Professor Raphael Israeli’s Prescience on Threat of Islamization to Australia and the West

By Jerry Gordon, NER

Last week in the aftermath of the Islamikaze Jihad  at Sydney’s Lindt Cafe, Raphael Israeli , Retired Hebrew University Professor of Islamic  and East Asian History, was interviewed in Israel  by radio personality Tali Lipkin-Shahak.  It was the subject of an op-ed published this past weekend in Israel Hayom (IH), “Time to Wake Up” by Dror Eydar. Eydar Lipkin-Shahak initially cited Israeli for his prescience in 2007, when he lectured on Islam sponsored by an Australian Jewish organization, only, to be asked to leave for expressing his views.  As Eydar noted in his Israel Hayom op ed,

In February 2007, Professor Raphael Israeli — an international expert on Islam and professor at Hebrew University — was interviewed by an Australian newspaper. In the interview, Israeli warned that the Muslim minority living in the continent posed a real threat to the Australians. His studies suggest that life can become unbearable when the Muslim population of a Western country reaches critical mass (in one study he even attached a number to this idea of critical mass: 10 percent of the general population). It is a rule of thumb, he said, and if it applies everywhere, it certainly applies in Australia. 

Note Eydar’s recounting of the Lipkin-Shahak interview with Israel:

On Monday, radio personality Tali Lipkin-Shahak interviewed Professor Israeli. It wasn’t the interview that was notable, but the style in which it was conducted — a style shared particularly by many Israeli journalists and Western journalists in general. “You were ahead of your time,” she said to him. Israeli replied that he had been investigating the Muslim “diaspora” in Western countries for over a decade, and that in that time the Muslim population has grown to alarming proportions.

“But why do you attribute violent intentions to the immigration process?” the interviewer asked him. “Joseph also immigrated to Egypt,” she remarked, evoking the Book of Genesis.

True, the professor answered, remarking that he had written five books on the subject, “but Joseph’s family had not proclaimed that it planned to conquer Egypt or to convert Egypt to become Israelite.”

“The Muslims explicitly say that they did not come to Europe in order to become European, but to Islamize Europe.” They have vowed that a Muslim flag will wave over 10 Downing Street in England and over Versailles Palace in France within 25 years, he explained.

Lipkin-Shahak then said that “one can always [always!] talk about those people in terms of a negligible, extremist minority, including the terrorist attackers.” Even ISIS, she said, “has no more than several thousand members.”

Israeli insisted that these atrocities are nothing new. In the past, Muslims who immigrated to Australia, Scandinavia and Germany, as well as other places, have perpetrated very serious attacks.

The overly concerned interviewers rushed to protect the ears of her tender listeners, saying “I have to be the one to tone things down, or at least present the opposing view,” she said. “What you are saying, it is very serious. You are vilifying an entire population; you are contributing to the process of hatred and counter-hatred, which only causes harm and intensifies the violence.”

Israeli was not surprised. “That is exactly what they told me in Australia, until they became the victims of a catastrophe…This is my job. Anyone who wants to listen can listen. Anyone who doesn’t, they can wait for the next catastrophe.”

Lipkin-Shahak stuck to her guns: “We listened, but we voiced a skeptical opinion. We disagree.”

“What are you basing your opinion on?” Israeli wondered in desperation. “I am basing my opinion on thirty years of research, studying Islam, and you are basing yours on a trend, on the fact that it is not nice to say these things. We are talking on two completely different planes.”

To which Eydar observed:

Indeed, two completely different worlds. Facts vs. beliefs. Reality vs. fantasy. Make love not war; imagine there’s no countries and no religion too. A very special kind of liberal fundamentalism. The moment the truth comes knocking, they retreat into their politically correct shells and refuse to recognize the facts. There is no such thing as Muslim terrorism. The terrorists come from outer space. Islam is a religion of peace and we mustn’t link it to all these terrible acts perpetrated in its name. Sadly, the people who think this way — the politically correct — have the microphone. The researcher with the facts is only a momentary guest.

What is missing in Eydar’s IH op-ed is the back story to what occurred in Australia in 2007 that witnessed the ejection of Professor Israeli by fellow Jews, an act of abysmal dhimmitude, reflective of Ms. Shahak-Lipkin’s on- air comments. I wrote about it in a 2007, Israpundit article, “Dhimmi Aussie Jewish leaders attack courageous Israel Scholar: Raphi Israeli.”

Hebrew University Professor Raphi Israeli, a noted and prolific scholar of Islam, South and East Asian studies, arrived in Australia this week to begin a lecture program and speaking tour under the auspices of Australian Jewish organizations and the Shalom Institute about ‘Understanding Islam.’ But when my chaver Raphi opined during anin terview on what Aussies should be concerned about encroaching IslamicJihad within the country, the roiling adjacent region with nearby Indonesia – the most populous Muslim country in the world – and a waffling immigration policy and rancorous debate about preserving
Western values-the you know what hit the proverbial fan.

Dr. Colin Rubenstein of the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council( AIJAC) announced cancellation of his organization’s co-sponsorship of a six-week tour because Israeli allegedly said according to a news report on the kerfuffle in the Australian Jewish National entitled “AJIC dumps scholar after Muslim remarks” that ‘life would become untenable unless the Muslim population is kept in check.” Apparently Australian Jewish leaders wanted to keep their heads in the sand somewhere n the outback.   Dr. Rubenstein stated that the ‘implication of [Israeli’s] remarks was that ‘the Muslim community as a whole is a danger.’

Has Australia’s current PM Tony Abbott woken up about what occurred on December 15, 2014? Unlike his Conservative predecessor, PM John Howard we doubt  that he wouldn’t  “upbraid local Sydney area Christian churches for putting out banners emblazoned with the statement: “Jesus loves Osama”-a send up on the core Christian value of forgiveness, another visible sign of galloping dhimmitude.” Instead he blamed the murders of Sydney lawyer Katrina Dawson Ashton and heroic Lindt Café manager Tori Johnson on the “mental instability” of Iranian refugee and asylees, Shiite convert to Sunni extremism, faux Sheikh Man Horan Monis.  Instead, the messengers of the truth about extremist Islam like Israeli are given the boot by liberal  Jews down under, America and, I’m sorry to say, Israel.

Sic transit ignominia mundi.