Israel. It’s hardly ever out of the news. It’s either always doing something bad, or accused of doing something bad. Whatever is happening it’s always painted as the villain.In 1948 the modern state of Israel was carved out of the lands that had been part of the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs, and their sympathisers (of whom there are many) today say that that wasn’t fair because the United Nations gave land to Jews who didn’t live there, taking it off the Arabs who had lived there from time immemorial. The Jews, the Arabs and their sympathisers say, had lived for well over a thousand years in other parts of the world – ever since the Romans expelled them from Israel in about 70 AD.But in my last programme I found that the Jews were still living and thriving in their homeland, which the Romans had called Palestine to piss the Jews off, up until the time that the Arab armies of Islam, with many mercenaries who weren’t Arabs, arrived and drove out the Byzantine Empire.So the question for me to answer in this programme is what happened to the Jews under the Arabs, or maybe more exactly the Muslims, because many of the peoples living in the Middle East, aren’t Arabs – like the Turks and the Persians for instance. But most of them are Muslims.Tag words: Israel; Ottoman Empire; Arabs; Jews; Romans; Palestine; Byzantine Empire; Turks; Muslims; Persians; Holy Lands; Arab Conquest; people of the Book; Christians; The Bible; Old Testament; New Testament; Jesus; Lydda; Ramle; Jordan; Ascalon; Caesarea; Gaza; Jericho; Dera’a; Hebron; dhimmi; Egypt; North Africa; Turks; Negroes; Berbers; Slavs; Greeks; Dailamites; Crusaders; Jerusalem; Acre; Caesarea; Haifa; Benjamin of Tudela; Academy of Jerusalem; Saladin; Mamluks; Kurds; Jewish Academy; Jacques of Verona; Dean of Mainz Cathedral; Bernhard von Breidenbach; Selim the Grim; Aleppo; General Allenby; Middle East; Suleiman I; Spain; King Ferdinand; Queen Isabella; Sephardic Jews; Sephardic Jews; Ladino; Safed; Don Joseph Nasi; the Great Jew; Zionists; Promised Land; John of Wurzburg; Latins; Germans; Hungarians; Scots; Navarese; Bretons; English; Franks; Ruthenians; Bohemians; Palestinian ; Bulgarians; Georgians; Armenians; Syrians; Persian Nestorians; Indians; Egyptians; Copts; Maronites; Norsemen; Danes; Frisians; Tartars; Russians; Nubians; Samaritans; League of Nations; British mandate; World War I; Mohammad; Genesis