Raphael Israeli

Christian missionaries in China have been toiling since the 16th century, with little success. Only after the Opium War were the Western powers which invaded China able to enforce their gunboat policy, under which their missionaries could penetrate all parts of China and extend their activities to a larger part of the population, which needed welfare assistance and western protection, and therefore resorted to evangelization as a way to obtain both. However, relative to the huge Chinese population and to the optimistic expectations of the missionaries, little was achieved on the ground. Therefore, at some point since the beginning of the 20th century, a decision was made by the missionaries to shift their emphasis to the Muslim population of China, realizing that, unlike the Godless Chinese, who had no knowledge, nor approach to the Bible, the Muslims would be more amenable, due to their Holy Book which knew One God and drew from the Judeo-Christian tradition many of their narratives. The attempt was valiant and lasted for almost a century, with many efforts made to extend educational and medical aid to the Muslim population, but it also ended in frustration, on the whole, due to the unexpected tenacity and resistance of the Hui and Uighur Muslims to the missionaries’ endeavour.

The Cross Battles the Crescent

One Century of Vain Missionary Work among Muslims in China

This book is built on the assumption that very often what seems to be evidence turns out to be “fake news”, while libels and stereotypes that have no foundation in reality are accepted as evidence, thus potentially causing travesties of justice. Examples are drawn here from several prominent and renowned case studies, including OJ Simpson’s trial, and the fiasco of American intervention in Iraq to search for the traces of weapons of mass-destruction, which were not found. The book also explores the history of anti-Semitism, which is replete with false accusations, where evidence was lacking and Jews were nevertheless convicted. It also shows how the Arab-Israeli conflict also demonstrates how unfounded accusations can be sustained by lies, proving that beliefs and prejudices are sometime stronger than hard facts.

The Absence of Evidence and Its Consequences in Travesties of Justice

Years of Upheaval discusses 'Axial periods' in history; years that witnessed such fundamental reversals in history as to make the world turn upside down and inaugurate a new era. Raphael Israeli sees the post-1989 period as such a period in Islam. He explores events in the Islamic world since the end of the 1980s, and during the 1990s and their aftermath, particularly following the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the Rushdie Affair, and the death of Khumeini.Israeli posits these events signalled a new age of Islamic violence and fundamentalism. The period has seen the dissipation of state borders and the rise of transnational and trans-territorial movements, such as ISIS, that have been extraordinarily attractive to young people in the Islamic world. The hopeful Arab Spring (2010-2013) has been replaced by a threatening Islamic winter.A number of major events shook the Muslim world on both the Asian and the African continents as well as peripheral Islamic minorities in Australia, Canada, and Latin America. Among them were the Islamic Bomb and the rise of radical Islamic movements (notably Hamas and Hezbollah) and the rift between Sunnites and Shiites. These and other momentous events in the Islamic world occasioned the 'Arab Spring' and produced unrest in a wide swath of the Muslim world. Even more importantly, these were forming trends that are characterizing the decades thereafter.

Axial Changes in Islam Since 1989

Years of Upheaval

By the year 2000, Christians had been reduced to a mere 30 per cent of the city's population of 60,000"--Jacket.

The Displacement of Christians by Muslims in the Holy Land

Green Crescent Over Nazareth

This is the story of the cultural and political struggle between Christians and Muslims, and of the rapid Islamicization of Nazareth - the birthplace of Christianity - ironically, under the rule of the Jewish State of Israel.

Traces the background to the history of the Armistice Regime, established in 1947 to combat the fighting between Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem. The author details the Armistice Commission, which governed its application and the many in-built problems that thwarted their proper functioning.

The Armistice Regime, 1947-1967

Jerusalem Divided

Metin Heper

The recent resurgence of Islam in the Middle East is a far more complex phenomenon than is often suggested by those analyses which reduce recent developments in the area to no more than an intensification of religiosity. Islam and Politics in the Modern Middle East challenges that perception of the contemporary Middle East. It explores the nature of the Islamic revival and attempts to establish the original impulse behind particular instances of Islamic resurgence. It also examines the degree to which religious institutions have served as a mechanism for expressing secular demands and frustrations and investigates to what extent politics is a functional alternative to religion. First published in 1984.

Islam and Politics in the Modern Middle East (RLE Politics of Islam)

For centuries Muslim countries have cultivated the myth that Jews under their rule enjoyed equality, harmony, and generally positive treatment. But the revelation of relevant documents covering one millennium of history (the 10th to the 20th centuries), tell a different story, one of persecution, pogroms, suffering, and humiliation, which were relieved only when France colonized North Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. The major landmark of this attitude was manifested in the inferior and humiliating dhimmi status that Jews were subjected to, which dictated that the harsh rules of Muslim supremacy and dhimmi submission be applied to non-Muslims in Islamdom.

The Case of Islamic Attitudes toward Jews

Paranoia, Inferiority Complex and Fanaticism

History books are usually written by victors, while the defeated write poetry and words of nostalgia hoping for better days. This volume takes major defeats in Jewish history and tries to describe what happens to a defeated nation, and how in the specific case of Israel and the Jews, the trauma of defeat engenders hope and forces the survivors to learn lessons for the future. The destruction of the two Jewish temples in antiquity, the Holocaust, and the 1973 War serve as case studies to illustrate the problematic. National grief as a result of disasters is a process of recuperation. Drawing lessons learned from the event will help the nation come out of trauma. Survivors commemorating the dead also help that process.

Defeat, Trauma, Lesson: Israel Between Life and Extinction

The fact that Kosovo was torn away from Serbia as a result of the Bosnia War of the 1990s was not dictated from above or was inevitable. It was a Loss by Complacency. Serbia had allowed this situation to develop over the years by letting a Muslim majority grow in place. It then was able to take over the most important district in Serbian history. International interference in this developing conflict helped decide its fate, but only because Serbia did not continually demonstrate that it cared for the area, and therefore should have ensured a permanent Serbian majority in it and not let it fall into the hands of Muslims, thus altering the entire strategic balance in the Balkans. The U.N. and other international forces decided the fate of the war in Kosovo, but it was the Serbs own self-delusion that they needed to do nothing to ensure their sovereignty over the territory that was theirs for centuries. They should have had no faith in the American and European assurances, or in the Dayton Agreements, which ended the Bosnia War and that Serbian territorial integrity would be guaranteed in any case.

The Relic and Reminder of Ottomanism in the Balkans

Kosovo: The Loss by Complacency

This polemical volume tackles the thorny and controversial issue of the vastly different narratives told (or manufactured) by the two parties of the conflict in the Middle East (the Arabs and Israel), focusing on 1948, where it all started. While all sides in this debate have vested interests, this author included, an attempt has been made here to reflect the factual truth on the events, although their interpretation will always remain controversial. Although the book argues principally with Benny Morris, the founder and leader of the so-called New Historians, it encompasses a wide array of controversial topics, like the evaluation of the 1948-49 War, the morality of the war (or the necessity to wage it as it was), and its main reverberations, such as the continuing conflict after seven decades, the aggravation of the Palestinian minority in Israel, and the essence of what history means. Israeli argues that the current debate between the so-called Old Historians and the New Historians--itself healthy if and when it is kept to the point and not allowed to degrade into personal libel and recriminations--is not really as unbridgeable as is often claimed. Both sides have erred at points and both sides have some important and complementary light to shed on the contentious events surrounding the birth of Israel.

The Derailed Debate on the Genesis of Israel

Old Historians, New Historians, No Historians

Peace is in the Eye of the Beholder

At the doorstep of the twenty-first century, one would expect that medieval concepts such as blood libel—the accusation that Jews kill children to use their blood in religious ritual—would have been discarded by any civilized human being. Certainly in the Christian world, where the story originated and endured for centuries, modern attitudes have nearly erased these barbaric accusations. But in Arab and Islamic worlds, where enmity towards Israel and Zionism has conditioned beliefs, attitudes, positions, and fantasies, blood libel and similar charges are still part of life. Most people are unaware of the history of blood libel and do not perceive links between it and many of the false accusations currently hurled against the state of Israel. Raphael Israeli argues that individuals and organizations guilty of human rights crimes project crimes onto Israel to avoid awareness of their own guilt. Certainly when countries ruled by dictators set the agenda of the UN Council for human rights, Israel is consistently censured and condemned. Accusations of “apartheid” and charges of discrimination against Muslims are frequently made. Israel is accused of plots against Muslims in order to harm their productive sectors, of using weapons of mass destruction to commit “genocide” against Arabs, of injecting poisonous substances into Palestinian children, of poisoning Arab lands under the guise of “agricultural aid,” and of laying siege to peaceful citizens. All of these charges are derivatives of blood libel and have been adopted by Middle East Jihadists in their struggle against Israel. This volume aims to explain the origins of the charge of blood libel and define the ways its derivatives have achieved acceptance in certain parts of the world today.

The Scourge of Anti-Semitism

Blood Libel and Its Derivatives

Political leaders of the 1930s may be accused of blindness to danger in their failed attempts to appease totalitarian aggression, but no one doubts they believed they were doing so to preserve their way of life. In contrast, Raphael Israeli suggests that twenty-first century appeasement of Islamists, wherever it occurs, is different. Appeasement in the advanced modern states of this century - in Europe, Australia, Canada, and even in parts of Asia - is characterized by what amounts to a self-inflicted humiliation, in misguided efforts to slow the advance of a rising Islamist tide. Such appeasement surrenders core aspects of sovereignty, turning non-Muslim populations into second- and third-class citizens in their own countries.Disturbing warning signs first emerged in Europe, but were either not noticed or denied. They extended to the periphery of the Muslim world, but their development in Western countries were unnoticed or denied, until they hit also the peripheral areas of the Muslim world. Canada and Australia, and to some extent the countries of Asia, fell into a syndrome of denial, which persisted until they were forced to listen, often at a price in human lives and carnage. In Europe, the core of the Muslim presence developed in countries like Britain, France and Germany, which lacked law-enforcement against terrorists because the executive and judiciary emphasized human rights and apparent safety over defensive measures to protect their citizens and way of life.Both the United States and Great Britain needed a traumatic jolt before they moved to act. In the United States, it would be the watershed event of September 11, 2001; in London, the July 7, 2005 bombings. And there were events in other countries: in Spain, the March 2004 Madrid train bombings; in France, the violent riots of 2005; in Amsterdam, the van Gogh murder; in Asia, the Bali horror; and finally in Scandinavia, the Cartoon Affair. These jolts shattered the tranquility of populations who had believed in peaceful coexistence with Muslim immigrants and in the feasibility of their integration into national societies. This study fills a large void in the examination of the consequences of new migrations of Muslim populations into advanced and modern societies throughout the world.

Raphael Israeli

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