A Name on the Map

Collins Bartholomew, the map-publishing company of world-leading publishers, Harper Collins, removed the name of Israel from its Geography Atlas to accommodate “local preferences.” In other words, in the interest of selling maps to an enemy that hopes to also wipe America off the map, the company was willing to erase Israel, as well as dispense with scruples, integrity, conscience, ethics, and credibility. Let’s take this a step further.

I understand that Muslims cannot abide truth; thus they invented the accusation of Islamophobia – to squelch all things that reveal their essence.  Islam is at war with the world and reality, and has been since the seventh century.  Their culture is a dedication to war and conquest, so that even their people may not grow and prosper. From the moment their children are born, they are robbed of the human spirit – freedom, creativity, imagination – and are twisted into becoming hardhearted “weapons of mass destruction” against their perceived enemies. In the name of their god, they attempt to erase the past by destroying ancient artifacts, refuting history to support their own supersessionist narrative, and call “offensive” all actions that lay bare their true nature, barbarism.

Above all, Islam teaches hatred of Jews, not to mention Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, idol worshipers and animists.  But above all, it is the Jews, because Mohammed could not convert the Jews in Mecca, so he beheaded all the Jewish men.  Yet, Muslims are still tied to Judaism through Abraham – and perhaps resent it.  Muslims also need the Jews to blame for their failures and adversities, and while they also claim Jewish successes and world contributions for their own, it has been said that they also feel the shame of having to do so. Why else would there be a traveling world exhibition called “101 Inventions,” for which they claim scholarship and ingenuity, but whose originality may be traced to Jews and other captives forcibly converted to Islam?   Why else would they begin claiming Moses, Jesus, Christopher Columbus, and Albert Einstein as Palestinian or Muslim, even if there were no Palestinians or Muslims during the times of Moses and Jesus?

Each defeat in wars begun by the Muslims against the Jews was yet another intolerable humiliation, particularly when five Muslim armies (Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq) attacked, but were bested by, what they thought would be a defenseless, fledgling, ragtag army of starved, beaten Jewish survivors from Europe. Failing in conventional warfare, they began a psychological war with the help of the uninformed, the envious, the angry, and those who are eternally predisposed to hate for their own reasons. This war includes the influential propaganda that Jewish achievements have actually been at the expense of others and that Jews are therefore the cause of every earthly ill.

Islamists have discovered that what they, themselves, do may readily be blamed on the Jews. Muslims have actually broadcast their plan to create an all-encompassing world Caliphate, but peddle the idea that it is the Jews who rule the world. It suits the Muslims to keep their brethren in a constant refugee status in Gaza and the West Bank in order to garner world sympathy (and cash) and to lay claim to territory illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt, although the land is both legally and historically Jewish. Through the centuries, Muslims were never interested in working what was then a desolate wasteland, but now insist that flourishing Israel is theirs.

In the surrounding Muslim lands, the majority continues to live in age-old poverty and ignorance under tyrannical regimes; this too is blamed on Israel. If the rainfall is inadequate and unequally distributed through the year in this sub-tropical zone, Israel is liable for not supplying water. If their women and children die as a result of being placed among jihadist rocket launchers, Israel is impugned. They accuse Israel of Palestinian genocide, when, in fact, the Palestinian population has dramatically increased, doubling in size with each new generation; and of apartheid, when the reality is that Muslims have banned Jews from Islamic countries.

The war is also against pluralism, individual rights and freedoms, liberal democracy, and Western ideas of progress, and this has become a collective Islamic obsession.  Yet the horrific crimes that Muslims commit against their fellow Muslims and Christians are swept under the prayer rug, hidden by the media, and not addressed by world leadership.  If the Jews cannot be incriminated for these crimes, then the mere mention of kidnappings, beheadings, honor killings, and other cruelty are forbidden topics.

And this is where our schools and teaching materials fail us. Except for a perfunctory early timeline on which one might find a designation for Ancient Israelites along with Assyrians, Babylonians and other defunct civilizations, world history studies begin with Ancient Rome and Greece, although the Jews have substantially contributed to human development. The framers of our US Constitution derived their morals, ethics and standards of behavior from Cicero and English Common Law, which drew from biblical law given to the Hebrews by God. Exodus reveals that the Hebrews had a representative form of republican government, not unlike the system created in the Constitution.  And while appropriate credit is given other countries, Israel’s contributions in medicine, science and technology to society at large has been overlooked, as is her eternal capital, Jerusalem, which is referenced 823 times in the Hebrew Bible, 161 times in the Christian Bible, and never in the Qur’an.

Many history textbooks devote a disproportionate number of chapters to Islam. Jerusalem is cited as the city where Mohammed ascended to heaven on a winged horse, but rarely as Israel’s capital.  Mohammed has been praised for “impressive leadership skills” but not for his methods of rapine, brutality, and slaughter. There is never mention of Islam’s butchery of 80 million Hindus in India, their skulls piled to mountainous dimensions and their cities burned to the ground; of the all-but-complete annihilation of Iran’s Zoroastrians; or of the trickery used to enslave Iran’s Sogdiana, take healthy men to replenish their Arab army, and annihilate the masses.  Neither is there word about Muslims’ killing perhaps as many as 400 million “infidels” over 14 centuries.

If today’s publishers have made a small correction on a map or two when it was called to their attention, is that sufficient?  Have they reviewed all their products (textbooks and maps) for accuracy?  No.  Absolutely not – not until they are called to task by parents and school boards, and not until the books and maps are thoroughly reviewed by trusted people, rewritten, and distributed anew. It takes the indoctrination of only one generation to completely change the nature of our country. Adding Israel and her name to a map alone, which can then be defaced by the “offended” students, will not bring enlightenment to a world that is plummeting into darkness.