In the 1962 movie “Lawrence of Arabia,” there is one scene where an Arab sheikh is speaking with Lawrence (played so well by Peter O’Toole) about the long-term goals of the Arab world. The sheikh says, as I recall, something to the effect of “Lawrence, you don’t understand. We want it all back and it does not matter how long it takes.”

I saw that movie over 60 years ago and am still moved and informed by that scene. The real-life Lawrence died in 1935, well before the establishment of the State of Israel, so the sheikh was not referring to places in Israel from which Arabs were allegedly expelled after Israel’s independence was declared in 1948. Not at all.  Rather, the sheikh was referencing what used to be a part of the Arab world at its peak and his desire to get back to that situation.

That was during the Islamic Golden Age (8th to 13th centuries). At its peak, the Arab world—encompassing the vast expanse of the Umayyad and Abbasid........

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