Next, I'd like to address specifically one perceived shortcoming, or in Fauwaz's estimation, the lack of "even a pretended depth", contained in "Blindfolding reason to the Palestinian conflict". I concede that certain parts of the article, for example, on the massacre of the Qurayzah Jews, were short on details and substance.

I will venture three excuses, 1) I had not expected the luxury of a three-parter space in malaysiakini like Fauwaz has been given, 2) from the outset, AB Sulaiman and I had made it clear that we could hardly be expected to unravel the Gordion knot of the tangled conflict which would have required of us a thesis and therefore reserved our comments to how the Cronesian media had portrayed it, and 3) religion being the extremely sensitive subject in Cronesia that it is, I fear to be roasted at Kamunting, what with Hishammuddin and his ilk's repeated threats against anyone "playing with fire" by engaging in Islamic polemics.

Presecution in Christian Europe

Nonetheless, I will attempt to shed light on a point of rhetoric raised by Fauwaz. He writes: "The occasional conflicts between Jewish and Muslim communities do not represent the centuries in which ordinary citizens of each group co-existed and culturally benefited from each other. Otherwise, one would not be able to understand why Jewish communities fought alongside the Muslims against the onslaught of the Catholic kings of Spain in the latter's conquest of Spain."

It is undeniable that historically the Jews have co-existed far better with Muslims when viewed against their relationship with the Europeans. In the case of Spain, the first known persecution of Jews was by the Visigoth (5th-8th century) when the status of Jews was reduced to that of slaves. When Muslims from North Africa conquered Spain, Jews were granted freedom under Muslim rule.

The position of Jews in the Arab world during the Middle Ages tended to be somewhat better too than in Christian Europe (e.g. in 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella's Edict of Expulsion caused an exodus of approximately 50,000 Jews from Spain). So perhaps in siding with the Arabs, the Jews thought they were casting their lot with the lesser evil?

On the beheading of 700 Jewish men in April 627 (which Fauwaz greets with incredulity) and the selling of the Qurayzah women and children as slaves, Fauwaz has bestowed upon the co-authors an "implicit assertion that the incident set the tone for the subsequent history of strained, when not violent, relations between Jews and Muslims (which) is not only a misrepresentation, but a projection of Europe's historical persecution of Jewish communities grafted onto Muslim history".

I'd like to explicitly state that we had made neither "implicit" assertions nor "projections" of the sort as alleged by Fauwaz. The incident of the Qurayzah (the last of the Jewish communities in Medina to be subjugated by Muhammad's forces) was cited to illustrate one of the earliest reprisals against Jews by Muslims in the context of 'treachery' to the nascent faith, as expounded by Ustaz in religious class.

Here is Karen Armstrong's (winner of the Muslim Public Affairs Council Media Award) take on the incident: "The massacre of Qurayzah was a horrible incident, but it would be a mistake to judge it by the standards of our own time. This was a very primitive society: the Muslims themselves had just narrowly escaped extermination, and had Muhammad simply exiled Qurayzah they would have swelled the Jewish opposition in Khaybar (Khaibar) and brought another war upon the ummah. In seventh century Arabia, an Arab chief was not expected to show mercy to traitors like Qurayzah."

The Quranic reference is in Surah 33:26-27. "And those of the people of the Book who aided them - Allah did take them down from their strongholds and cast terror into their hearts, (so that) some ye slew and, some ye made captives."

Slavery was extant in Arabia during the Prophet's time and continued for many hundreds of years after with the Arabs engaging in the slave trade (the Middle Passage) of Africans. So I don't find the Qurayzah incident quite as implausible as Fauwaz does.

Diaspora of 'dhimmi'

"The banishment of the Jewish tribes of Banu Nadhir and Banu Qinaqa' from Medina had accentuated the animosity of the Jews towards the Muslims. These tribes had settled down at Khaibar at a distance of about 80 miles from Medina. 'Khaibar' means 'fortified place'. It was a Jewish stronghold comprised of seven fortresses: Naaim, Qamus (on a hill of the same name), Katiba, Shiqu, Natat, Watih and Sulalim." (source: al-islam.org, Digital Islamic Library Project)

With their defeat in Khaibar, the Jews were required to pay the Muslims half the produce of their lands. The Prophet maintained the right to turn them out of their lands whenever he so decided. The battle of Khaibar is important as it put an end to the Jewish resistance and, for the first time, a non-Muslim people were made dhimmi .

"Muhammad then sent an expedition with Ali ibn Abi Talib to a Jewish tribe living in Fadak. Without any battle, they agreed to the same terms as the people of Khaibar had. The income from Khaibar was for all Muslims in general, whereas the income from Fadak was exclusively for the Prophet because it was taken without any use of force." (al-islam.org)

The expulsion of the Jews from Hejaz by the caliph Omar (641) a few years after Muhammad's death marked the virtual end of Jewish presence in the region.

But why were the Jews so actively disliked even during the Prophet's lifetime? Alfred Guillaume (Islamic scholar and once Professor of Arabic at the University of London) suggests that their economic supremacy was a "standing irritant" with the Arabs.

What are possible reasons for continued Arab-Muslim hostility towards Israeli Jews in the present day? One theory is that Islamic tradition forbids Jews or Christians from being considered equal to Muslims, so that the kafir must accept the status of dhimmi if they wish to live alongside Muslims in Islamic countries.

As for the Israeli Jews, their parochialism may possibly be traced to surviving the Holocaust and pogroms in Europe. They may fear a return to being second-class citizens never accepted in lands they were born in. Therefore full and equal citizenship in a hardwon 'recovered' homeland, albeit one under neverending siege, is still better than settling for a Diaspora of dhimmi .

Turn back the clock?

My last point of contention with Fauwaz is over what he terms 'Biblical claims'. He writes: "Making way for the claims all over the world for descendants of ancient empires to reassert their 'ownership' over distant lands is a recipe for disaster in the case of the Palestine." Yes, I agree.

In the same vein, I'd also opine that refusal to recognise a resident body of people who have, for over half a century, worked on arid land to make it arable is equally untenable. It's tantamount to saying all the later hardworking immigrants have no place in Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the USA. Would the countries' oldest inhabitants the Aborigines, Maoris, Inuits, native Americans, have the new(er)comers deported? Yet in the case of Israel, there is still a residual number of Arabs who hope to see the dissolution of Israel and the dispersion of Israeli Jews.

This latent Arab hostility may explain the Jewish belligerancy. After their defining experience of Hitler's Final Solution, surely the Israelis Jews probably the most attacked and vilified people in the latter half of the 20th century will understandably not accede to concessions that could jeopardise the security of their borders, because "at stake is the very existence of the state of Israel."

My purpose when I co-wrote the opinion piece in April had not been to throw my support in the Israeli ring, and indeed why should I? Nor had I intended to cast any aspersions on the Palestinian cause where it is just, which indeed we did not.

All the article had asked was for the public to be aware that the Cronesian media does not adopt a balanced approach to the conflict but only systematically demonised Jews.

I'd like to observe that however persuasively the supporters of Palestine put forth their cause, it does not detract from what I am recommending, which is to try and rid ourselves of our pre-conditioned bias, prejudice and the mistaken assumption that the Cronesian media presents all the facts fairly, fully and with unimpeachable integrity.

Yet there are those who seem to believe that the more stridently and combatively they put forward the merits of their side, the more they will be able to shout down or muffle the opposing side, as if downplaying or suppressing other viewpoints would enhance their own credibility. What is wrong with a story being told from different angles (remember the Japanese classic film Rashomon )?

On the one hand, we have the situation described by Mahathir (the old man is not retiring from the public arena, is he?) who last week exhorted local news providers not to trust the accuracy of the foreign press (speaking from his own experience of "reports on Malaysia to be far from accurate and the country portrayed in a bad light", The Star, June 9, 2004).

On the other, we have the local media who further filter, truncate and selectively present the content of these wire stories. Or the local newspapers who gush (check out the Media Monitor's Diary in the Aliran website on local media coverage of Pak Lah's recent visit to a San Francisco bio-tech exhibition) through their Cronesian tunnel vision lens when reporting from abroad. By that reckoning, the end product for the media consumer at home must be something lacking in breadth and depth.

With Mahathir, Najib, Hishammuddin and like-minded folks setting the parameters, all of us would only be getting our mediated news exclusively from the state apparat fourth estate and never questioning the official line and government propaganda. How Cronesianly enlightened we should all be then.

Endnotes:

The War of Independence:

Called al Nakba (the catastrophe) by the Arabs, it began as a joint Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Saudi and Iraqi attack on Jewish positions one day after the British withdrawal and the declaration of the state of Israel on May 15, 1948. The Arabs had rejected the United Nations Partition Plan of November 1947, which proposed the establishment of an Arab and a Jewish state in Palestine. This solution, ironically, is touted today as the most viable peace plan.

"From January to July 1949, armistice agreements were signed with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria based on the frontlines as they were at the end of the fighting. These lines created the borders of the new state and as a result, Israel gained control of the areas which would have been part of the Arab state envisioned by the UN had the Arab world not gone to war with Israel."

The Arabs expelled or killed Jews from the territories which came under their control. The Palestinians fled to avoid being caught in the crossfire and due to fears of the new state of Israel. In addition, many Arab countries expelled their Jewish populations or they were compelled to flee because of anti-Jewish sentiment.

Mirroring the Partition of the Indian sub-continent in its bloodshed and chaos, 472,000 Palestinians became refugees (UN Mediator on Palestine estimate). The Jewish refugees were absorbed by the newly-created Israel; and according to Israeli sources, of the 820,000 Jewish refugees between 1948 and 1972, 586,000 were resettled in Israel without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions.

The 1956 Sinai Campaign:

"In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, threatening British and French interests in oil supplies and Western trade. Their interests converging, Israel, Britain and France planned an attack on Egypt, with the former seeking free navigation through international waters and an end to terrorist attacks and the latter two hoping to seize control of the Suez Canal."

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Abba Eban explained the provocations to the Security Council on October 30: During the six years during which this belligerency has operated in violation of the Armistice Agreement [the Israel-Egypt Armistice Agreement signed Feb 24, 1949] there have occurred 1,339 cases of armed clashes with Egyptian armed forces, 435 cases of incursion from Egyptian controlled territory, 172 cases of sabotage perpetrated by Egyptian military units and fedayeen in Israel. As a result of these actions of Egyptian hostility within Israel, 364 Israelis were wounded and 101 killed.

The Six-Day War of 1967

: "On May 30, President Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan signed a mutual defence pact, followed on June 4 by a defence pact between Cairo and Baghdad. Also that week, Arab states began mobilising their troops. Against this backdrop, Nasser and other Egyptian leaders intensified their anti-Israel rhetoric and repeatedly called for a war of total destruction against Israel."

Egypt had expelled the UN peacekeepers from Sinai, stationed massive troops at the peninsula, and in spite of Israel's request to Jordan to desist from attacking it, both Jordan and Syria began to shell Israeli civilian targets. As a response, Israel captured the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

The 1973 Yom Kippur war:

Egypt and Syria jointly attacked Israel on October 6, 1973, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Other Arab states contributed troops and financial support to the war to regain the territories lost in 1967. Despite early successes by the Arabs, Israel was able to counterattack and destroy the Syrian army and encircle the Egyptian army with the Israel Defence Forces in position on the move on Damascus and Cairo. The series of wars and Israel's military victories echoed biblical David prevailing over Goliath.

The Lebanon War:

Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that Israeli military action was not always viewed by the international community as defensive or pre-emptive, one example being her incursion into Lebanon. The immediate trigger for Israel's operation into Lebanon was the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London on June 3, 1982.

"In Lebanon, the fragile state of no-war, no-peace, in place since 1973, began to break down as the PLO strengthened its mini-state in Lebanon, established PLO military training centres, and escalated artillery and cross-border attacks on civilians in northern Israel. Israelis were forced to spend long periods of time in bomb shelters."

The writer has compiled the above snippets of information on the wars from various sources, including the Anti Defamation League, with the purpose of filling in the blanks about the other side.

Part 1 appeared yesterday

Z SUNDAY is a Joe Public who reads the local print media for its unfunny and unintentional imitation of black and gallows humour. The truth may be out there but he doesn't expect to extract it from the Malaysia Boleh chaff in local newspapers.