The Prophecy Ignored by John Peters

For centuries, Jews lived and prospered as minority communities within the Arab and Muslim world. In the early 20th Century, the convergence of Zionism, a world war and the triumph of colonialism would lay the seeds for perpetual conflict in the Middle East . Previously healthy relationships between Arab and Jews would be poisoned as Arab lands were fractured and taken to feed the ambitions of Europeans and Zionists. Arabs aspirations were ignored not because Zionists were Jews, but primarily because early Zionists were Europeans who shared a general European contempt for the cultures of the Middle East . For this same reason, Middle Eastern Jews were treated with a similar contempt by the founders of Israel.

We are now faced with the consequences of ignoring self-determination, as King-Crane’s crystal ball sits in the dusty attic of history.