The Anti-Convivencia Convivencia
David Shasha
Lyn Julius and the Self-Hating Sephardim Do Not Give Up: Catholic Spain Triumphs!
The anonymous Point of No Return blog remains one of the important conduits for the Arab Jewish Refugee HASABARAH advocacy:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/refugee/davidshasha/Fpvk3Yg8rHg/fLf9ZpRFAgAJ
If you did not get the point, the word “Refugees” appears in their URL!
The website is basically a front for Lyn Julius and her deep and abiding concern for maintaining White Jewish Supremacy and “Bourekas and Haminados” Sephardischkeit:
I hear Henna is all the rage!
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2018/11/yemenite-hennas-are-all-rage.html
Indeed, she has proven herself to be one of the most prominent of the current crop of the Self-Haters:
And she is a resolute enemy of Andalusian Convivencia:
Her blog just posted another attack on the “mythical” Sephardic Golden Age:
The complete post follows this note.
We will recall that her fellow Self-Hater Rabbi Marc Angel has been just as emphatic in this regard:
In his article on Convivencia in Muslim Spain he refers positively to a book by Catholic apologist Dario Fernandez-Morera that attacks Convivencia and praises the Inquisition:
https://www.jewishideas.org/article/golden-age-spain-how-golden-was-it
Just like Devin Nunes:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/hSOYaCMWfgM
The Spanish Inquisition is apparently doing very well these days!
The Fernandez-Morera book was attacked by Stephen Schwartz in The Weekly Standard:
Here is what Schwartz said there:
The author is casual in his discussion of unpleasant aspects of the history of Christendom, deriding "the ubiquitous Spanish Inquisition!" as a topic and referring to the "so-called Dark Ages." Throughout, he endeavors to discredit the 12th-century Spanish Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (known to the West as Averroës) mainly because he served as an Islamic law judge, which, Fernández-Morera alleges, is ignored by "some scholars today who deal with him as the great and enlightened philosopher." As he treats Averroës, his tone becomes increasingly insulting.
Particularly important for us to note is Fernandez-Morera’s attack on Maimonides:
The subject of Jews in medieval Spain leads Fernández-Morera to repeat accusations that, resenting their treatment by the Visigoths, the Jewish community supported the Islamic takeover of most of Spain and even guarded occupied cities for the Muslims. The Jews, he says, "continued to collaborate with the Muslim rulers," providing a counterweight to the majority of Christian subjects. But in pursuit of this curious allegation, Fernández-Morera, as he does with Averroës, does not hesitate to criticize the Islamic philosopher's contemporary, the great Andalusian rabbi Moses Maimonides, for his adherence to "exclusionary" laws similar to those imposed by Muslims and Christians. Religious restrictions on social interaction among Muslims, Jews, and Christians (in the view of Fernández-Morera) are definitive proof that convivencia is a myth. Thus, if medieval Spain, both Muslim and Christian, was lacking in modern tolerance, Fernández-Morera would seem to find equal blame among all who lived there.
Seeing the profound difference between Angel and Schwartz on Fernandez-Morera’s detestable book provides the appropriate context for understanding the Point of No Return post.
For further contrast, I would also like to point to the excellent issue of the scholarly journal Critical Muslim that presented a treasure trove of articles on “Reclaiming Al-Andalus”:
https://criticalmuslim.com/issues/06-reclaiming-al-andalus
Here is my contribution to that volume, “Sephardic Judaism and the Levantine Option”:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1NQdm28qvvXVFhBSjh3eVdIU0E/view
And, of course, there is the seminal scholarship of the late Maria Rosa Menocal which helped to popularize Andalusian Convivencia with her book The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain and with her many articles and public lectures, as I have noted in the following tribute newsletter:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/CAiejYQJCRA
Mrs. Julius points us in a resolutely different direction.
Here we naturally go to Israel, where Sephardim are not much respected; our historic culture has largely been erased by the “superior” Ashkenazi Jewish civilization.
And once again, there is our Catholic friend Dario Fernandez-Morera leading the way!
Did the medieval Andalusian Golden Age of Jews, Muslims and Christians, much vaunted by interfaith projects and Arab sources, really exist, or is it a myth? Recent research by Fernando Dario Morera and others has put the Golden Age in question.
He must be a real authority on the subject.
The post proper begins with the truly shameful Shmuel Trigano, a French-Jewish thinker who relinquished his Sephardic identity for Tikvah Fund glory:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/trigano/davidshasha/wz3nqh20iE4/tQHMRhPaec0J
According to Trigano, Convivencia is a devious plot by the German Jewish scholars of the Wissenschaft:
Sociologist emeritus professor Shmuel Trigano argued that the myth was created by German Wissenshaft scholars in the age of emancipation. More recently it has been exploited to foster multiculturalism in contemporary Europe. The French education system aims to imbue its large number of Muslim students with pride in their heritage. The myth of a multi-culti paradise is generally instrumentalised to facilitate the absorption of large numbers of Muslim immigrants into Europe.
Well played indeed!
And of course, where would we be without the odious Bat Ye’or?
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/hGbojJTkhB4
She is still on fire:
Writer and researcher Bat Ye'or saw the immutable dhimmi laws as part of the jurisprudence of holy war, or jihad. The propaganda of the golden age myth resurfaced from time to time throughout history in various incarnations for pragmatic reasons. For instance, Arab nationalism tried to unite Christians and Muslims in the 19th century in order to frustrate the emergence of a Jewish homeland. The UK promoted the myth of Turkish tolerance of minorities as a counterweight to the interests of Russia and Austria. Christians took up the myth to reinforce their support of Arab nationalism. Today, a Palestinian version of the myth - the multicultural one-state solution - is employed as a weapon against Israel.
In my recent profile of Bari Weiss and her work with The David Project, which produced the documentary “The Forgotten Refugees,” I briefly referred to Bat Ye’or who has been one of the most militant Islamophobes in the Jewish institutional world over many years. She apparently cannot speak even a single sentence without using the word “Dhimmi”; a term she has weaponized in the standard Zionist manner.
In the Bari Weiss post I included my 2005 article “The Mess at Columbia University: The Zionist McCarthyites and an Orgy of Hate,” which discussed the Zionist Lobby’s desperate attempt to smear the Middle Eastern Studies department at the school.
Here is what I said there:
A quote from the handout provided by the organizers from the Zionist Organization of America, a reactionary fringe group that is at this point closer to the ideals of Meir Kahane than it is to the ideals of Stephen Wise (who was lambasted in this orgy of hate for his silence on the Holocaust) who was its founder, says it clearly: “That curricula, textbooks, and other educational materials be free of distortion and prejudice from one side, just as students may be required to read and study Mein Kampf and Edward Said as part of their class, they should be required to read Bernard Lewis and Bat Ye’or.”
Bernard Lewis and Bat Ye’or: a marriage made in Ashkenazi Zionist heaven.
The “Columbia Unbecoming” conventicle was seen then as a radical outlier:
http://nymag.com/nymetro/urban/education/features/10868/
The New York magazine article from the time contains the following quote from Professor Dan Miron which provides some sense of the controversy as it was understood then:
“Columbia Unbecoming is not a very professionally made film,” concedes Miron. He’s sitting in his office, another shadow box of books and papers. “It’s not even a very useful piece of propaganda,” he adds. “They were slim on facts and gave much too much space to emotional reactions. But since the issue is there, it erupted.”
My how times have changed!
The David Project’s Bari Weiss is now a writer and editor at The New York Times:
And the Zionist Organization of America has become a mainstream political group which is amazingly represented in the Trump White House in the person of Kenneth Marcus, the current head of the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights and a longtime ZOA loyalist:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/trump-anti-semitism-judaism-nationality.html
We should note that Weiss has railed against campus Anti-Zionism as the main threat to American Jews, just as Marcus has pushed that issue through the Oval Office, as The New York Times article has noted:
The Zionist Organization of America, a group that Mr. Marcus has worked with for years, said the agreement sent “a powerful message to universities and colleges throughout the country that the U.S. government will hold them accountable for allowing campus anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and/or the physical or emotional harassment of Jewish students.”
The “Columbia Unbecoming” chickens have indeed come home to roost.
It is thus very important for the Right Wing Zionist Islamophobes to reject Convivencia, as the cultural symbiosis of Medieval Spain presents a challenge to their fierce demonization of Arabs and the place of Jews in Arab civilization.
Sephardi Self-Haters like Julius, Angel, and Trigano thus serve as Useful Idiots for the Ashkenazim who have sought to erase our culture.
They all serve at the pleasure of the master.
Indeed, the anti-Convivencia movement, connected to the Arab Jewish Refugee movement, is one of the few places where White Jewish Supremacy HASBARAH allows Sephardim to be represented in what is otherwise an Ashkenazi-only Jewish institutional discourse.
We can see how this works in the curious case of NYU student Adela Cojab Moadeb who made it to The New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” list in 2018:
https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/adela-cojab-moadeb-21/
It was an excellent piece of Orientalism that quickly paid off HASBARAH dividends for the young woman:
https://www.israeliamerican.org/iac-national-summit/team-member/adela-cojab-moadeb
Here is why they love her so much:
Before graduating, Adela filed a Title VI complaint with the Office of Civil Rights against NYU for failing to protect the Jewish community from consistent harassment, making headlines in secular media like the New York Post and triggering similar lawsuits across US campuses.
She quickly moved from defending the Ashkenazim on campus to speaking from the same Zionist stage as Trump!
Indeed, maybe she helped Jared Kushner write his truly pathetic and brazenly duplicitous New York Times Op-Ed, “President Trump is Defending Jewish Students”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/opinion/jared-kushner-trump-anti-semitism.html
HASBARAH and Trumpworld: One big happy family.
We’ll pretend that Charlottesville and Pittsburgh never happened.
And then there is the equally-troubling case of Hen Mazzig, the Mizrahi Uncle Tom to beat all Mizrahi Uncle Toms:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/hen/davidshasha/F56-YejvG8E/jHKC17y3BAAJ
I recently posted an excellent article by Lior Sternfeld and Menashe Anzi on the way in which Arab Jewish history has been manipulated by Israel for HASBARAH purposes:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/Davidshasha/CLcAdzT7jdM
Not surprisingly, the article was immediately attacked by Julius:
http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2019/12/academics-israel-is-making-zionist.html
And right on cue, her close ally Mazzig amplified the attack in an article for The Times of Israel:
Mazzig savages those Ashkenazim who have had the courage to call out Zionist racism against us, rather than attacking the racism itself.
According to Mazzig, these scholars do not “know” what Arab Jewish history is.
I suppose only the Ashkenazi Zionists know what it is!
Not that he knows anything about it.
In his hysterical article Mazzig also refers to the aforementioned Tikvah turncoat Shmuel Trigano.
Brilliant minds do think alike.
He also refers to JIMENA – a purportedly Arab Jewish group that is controlled by Ashkenazim:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/Davidshasha/jimena/davidshasha/u8KXBiFOLRU/WeiaSW1FAgAJ
As is the case with Bari Weiss, we can see here the incestuous nature of the Right Wing Zionist world, and how it uses its institutional clout to manipulate the Convivencia issue in order to suit HASBARAH purposes.
Those Sephardim who refuse to acquiesce to White Jewish Supremacy and participate in their own cultural erasure are refused entry into the privileged world of Jewish institutional life. Their air supply is cut off at the source.
But those who do serve the White Jewish Supremacy are rewarded with professional advancement, financial rewards, and institutional access.
And that is what I call the New Convivencia.
David Shasha
Was the Golden Age in Medieval Spain a Myth?
By: Point of No Return blog
A recent Dialogia conference held in Israel examined the myth and the reality. Sociologist emeritus professor Shmuel Trigano argued that the myth was created by German Wissenshaft scholars in the age of emancipation. More recently it has been exploited to foster multiculturalism in contemporary Europe. The French education system aims to imbue its large number of Muslim students with pride in their heritage. The myth of a multi-culti paradise is generally instrumentalised to facilitate the absorption of large numbers of Muslim immigrants into Europe.
The three religions, Trigano asserted, did not live with each other, they lived alongside each other. The Jews were isolated in their ghettoes or mellahs in the shadow of the royal palace. Potentates granted them protection in return for their loyalty. Medieval kings could rely on the Jews and trusted them not to betray them. Some rose to high office, such as the vizirs Shmuel ibn Nagrela Hanagid and his son Yosef. Like Yosef, who was crucified and 4,000 of his coreligionists massacred in 1066, they could come to a violent end.
Yet a sort of 'intellectual myopia' has taken hold and the mantra 'Islam
saved Jews' has been propagated by Bernard Wasserstein and others. The jizya
tax on the dhimmi Jew and Christian was a ransom, said Trigano.
Maimonides even converted to Islam to survive at a time of Islamic
fundamentalism. We know he did this because he taught at the university of
Kairouan. - only Muslims could.
Emeritus professor Raphael Israeli said that history was a matter of interpretation.
The lachrymose version, as promoted by Bat Ye'or, David Littman and Paul
Fenton, saw black stains on the carpet of history, while others emphasised the
carpet itself.
There were times when Jews took refuge in Christian lands : at the battle of Tortosa in 1212, the Christian King Alfonson V1 defeated the fundamentalist Almohads.
Jews collaborated with the Muslim conquest because they were better treated under Islam than under the Visigoths. They helped the Muslims control the non-Jewish majority. But the Muslims ended up hating Jews as much as Christians, Israeli said. Good relations between the Muslim and Jewish elites masked persecution of the Jewish masses.
Israeli emphasised that the Taifas, the Arab principalities in Seville and Granada, for instance, were outside the Caliphate and depended heavily on Jews. This explains why Shmuel ibn Nagrela (Hnagid) was appointed vizir of Granada. But jealousy caused the tragic murder of his successor Yosef and the massacre of most of the Jews.
Writer and researcher Bat Ye'or saw the immutable dhimmi laws as part of the jurisprudence of holy war, or jihad. The propaganda of the golden age myth resurfaced from time to time throughout history in various incarnations for pragmatic reasons. For instance, Arab nationalism tried to unite Christians and Muslims in the 19th century in order to frustrate the emergence of a Jewish homeland. The UK promoted the myth of Turkish tolerance of minorities as a counterweight to the interests of Russia and Austria. Christians took up the myth to reinforce their support of Arab nationalism. Today, a Palestinian version of the myth - the multicultural one-state solution - is employed as a weapon against Israel.
Ephraim Herrera focused on the pogrom of Granada in 1066. Pogroms were not frequent in the Muslim world - why would they be needed when Jews were already subhuman? In 912 Abdul Rahman III had ignored the dhimmi rules to appoint a Jewish vizier in Cordoba - Hasdai Ibn Shaprut. Another Jew, Shmuel ibn Nagrela Hanagid was appointed in 1013 to serve his Berber ruler. In 1030 he was named vizir responsible for tax collecting. Although he had the support of the ruler's son Badis, there was growing mass opposition to a non-Muslim in a position of power. As Ibn Haim wrote at the time, Hanagid was resented for employing only other Jews. His son Joseph succeeded him 1033. He soon attracted enemies who disliked the fact his place was built outside the Jewish quarter. In the face of increasing jealousy and rumour that he was plotting to kill Badis, a frenzied mob captured Joseph, crucified him and killed 4000 out of 5,000 Jews. The golden age happened despite Islam and in opposition to it, not thanks to it.
Eliezer Cherqui spoke about the great Aristotelian philosopher and scholar Averroes (Ibn Rusht), a contemporary of Maimonides. Ibn Rusht (1126 - 1198) became a cadi (judge) and was a paid functionary of the fundamentalist Almohad regime. Although he came to a bitter end and his works were burnt (only Hebrew translations survived) his work testified to the fact that cultural symbiosis bore no relationship to politics. The Almohads decimated the non-Jewish communities of North Africa yet little historiography is devoted to them. Cherqui concluded that Islam symbolised divine unity, and can brook no diversity. No other religion can claim legitimacy. The only hope of Israel ever being accepted by the Muslim world is to find in the Koran verses that say Israel is being re-established according to the divine will.
Emeritus professor Paul Fenton argued that the Spanish Inquisition was inspired by 140 years of Almohad persecution, massacre and forced conversions. Witnesses describe the existence of crypto-Jews, outwardly Muslim. The Christians disappeared completely in North Africa. The New Muslims were still treated as dhimmis and were forced to wear special clothing or distinguishing signs until 19th century. As a result of bildiyeen conversions in the 15th century there are still residents of Fez who sport Jewish names like Cohen and Shabbat.
From the Point of No Return blog, December 11, 2019