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November 24, 2006
US: The Ignorance of our Alleged Betters
Little Green Footballs points to a blog article by legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, in which Mr. Dershowitz takes President Jimmy Carter to task for his pro-Muslim views in the Jihad war against Israel. I wish to comment in one of the bullet points Dershowitz raises:
Carter emphasizes that "Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times," but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.
This isn't true. The Roman Empire split in two in 395 A.D., which effectively ended "Roman" domination in the middle east. Furthermore, Roman times ended altogether in 476 A.D., when all pretension of a Roman Empire ended with the decisive fall of Rome. Muhammad, the self-proclaimed prophet, was born in 570 A.D. He didn't begin preaching until his forties. He didn't wage warfare until his fifties. The first Muslims to reach what is now Israel did so shortly after Muhammad's death, in the mid-630's, and they were not settlers, but first raiders (to terrorize the population and gain booty) and eventually conquerors who submitted the region. So, in short, we have an error of more than 150 years in Carter's description, coupled with a wholly unsuported vision of peaceful co-existence. It would be irresponsible to take historical lessons from Jimmy Carter when he cannot get historical timeline right.
Posted by Ruy Diaz at November 24, 2006 7:59 PM
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