Professor Mearsheimer has argued (like many others) that Israel wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza. But we’ve seen this story before: A persecuted religious community in a hostile land migrates to a more welcoming place to practice their beliefs more freely. But then that community gains political power in their new home and starts persecuting and driving out the people living in that land. This is what the Muslims (successfully) achieved in Medina, and this is what the Israelis are trying to do in Gaza.
It’s 622 CE, and the Prophet Muhammad and his followers are fleeing Mecca. They seek refuge in Yathrib, soon to be known as Medina, where they hope to establish a peaceful community. Initially, it seems like a harmonious blend of cultures and faiths is possible. The Constitution of Medina, a sort of social contract, lays down the rules for coexistence among the Muslims, Jews, and various Arab tribes. But, as with all good stories, peace is fleeting.
Within two years, the cracks begin to show. The Banu Qaynuqa, a Jewish tribe, is accused of breaking the terms of the constitution. What did they do to break the terms you might ask? Tabari and Ibn Ishaq argue that the Jews started to violate the treaty by their “obvious mischievous acts and seditions” (what mischievous activities? They did not bother to explain). Later, a Muslim woman was harassed at a Jewish shop which led to a fight where a nearby Muslim man killed a Jew. The Jews at the spot retaliated by killing that Muslim man. This was a very local incident involving a handful of people who committed an act of violence in the heat of the moment.
What punishment did the Muslims of Medina announce? Complete expulsion of the ENTIRE tribe of Banu Qaynuqa from Medina. Muhammad wanted to execute them all but a “sly hypocrite” Abdullah ibn Ubayy convinced him to expel them instead. How generous. This is like Israel deciding to expel all of the Muslims of Gaza because some people from Gaza (Hamas) killed a bunch of Jews.
Not long after, in 625CE, the Banu Nadir faced a similar fate, expelled under the pretext of plotting against Muhammad (although some accounts claim that the Tribe’s leader Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf was assassinated and they acted in retaliation). And of course, nobody was caught trying to kill Muhammad, he just had “divine” revelation informing him of the attempt (lol). This is another instance of the culture of collective punishment perpetuated by Islam where all members of a community are punished for the acts of a few.
But the most tragic outcome of the three Jewish tribes was that of the Banu Qurayza. Medina was besieged by the Quraish in the famous Battle of the Trench in 627 CE. The battle was at a long stalemate. The Quraish approached the Tribe of Banu Qurayza to allow them to enter the city through their fortress. But this did not happen as no real fighting happened in this entire battle. Banu Qurayza were still executed and their women, children, and property distributed among Muslims. Imagine Israel deciding to Kill all Palestinian men and to enslave all of their women and children just because they found some Muslim leaders conspiring with the Invading Muslim armies in the wars of 1948, 67 or 73.
By this time Muhammad had thoroughly cleansed Medina of all the “mischievous” Jewish tribes. But they did stop here. 150 kilometers north of Medina, there was a Jewish Oasis of Khyber. The Muslims supposedly got news of the mischievous Jews there hatching another plot to attack Medina. Again, the Jews of Khyber never really went to war against the Muslims (just like the three Jewish tribes of Medina), Muhammad just “felt” that they had become a source of danger to the Muslims and preemptively decided to attack.
This danger suddenly disappeared when the Jews agreed to give half of their harvest every year to the Muslims. A decade or so later, even the Jews of Khyber, along with nearly every other Jewish and Pagan presence in Arabia, were expelled during the Caliphate of Umar. Why did he do this when there was no real danger to the strengthened Muslim empire at this time? He was just fulfilling Muhammad’s goal of cleansing Arabia of all non-Muslim presence. It has been narrated by ‘Umar b. al-Khattib that he heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) say:
I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim. (Sahih Muslim 1767a; Book 32, Hadith 75)
No matter how bad you think the Israelis have treated the Palestinians (which is pretty bad), the early Muslims of Arabia treated the Jews worse. In under two decades, Muslims completed the ethnic cleansing of Jews from all of Arabia. I believe ethnic cleansing is the end goal of the Israeli right-wing as well, but they are nowhere near as successful in this project as the early Muslims were.
Remember that the Jews of Arabia never initiated a battle against the Muslims. The number of Muslims killed by Jews during that period is negligible. They were always attacked by the Muslims preemptively on the pretext of “conspiring” against Islam. They were indigenous to the lands of Medina and Khyber for many centuries prior to Islam but were completely rooted out once Muslims got a foothold in that region.
I find it frustrating when they justify these atrocious actions of ethnic cleansing and genocide (Banu Qurayza) with words like “mischievous” and “conspiring” for the Jews. The actions of Muhammad were just antisemitism. He went through the effort of creating a new religion, and among all the religions of pre-Islamic Arabia, Islam was the most similar to Judaism. And it was the Jews who resisted conversion the most, which I believe, led to these actions by Muhammad.
This is where I think Netanyahu is worse. He doesn’t even intend to convert the Muslims of Israel-Palestine to Judaism (which they won’t anyway). He just wants to push them out because religious Israelis feel the land belongs to them alone. People try to depict the whole conflict as just a conflict of land, but it has been a conflict of beliefs for over a millennium.