els were accorded an element of respect, albeit with qualifications.
How inward-looking and degraded has Islam since become. Never quite recovered from its loss of territorial and spiritual hegemony in Europe; an assault on its Islamic consciousness and collective sense of honour, never to be forgotten, nor forgiven. The outward spread and the flowering of Islam shrivelled, and it turned into itself and ossified. The generosity of spirit dissolved, and the resolve for revenge slowly asserted itself.
In the very birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, both religions, much pre-dating Islam, are now scorned and their former esteem replaced by conscious revulsion. They represent now the antithesis in every conceivable respect of Islam's purpose. Even though Judaism now has its place once again in its historical birthplace, semi-secure in a state of its own, encircled by bitterly resentful Muslim countries.
Christianity is slowly being expunged from its cradle of existence, as one Muslim country after another gradually expresses its disgust over the presence of an "alien" religion, though social and political persecution. In the Palestinian Territories, Christians are slowly departing an atmosphere of threat and assaults. Christians are on the move out of Iraq and Lebanon, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
If this exodus of an ancient religion's adherents from their original home is distressing to their neighbours it's hard to imagine. People who once lived in peace and mutual respect no longer appear to be inclined to do so. So it's a little surprising and encouraging to read that a Saudi columnist, Hussein Shubakshi, writing in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat has taken it upon himself to warn of the potential ramifications for Arab society in the wake of this ongoing cleansing of Christian and Jews from Arab countries.
For one thing, he laments the validation of the claim that Muslim countries are incapable of religious moderation; by their rigid exclusionism inimical to the acceptance of the 'other'. "The Arab East was once a paragon of peaceful coexistence between different religious groups. Abundant evidence of this model arrangement could be found in school classrooms, trading companies and cultural projects", he wrote.
"This situation existed until the Jews were expelled from the Arab countries for the first time, which took place in the wake of the declaration of the Zionist state. The response to this declaration by the security apparatuses of several Arab governments was inane, in that they came to regard the Jewish communities with suspicion, skepticism, and apprehension, and tormented them in order to force them to emigrate from Arab countries.
"Jewish emigration from Arab countries had a significant negative impact on the material well being of society and on economic diversity in the Arab World. It is obvious that, today another wave of emigration is underway, and that the Arab world is being drained of its Christian residents. The rate of Christian emigration from Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, Sudan and Syria has reached astonishing proportions.
"Palestine in particular is facing a plan to eradicate the entire deeply-rooted Christian presence from all its territories. With the spread of extremism and the prevailing lack of understanding of the basic principles of coexistence with the other - which were put into practise by the Prophet Muhammad himself - it comes as no surprise that an extremist vision dominates the religious discourse.
"This forcible expulsion is evidence of the narrow limits of tolerance and acceptance of the other - and the narrowness of these limits is clearly evident from the actual outcome. The fact that Christian Arabs do not feel secure and protected in Arab countries is a very grave problem, which must be dealt with immediately because without a solution, emigration will continue to exact a price that must eventually have to be paid by everyone, without distinction, including the Muslims themselves."
Well said. Now...what?
Hard to believe that the State of Israel could be so clumsy, so incapable, so unwilling to put in a real effort at launching a reasonable and honest information campaign to alert the world of her untenable position with respect to hanging on to her legal right to statehood against a bitterly avowed enemy sometimes posing as a reasonable partner in a peace process, more often revealing the true identify of an irredentist and implacable enemy.
Yet the Palestinians, in whatever their guise; the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, or the Islamist Hamas terrorists, have developed the ability to counter any feeble attempts at explanation and exculpation by Israel, with damning complaints of oppressor-violence against the State. Effectively down-playing their role in encouraging their recruits in terror to ongoing attacks which Israel must respond to. And in the process of so doing, reaping condemnation from the world.
Israel's lukewarm and too-few attempts to clear her name of charges of "occupier" and "Apartheid regime" fall on frosty ears, and she is condemned by a world now willing to view her in the unkindest light of all; a military bully eager to attain ever more land not belonging to her, and willing to commit the most egregious acts of violence against the poor defenceless Palestinian militias who wreak havoc on her border towns.
It did not, actually, take Palestinians all that long to understand just how malleable are the perceptions of the outside world, how fragile their support for Israel as a tiny state struggling to maintain her existence against the determined rejection of the surrounding Arab nations in the Middle East. They easily, readily and competently perfected their act of defenceless victims, persuading the outside world of a need to protect them from their vicious occupier.
The willing co-operation of a censorious world that simply had no patience nor the inclination to listen to the few weak attempts of Israel to place matters in the perspective of an embattled state attempting to protect its vulnerable population from suicide bombers and Kassam rockets cut no ice with a world which holds Israel to a standard of forbearance no other nation is expected to demonstrate.
What has been lost in the process is the understanding that Jews have always had a presence in the land they now occupy as a nation, apart from their historical, religious, cultural identity there. The world takes no notice of the fact that the real agenda of the Palestinian Authority can be seen in the maps it blatantly displays of a greater Palestine; absent the State of Israel. 
What the Palestinians have cleverly set out to do, is to establish in the mindset of a ever-willing portion of any Western population that there is no legitimate Jewish identity possible in the Middle East. And that the current State is there, having "taken" that which is not morally or legally theirs. That the State of Israel is a de facto "occupier", brutal and illegal, of Palestinian land.
Israel felt it had no need to defend itself from such calumnies, that the truth would speak for itself. Jews were, after all, historically entitled through their indelible religious and cultural presence, to return to a land from which invaders had banished them. It was nothing, if not a just solution to return to the land which had birthed the people, given rise to its religion and its culture and its pride in self. People of the Book, yes, but in modern incarnation, a people deserving and in need of a home, a refuge.
And that was how the world saw Jews, post-Holocaust, and Israel; a critically needed state for a historically beleaguered people. Victims of history and circumstance, hate and genocide, brought to their homeland and there the story would end. But it did not; history conspired, as it always does, to move on to introduce additional elements fraught with dangerous complications for Israel's ongoing presence.
And finally, the agreement between the State of Israel and the PLO, brokered by the United States. And the subsequent impossibility of dealing with an untrustworthy antagonist who had no real agenda of bargaining fairly and honestly to attain the portion of the geography initially rejected by the Palestinians which the United Nations had offered in legitimizing the creation of Israel.
Israel, trusting the assurances of the international community that the PLO and Yasser Arafat were to be trusted. As what else could she do other than continue to commit to ongoing warfare? Which, as it happens, is exactly what has concluded, in any event. While Palestinians live openly and freely within Israel with secure and equal entitlements, Jews within Israel must face the reality that the Palestinian Authority has no real intention of accepting peace and two states, side by side.
Israel can no longer afford to shrug off the implacable denunciations of her position by onlookers who accept holus bolus the slanders levelled against her by her enemies. But the reality is that the apprehension now of Israel as the aggressor against the pitifully helpless Palestinian population is seared into the mindsets of the international community, with few exceptions. Aided and abetted by her own moral insecurities, by her free press only too willing to give the acceptance of doubt to her enemies.
The fact is, the Jewish conscience is never still, never complacent, never certain about what its position should be, as a people fairly universally given to justice and peace. Finding itself in an uncommonly uncomfortable position, wondering whether the opinion of the outside world justifies its continued existence on the edge of approbation.
Past time for Israel to restore her sense of certainty and pride in herself. To remind the world that its approval of her existence and her right to exist must be unequivocal, and if it is not, then that's the way it is. But until a more secure certainty is attained, the situation in the round will never be recognized, pressure will never be placed on the Palestinians to remediate their position and accept the need to behave civilly with a