.

Don’t fall for the lie that Jews were “safe” under Muslim majority rule. This day (March 26) in 1839, in Mashhad, Persia (today’s Iran), a Muslim boy—angry over the wages he’d received from a Jewish woman—ran through the streets screaming a blood libel: that the Jews had killed a dog and named it “Hussein” to mock Muslims on their holiest day of mourning. Thousands of frenzied Muslims stormed the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue to the ground, looted and destroyed homes, and murdered 32 Jews. The survivors were given a stark choice: convert to Islam or die. The entire community chose survival. They outwardly became Muslims. For the next century, the Mashhadi Jews lived a double life—publicly “new Muslims,” privately observing Shabbat, circumcision, kosher laws, and Jewish holidays behind closed doors, at constant risk of discovery and death.

A heated debate in the government over violence by Jewish extremists in Judea and Samaria: Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter demands the return of administrative detentions: Let’s call it what it is — this is terrorism. Defence Minister Katz: You don’t correct an injustice with another injustice. Foreign Minister Saar: There is no better public than the settler public, but the damage done by a violent few is immense. Diaspora Minister Chikli: The farm enterprise is the spearhead of practical Zionism, and the violent group within it threatens the entire police force. The problem lies with those leading the youths.

It would be useful for all these Cassandras that Israel is becoming illiberal, opening a huge schism with US Jews, actually provide specific arguments with specific principles and facts. Remember, foreign policy is a question, but by illiberal, one means the internal measure of freedom of the nation. Exactly what has Israel done in the last 50 years to become more illiberal? Evidence please so a real debate can obtain, and compared to how “liberal” Israel was before 1977 (since then U.S. when we heard these argument first) when it was run by a socialist elite. Exactly what exactly has Israel done internally to become an illiberal nation that suggests, let alone drives, US Jews split from Israel? I want to see polls which show U.S. Jews are splitting from Israel because of its rising internal illiberalism, and indicate that it is not the broader rise of progressivism among many American Jewish youth that is the dominant factor in turning away from Israel, but that it is Israel’s actual behavior that is uniquely driven by Israel’s “illiberal” right and is not shared by Israel’s “liberal” left that is causing it. Moreover, any of those behavior have to be shown as new and not something Israel would have done in 1948, 1958, 1968, 1978. … Because in those years, Israel was ostensibly do much more liberal.

Yes, when in Lahore in Feb, I challenged the focus on "Islamic" history. I also advocated for religious freedom, including the right to convert out of any religion one chooses, and other uncomfortable things. Some people disagreed, but nobody screamed at me. I liked that part.

All this bloodshed is because the West won't accept Palestinian as equal human beings.

The absolute swagmonster

There's a growing tendency in Britain, and no doubt elsewhere, for non-Muslims to refer to Mohammed as 'the prophet Mohammed': to be avoided.

100 years ago there was a country Persia They gave shelter to about 1K Muslims. Now that country has become Islamic Iran.

I think about this often