re: Bari Weiss gave great speech on how Oct. 7 matters to America

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Talking about it? Oh yeah, New York elected a fricking Muslim mayor. Talking about it and doing something about are two different things.

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No amount of "let me explain this to you" is going to make a difference. That's my point.

The propaganda has worked. The one sidedness and extreme hyperbole is another hallmark. You don’t get any crazy stories about the terrorist we saw murdering babies and raping not just Jewish people but other Muslims in neighboring towns. The only insane stories we get are anti Israeli stories but again, normally people would recognize this.

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There were a million or so Arabic jews living across the Muslim majority nations in 1945. There are now functionally 0 living in Muslim majority nations. There was an absolute genocide of Yemeni Jews, Moroccan Jews, Egyptian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Syrian Jews after WWII with those countries seizing property and evicting these people.

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That's an important statistic. Thanks.

If you have any evidence of mass killing of Jews by those Muslim countries, however, I would appreciate it. My recollection from a book I read (but can't find) estimated that around 900,000 Jews left/were expelled during that time period

I remembered the thesis of the book as being that the upheaval was largely in response to the formation of the state of Israel and the Nakba. It was given to me by a Palestinian woman in our church. Her family had been forced off their land when she was a little girl.

FWIW, she didn't hate Jews, but her American born WASP husband was literally the only person I have met IRL who thought Judaism was evil.

I don't want to overstate the case. Many of those Muslim countries made it hell on Jews. (Of course nothing like the Lutheran and Catholic Germans did a few years earlier).

But the question has to be asked, if those Muslims had that hate of Jews from birth, why did they wait so long to act on it.

In lieu of the book, for anybody interested, I am attaching what ChatGPT found in response to this prompt (definitely some hatred for Jews, but triggered largely by birth of Israel):



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The repression that developed in many Arab/Muslim countries after World War II had several overlapping causes. The creation of Israel in 1948 was an important catalyst—but it wasn't the only cause.

The main factors

1. The Arab-Israeli conflict turned Jews into suspected political enemies.
This was probably the most important immediate factor after 1947–48. Arab governments went to war with the newly established Israel, and some began treating their own Jewish citizens as potential supporters of the enemy. In Iraq, for example, Zionism was criminalized in 1948, Jewish government employees were dismissed, Jewish businesses were restricted, and prominent Jews were arrested. ?
Taylor & Francis Online +1

This was particularly irrational in one sense: most of these Jews were not Israeli citizens and had lived in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, etc., for generations. But governments increasingly conflated Jewish identity with Zionism and Zionism with Israel.

2. Arab nationalism was becoming much more powerful.
After the European colonial powers withdrew, countries such as Iraq, Syria and Egypt were undergoing intense struggles over what constituted the new nation. Some nationalist movements increasingly emphasized an Arab and/or Islamic national identity, making long-established minorities more vulnerable.
A scholarly study of Egyptian Jewry, for example, describes postwar nationalism as emphasizing national homogeneity and Arab-Islamic unity, while Jews were increasingly portrayed as associated with foreign or colonial interests. ?
Persée

3. European antisemitism had begun influencing parts of the Arab world before Israel existed.
This is an important point because it prevents us from making the chronology too simple.

The Farhud pogrom in Baghdad in 1941, six years before Israel's establishment, was a major turning point. Nazi propaganda and pro-Axis elements in Iraq contributed to an environment in which Jews were increasingly portrayed as enemies. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum describes the Farhud as a watershed in the deterioration of Iraqi Jewish security. ?

Holocaust Encyclopedia
So the idea that anti-Jewish repression simply appeared overnight in response to Israel isn't historically correct.

4. Domestic political problems made Jews convenient scapegoats.
Governments facing economic crises, political instability and competition between nationalist, Islamist and communist movements sometimes used the Jewish minority as a way of demonstrating nationalist credentials or deflecting political pressure.

A scholarly history of Iraq, for example, describes the government's post-1948 policy as a combination of oppression, discrimination and economic exploitation, occurring amid severe economic and political instability. ?
Taylor & Francis Online

5. The Palestinian refugee crisis intensified popular anger.
The 1948 war produced a huge Palestinian displacement. As Arab populations saw Palestinian refugees arriving in their countries, resentment toward Israel increased. In some countries, that resentment was transferred to local Jews—even though those Jews had nothing to do with the Palestinian displacement.

The chronology is therefore important
A useful way of looking at it is:
Pre-1948:
European antisemitic influence + local antisemitism + rising Arab nationalism + political instability ? increasing pressure on some Jewish communities.

1947–48:
UN partition + civil war in Palestine + creation of Israel + Arab-Israeli war ? dramatic escalation.
1948–1960s:

War, nationalism and identification of Jews with Israel ? discriminatory laws, arrests, confiscations, restrictions and—in some countries—expulsion or circumstances that effectively forced Jews to leave.

One particularly revealing example: Iraq
Iraq illustrates the transition very well.
In 1941, the Farhud occurred before Israel existed. Then, after the 1948 war, the Iraqi government dramatically intensified repression: Zionism became a capital offense, Jews were dismissed from government employment, Jewish financial institutions were restricted, and prominent Jews were prosecuted. By 1950–51, roughly 120,000 Iraqi Jews had left, most for Israel. ?
Taylor & Francis Online +1

So I would characterize the historical picture this way:
Israel's establishment didn't create anti-Jewish sentiment in the Arab world from nothing. But the 1947–49 conflict transformed an existing problem into a much larger political crisis for Jewish communities in many Arab countries.

And that's why it's important to distinguish pre-existing antisemitism from anti-Zionism/anti-Israel hostility that was transferred onto Jews as a group. Those were related but not identical phenomena.

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you believe those reports?

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Yes. I believe the numbers. They aren't from the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Israeli reporting said the IDF accepted the 70,000 number as of January 2026. Then, the IDF said we're waiting for official reports...but have simply refrained from comment since then.



I am really impressed with Israeli intelligence. If they had some way of contradicting the estimates, I'm sure they would have.

The actual numbers (10k civilians killed v 50k civilians killed), however, aren't that important. It goes back to American v Israeli interests.

If I were an Israeli, I probably would think that ALL Palestinians are potential terrorists who might kill my family. I probably would be for wiping them out.

As an American Christian, that kind of civilian death toll is repellant as a response to a terrorist attack committed by men who are already (hopefully) almost all dead.

So...we should have a national discussion about that.

Ok now you’re playing games. I mentioned the fabricated hospital and school stories, you defended them, I asked if you really believed that and you switched up to something else.

So you protect evil in your house?

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now you’re playing games. I mentioned the fabricated hospital and school stories, you defended them, I asked if you really believed that and you switched up to something else.

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What? I didn't defend the "fabricated" stories. I don't know enough about them. I was just pointing out that Gaza is a very densely populated area. It's unlikely that military installations would be far from civilian facilities.

Sure there might be SOME fabrication, but enough to cover 70,000 deaths? There were only around 30 hospitals in all of Gaza. Dunno about schools, but they can't have THAT many.

I screenshoted the Reuters article about the IDF accepting the 70,000 number. Here's the link of you want to read it yourself:

Reuters: IDF accepts 70,000 number killed in Gaza

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, my bad, we got crossed up

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No worries. Thanks for discussion.

You’re welcome. Glad I could help you understand better.