Ron Paul update on Gaza conflict, page 3

Originally posted by Alpha_Magnum
I'm not going to ignore you but you are historically and informatively in error. That area has been contested for thousands of years. Ultimately the Arabs were able to take it from the Crusaders and hold it for 600-700 years. If memory serves that area has changed hands over 50 times.

I guess if you want history to begin in 1000AD and the evil Crusaders came on a conquest against the innocent Arabs then you should go work for Al Jizera

The Levant (Eastern Mediterranean Lands) was part of the Roman Empire before the turn of the Millennium 1AD. When the capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople, it was still part of the (Eastern) Roman Empire.

Rome and Persia fought each other in the hundreds of years after Christ and suddenly , out of no where, fanatical Arabs started doing raids from Arabia. At first , the Arabs were ignored since they were acting out of character but Constantinople soon learned this was a threat they couldn't ignore but weakened from years of fighting with Persia, they were unable to stop the Arabs from overrunning the Levant and taking Jerusalem.

The Arab conquest of Levant and North Africa was savage and unrelenting. In today's world , we think it's natural that the Arabs are an almost exclusive ethnicity in Jordan/Syria/Mesopotamia. But these lands were not Arabian originally. The cultural obliteration of the Pre-Islamic peoples was the result of the brutality of the war.

For HUNDREDS of years the people had to suffer this brutality.

789AD

One source tells of a Muslim who converted to Christianity and became a monk, and renamed Christophorous. He was beheaded on 14 April 789. At around the same time, evidently, there was an Arab attack on the monastery of St. Theodosius, near Bethlehem. The monastery was pillaged, many of the monks were slaughtered and some escaped. The attackers also destroyed two churches near that monastery. A Church source tells about the suffering endured by the monasteries in the Judean mountains during the inter-tribal warfare which broke out in 796…While Bet Guvrin was being abandoned by its inhabitants, who were falling captive to the Arabs, assaults were being made in Ascalon, Gaza, and other localities. Everywhere there was pillage and destruction.

923AD

…the Muslims attacked…in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (26 March 937) and set fire to the southern gates of Constantine’s church and to half of the exedra, whereupon the Church of the Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection collapsed…According to al-Makin and al-Maqrizi, the Church of the Resurrection and the Church of the Calvary were also robbed of their treasures…It seems at the same time the Muslims attacked in Ascalon again. According to Yahya b. Sa’id, the assault was made on ‘the great church there, known by the name of Mary the Green. They destroyed it and robbed it of all its contents and then set fire to it’…The bishop of Ascalon then left for Baghdad to get permission to rebuild the church, but he did not succeed. The church was left in ruins, for the Muslims who lived in Ascalon agreed amongst themselves that they would not allow it to be built again. As to the bishop, he never returned to Ascalon and remained in Ramla until his death

1011AD

They were ordered to wear black turbans. The Christians had to wear a cross the length of a cubit and weighing five ratls around their necks around their necks; the Jews were obliged to wear a block of wood of similar weight…they had to wear some distinguishing mark in the bath-houses, and finally al-Hakim decided that there were to be separate bath-houses for their use…Ibn Al-Athir conveys…that al-Hakim ordered (after the destruction of the Chucrh of the Resurrection in Jerusalem…) that all the churches in the realm be destroyed, and this was done, and that the Jews and Christians were then to accept Islam, or emigrate to Byzantine lands. They were also obliged to wear special distinguishing signs. Many converted…Bar Hebraeus speaks of thousands of churches which were destroyed in the Fatimid kingdom at that time; the decree regarding the wearing of the cross around the neck was also, he says, a means of pressuring the Christians to convert. The wooden block the Jews were obliged to wear, had to be in the shape of a calf, as a reminder of the golden calf

1077AD

Muslim Turcoman rule of Palestine for the nearly three decades just prior to the Crusades (1071-1099 C.E.) was characterized by such unrelenting warfare and devastation, that an imminent “End of Days” atmosphere was engendered. 63 For example, Gil describes one of Atsiz b. Awaq’s jihad campaigns in Syro-Palestine at around 1077 C.E.:

Then Atsiz advanced on Jerusalem from Damascus, placed the city under siege, and promised its inhabitants the aman; on this basis, the inhabitants opened the gates of the city to him. Atsiz prevailed over Jerusalem, completely ignoring his promise of aman, and went on a rampage. He slaughtered 3,000 people there…He also conducted campaigns of annihilation against Ramla, until all its people had fled, and against Gaza, where he murdered the entire population. He likewise massacred people in al-'Arish and elsewhere and wrought endless havoc in Damascus, where only 3,000 of the original 500,000 inhabitants had remained, due to starvation and scarcity. Jaffa, too, was attacked, and its governor…fled from the town to Tyre, together with all the city's inhabitants, while the walls of Jaffa were destroyed on Atsiz' orders. 64

Muslims made their way all the way into France. And they threatned to go near the Balkans.

The Crusades were a response to this.