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>The thing is that the only account that I can find is in a >fictional work. I havent read it for years but it was based >on fact. The book I am thinking of is by Leon Uris and is >called Hajj.
There's 500 year period of history where Arabs ruled over a nice chunk of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Europe. It was between the years 700-1200. Many Jews came under Arab jurisdiction, and for the standards of the time, Jews were treated much better than Europeans ever did. There was no Arab Inquisition of Jews (like the Spanish Inquisition), nor was there a Holocaust of the Jews committed by the Arabs. By today's standards, you might criticize Arab treatment of Jews back then, but it was a much less enlightened time back then, and you must judge their treatment by the standards of that time, and it was much better than Europeans ever treated Jews, even as recent as 60 years ago.
And during the Ottoman Empire, many Jews lived in Arab countries, spoke Arabic, celebrated Arabic culture, ate Arabic food, etc. and coexisted peacefully with Arabs. It wasn't until Zionism reared its ugly head that Arabs and Jews became antagonists.
Zionists, especially European Zionists, treated Arabs with virulent RACISM while Arab animosity towards Jews was based on political events, not a cultural/ethnic/religious hatred of Jews such as European anti-semitism. A natural, yet still wrong, reaction of the antagonism of Israel-era Arab-Jew animosity was to expel Jews from Arab countries. Had political Zionism never poisoned the atmosphere, Jews and Arabs could've coexisted peacefully, and might still be to this day.
"The devil crept into heaven/God overslept on the seventh/the New World Order was born on September 11th" - Immortal Technique
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