A small number of Jewish worshipers pray during the priestly blessing, a traditional prayer which usually attracts thousands of worshipers at the Western Wall on the holiday of Passover during 2020, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 12, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Ronen Zvulun.

At the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) conference in Chicago last month, one of the speakers was Omar Suleiman, who has been praised as a new type of moderate Muslim leader; he even once gave the opening prayer at Congress.

Is Palestine a Muslim issue? It’s a Muslim issue, but it’s not just a Muslim issue. People will say, well, you know, the Muslim vision for Palestine is one in which Jews do not exist, in which Christians do not exist, in which people are wiped out and oppressed. And I respond to them and I say have you not read about Umar Ibn Al-Khattab, entering into Palestine? That’s my vision of Palestine.

He sounds so tolerant.

Unfortunately for him, this vision is a whitewash of the reality of Jews and Christians under Muslim rule over the centuries, and today as well. After all, we only have to see how Christianity has dwindled under Muslim rule even in the past few decades to see how tolerant Muslim nations have been — let alone the ethnic cleansing that Jews have suffered under Muslim rule since 1948 (and long before).

The Palestine that he wants to return to is one where Jews would be beaten if they dared walk past the seventh step of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Jews would be killed if they entered the Temple Mount, where Jews would be attacked if they brought folding chairs to the Western Wall to pray. The Palestine that he envisions is one where Jews and Christians know their place is to be humble supplicants — or else.

What was it like to be a Jew in Palestine under Muslim rule? James Finn, the British consul to Jerusalem in the mid 19th century, describes it:

In times gone by these native Jews had their full share of suffering from the general tyrannical conduct of the Moslems, and, having no resources for maintenance in the Holy Land, they were sustained, though barely, by contributions from synagogues all over the world. This mode of supply being understood by the Moslems, they were subjected to exactions and plunder on its account from generation to generation (individuals among them, however, holding occasionally lucrative offices for a tune). This oppression proved one of the causes which have entailed on the community a frightful incubus of debt, the payment of interest on which is a heavy charge upon the income derived from abroad.

… The Jews are humiliated by the payment, through the Chief Rabbi, of pensions to Moslem local exactors, for instance the sum of 300£. a year to the Effendi whose house adjoins the ‘ wailing place,’ or fragment of the western wall of the Temple enclosure, for permission to pray there; 100£. a year to the villagers of Siloam for not disturbing the graves on the slope of the Mount of Olives ; 50£ a year to the Ta’amra Arabs for not injuring the Sepulchre of Rachel near Bethlehem, and about 10£ a year to Sheikh Abu Gosh for not molesting their people on the high road to Jaffa, although he was highly paid by the Turkish Government as Warden of that road.

All these are mere exactions made upon their excessive timidity … The Hebron Jews were more exposed than even those in Jerusalem to rough usage from the natives…

That barely scratches the surface.

An 1852 account describes how Jews had to hide any indication of owning property or goods, because the Arabs would steal them. Jews in Palestine suffered pogroms. The word “Jew” was (and remains) an epithet in the Arab world. And under the Jewish rule that Suleiman calls “ethnic cleansing,” there are more Muslims living in Jerusalem than at any time in history.