Judaising the Arabs

Submitted by Martin Katchen (United States), Mar 27, 2012 at 16:04

Israel could not even consider Judaising the Arabs until DNA analysis showed that many if not most Palestinians are indistinguishable from Jews by nuclear DNA. And that only happened in the last 10 years. During that time, obviously, the Arabs have engendered a lot of hatred on the part of Jews by their terrorist acts. But that is not the only reason.

During the latter Roman Empire, Jews were not shy about accepting Gentiles as converts. That changed when Justinian issued an edict against Jews accepting converts--an edict that was reaffirmed by Islamic Sharia law and by the laws of most Christian states up until Emancipation in the 19th Century. And of course Jewish Halakha followed suit.

It does not help that Evangelical Christians have been fairly effective in converting Jews to Messianic Christianity outside and inside of Israel. The activity of "Messianic Jews" and "Jews for Jesus" have frightened Jews and are at least the oestensible motivation for Israel to pass legislation against offering any monetary inducement to anyone to change their religion.

For Jews now to openly accept Muslim (or even Melkite Christians) who wanted to return to Judaism would be seen and treated by Muslim nations as an inflammatory act and calls for economic sanctions against Israel. Even if Israel brought a large number of anusi returnees from Latin America, there would likely be a hue and cry from the Arabs, since this would destroy the demographic fig leaf for a two state solution. Never mind that the UN Charter guarantees freedom of religion. Israel would get a lot of heat if it started legally accepting Arab converts or returnees in large numbers since this would amount to a more direct challenge to the legitimacy of Islam than the existence of the State of Israel already is. Israel would need to be able to take such heat and will need the gas and the oil shale that will make Israel a net energy exporter to be able to do so.

Having said that, a direct challenge to the legitimacy of Islam as a religion that would expose the Arab stance as a religious issue masquerading as a land issue would be more honest and a much better ground for Israel to stand upon than the current policy.

all the best

Martin H. Katchen

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