arab workers, Arab labor continued to find employment in Jewish settlements. It was only with the massive Jewish immigration of the 1930s, coupled with Arab unrest and sabotage attempts, that Jewish workers began to replace Arab workers in most of the Jewish economy. Of course, few Jews worked in the Arab economy.

The kibbutz collective settlements were started as a practical method of settling Jewish laborers on the land and overcoming the preferences of plantation owners for Arab labor. A small group of Jewish immigrants was settled in an economic cooperative in Sejera, later founding Kibbutz Degania in 1909. The arrangement, originally thought to be temporary, proved to be practical, as well as suited to the socialist ideals of the new settlers and the practical requirements of Zionism. It soon inspired several other kibbutzim (collective farms). The kibbutz movement was to become the backbone of Labor Zionism in Palestine, and eventually provided political and military leadership. Kibbutzim provided ideal places for hiding arms from the British and recruiting and training troops, as well as for organizing local defense and guarding borders.

The Zionist movement did not give up efforts to find a political solution. The political Zionism and practical settlement approaches were merged into "Synthetic Zionism" advocated by Chaim Weizmann . The efforts ultimately bore fruit in the Balfour Declaration, a promise by Britain to further efforts for a Jewish national home in Palestine. and in the League of Nations Mandate,which give international sanction to the Jewish national home. Weizmann became head of the Zionist organization and later was the first President of Israel.

Chaim Weizman

Zionism and the Arabs

When Zionism had its first beginnings, in the early 19th century, there were about 200,000 Arabs living between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean in the approximate area that later became "Palestine," mostly concentrated in the countryside of the West Bank and Galilee, and mostly lacking in national sentiment. Palestine was, in Western eyes, a country without a nation, as Lord Shaftesbury wrote. Early proto-Zionists did not trouble themselves at all about the existing inhabitants. Many were heavy influenced by utopianism. In the best 19th century tradition, they were creating a Jewish utopia, where an ancient people would be revived. They envisioned a land without strife, where all national and economic problems would be solved by good will, enlightened and progressive policies and technological know-how. Herzl's Altneuland was in in fact just such a utopia. In the novel, Herzl envisioned a modern pluralistic society, in which Jews and Arabs had equal rights. A demagogic politician who wanted to form a narrow hyper-nationalist Jewish state, was defeated in elections.

In reality, Jewish population grew, but Arab population grew more rapidly. By 1914, there were over 500,000 Arabs in Palestine, but only about 80,000 to 100,000 Jews. Arab opposition to Jewish settlement grew as Arabs perceived that the Zionist goal was more than just a myth, and as they increasingly identified Zionism with British interests in the Middle East.

At the same time, early Zionist pronouncements and outlook were often frankly colonialist, especially when addressing leaders of foreign powers. The plantations sponsored by Baron Rothschild were modeled on plantation settlement in Algeria and other colonies. Colonialism was fashionable and "progressive," and some early Zionist leaders saw nothing wrong in assimilating this idea to Zionism along with other modern ideas such as socialism, utopianism and nationalism.

Later Zionists were heavily influenced by socialism and embarrassed at the colonialist aspects of the Zionist project. They were also aware, of course, that Palestine was already occupied by Arabs. Many however, including the young David Ben-Gurion, who headed the Executive committee of the Zionist Yishuv (Jewish community) in Palestine and was later the first Prime Minister of Israel, initially thought that the Arabs could only benefit from Jewish immigration and would welcome it. Others, such as Eliezer ben Yehuda, frankly envisioned removal of the Arabs from Palestine.

One of the earliest warnings about the Arab problem came from the Zionist writer Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginsberg), who wrote in his 1891 essay "Truth from Eretz Israel" that in Palestine "it is hard to find tillable land that is not already tilled", and moreover:

From abroad we are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all desert savages, like donkeys, who neither see nor understand what goes on around them. But this is a big mistake... The Arabs, and especially those in the cities, understand our deeds and our desires in Eretz Israel, but they keep quiet and pretend not to understand, since they do not see our present activities as a threat to their future... However, if the time comes when the life of our people in Eretz Israel develops to the point of encroaching upon the native population, they will not easily yield their place.

Ahad Ha'am, believed that the Jews would need to first build a strong Jewish culture abroad, and that this culture and awareness would then make the dream of a Jewish homeland possible. The Jewish community in Palestine, he felt should be a cultural center for Jews of the Diaspora, that would catalyze this revolution in Jewish life and eventually bring about mass Jewish support for the Zionist project. Contrary to the impression that some modern interpretations give, Ahad Ha'am was not anti-Zionist and was not an opponent of the formation of a Jewish national home. In fact, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Zionism. Hed wrote an article eulogizing Leon Pinsker in glowing terms and he emigrated to Palestine and lived in Tel Aviv.

Arab opposition to Zionism grew after 1900. The birth of Arab nationalism and Arab political aspirations in the Ottoman empire coincided with the arrival of fairly sizeable number of Zionists with the announced program of settling the land and turning it into a Jewish national home. In his book, Reveil de la Nation Arab in 1905, Najib Azouri stated that the Jews want to establish a state stretching from Mt Hermon to the Arabian Desert and the Suez Canal. Azoury wrote:

Two important phenomena of the same nature but opposed, are emerging... They are the awakening of the Arab nation and the latent effort of the Jews to reconstitute on a very large scale the ancient kingdom of Israel. These movements are destined to fight each other continually until one of them wins.

(Mandel, Neville, The Arabs and Palestine, UCLA, 1976)

Rashid Khalidi (Palestinian Identity, Columbia, 1997) notes that beginning about 1908 Palestinian newspapers offered extensive evidence of anti-Zionist agitation. Actual conflicts flared up because the Zionists purchased large tracts from landowners and subsequently evicted the tenant farmers. The former tenants, though they had received some compensation, continued to insist that the land was theirs under time honored traditions and tried to take it back by force. A notable case was Al-Fula, where Zionists had purchased a large tract of land from the Sursuq family of Beirut. Local officials took the side of the Arab peasants against the Zionists and against the Ottoman government, which upheld the legality of the sale. 150 Palestinian notables cabled the Ottoman government to protest land sales to Jews in March 1911. Azmi Bey, Turkish governor of Jerusalem responded:

We are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites; we value the economic superiority of the Jews. But no nation, no government, could open its arms to groups... aiming to take Palestine from us.

(Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, Knopf 1999 Page 62)

Likewise, the "conquest of labor" movement displaced some Arab watchmen and led to violence. While the actual number of persons displaced or dispossessed may have been small, and may have been offset by real economic benefits and increased employment provided by Zionist investment, the feeling grew among the Arabs that the Zionists had arrived to dispossess them. A Nazareth group complained that the Zionists were "a cause of great political and economic injury... The Zionists nourish the intention of expropriating our properties. For us these intentions are a question of life and death." (Morris, loc cit.) As the conflict intensified, the Zionists formed a guard association, Hashomer, to guard the settlements in place of Arab guards. The attempts to retake land and disputes with Jewish guards led to increased violence beginning in the second half of 1911. ry zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism *

Following World War I, Palestine came under British rule. Even before they had conquered Palestine from the Ottoman Turkish Empire, owing to the efforts of Zionists, the British government declared its intentions, in the Balfour declaration, of sponsoring a "national home" for the Jews in Palestine. Britain was given a League of Nations Mandate to develop Palestine as a Jewish National home. The Arabs of Palestine were appalled at the prospect of living in a country dominated by a Jewish majority and feared that they would be dispossessed. Anti-Jewish rioting and violence broke out in 1920 and 1921. By this time, Zionist leaders could no longer ignore the conflict with the Arabs. By 1919, representatives of the Jaffa Muslim-Christian council were saying

"We will push the Zionists into the sea or they will push us into the desert"

(Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, Knopf 1999 Page 91)

Arab opposition to Zionism was not based only on economic and social issues. It was colored by the traditional Muslim vision of the Jews as second class citizens. By the 1920s, it was also motivated by a strong admixture of Western anti-Semitism. In 1920, Musa Kazim El Husseini, deposed as Mayor of Jerusalem because of his part in riots earlier that year, told Winston Churchill:

The Jews have been amongst the most active advocates of destruction in many lands... It is well known that the disintegration of Russia was wholly or in great part brought about by the Jews, and a large proportion of the defeat of Germany and Austria must also be put at their door.

(Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, Knopf 1999 Page 99)

It is not clear how Churchill received this amazing and unwitting testimonial to the aid proffered to his country's war effort by the Jews, or what Husseini thought to accomplish by it. Aref Dajani had earlier voiced similar sentiments to the King- Crane Commission

It is impossible for us to make an understanding with them or or even to live with them... Their history and all their past proves that it is impossible to live with them. In all the countries where they are at present they are not wanted... because they always arrive to suck the blood of everybody...

(Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, Knopf 1999 Page 91)

While Palestinian Arabs viewed themselves as a small group of helpless victims of powerful British and Jewish "interests," the Zionists saw the opposite side of the coin. The militant Zionist leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, asked in 1918:

The matter is not ... an issue between the Jewish people and the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, but between the Jewish people and the Arab people. The latter, numbering 25 million, has [territory equivalent to] half of Europe, while the Jewish people, numbering ten million and wandering the earth, hasn't got a stone...Will the Arab people stand opposed? Will it resist? [Will it insist] that...they...shall have it [all] for ever and ever, while he who has nothing shall forever have nothing?

(Caplan, Neil, Palestine Jewry and the Palestine Question, 1917-1925, Frank Cass, 1978)

Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky

Soon after World War I, Zionist leaders clearly recognized the problem. David Ben Gurion told members of the Va'ad Yishuv (the temporary governing body of the Jewish community in Palestine) in June 1919:

But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf; and nothing can bridge it.... I do not know what Arab will agree that Palestine should belong to the Jews...We. as a nation,. want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.

(Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, Knopf 1999 Page 91)

In 1923, in his Iron Wall article, Jabotinsky replied to his own question. He asserted that agreement with the Arabs was impossible, because they:

...look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile.

Jabotinsky, was initially against expulsion of the Arabs, which he was "prepared to swear, for us and our descendants, that we will never [do]". Rather in The Iron Wall, he claimed that the Jewish presence should be imposed by a strong defense that would show the Arabs that the Jews could not be forced out of Palestine. However, while The Iron Wall expressed a comprehensive philosophy, its practical background and intent were much more limited. Jabotinsky wanted the British authorities to allow the Jews to form a separate defensive force under British supervision, to combat attacks such as the riots that had occurred in 1920 and 1921. The British refused, and the Zionist organization resigned themselves to the British decision, but Jabotinsky wanted to continue with the formation of such a force. Though the Haganah defensive underground was founded in 1920 by Jabotinsky, it didn't become a major project of the Zionist movement until after the riots of 1929. These riots, and not any intrinsic aspect of Zionist ideology, were the real trigger for the birth of militant Zionism as a political force, as well as the progressively more important role played by self-defense and military prowess in Zionist thought, action and society.

Meanwhile the Arab and Jewish communities grew progressively apart. Arabs refused to participate in a Palestinian local government which gave equal representation to the Jewish minority. The British, nearly bankrupt after WW I, insisted that the mandate should be self-sufficient. Mandate services were paid for from taxes paid by the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Palestine. Additional services were funded by philanthropists from abroad and from membership dues in various organizations. Zionist philanthropy and organization far-outstripped what Palestinian Arabs could provide. Neither Arabs nor Jews wanted integrated schools. Zionist groups funded religious, secular and labor-Zionist educational networks for Jewish children in Hebrew, but few comparable schools were set up for Arabs. The Zionists founded the Histadruth Labor federation to encompass Jewish workers, providing Hebrew education, medical care, worker-owned enterprises and cultural facilities as well as representation of labor rights. No comparable association was created by the more numerous Arabs of Palestine, though the Histadruth made some efforts to organize Arab labor beginning in 1927, and the Palestine Communist party attempted to represent both Jewish and Arab labor.

As the conflict unfolded, attitudes hardened on both sides. Some Zionist factions called for expulsion or "transfer" of Arabs "voluntarily" or otherwise. Beginning with the Husseini clan led by Hajj Amin El Husseini, the Grand Mufti, different factions of Palestinian Arabs, successively allied themselves with Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and, after WW II with communist countries. Arab rhetoric became increasingly colored by European anti-Semitism, and adopted many of the claims and ideas of Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy as well as the anti-Zionist ideology of radical Jewish intellectuals.

The conflict was intensified and complicated by the 1948 war. About 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled during the war, and Israel did not allow them to return. Many Palestinian refugees were settled in camps under miserable conditions, where they have remained for several generations. The Israeli point of view had in mind the recent convulsions of World War II, and the exchange of populations that occurred when India and Pakistan were created. Most Israelis believed the Palestinians became refugees through their own fault. Their exile was the result of the war which the Palestinians themselves had started by rejection of the UN partition plan, just as, for example, the Germans of Sudetensland, who helped instigate the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, were eventually banished as the result of their own mischief. For the Arabs of Palestine, their Nakba, or catastrophe, vindicated their fears that the Zionists were bent on dispossessing them.

Zionism and the Conflict With Britain

The British government increasingly understood that its promises to the Zionists and Mandate obligations were very unpopular in the Arab world. They split off a large part of the Palestine Mandate territory to form Transjordan and issued the Passfield White Paper that proposed limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Passfield White Paper was quietly withdrawn under pressure from Zionists, from British public opinion and from the League of Nations. However, the British eventually did impose a limit on immigration. These policies turned the once-friendly British into antagonists of the Zionist movement. Labor Zionists and the Zionist Executive were in favor of moderate policies that would try to work around the British opposition to Zionism. A faction led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky believed in confronting the British and the Arabs, and if necessary, using force. In 1923, Jabotinsky split from the main Zionist movement and formed the Revisionist movement. In 1925, an Arab Revolt (The Great Uprising) broke out in Palestine, triggered by rising Jewish immigration and systematic agitation by extremists. In 1937, the British proposed tentatively to partition Palestine in the Peel report. This caused additional divisions in the Zionist movement. Some believed in a bi-national Jewish Arab state and objected to the idea, contained in the Peel recommendations, of transferring Arabs "voluntarily" out of the territory to be allotted to the Jewish state. The revisionists and religious Zionists, on the other hand, objected to giving up any part of the territory of Palestine. Subsequently the British issued the White Paper of 1939, severely limiting Jewish immigration. The Arab revolt and the reaction to it crystallized the Zionist ethos of self-defense and emphasis on military service. The Revisionists formed the Irgun underground army, which attacked British soldiers and administrators and perpetrated terror attacks against Arabs in retaliation for Arab attacks on Jews. Atrocities committed by the Arabs, as well as counter-terror by Jewish groups, inculcated in both Jews and Arabs the idea that any means at all may be used against the enemy, even though the Hagannah officially maintained a military ethic of "purity of arms" - forbidding needless violence. The Arab revolt and the Peel report also legitimized, to some extent, the idea of "transfer," and solidified and entrenched the idea that conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine was inevitable.

The Zionists, attempting to rescue Jews from the Nazis, organized illegal immigration. The Revisionist Zionist movement began to organize immigration, both legal (with certificates) and illegal, in 1937, from Austria, and later from the free city of Danzig. At least 20,000 Jews were saved in this way. The Jewish agency opposed illegal immigration until the promulgation of the British White Paper of 1939, which stopped Jewish immigration. Thereafter, they founded and supported the Mossad l'aliya Bet ("B immigration institution") to bring immigrants from abroad. This operated between 1939 and 1942, when a tightened British blockade and stricter controls in occupied Europe made it impractical, and again between 1945 and 1948. Rickety boats full of refugees tried to reach Palestine. Additionally, there were private initiatives, an initiative by the Nazis to deport Jews and an initiative by the US to save European Jews. Many of the ships sank or were caught by the British or the Nazis and turned back, or shipped to Mauritius or other destinations for internment. The Patria (also called "Patra") contained immigrants offloaded from three other ships, for transshipment to the island of Mauritius. To prevent transshipment, the Haganah placed a small explosive charge on the ship on November 25, 1940. They thought the charge would damage the engines. Instead, the ship sank, and over 250 lives were lost. A few weeks later, the SS Bulgaria docked in Haifa with 350 Jewish refugees and was ordered to return to Bulgaria. The Bulgaria capsized in the Turkish straits, killing 280. The Struma, a vessel that had left Constanta in Rumania with about 769 refugees, got to Istanbul on December 16, 1941. There, it was forced to undergo repairs of its engine and leaking hull. The Turks would not grant the refugees sanctuary. The British would not approve transshipment to Mauritius or entry to Palestine. On February 24, 1942, the Turks ordered the Struma out of the harbor. It sank with the loss of 428 men, 269 women and 70 children. Apparently, it had been torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, either because it was mistaken for a Nazi ship, or more likely, because the Soviets had agreed to collaborate with the British in barring Jewish immigration. Illegal immigration continued until late in the war, apparently without the participation of the Mossad l'aliya Bet. The illegal immigrant Mefkure, organized with the help of the United States government, was sunk by a Soviet submarine in 1944. Despite the many setbacks, tens of thousands of Jews were saved by the illegal immigration.

To circumvent British regulations against creating new settlements, the Zionists initiated the "stockade and tower" ("homa umigdal") program, that allowed overnight creation of a new "settlement," consisting of a wall and watch tower. Under the law, the British could not destroy such an 'established' settlement.

Reports of Nazi atrocities became increasingly frequent and vivid. Despite the desperate need to find a haven for refugees, the doors of Palestine remained shut to Jewish immigration. The Zionist leadership met in the Biltmore Hotel in New York City in 1942 and declared that it supported the establishment of Palestine as a "Jewish Commonwealth." This was not simply a return to the Balfour declaration repudiated by the British White Paper, but rather a restatement of Zionist aims that went beyond the Balfour declaration, and a determination that the British were in principle, an enemy to be fought, rather than an ally. This was a defeat for the left-wing party of the Labor Zionists, Mapam, who wanted a bi-national Zionist state, and for Chaim Weizmann, who opposed confrontation with the British and favored partition. The Revisionists rejoined the Zionist movement, but were still called "dissidents" and did not merge their underground armies, the Irgun and the Lehi (also called the "Stern Gang") into the Hagannah defense organization of the mainstream Zionists.

On November 6, 1944, members of the Lehi underground Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo. Moyne, a known anti-Zionist, was in charge of carrying out the terms of the 1939 White Paper. The assassination turned Winston Churchill against the Zionists. The Jewish Agency and Zionist Executive believed that British and world reaction to the assassination of Lord Moyne could jeopardize cooperation after the war, that had been hinted at by the British, and might endanger the Jewish Yishuv if they came to be perceived as enemies of Britain and the allies. Therefore they embarked on a campaign against the Lehi and Irgun, known in Hebrew as the "Sezon" ("Season"). Members of the underground were to be ostracized. Leaders were caught by the Hagannah, interrogated and sometimes tortured, and about a thousand persons were turned over to the British.

Following World War II, Britain continued to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Zionist factions united and conducted an underground war against the British, as well as applying pressure on the British government through the United States. In June of 1947, the British rammed the Jewish illegal immigrant ship Exodus (formerly "President Warfield") on the high seas. They towed it to Haifa where it was the subject of extensive publicity, generating public sympathy for the Zionist cause. The passengers were eventually disembarked in Hamburg. The incident set world, and particularly US, opinion against the British, and caused the British to intern illegal immigrants thereafter in Cyprus, rather than attempting to return them to Europe. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Arabs did not accept the partition plan, and a war broke out. The state of Israel was established on May 14, 1948. The civil war that took place beginning on December 1, 1947, between Arab and Jewish Palestinians, and the subsequent invasion of the state of Israel by Arab States on May 15 1948, shaped the ideological development of Zionism, and the conflict and propaganda surrounding the Arab invasion of Israel and subsequent refusal to recognize the state, as well the Arab Palestinian refugee that was created, shaped the perception of Zionism in the Arab world and in the West. (See 1948 Israel War of Independence (1948 Arab-Israeli war) Timeline (Chronology) and Israel War of Independence)

Click this link for information about President Harry S. Truman and US Support for Creation of Israel

	Labor Zionism vs Revisionism - After independence, the Labor Zionist movement became, for many years, the leading political force in Israel. Mapai (Miflegeth Poalei Eretz Yisrael - the party of the workers of the land of Israel) party led by David Ben-Gurion and his successors held power continuously until 1977. The Zionist movement had split when Jabotinsky led the revisionists out of the Zionist organization in the 1930s. The Zionist executive was led by Labor Zionism under David Ben-Gurion. Revisionists and Labor Zionists had separate underground armies. Revisionists and Labor Zionists cooperated against British after World War II. However, the "Sezon" in 1944-45, the massacre perpetrated at Deir Yassin by the Revisionists in April 1948, and the subsequent sinking of the "Altalena" Irgun arms ship by the Israeli government, as well as numerous smaller incidents, helped to deepen the split between mainstream Labor Zionism and Revisionist Zionism. Begin, the leader of the Revisionist Zionists, was distrusted by Ben-Gurion and viewed a dangerous extremist. It was not until the 6-day war in 1967 in 1967 that revisionists were allowed to participate in a government coalition.
David Ben-Gurion

Anti-Zionism ry zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism * history zionism *

Anti-Zionism is often defined as "opposition to the existence of Israel," but that definition is a historical distortion and probably detracts from understanding the nature of anti-Zionism and its diverse ideological roots. It is true that anti-Zionists are necessarily opposed to the existence of a Jewish state, but it is not the essence of their ideology. Anti-Zionism existed long before there was a Jewish state and long before the Zionist movement formally adopted the goal of founding an independent Jewish state in 1942. Anti-Zionists were and are opposed to Zionism for a variety of reasons. Assimilationist Jews denied that there is a "Jewish people." Marxists admitted that there is a separate Jewish group, but believed that it is undesirable to perpetuate its existence (see Marxist anti-Semitism The Jewish Bund and Anti-Zionism ).

. Marx's views of Judaism are more or less indistinguishable from those of anti-Semites. In "A World Without Jews," Marx wrote,

The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.

The Jew is perpetually created by civil society from its own entrails.

The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of of the merchant, of the man of money in general.

Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself, which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish religion

We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development -- to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed.

Ultra-orthodox Jews are anti-Zionist because, while they recognize the existence of the Jewish people, they believe that redemption of the Jews must come through the agency of the Messiah rather than through any actions of the Jews, and that certainly it cannot come about through the agency of a non-religious political organization such as Zionism. (See Jews Against Zionism - the Neturei Karta Jewish anti-Zionism Anti-Zionism of Orthodox and establishment Judaism

Arab nationalists are anti-Zionists because Zionism conflicted with their nationalism, though Feisal himself envisaged cooperation with the Zionists.

Zionism was popular among Jewish people as a movement they might support with money or at political meetings. However, few, especially in Western countries, thought of coming to Palestine or Israel until the latter decades of the twentieth century, except when in danger of persecution. Palestine was too far, economically backward and dangerous to draw many immigrants. Nonetheless, non-Zionist groups like Alliance Israelite Universelle and many others helped Zionist efforts in Palestine and joined the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

Jews who sought to assimilate in their own countries claimed that they were loyal citizens of a different faith, sometimes styling themselves "of the Mosaic persuasion" as did early reform Jews (see Reform Jewish anti-Zionism )They felt that the Zionist movement and the concept of a "Jewish People" would raise questions about their own loyalty, and they resented the fact that Zionists often spoke as though they represented all Jews. This movement was particularly prevalent in Germany, where Jews were staunch supporters of German nationalism. Valuable insight into the prevailing ideologies of the time can be gained from Amos Elon's book, "The Pity of it All" (Henry Holt, 2002) which chronicles the tragic history of German Jewry. At one point, the reform Jewish movement went so far as to systematically remove all references to the Holy Land and Jerusalem from their liturgy. A large segment of ultraorthodox Jews were displeased by the secular ideas that dominated Zionism, and insisted that the rebuilding of Israel must await the coming of the messiah. In Europe, the agitation of assimilationist and ultraorthodox Jews helped to actively block Zionist rescue efforts in the 1930s, when it began to be apparent that Nazism would soon make Europe very dangerous for Jews. Jewish communists were and are opposed to Zionism because Marxism posited the disappearance of the Jews as a historic anomaly, once international atheistic communism triumphed over nationalist particularism, and religion, the opium of the people, died out. In the USSR, as part of his "nationalities" policy, which assimilated or murdered numerous national groups, Stalin tried to handle the Jewish problem by creating an autonomous Jewish republic in the wastelands of Birobidjan. This project was never supported very seriously and was later abandoned. Though the USSR supported the creation of the state of Israel, Stalin was opposed to Zionism inside Russia and the USSR suppressed Zionist activities and at times persecuted Jews as well as Zionists.

Most religious Jews and the reform movement, initially anti-Zionist, reconciled themselves with Jewish state, after the Holocaust seemed to bear out the basic thesis that Jews required a homeland of their own and would not necessarily be safe even in the best circumstances, and after creation of Israel proved that Zionist aspirations could become a reality. Success has many fathers. Nonetheless, anti-Zionist ideologies and their representatives persist among religious groups such as the ultraorthodox

Neturei Karta and writers such as Noam Chomsky.

This ideological opposition to Zionism later dovetailed with the anti-Israel cold-war politics of the Soviet Union and the Arab antagonism to Israel, as well as with anti-Semitism. Retrospectively, communist ideologues pegged Zionism as a colonialist ideology bent on exploiting and dispossessing the native inhabitants of Palestine, and creating an apartheid colonialist fascist Jewish state. In 1975, a pro-Soviet and pro-Arab majority in the UN passed General Assembly Resolution 3397 , branding Zionism as racism. The resolution was repealed in 1991, but similar sentiments were repeated at a conference of non-government organizations in Durban, South Africa in 2001. The rationale for this idea is that Zionism is a colonialist movement that assumes that the racial superiority of the Jews gives them the right to dispossess the Arabs of Palestine. However, Zionist ideology is not based on racial notions and didn't assume superiority of the Jews. Zionist theorists assumed that the Jews are socially inferior and "abnormal" because they did not have a national home. The "abnormal" Diaspora character of Jews would be corrected when the people returned to their own land, realized their right to self-determination and renewed their nation existence. Zionists believe that the Jewish right to the land is based on ancient historical links, not racial superiority. Some Zionists see the Arabs as usurpers, just as the Arabs see the Zionists as usurpers. As the conflict between Arab and Jew escalated, some Zionists favored voluntary or not so voluntary transfer to remove the Arabs, and others seem to have thought the Arabs could be wished away. However, Zionism as an ideology did not posit dispossession of the Arabs.

It is undeniable that early Zionist leaders used the language and rhetoric of colonialism and established organizations with names like "The Jewish Colonial Trust." In part, this reflects the influence of the 19th century European cultural milieu, when colonialism was a perfectly acceptable concept. In part, it reflects efforts of Zionist leaders to sell leaders of the great powers on the idea of supporting a Jewish colonization scheme that would support German or British or French interests in the Middle East. The Socialist-Zionist movement certainly did not see themselves as colonialists and were opposed to colonialism and imperialism, nor did the USSR originally oppose Zionism on the basis that it is a colonialist movement.

Anti-Semitic writers identify Zionism with the spurious program enunciated in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a nineteenth century forgery of the Russian secret police, and insist that Zionists are intent on taking over the world.. A related notion, perhaps inspired by the writings of Najib Azouri, is that Zionism insists on expanding the Jewish state to the borders promised in the Old Testament - the Nile and Tigris Euphrates rivers. Though there are at present some religious and nationalist extremists in Israel who want such borders, Zionism never had any such program. Early Zionists did not always envision a national home in the Middle East, and "Palestine" did not exist as a political entity before 1922. The map of Zionist borders presented by Zionists to the Paris conference in 1919 was somewhat larger than modern Israel. It covered parts of what are now Jordan and Lebanon and Syria, ending just west of the Damascus-Hejaz railway. However, this optimistic (from the Zionist point of view) proposal was a bargaining position, had little to do with biblical promises, and did not reflect any deep seated ideology.

Zionism After the Establishment of the State of Israel

The Zionist organization has continued to function after the establishment of the Jewish state. It has helped to bring millions of new immigrants to Israel, encourages the teaching of Hebrew and Jewish culture abroad, lobbies for Israel with the US and other governments, and rallies support to Israel in times of crisis. However, in Israel, "Zionism" became somewhat of a pejorative, associated with government propaganda, super-patriotism and regimentation. The Labor Zionist movement, that had founded the state, eventually found itself in a minority, replaced in large part by more militant religious Zionists and the Likud party, which inherited the mantle of revisionism, carried on by a Begin after the death of Ze'ev Jabotinsky.

Zionism and the 6-day War- The 6-day war, which resulted in a dramatic victory for Israel, had a profound affect on the attitude of Jews in Israel and abroad to Zionism and Israel. The war and lightning victory taught many Arabs that Israel was here to stay, and in fact, it did the same for Jews. In Israel, it lifted the populace out of the doldrums of economic stagnation and frustration, and gave them renewed faith in the Zionist idea and the state. Abroad, the war had a more profound effect. The United States and Canada held the largest concentration of Jews outside the USSR. The vast majority of American Jews had looked upon Israel benignly and condescendingly as a refuge for persecuted Jews, and as a charitable cause that they would support with the same feelings of superiority that they supported their less fortunate relatives in Europe. Among secular American Jews, Zionism was regarded as the aberration of misfits and dreamers, somewhat as it had been at the beginning of the twentieth century. The state of Israel, had after-all been founded and Zionism had therefore "accomplished its purpose," they felt. They had seen the penniless immigrants, the wretched of the earth, arriving in the displaced-persons refuge called Israel with their pitiful bundles and strange clothing, coming off the gangplanks of ships in Haifa on newsreels. This was all very well for those poor unfortunates, who needed a place to live, but surely, it could have nothing to do with them or their lives, living in the United States or Canada and building their futures there. As an ideology, Zionism threatened their own sense of identity as Americans perhaps, or even worse, threatened to take their sons and daughters to a far-away land.

The ultra-orthodox Hassidic Jews were opposed to the Zionist state, or at best neutral. The focus of religious Zionism was the dovish Mizrachi movement, whose representatives in the Israeli government, the National Religious Party (NRP) had opposed the war.All this changed rapidly in June of 1967. Israel became a source of pride for most Jews. They all wanted to be partners in this successful enterprise and to claim pride of ownership. Socialists came to volunteer in kibbutzim. Capitalists brought investment capital. Willing donors were found for the beautification and revitalization of Jerusalem. The NRP began to mobilize to settle and retain the conquered territories. Ultra-orthodox rabbis who did not recognize the Zionist state, nonetheless issued injunctions against returning any part of the "liberated" "holy land."

Zionism and Occupation - For many people in Israel and abroad, "Zionism" came to imply support for the settlement of Jews in the territories occupied by Israel in the 6-day war. It assumed a very negative connotation for those who oppose the occupation. The word "Zionism" in the sense of support for settlers is used both by right wing Zionist extremists, and by anti-Zionists. Right wing Zionist extremists insist that withdrawal from the occupied territories will mean the "end of Zionism." Anti-Zionists insist that "expansionism" is part of Zionist ideology. Historically, this view does not seem to have ideological support, since "Greater Israel" was the ideology of the breakaway religious movement created after 1967, and was never the ideology of mainstream Zionism except perhaps for a few decades following the Six Day war. Messianism was part of proto-Zionism, but the Zionist movement was pragmatic in all that it said and did. Expansionism became popular as a result of historical accidents, and not because of ideology. The territory that might be allotted to the Jewish state shrank during the British mandate, creating a sort of irredentism. Rather than being friendly neighbors, it became apparent that the Arab countries would be hostile, generating a desire for "strategic depth" to protect against invasion. It was easy for Israeli governments to say they would return territories for peace, and at the same continue to build Greater Israel, since peace or anything approaching it appeared to be a remote abstraction.

A part of the religious Zionist movement grafted itself on to the temporary realities created after the 6 day war, and evolved a radical messianic ideology. They insisted that they, and only they, represent the "real" Zionism. A quiet coup had transformed Zionism. Unfortunately, a considerable part of the world took them at their word. The image of Zionism in the world was transformed from that of a progressive movement of liberation to a movement of fanatics who wanted to create a religious state and disenfranchise a native population.

Disillusionment and Zionist Counter-Revolution

- However, the dream of Greater Israel collided with hard realities. If the conquered territories were kept, the Arabs of Palestine would soon be a majority between the river and the sea, making a democratic Jewish state impossible. Tens of thousands of IDF soldiers were needed to guard 8,000 settlers against Palestinian terrorism in Gaza. Israelis were confronted with images of Zionist soldiers destroying houses, uprooting trees and killing children as "collateral damage." This was not the Zionism of the school books. Messianism and wishful thinking aside, the state created by flesh and blood was faced with the facts of Palestinian demography, military necessity, humanitarian values and international commitments.

The resolution of this conflict within Zionism is unfolding before our eyes. It has created an earthquake in Israeli politics, splitting the ruling Likud party, and it has generated a counter-revolution in Zionism that is overthrowing the coup of the Greater Israel supporters. Israel withdrew from Gaza, but Zionism did not end. IDF and Israel police used force to destroy an illegal outpost, but Zionism survived that too. The changes do not come without a price. A residue of the religious Zionist movement have become embittered anti-Zionists who fight against the state. The transformation is not yet complete. (see commentaries: The real self-hating Jews: the paradoxical tragedy of extremists and Avram Burg on the future of Religious Zionism )

Post-Zionism - Beginning in the 1980s, some Israeli historians and sociologists began to question facts about the official history of Israel and Zionism, as well as the Zionist ideology. They reasoned that Zionism had accomplished its purpose in creating the Jewish state, and that now it was time to move on. They posited that Israel and the Zionists had a large share of the blame for the animosity between Jews and Arabs, and had in fact, ignored the existence of the Arabs in Palestine and then dispossessed the Palestinians by force. This reasoning was supported by new histories, that talked frankly about less savory aspects of Israeli history that had been previously ignored. The new historians made a case that at least part of Zionism had always envisioned expulsion or transfer of the Arabs, and described massacres and expulsions which took place in 1948, often claiming that these were part of a deliberate policy. The historians claimed that these new facts were revealed by declassified archives. In fact, the most important facts supposedly "revealed" by the new historians were known to all Israelis who wanted to know them, though perhaps not in detail, and not presented in the particular way that new historians presented them. Facts can be interpreted in different ways. The ideas behind the facts, called by some "post-Zionism," do not necessarily form a coherent ideology and their practitioners do not generally see themselves as members of a movement or followers of a distinct philosophy. Some "post-Zionists" like Ilan Pappe are indistinguishable from anti-Zionists, while others, like Benny Morris, use the same facts to arrive at very different conclusions that might support a militant Zionist ideology. Post-Zionism attained a wide popularity for a while, but fell into eclipse after peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israel failed and violence flared up in September of 2000.

See here for details about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and History of Israel and Palestine.

Ami Isseroff

Some Related Materials at MidEastWeb

Labor Zionism and Socialist Zionism

Brief History of Israel and Palestine - Overview of Zionism and details of Israeli-Palestinian history.

British Zionism - British movement to restore the Jewish People to their Homeland

Jew, Zionism and Talmud

Population of Palestine before 1948

President Harry S. Truman and US Support for Creation of Israel

The Growth of Palestinian Identity

Biography - Shimon Peres
Biography - Yitzhak Rabin
Biography - Ariel Sharon

Books about Zionism

1942: The Biltmore Program - The 1939 British White Paper had closed Palestine to Jewish immigration, trapping millions of Jews in Nazi occupied Europe. Zionist leaders met in the Biltmore Hotel in New York, and declared their support for a Jewish Commonwealth and renewed immigration, in open defiance of the British mandatory authorities.

1923: Vladimir Jabotinsky: The Iron Wall - This essay was published by the head of the Zionist Revisionist movement, Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky in 1923. In reaction to riots that had occurred in 1920 and 1921. It called for an independent, legal Jewish defense force, a Jewish Legion in Palestine, which Jabotinsky referred to as an "Iron Wall."

1922: The British Mandate for Palestine - The League of Nations Mandate giving Great Britain control of Palestine for the purpose of making a Jewish national home there.

1919: Statement of the Zionist Organization to the Paris Peace Conference - The Zionist organization presented this statement at the Paris peace conference, outlining the Zionist position regarding Palestine, and supporting the British proposal for a mandate that would create a Jewish national home, in line with the Balfour Declaration . The statement provides a great deal of background regarding the position of various Zionist groups and foreign governments, and gives proposed borders for the Palestine mandate as well as proposals for organization of the Palestine government.

1917: Balfour Declaration - The "letter" from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, declaring that the British government "view with favor" the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. This was to be the basis of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, granted to Great Britain.

1897: Program of the First Zionist Congress - Theodore Herzl organized the first Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland in 1897. Prior to the Congress, Zionist activities had been initiated by several different groups such as Hovevei Zion (lovers of Zion) with no central direction or political program. The Basle Congress was the foundation of a mass Zionist movement.

1897: Max Nordau - Opening Address at the first Zionist congress.

1896: The Jewish State, by Theodore Herzl - This book became, essentially, the program of the Zionist movement and the embodiment of its common ideology. Complete downloadable source, with a historical preface.

1882: Auto-Emancipation by Leon Pinsker - This early Zionist pamphlet was written by Leon Pinsker after violent pogroms in Russia.

1799 - Napoleon's Proclamation of a Jewish State - In this stillborn proclamation, Napoleon offered the Jews a state in Palestine under French protection. This was the first of many such nineteenth century projects for restoration of the Jews in Palestine.

Additional documents about Israel, Zionism, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are here

External Zionism Links

Please note that we are NOT responsible for content of external links.

Additional source documents about Zionism

Maps of Israel at Zionism & Israel

Christian Zionism at Zionism & Israel

Encyclopedic Dictionary of Zionism, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict at Zionism and Israel Information Center No Frames version of Zionism and Israel Dictionary

Photo Gallery of Zionism and Israel

Article: Zionism and its Impact at Zionism & Israel

Zionist and Israeli Biography

Definitions of Zionism at Zionism & Israel

Timeline of Zionism and the Creation of Israel

Palestine-Israel Procon - Balanced examination of Middle East Issues

Zionism and Israel on the Web - Zionist presentation of Issues, advocacy and history

Zionism and Israel Pages

Wikipedia article about Zionism - A comprehensive and fairly balanced article including the history of Zionism as well as links to specific topics and articles about anti-Zionism.

Zionism - Definition, History Policies

Zionism - Table of contents at the Jewish Virtual Library

The US Library of Congress has a comprehensive and balanced set of articles about Zionism

Zionist Precursors - US Library of Congress

Political Zionism - US Library of Congress

Cultural Zionism - US Library of Congress

Labor Zionism - US Library of Congress

Revisionist Zionism - US Library of Congress

Centenary of Zionism - Detailed History and biographies at the Israel Ministry of Information.

What is Zionism?

Chaim Herzog's Address regarding the Zionism is Racism resolution

Copyright

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Jarusslem

2009-01-06T03:36:00.001-08:00

Jerusalem: The Palestinian Side

Peter Mann

This is an experiment. I am a Jew. I am taking the position of a Palestinian in order to better understand that position. I have studied the issue of Jerusalem, and the possibility of returning at least a part of it to the Palestinians to be used a a capital of the Palestinian state, i.e.; Palestine. Probably the best description of this kind of exercise is a role-reversal. I do not claim perfection in my understanding through this process, so please bear with me. If I am not completely reflective of reality, this is not my fault. I am only trying to gain greater empathy, and to pass this on.

I was born in Jerusalem. My family has lived in Jerusalem since before the Crusades. Our family is very close, and we have always tried to keep together. Some of us fled. In 1967, my uncle and aunt went to the U.S. I write to them sometimes and we talk about things. Recently we talked about the possibility of Jerusalem becoming at least in part, part of the new Palestine. My uncle was cynical about the thing, saying that the Israelis consider the whole of Jerusalem to be holy, from the pebbles in the street to the molecules of oxygen. I feel like much of the negotiation is going nowhere, that past agreements are always being abrogated and we get less and less. We talked about Jerusalem and what it means emotionally to him. He remembers the beauty of the Dome as a shining symbol of the holiness of the place. He told me the story of the night journey, of how Mohammed ascended on his horse beyond the earthly sphere into the heavens and what this means to Moslems everywhere. It is the first Qibla, the direction one posits oneself before praying. It is not a good thing that this holy site be in the territory of those not of Islam. It must come back to the land of the believers and those believers are of Allah. We do not invest out time trying to wrench the wailing wall from the Israelis and hope that they respect us to the degree that access shall be made to connect this very holy site to the new Palestinian capitol. My uncle says this will happen when the Jordan runs backwards. I mentioned the Rock and my uncle told me that some Israelis diminish its importance and see it as totemistic stone worship. That would put us back before Islam when we believed in many Gods. It is an insult to infer paganism. The Rock has traditional importance as the place of Ibrahim's sacrifice. I would think there would be some respect in that regards to that. We have always helped to maintain and improve the ancient holy places of the city. For that alone, we deserve something of it. We talked about the land Israel has returned to us, about how it is only a percentage of what was discussed in negotiation. How does one compensate the losses suffered in 1948 and 1967? The land is gone now. People are displaced, refugees, or worse. To truly compensate for the loss of east Jerusalem to so many, something of east Jerusalem needs to be returned to the Palestinians. My uncle scoffed and said that you would think that displaced people might understand that when displaced people displace people there are just a different group of displaced people in the end. He says he dreams at night of the shouk and can still smell the fruit and the coffee smells in his mind. He has a hard time believing that other nations in the area will take Palestine with any kind of seriousness unless they have a capitol in Jerusalem. Not only will they have returned an important holy place to the Islamic world, but they will themselves be able to manage the visitation and gain importance in the eyes of the many pilgrims from all over the world who will come to worship. It is for legitimacy's sake that we need to administer the government from a new east Jerusalem. I told my uncle that although this agreement may go through in September, there have been other agreements made and broken throughout history. Jerusalem was not always in our hands. He said, "what makes one people's history less important than another's? How do you measure that over centuries and in this case, millennia. Who owned the place originally? The Jebusi, the Jebusites. Where are they now? Someone probably owned it before them. It is a fact that I lived there, in the city, some forty odd years ago. If there are people alive to remember what was, then it is the present." The Israelis want peace. Peace is negotiable through the trading of land. When land is traded, the details, social, religious, historical, cultural, economic, all get dissected and reviewed. Every little detail has got to be examined before anything happens. I am beginning to think that my uncle is right. It will happen when the Jordan runs backwards.

Jerusalem: The Zionist Side

Anita Abu-Daya

Of all the "final status issues" that have to be resolved to get peace in the Middle East, the fate of Jerusalem is deemed to be the most difficult. This might seem quite strange since unlike the question of borders, territory or water rights the possession of Jerusalem does not confer a material advantage on the Palestinians. A viable Palestinian state is quite possible even if its capital is not Jerusalem. It is the symbolism of the city and the holy sites in it therefore that make it so important.

For the Jewish people Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish nation before the diaspora. For the next 2000 years it was mentioned in Jewish prayers, as a place where the Jews wanted to return to, wherever Jews found themselves to be, from Morocco to Russia. The old city which lies in East Jerusalem and which is claimed by the Palestinians for their Capital contains the wailing wall and temple mount, the holiest sites in Judaism. Is it that strange that now that the Jews have finally returned to Jerusalem, giving it up seems unthinkable?

It has been suggested by certain Israelis and certain Palestinians that it is not necessary to divide Jerusalem, that the whole city could function as a capital for both states. Although this is a beautiful idea in theory, in practice it would simply not work. The outcome of the final status talks should be two states, Israel and Palestine with clearly defined borders, separate governments, laws, custom duties etc. Such states cannot share a city in common. The movement of people from Jerusalem to the rest of Israel would necessitate border controls at the border of Jerusalem. Every nation must have free movement of people between its capital and the rest of the country. Therefore the idea of a shared capital is simply impossible in practice.

When East Jerusalem was controlled by the Jordanians Jewish people had no access to their holy sites. The Palestinian community contains many factions of religious fanatics such as Hamas who don't accept the peace process and will probably persist in their belief that "Israel must be thrown into the sea" no matter what. The Palestinian authority is on the whole a secular government but the "fringe groups" have a large influence on Arafat et al. It is very easy for them to whip up the Palestinians into a frenzy of anti-Jewish protests (as happened a few years ago when the Netanyahu government tried to open a tunnel for tourists). Hence even if the Palestinian authority were to promise and swear that they would not block access to our holiest sites, it would not be an easy promise to keep and things would probably be back to the pre 1967 nightmare. Of-course, we Israelis also have our religious fanatics, including a group that believes we should demolish the Al-Aqsa mosque and build the third temple. However their influence on the government and the population of Israel is negligible. Therefore under Israeli control all 3 major faiths (including Israel's Arab population) would have access to their holy sites.

The Palestinians often quote UN resolutions to prove that they should have control of East Jerusalem. This is somewhat disingenuous. The reason we have been at war for the past half century is that the Arab people refused to accept the division of Palestine that was voted upon by the UN. One can't pick the UN resolutions that one thinks are "fair" and insist that these are the ones that have to be implemented. Due to their stance in 1948 the Palestinians lost everything. Now they stand at the threshold of regaining the West Bank, statehood and final self-determination. It would be a tragedy if they let that opportunity pass by because of their insistence that Israel must give up Jerusalem.

This article gives a view of the future of Jerusalem, seen through the eyes of a native

A Geologist Looks at the Stones of Jerusalem

Arie S. Issar
Jerusalem & BeerSheva Israel

(a version of this article originally appeared in American Scientist)

"A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing" (Eccl. 3:5)

During the late sixties I was exploring for ground-water in the semi-arid Nordeste of Brazil. Once while traveling to the drilling site, the driver of my jeep, asked me where I come from. As I had learned already that the name "Israel" may mean nothing to many of the people in that remote part of that big country, I told him that I was born and I live in Jerusalem. He stopped the car, looked at me and said: "No, Senior, you must forgive me, but you are either joking or God forbid lying, we were told in our church that Jerusalem is in Heaven." Fortunately I had my passport with me, in which it is stated that I was born in Jerusalem on the 13th of July 1928.My driver studied the written document, shook his head a few times, and went on driving, still shaking his head and murmuring to himself from time to time. I gathered that this poor fellow was going through a process of changing his whole attitude towards my city of birth.

Recently I found that there is no need to travel to the remote Nordeste corner of Brazil in order to shock people by telling them that Jerusalem can be regarded in an altogether new and different way. I published in the Israeli daily newspaper "Haaretz," suggesting that the old city of Jerusalem, instead of being a place of clash between religions and their faithful, should become a center for study of international law and thus of international peace. Of course, the sites considered holy for the different religions would remain as they have been. However, there are enough places inside the walls, which can be purchased and turned into a university and into law institutes, where students from all over the world can come and study international law, and in due course deal with lawsuits between nations. People whom I knew as far from intemperate reacted to my suggestion disapprovingly, saying that Jerusalem is regarded too holy for each of the people of the three religions to cause anyone to agree to such an idea. I did not get any reaction from religious and nationalist extremists. I suppose they regarded my suggestion to be too ridiculous to be worth consideration and reaction.

I asked myself how come I, born and raised in Jerusalem in an orthodox-tolerant Jewish family, was ready to consider a new scenario, in which the Old City turns into an international city. rather than fight for fulfilling the ancient dream of my ancestors to rebuild this part of Jerusalem as the national and religious center of the Jews of all over the world. During my youth I had prayed, as have all orthodox Jews for two millennia, that Jerusalem and its Temple should be rebuilt, that all the Jews will return to their land and that the ancient rites of sacrifice should be restored. Moreover, spending my youth in this city I have some special memories of its past interconnected with its present. I remember that my friend and I, when preparing for our high-school final exams, chose a shady place on the flat roof of the three story building where I lived with my parents, overlooking the hills of Jerusalem. For Bible and history exams we were often able to look around and see the very places which were mentioned in the various books from the time of the Judges to the kings of Judea to that of the Romans. As a young man, during the time of British Mandate over Palestine, I served in the Hagana, the underground army of the Jewish community in Palestine. My squad was in charge of security in the area around the Wailing Wall. On the night before the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD, we were put on special duty, as thousands of people flocked to the very narrow alley that was available at that time for worship by the Jews at the foot of the Wailing Wall. Many of the people sat down on the floor, lighting candles, crying and chanting from the Book of Lamentations.

I think my attitude toward the Old City changed partly because the Jewish people did gain their independence, and Jerusalem became a flourishing capital of the State of Israel. Secondly, I think that my attitude towards rocks and stones in general and those of Jerusalem in particular changed completely because I became a geologist. I know this with certitude because I remember the way I looked at the massive stones of the colossal Wailing Wall, towering above the narrow alley, just a few days after the Six Day War. We had then come back to the Old City after being away from it for twenty years, while it was under Jordanian rule. When I stood in the front of the wall I found myself asking from which of the geological strata these stones had been quarried out. I also looked at the rock above which was erected the dome of the Mosque of Omar. I could see that it is of Turonian i.e. Upper Cretaceous age. This very rock played a special role in Jewish tradition. One can write a whole book on the legends, traditions and myths attributed to this rock.

Thus to look at a stone and remain totally in the past, or to ask what the past of this stone can tell us with regard to the future, makes the stupendous difference between my way of looking at the stones of Jerusalem and that of a religious person. Yet, I will not pretend to be aloof from the feelings which man has to his homeland and to its stones. Thus with all the members of my reserve army unit, I was elated to tears on the day of the Six Day War, when we stood near our guns, on the mountain north of Jerusalem, and heard on the radio the announcement of the commander of the paratroopers: "The Mount of the Temple is in our hands."

So I must confess that though I am a geologist, I feel a special sentiment to the stones of Jerusalem, and after many years of travel and visiting many other cities, I still admire the view of the city of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, in the early and late hours of the day, when the oblique rays of the sun emphasize the golden reddish color of the stones of this city. However, at the same time, as a scientist, I know how dangerous maintaining ancient attitudes can be, especially when it comes to the adoration of ancient stones. In fact the holiness attributed to the stones of Jerusalem caused this city to witness so much bloodshed, cruelty and atrocities since it became a city. At the same time it inspired most futuristic prophecies of human and international justice. Today Jerusalem is again in the center of a political and religious controversy. Once again one hears many words about the holiness of the stones of this city. One can guess that in the future, as in ancient times of cult, these words about holy stones, will cause more bloodshed which will make these stones even more holy to many people. During years of living in Jerusalem, one learns to distinguish between the various ways in which the masons in the different periods of its long history used to dress the stones to put in their buildings. Thus, one can see that many stones were reused each time the city was conquered, destroyed and rebuilt.

Naturally, one would like the city of his birth to survive and escape the fate of war and destruction, and this brings me back to the stones of Jerusalem and to its new future, namely to use these stones in order to build a Center for International Law, Justice and Peace in the Old City. I cannot claim to be the first to raise this idea. The prophets Isaiah, Hosea and Micha prophesied that Jerusalem would one day become a center for judgment among the nations, and justice among the people, making them beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.

As a scientist, I regard prophecies as foresight and intuition. The intuition of these clairvoyant people, acclaimed as prophets, concluded that the existence of a nation depends on peaceful coexistence with other nations, and that this is better ensured when the rule of justice dominates the world rather than the rule of the sword. It takes more than stones to build a Palace of Peace or a Center of International Law and Justice. Yet stones become what they are according to the beliefs and ideas of the men who use and acclaim them. If enough people come to believe that the stones of the Old City of Jerusalem can be turned into buildings that accommodate the Center of International Law, Justice and Peace, this belief may overwhelm those who maintain that the stones of Jerusalem are holy only to them. The sad question now is, how much more blood will be spilled over the stones of Jerusalem before more people decide that this city of peace should be a cornerstone of peace on earth, and not in heaven?

Prof. em. A. S. Issar J. Blaustein Institute for Desert Research Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boker Campus 84990 ISRAEL

HAMAS

2009-01-06T03:35:00.001-08:00

troduction

Hamas means zeal. It is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawima al-Islamiyya, Islamic Resistance Movement/ It was created as the armed wing of the religious revivalist Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimin) in Gaza, in 1987 or 1988. The Hamas Charter is virulently anti-Semitic and uncompromising in its goal of riding Palestine of the Jews.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1946 in Gaza. The Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood was a quiescent force whose main goal was a reorientation of Palestinian society to religion. The Brotherhood had relatitvely little to do with the fight against Israel or later in opposition to the occupation, though individual members were active in arms smuggling during the Israeli War of Independence. However, one group initiated by former members of the brotherhood, Hizb ut Tahrir, formed in the West Bank, later evolved into an international Islamist organization.

After 1967, the main front organization of the brotherhood was Ahmad Yassin 's Mujama‘ (established 1973), a welfare charity (clinics, kindergartens, education), that was encouraged by Israeli civilian administration in Gaza to apply for registered charity status in 1978 and was indirectly funded by Israel as a means of dividing Palestinian society. It collected funds from from local zakat collections, Gulf Islamic organizations (often via Jordan), and expatriate Palestinians. Due to its identification of secular forces in Palestinian society as the main opponent, there was considerable tension with PLO, which climaxed in January 1980 when Islamist activists attacked Red Crescent Society offices and attempted to march on the home of its Director, Haydar ‘Abd al-Shafi. Its main base was the Islamic University of Gaza, founded after Sadat closed Egyptian universities to Gazans due to Palestinian protest at Camp David. Sheikh Awwad's preexisting religious college, the only higher education institution in Gaza, was transformed into a University, ,However, with tensions over IUG's basic policy, Mujama‘ encouraged Israeli authorities to dismiss their opponents in the committee in February of 1981, resulting in subsequent Islamisation of IUG policy and staff including the obligation on women to wear the hijab and thobe and separate entrances for men and women), and enforced by violence and ostracization of dissenters. Tacit complicity from both university and Israeli authorities allowed Mujama‘ to keep a weapons cache to use against secularists. By the mid 1980s, it was was the largest university in occupied territories with 4,500 students, and student elections were won handily by Mujama‘.

Outside the university, Mujama had only limited support. This included support in early 1980s from medical and engineering associations and some support from UNRWA teachers. Throughout the 1980s, it increasingly used violence against institutions such as cinemas, places selling or serving alcohol, casinos, which it deemed un-Islamic. Its increasingly overt political aspirations, especially in Khan Yunis under ‘Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, eventually led to conflict with Israel. In 1984 13 members including Yassin were arrested by Israel and an arms cache seized, and leadership was passed to Rantisi and Dr Ibrahim Yazuri. There were also splits from the Brotherhood by those who advocated Islamic liberation of Palestine, especially Islamic Jihad in 80-90s. By 1985, Gazan membership of Mujama‘ was about 2,000, largely employed in religious, community service and trading sectors; leadership was largely born around 1948 and grew up as refugees in Gaza, with professional education often in Egypt.

Hamas was formed about February 1988 to allow participation of the brotherhood in the first Intifada. The founding leaders of Hamas were: Ahmad Yassin, ‘Abd al-Fattah Dukhan, Muhammed Shama’, Ibrahim al-Yazuri, Issa al-Najjar, Salah Shehadeh (from Bayt Hanun) and ‘Abd al-Aziz Rantisi. Dr. Mahmud Zahar is also usually listed as one of the original leader. Other leaders include: Sheikh Khalil Qawqa, Isa al-Ashar, Musa Abu Marzuq, Ibrahim Ghusha, Khalid Mish’al.

The August 1988 Charter declared that all Palestine is Islamic trust land, can never be surrendered to non-Muslims and is an integral part of Muslim world. It cites the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as legitimate documents, declares that negotiations and international conferences are a waste of time, and blames 'Zionists' for the French and Russian revolutions.

Hamas was created as three separate wings. The political wing, staffed by Yassin's closest allies (Shanab, Yazuri, Rantisi, Zahhar) produced leaflets, raised funds especially in Gulf, recruited members and coopted mosques. The intelligence apparatus, known as al-Majd (glory), under Yihyah Sanwar and Ruhi Mushtaha, was created for internal policing, especially of Gaza (eg killing collaborators). It later merged with the military wing, ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, which began as the smallest wing. Hamas operated through a cell system, and was therefore hard for Israeli agents to penetrated. Israel barely interfered with its activities initially, continuing to see it as a social reformist organization and thus promoting it as a viable partner in discussions in order to marginalize the PLO, resulting in frequent meetings between Hamas figures (including Yassin) and Israeli government officials such as a reported Zahar-Rabin meeting. This tacit cooperation ended with the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers Sasportas and Sa'don. Hamas was banned and Ahmed Yassin and others were arrested.

Military actions, though originally declared incompatible with religion, were seen as part of the Brotherhood’s increasing reconciliation with nationalism and drew support from refugees, white collar workers and professionals. The Hamas agreed to abide by decisions of the PNC in 1989, but called for elections to it (1991). By 1990-1, they were cooperating with PFLP in opposition to Fatah policies.

Unlike Arafat, Hamas did not support Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Instead they called for both Iraqi and US withdrawal. Consequently, Gulf States shifted their funding from PLO to Hamas, and may have donated as much as $28m per month (from Saudi Arabia primarily). Hamas thus took PLO's welfare role away from it, generating considerable public support due to their greater efficiency. There were armed confrontations with Fatah, and some conciliatory meetings, calling for unity, especially with December 1992 expulsions of Hamas leaders by Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin. The January 1993 meeting in Khartum resulted in increased coordination, pledges of mutual nonviolence, and PLO pledging delay in returning to talks with Israel until the deported activists were returned. Also, after the" al-Aqsa massacre" in October 1990, Hamas turned its primary opposition to Israel; it declared every Israeli soldier and settler a legitimate target. In fact, it had already been kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers.

Hamas shunned the Oslo peace process and joined the wider rejectionist alliance which managed to gain considerable support (over 20% of Palestinians support Hamas and Islamic Jihad despite PNA pressure). The first Hamas suicide bombing in opposition to the Oslo accords was conducted in 1993.

The Palestine Authority (PA) tried to use foreign donor funds to replace Hamas welfare services, but it did not move vigorously to suppress the Hamas after signing the Oslo accords and renouncing terror. In 1994, after protest against the PA, there were shootings in Gaza by PA police and Arafat coopted the leadership in Gaza, which subsequently opted for non-military measures. This caused a split in Hamas leadership throughout the occupied territories. At the same time, Abu Marzuq, head of Hamas political leadership in Jordan, gave de facto acceptance of Israel within 1948 borders, by declaring that a hudna (truce) would be in place if Israel withdrew from the occupied territories, signifying supposedly a recognition of the legitimacy of Israel within the Green Line. This was also reiterated by Sheikh Yassin in a Spring 94 letter in which he offered a ceasefire (hudna) if Israeli forces withdraw from occupied territories, settlements were dismantled and prisoners were released. and by Rantissi. In 1996 after a series of suicide bombings in Israel, and coincident with the signing of the Oslo II accord, Muhamed Dahlan supposedly ensured the thorough dismantling of Hamas infrastructure in Gaza, including charities and welfare agencies, but in fact, Hamas remained in place.

The confrontation with the PA became most explicit while the Hamas leadership (Rantisi, Yassin, Abu Marzuq) were in jail, but all were subsequently released. Yassin was released in 1997 after a failed Israeli attempt on the life of Khaled Mashaal in Jordan. A new modus vivendi was achieved that allowed Hamas to operate as long as they didn't oppose the Palestinian Authority. Thus, they could not attack the Oslo accords directly and reprisals against PA repression were taken against Israel. Hamas presents itself as an alternative to the PA internationally, through diplomacy. Despite its role in establishing the Damascus 10 refusal front grouping, Hamas participates in the National and Islamic Front that was initiated by Marwan Barghouti.

There are several divisions and potentials for splits within the Hamas. The political and military wings had become semi-independent before Oslo to protect the political decision-makers. Arafat used this fissure in mid 95, holding dialogue with the political wing and seeking its participation in the political process, while combating the ‘Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades. This resulted in minor Hamas participation in elections, while the military wing were exploding buses in Israel 2 months later. The Diaspora leadership is much more strongly opposed to the Oslo process than those in the occupied territories, backing the military wing especially when PA-Israel deals were thought to be forthcoming. There was dissension in the political wing on participation in elections. This was never settled, with Hamas candidates running in election without formal party approval. Within the military wing, the newly created ‘Cells of the Martyr the Engineer Yahya Ayyash' were more hard line than Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades. Additionally, the Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank, which centers around the Hebron area and Bir Zeit University, could split from the Ikhwan-dominated Gaza group, which is apparently more militant.

During the second Intifada, Hamas became active both politically and militarily. It joined with the Fatah Al-Aqsa brigades in several suicide attacks, and also began plotting to usurp leadership of the Palestine Authority from the PLO. Popularity soared as polls showed combined Hamas/Islamic Jihad support exceeding 30 percent. Hamas was blacklisted as a terrorist group by the United Sates and eventually by the EU as well, and Saudi Arabia began withholding support from Hamas. Shi'ite Iran apparently had become the financial mainstay of the Hamas, which also received moral support from the Iranian supported Hizbollah. Egyptian sponsored talks during the tenure of PNA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas failed to produce agreement on a cease-fire with Israel, but the PLO nevertheless failed to move against Hamas, and announced that it would not do so.

Hamas popularity increased after Israel assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin March 22, 2004. Abdel Azziz Rantissi was chosen to succeed him. Hamas and PLO/PNA began intensive negotiations to allow Hamas to join the Palestine Authority government and also to rejoin the PLO. At the same time Hamas was marginalized in the Arab world, and reportedly lost all Saudi funding, including the residual funding that was supposedly used for charities. This support has apparently been replaced by massive funding from Iran. Rantissi was assassinated on April 17, 2004. Mahmoud Zahar was reportedly chosen to replace him, but the appointment was not announced.

In March of 2005, following the election of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu-Mazen) to succeed Yasser Arafat as President of the Palestine Nation Authority as well as chairman of the PLO, Palestinian groups met in a conference in Cairo. The conference decided on a Tahadiyeh - "lull" in the fighting with Israel. At the same time, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced that they would be joining the PLO. The Hamas also decided to participate for the first time in Palestine Legislative Council elections. However, in January of 2006, candidates representing the Hamas swept to victory in Palestinian elections, overcoming the traditional leadership of the Fateh and PLO. Polls showed that most Palestinians want the Hamas to negotiate with Israel and give up its non-recognition of the Jewish state, but Hamas leaders were at least initially adamant in their refusal to recognize Israel.

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