Abraham and Sara were married for many years without children. HaShem had promised Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, but Sara could not have children, and the years went by. Abraham was already 85. Sara had a personal maid, a young Egyptian woman named Hagar. Sara decided to give Hagar to Abraham: “Perhaps I will have children through her” (Bereshit 16:2). The plan was for Sara to adopt Hagar’s child as her own. It was, more or less, an ancient version of surrogacy. Abraham and Sara treated Hagar very well. Abraham treated Eliezer, his servant, like family, with respect, and trusted him with everything he owned. With Hagar, they trusted something even greater: their future descendants.
But something happened. As soon as Hagar became pregnant, the Torah says, “vatekal gevirtah be’eneha” (16:4): Hagar began to look down on Sara and to treat her with disrespect. According to the Midrash, she first stopped calling her “my lady” and started calling her by her first name: “Sara.” Then she humiliated her in public. She told Sara’s friends: “If Sara were truly righteous, God would have given her children. I, on the other hand, got pregnant right away!” Hagar was not satisfied with all the rights and privileges of being the biological mother of Sara’s child. Now she wanted to be the boss.
Hagar gave birth to Yishmael, Abraham’s first son. According to our sources, and to Islamic tradition as well, Yishmael is the patriarch of the Arab peoples. As the Torah predicted, Yishmael became a great nation, a civilization. But, as the Torah also anticipated, his descendants stand out for their drive to conquer other peoples and to become the bosses wherever they live.
The Torah hints at this very subtly: “yado bakol veyad kol bo.” Literally: “his hand (Yishmael’s) over everyone.” That is, Yishmael tries to keep everyone under his control. But it also says: “and everyone’s hand over him.” My interpretation: Yishmael is willing to live under the hand of others. In other words, Yishmael, like his mother, knows only two ways to relate to other people: under their hand, or with his hand over them. He can be below or above, dominated or dominant. What he does not know how to do, or cannot do, is stand as an equal. He cannot live on equal terms with others.
EUROPE, EUROPE
Europe’s great tragedy, and soon America’s if it isn’t careful, is its refusal to see that the descendants of Yishmael, especially the Islamists, do not tolerate equality. They accept being dominated. They accept lowering their heads and living under someone else’s hand. But, and this “but” is critical, only temporarily. It is strategic patience. The goal of Islamist immigrants in Europe and America is not to integrate. Having the same rights as the citizens of the country that took them in is not enough for them. They do not seek political power in order to be equal to everyone else. Their final aspiration is religious: they want, they need, to be on top. To control, to dominate, to impose themselves on others.
This is the founding story of Islam. Muhammad spent thirteen years in Mecca as the leader of a weak minority. During that period he was strategically patient, very conciliatory, even pacifist. But when he moved to Medina and gained numbers and military power, the period of war and domination began. Muslim jurists explain that “the later verses of the Quran cancel the earlier ones.” In other words: tolerance toward the infidel (anyone who is not a Muslim) is practiced while the Islamists are weak. When they are strong, they must impose their rule. This is how Muslims treated the Jews and Christians who lived under Islam for centuries. Islamic law, Sharia, spelled out every detail of that “being below”: they could not build houses taller than those of Muslims, they had to give up their seats to Muslims, and they could not ride horses. The ideal of Islam is not theological submission. It is, by definition, the subjugation of the infidel.
Westerners cannot grasp this, because they do not understand a religious mindset. They assume everything is about rights, equality, gratitude, and respect. They believe that if they welcome immigrants and give them everything they ask for and more, the Islamists will live with them in peace, as equals, and with an enormous sense of gratitude. Why would they be hostile to their hosts? Thinking this way, logically, is a grave mistake. The Islamist does not want to subject the infidel to his law because the infidel did something wrong to him. He wants to subject him because, once he has the power, it is his religious duty to do so. It is not personal. The Hagar Syndrome is part of the Islamist’s religious observance.
The Muslim immigrants who came to Europe “lowered their heads” at first, and took every advantage and privilege they could from the welfare system of socialist Europe. They were treated with the same kindness Abraham and Sara showed Hagar. But little by little, instead of integrating, the Islamist movements grew stronger, in numbers and in politics. And once they were strong, they stopped seeking integration and started seeking domination.
Worst of all, they no longer hide their goal. They say it openly. The first precedent was on April 27, 2024, when more than a thousand Islamists marched in Hamburg demanding a caliphate, an Islamic state. They carried signs reading “The caliphate is the solution” and called for Sharia law. Let me be clear: they were not asking to be allowed to practice Sharia themselves. They were demanding that Germany become a caliphate!
MEMRI, an institute that translates and publishes what is said in mosques and on Arab media, has documented, and keeps documenting, hundreds of sermons delivered in Arabic in the heart of Europe, where imams and political-religious leaders openly announce that “Rome,” meaning Christendom, will be conquered by Islam. In the Netherlands, Sheikh Abdelhamid Aynelhayat preached that democracy, people governing themselves, is the cause of strife, and that the solution is to impose Sharia. In Copenhagen, Imam Mundhir Abdallah told his followers that after establishing the caliphate and eliminating Israel, the final solution would be the conquest of Europe.
For the same reason that “integration” with Islamists is impossible, peace with them as equals is impossible too. Unless it is on Sharia’s terms: “We offer you peace, on one condition. If you do not convert, we control society and you become dhimmis, a minority that, in exchange for a small head tax, the jizya, enjoys our ‘protection.’ And so we will live in peace.” It is the same principle: you are either below or above. There is no real integration. Only a pretense of it, a temporary one, until more power is gained. That is the strategy. Europe’s endless naivety, and its willful ignorance, will cost it its identity.
THE ISRAELI ELECTIONS
Like Jews all over the world, I am following the Israeli elections very closely, and the massive increase in the Arab vote, which doubled the Arab parties’ seats in the Knesset. Right now there is an investigation into whether fraud can be proven, since there are serious suspicions that foreign countries used money to buy votes. I don’t have a crystal ball to know how or when the coalition-building process will end. But there is one possibility that terrifies me: a coalition with Israel’s Arab parties.
Most of the Arab Israelis who vote for these parties are not “Israelis of another religion.” They are anti-Zionists. Argentine Jews, by contrast, want the good and the prosperity of the Argentine Republic, the country that took them in and that they love. Wherever we Jews go, we want the same rights, security, and freedom of worship, and nothing more. We have no intention of conquering the country that receives us, or of converting anyone. Of the two Arab parties, the Joint List (Meshutefet) is nationalist and anti-Israel, and Ra’am is Islamist, part of the Muslim Brotherhood. And now that they feel stronger, having doubled their representation, they have begun to voice their ambitions of domination more openly: to conquer the Galilee, and for Israel to stop being a Jewish state. The political jihad of Israel’s Arabs has begun.
I do not believe the opposition will form a government with them. Eisenkot, Bennett, and Liberman have promised to partner only with Zionist parties that recognize Israel as a Jewish state and declare Hamas a terrorist organization, conditions most Arab Knesset members would never accept. So the most likely outcome is a second election. But there is a Machiavellian and unforgivable possibility that would be a nightmare and would harm Israel for many years. There is talk of temporary voting deals between the Arab parties and the opposition parties to remove Netanyahu from office and, somehow, together with the Supreme Court, “disqualify” him politically so he cannot run in the next election. I hope and pray this does not happen.
But there is one thing I am sure will happen. Whatever the results of the fraud investigation, Israel’s Arabs will start looking down on “Sara.” They will be more defiant. They will hide their hostility toward Israel less. They are at the turning point: done being on the bottom, and thirsty to be on top.
But there will also be something positive in this change. The Jews of Israel, who have already learned that they cannot trust the Palestinians of Gaza, will get to know the true aspirations of their Arab neighbors who live and work in Israel. Because when they raise their heads, their true face will show. It may be a moment of awakening for many Yehudim, a moment to understand that, by culture and by religion, equality and rights are not enough for the Islamists. They cannot live for long as equals. Either they are below, or they are on top. It is stronger than they are. They can’t help it. It is the Hagar Syndrome.
Rabbi Yosef Bitton
