Ever since Israel became a state in 1948 and the Jews regained their independence after two thousand years, Arabs have been crying about the so-called occupation of what they claim is their land. They say that Israel is a product of colonialism. Actually, the Jewish state represents the opposite of colonialism. It represents the liberation of the Land of Israel by its indigenous inhabitants – the Jews.
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The real occupation in the Middle East and North Africa is the Arab occupation of lands outside of the Arabian Peninsula, which, as its name implies, is the original homeland of the Arab people. In the seventh century, following the death of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, Muslim Arab armies stormed out of the Arabian Peninsula and rapidly conquered nearly the entire Middle East and North Africa. Every piece of land outside of the Arabian Peninsula that is now controlled by Arabs is controlled by them as a result of conquest – conquest that was often brutal and led to the destruction of many different ethnic, cultural, and religious communities throughout the region.
Even today, non-Arab cultures in what is now called the Arab World are still under siege, and some are facing extinction. For instance, the Coptic Christians of Egypt – the direct descendants of the original, pre-Arab Egyptian population – are now a minority in their own country, and are consistently and relentlessly persecuted by the Muslim Arab majority.
In the rest of North Africa, the Berber population that once dominated the region is now chafing under the boot of the Arab majority. In Lebanon, the Christian population, the direct descendants of the ancient Phoenician people, has been on the decline for decades due in large part to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
In Iraq and Syria, the Kurds and Assyrians have fought against persecution at the hands of the Muslim Arab majority for decades, if not centuries. The Assyrians, who are mentioned in the Bible as the ones who exiled the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, were among the victims of genocide at the hands of ISIS. And of course, the once vibrant Jewish communities in North Africa and the Middle East, which predate the Arab populations of the region, are all but gone.
The one place that does hold promise for pre-Arab conquest populations in the region is Israel. The Christians of the Jewish state – who descend from populations that were in the country prior to the Arab conquest – have seen their numbers grow since Israel gained independence in 1948. In fact, Israel is one of the few places in the region in which the Christian population is growing.
If there were any justice, the folks now protesting around the world with signs like "End the Israeli Occupation," would instead be holding signs saying, "End the Arab Occupation."
Now of course, I'm not suggesting that all the Arabs of North Africa and the Middle East need to pack their bags and head for their ancestral homeland in the Arabian Peninsula. What I do suggest, however, is for the genocidal maniacs of Hamas, the rest of the Palestinian people, and those who support them to stop pretending that the current war being waged against Israel is a war of liberation because it is the exact opposite. It is a war of conquest. A war in which imperialist Arabs are trying to drive the indigenous Jews out of their land and retake what their seventh-century ancestors conquered.
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