ভূমিকা

He argues that Muslims have developed a sophisticated and rich doctrine of hatred towards Jews (including modern-day Israelis) since the foundation of the Islamic state during the Prophet's time in 622. Undoubtedly, Nettler's assumptions are bounded by an interest, context, and subjectivity. It seems to me that his objective in essence is to justify the hegemonic and colonialist nature of the state of Israel.

Since his context is that of Israeli scholarship, which is antagonistic to both Arabism and Islam, his personal interest would be to show that the real problem is not between Christendom/Europe and Judaism, but between Islam and Judaism. Nettler does not draw any analytical distinction between Judaism, Zionism, and Israel. [^26] He considers Zionism to be the product of Judaism and Israel the culmination of both.

Understood in this light, if Muslims oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestine, they, then, oppose both Zionism and Judaism. It is the contention of many specialists on Jewish history that Zionism and the Jewish Holocaust have to be understood against the socio­economic, political, and nationalist-chauvinistic European background of the 19th and early 20th centuries. [^27] The European persecution of Jews did not only culminate in the Holocaust but in the creation of Israel too.

The writer is oblivious to this significant historical phenomenon, and, instead, considers the West to be the true liberator of the Jews when it supported the creation of the state of Israel. It is clear that Nettler cannot see the anomalous consequences that the creation of Israel has brought upon Palestinian society, its total disintegration, and the dispersal of its people.