While Jews under Christendom suffered two millennia of systemic persecution as "Christ killers" culminating in the Holocaust, they (and Christians) as "People of the Book" co-existed and even prospered in the vast Muslim world for centuries before the forceful carving of a Jewish state out of predominantly Arab Palestine poisoned relations.

True, non-Muslims were second-class Dhimmis, but this was at a time Americans owned slaves. Persecution of minorities (including Jews) existed everywhere and the Muslim world was no exception. But no one disputes (not even pro-Israel scholar Bernard Lewis) that historically, Jews fared far better under Islam than Christendom, until Zionism appeared.

The seeds of conflict were only sown in the 1880's when European anti-Semitism gave birth to a Zionist movement that sought to recreate a Jewish homeland in an already populated Palestine.