by Gerald A. Honigman

          The June 12th New York Times ran an article skewed against Israel by Helene Cooper, The Quiet Mideast Corner (Surprise).

          Shocking not…but given this paper's duplicity towards the Jewish State, this was actually one of its milder rebukes.

          Still, the thrust of the article was that Israel should consider itself lucky because the Arab Spring hadn't taken up against the Jews yet. Cooper quotes President Obama and Yasir Arafat's bosom buddy, Robert Malley, as calling this potentiality a "game-changer."

          Interestingly--especially for an op-ed appearing in this particular newspaper--Cooper then concedes that the territories in question are disputed lands…not simply occupied territories.

          Keep in mind that the disputed lands of Judea (as in Judean… Jew) and Samaria also became known as the West Bank only since British imperialism named them so in 1922. This was done to distinguish  these territories from the nascent Arab state the Brits were creating on the east bank of the Jordan River--Jordan--which itself was sired from almost 80% of the original April 25, 1920 Mandate of Palestine.

          Contrary to Arab fairy tales and explained in quotes you will soon read below, all residents of the Mandate--not just Arabs--were allowed to live in these non-apportioned territories of the original 1920 Mandate. Indeed, Jews owned land and lived there until they were massacred by Arabs in the 1920s and 1930s. After illegally seizing it during the attack on a nascent Israel in 1948, Transjordan declared the West Bank to be as officially Judenrein as it had made itself since 1922.

          With this as background, let's now focus on what the real "quiet" corner(s) of the region are--and what the real game-changers would be…

          Notice that the Helene Coopers, Robert Malleys, Barack Obamas, New York Times, and so forth only see this entire picture through Arab eyes--as if no one else mattered, or even existed, in the region.

          Now, to truly understand the reasons for this, we have to go back over a half century to when Arabs made their honey deal with the West which effectively resulted in scores of millions of native, non-Arab peoples getting the shaft in terms of their own human--let alone political--rights.

         Rather than reinventing the wheel, I have a few favorite quotes from North African Amazigh ("Berber") spokesmen which spell this out nicely.

          Follow these excerpts from a Special Dispatch of MEMRI on May 3, 2007, written by Belkacem Lounes of the World Amazigh Congress, as he responded to Libya's Mu'ammar Qaddafi's denial of the very existence of the Amazigh people:

     The people of whom you speak...speak their own Amazigh language daily...live their Amazigh identity...What worse offense to elementary rights is there than denying the existence of a people...30 million in North Africa? You menace the Amazigh, warning that whosoever asserts his identity will be a traitor (identical problems in Algeria and Morocco)…There is no worse colonialism than internal colonialism--that of the Pan-Arabist claim that seeks to dominate our people. It is surely Arabism--an imperialist ideology that refuses diversity--that constitutes an offense to history and truth...

     Or, even more to the point, check out these next excerpts and paraphrases from the New English Review on January 18, 2008 and reported in North-of-Africa.com on July 3, 2009:

      In Algeria, Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, Tamazight...riots erupted, reported in France but ignored elsewhere in the West...America, of course, had been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO (the Arabian American Oil Company) propaganda, a payoff to the Saudis by Big Oil, to allow the latter to produce and market Arab oil. So, ARAMCO's message to America was that there is just an Arab world in this region in which there are no Copts, Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Turkmen...and, of course, no Berbers and no Jews—they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe for everyone in this region is just Arab.

          The American State Department has been in bed with ARAMCO since its creation…get the picture ?

          And from that noxious fountain sprung subsequent indoctrination of the media and others as well…even much of academia--whom should have definitely known (and acted) better.

          While countless columns--such as the Cooper essay--are written about (and academic courses focus upon) the quest for Arab rights in the region, one is hard pressed to find folks making the same demands for scores of millions of the area's native, non-Arab peoples who predate the Arab conquests by millennia.

          The same essayists and editorialists who take Israel to task for its reluctance to shrink itself again to suicidal, virtual invisibility on a world globe by a return to the '49 armistice lines forced upon it up until the '67 war, act deaf, dumb, and blind to the plight of Imazighen, Kurds, Copts, and millions of other non-Arab folks in the region.

          True, when Kurds get gassed and otherwise massacred by Arabs (and others as well), a story might make it into print. And the plight of black Africans in the Sudan at the hands of Arabs also sees the light of day more often these days too. The same goes for burned down churches and murdered Copts in Egypt.

          But the dots are most often not connected…

          There is no constant outcry--as there is for the birth of Arab state #22--for even basic human rights, let alone the birth of even one single political entity, for any of the region's largely subjugated and oppressed non-Arab peoples. They are simply expected to accept their Arabized fate. Indeed, perhaps the most famous Copt of modern times, Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the late Egyptian President Sadat's Foreign Minister and former Secretary General of the United Nations, told visiting Israeli author, Amos Elon (quoted in my own new book http://q4j-middle-east.com), that to "be accepted" in the region, Israel must consent to being Arabized.

          Now, read those above quotes, yet again, from those Amazigh spokesmen and see how pathetically hypocritical the so-called voices of Liberal ethical enlightenment truly are.

          Why is there no day-to-day demands from The New York Times--as is done on behalf of Arabs, who could have had their 22nd state (and second one in "Palestine"--Jordan created in 1922 from about 80% of the original 1920 Mandate) decades ago if they just didn't really want that state to replace Israel instead of existing alongside it--for Arabs to allow tens of millions of North African Amazigh parents to practice their own culture, speak their own language, and such and likewise for millions of Kurds in Syria as well?

          While the situation is reported to have recently improved in some parts of North Africa, it's still too early to jump for joy. But again, why have these situations been virtually ignored over the decades by the mainstream media--and in other quarters too (shame on too many of those supposedly objective academics)? If Israel is not the alleged culprit, no one gives a hoot…The same situation, until the relatively recent overthrow of Saddam in Iraq, could have been said about the plight of millions of Kurds there as well.

          While periodic tragic events like Arab gassing of Kurds and Arab genocide against blacks in the Sudan have been reported, once again, the dots have not been connected.

          Where are the editorials demanding a roadmap for Kurdistan?

          As I like to remind readers, Kurds were indeed promised independence in the region after World War I, but a collusion of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism nipped that Mesopotamian Kurdish state in the bud. Purely Arab Iraq arose in its stead…and we have been living with the tragic consequences of this sellout ever since.

          Unlike the Mandate of Palestine, where Arabs would be granted the lions' share of the land in 1922 with the creation of what would become Jordan (and would subsequently also be offered, but would reject, half of the 20% of the Mandate that was left in 1947),  there would be no offer of compromise to million's of Mesopotamia's Kurds who lived in the land for thousands of years before an Arab ever set foot on its soil.

          Where is Helene Cooper's essay complaining about not only the true statelessness of the region's  thirty-five million Kurds, but the utter subjugation, terror, and forced Arabization they have been forced to live with?

          While Cooper ponders the "quiet" of Arabs in the disputed--not purely Arab--territories, neither she nor the paper she writes for have any real interest, for example, in why millions of Syria's Kurds have been "quiet" too.

          Let's just say that, unlike how Israel deals with Arab protests, the title of Ismet Cherif Vanly's book speaks volumes as to what Kurds can expect from Arabs when the subject of Kurdish rights is discussed…The Syrian 'Mein Kampf' Against The Kurds (Amsterdam, 1968).

          Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have indeed been massacred over the last century in both the Syrian Arab and Iraqi Arab portions of Kurdistan (with many others victimized elsewhere), and their lands have been forcibly Arabized and their very culture outlawed as well.

          As for Robert Malley's game-changer, think about what would happen if millions of the region's subjugated and victimized non-Arab peoples truly rose up against their Arab oppressors…

          Unfortunately, unlike Israel trying to pinpoint those who target its children and other innocents as precisely as possible (but being falsely accused of atrocities anyway), there is no doubt about how Arabs would respond to such an eventuality.

          "Quiet," indeed, Ms. Cooper…

                                                       Abyei, Kirkuk, and Jerusalem… The ABCs Of The Arab-Israeli Conflict

                                                                                                             by Gerald A. Honigman

          At first glance, Abyei, Kirkuk, and Jerusalem may appear as if they have very little in common. But take another look. There is at least one common thread, in particular, which is revealing indeed…

          After a half century of renewed warfare (just in modern times), the black African south of the Sudan is slated to become independent of the Arab/Arabized north of the country in July of this year.

          Here's how the Arabs have viewed this. Ex-president, Gaafar Muhammad al-Nimeiry proclaimed…

               The Sudan is the basis of the Arab thrust into... black Africa, the Arab civilizing mission ("Arabism and Pan-Arabism in Sudanese Politics," Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 11, no. 2, 1973, pp. 177-78).

                Some three million blacks were subsequently slaughtered, enslaved, maimed, turned into refugees, and the like in the Arabs' "civilizing" process.

                Abyei is a disputed border area between north and south…and it has oil. While it was granted special status under the 2004-2005 agreements ending the decades-old civil war, a referendum was supposed to later decide its fate. Most recently, in May 2011, the north invaded the area, tanks firing at civilians indiscriminately, causing thousands of people to flee. The referendum has been postponed indefinitely at this time, and many fear a return to open warfare between the north and the south.

               While the Darfur region is in the west of this huge nation--so is not slated for independence (and so its own nightmare has no end yet in sight)--the following quote sums up what black Africans, Muslim  and non-Muslim, have largely been subjected to at the hands of their Arab conquerors--especially those who are considered to have not become sufficiently "Arabized" enough. Recall that Darfur is largely Muslim.

          Back on June 15, 2006, an AP article dealt with the findings of an UN-backed court, finally prodded into action, probing war crimes in Darfur. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor, stated that eyewitnesses spoke of Arab perpetrators of numerous atrocities telling black victims such things as, "we will kill all of you blacks and drive you out of this land."

          The new nation of South Sudan will need the oil wealth of the Abyei region to sustain itself, but the north wants this strategically important area as well.

          Having conquered the entire country over the centuries, it's somewhat amazing that the Arabs appear to have finally consented to the south's independence…or did they ?

           Given the importance of Abyei, this story continues…

            Moving out of Africa to Mesopotamia, Arabs have long stated that the birth of an independent Kurdistan would be viewed as "another Israel"…i.e., how dare yet another people (besides Jews) declare that they too have rights in what Arabs claim to be "purely Arab patrimony."

        Recall that Kurds--some thirty-five million truly stateless people in the region--were promised independence with the breakup of the centuries-old Ottoman Turkish Empire after World War I but were sacrificed, instead, on the altar of  British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism. My research on this very subject has been showcased in Paris's acclaimed Institut d'Etudes Politique (Sciences-Po) since the early '80s.

           The Kirkuk and Mosul region is where the second half of Iraq’s major oil deposits are located. After the Brits got a favorable decision on the Mosul Question from the League of Nations in 1925, the abortion of promises of independence to the Kurds became complete. It was considered essential to unite the oil wealth of both the north and south for the viability of the Mandate. Not wanting to anger the region's other oil-rich Arabs, the Kurds got His Majesty's royal shaft.

          Caught between the risen phoenix of Ataturk's Turkey and Reza Shah Pahlavi's Iran, Mesopotamia was only real hope for Kurdish freedom in the age of nationalism. Unlike the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine, which would see some 80% lopped off and  handed over to Arab nationalism in 1922 with the creation of what would become purely Arab Jordan, the larger Mandate of Mesopotamia would offer no compromise to its Kurds. We are living with the tragic consequences of this travesty to this very day.

          Kirkuk has been called the Kurdish Jerusalem. While it is now composed of mixed nationalities, largely due to Saddam's forced Arabization of the area, there is no doubt that Kurds lived in the region of the northern oil fields for millennia before an Arab even knew it existed. As Hurrians, Kassites, Medes, Gutians, and so forth, they were neighbors of the Jews. As for the presence of some Turkmen, recall that, besides Turkey, there are a half dozen other Asiatic Turkic states. It’s the Kurds who are still the main folks lacking any national liberation. While Arabs demand their 22nd state, who demands a roadmap for Kurdistan?

          Kirkuk is as Kurdish as London is British…despite all of those other nationalities now living there.

          While Iran's major oil fields are in its western province of Khuzestan, that area has been known as Arabistan for centuries…Guess why? Now relate this to Kirkuk…Like Abyei in the Sudan, the Arabs will fight to keep it solely as "purely Arab patrimony."

          Perhaps there is a way for the oil wealth of both areas to be shared between Arabs and those they have conquered, massacred, and subjugated in the past. It all depends on what the Arab mindset permits…and so far, the latter is rarely in a sharing mood.

          Finally, the last link in this essay involves Jerusalem.

          When Transjordan attacked western Palestine on its assault upon the reborn state of Israel in 1948, it soon demolished dozens of ancient synagogues, used tombstones from ancient Jewish cemeteries to pave roads and build latrines, and declared the conquered "west bank" of the Jordan River to be Judenrein, just like Transjordan had been since its creation in 1922. Arabs did all in their power to erase the Jews' millennial connections to the land…and now they have an American Administration--with perennial State Department assistance--to support their claims.

          Jews owned land and lived in Judea and Samaria up until the 1920s and 1930s when they were massacred by Arabs and had formed the majority of Jerusalem's population since the mid-19th century.

          Like Abyei and Kirkuk, Jerusalem was simply declared to be "purely Arab patrimony.

          Even the holiest of site in Judaism, the Temple Mount / Western Wall, was declared to be Buraq's  Mount instead--the site where Muhammad's winged horse rested before flying to Heaven. And, like other sites conquered on behalf of the Dar ul-Islam, the Dome of the Rock would be erected atop the very site of the conquered Jews' Holy of Holies.

          Abyei, Kirkuk, and Jerusalem…their stories go far in explaining the ABC s--the  root cause--of the Arab-Israeli conflict: the  Arabs' dominant worldview which refuses to see justice through any eyes but their own. Given this, any reasonable compromise becomes nearly impossible to achieve.

 www.geraldahonigman.com

Gentiles, Jews, and Ghettos...

by Gerald A. Honigman




What is it with you guys…at least, most of you?

I mean, if a Jew wants to live a semi-normal life outside of the ghetto, you have a bloomin' fit.

Reading an AP piece by Tia Goldenberg (don't let the name fool you…the Inquistion's Grand Inquistor had his Jews too, as did Hilter, James F-the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway Baker III, and so forth), I just couldn't resist…

Some background:

The early Church Fathers had a major argument about what to do with the alleged "G_d-killers" (you know who) in their midst.

Some, like Saint (????) John Chrysostom, wanted them dead. Here's an example of his teaching in his Homily 1, some sixteen centuries ago.

The Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they failed to accept the yoke of Christ, nor did they pull the plow of his teaching. Another prophet hinted at this when he said: "Israel is as obstinate as a stubborn heifer." … Although such beasts are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: "But as for these my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them here and slay them."

Indeed…

The road to Auschwitz was carefully paved with such religious enlightenment over the millennia.

Luckily, Saint John had other leaders who opposed his final solution strategy…St. Augustine, in particular.

Augustine wanted the G_d-killers kept alive so that when looked upon, others would see their lowly status and be reminded of their sin.

While the advice of both leaders was heeded throughout ages (i.e., scholarly estimates place the number of Jews slaughtered--a la Chrysostom--prior to the Holocaust at at least that same six million figure), such things as the mandatory ghetto, "Jew badge," and so forth were born in accordance with Augustine's "more tolerant" approach.

The ghetta--iron foundry in Italian--was the most unhealthy, filthy, lowly vicinity one could live in…just perfect for the G_d-killers. And so, for centuries, Jews were placed under lock and key behind ghetto walls throughout Christendom. Not until Napoleon were they freed from this existence.

Ghetto made it into our everyday language courtesy of the Jew.

Now, in case you think that this was confined to just the West, Islam and the Arabs had their version of what to do with the killers of Prophets, sons of apes and pigs, and kilab yahud (Jew dogs) living among themselves. While not as extensively utilized as in the West, certain parts of the "Arab" World had mellahs in which Jews were confined.

Okay, now for the May 15th AP story…

Unlike many of her (I presume) other stick it to the Jews fellow Jews in the mainstream media and elsewhere, Goldenberg used a more subtle approach in her article, "Settlers Hope To Lure West Bank Tourists."

Goldenberg "only" made the Jews' desire to live beyond the nine to fifteen-mile wide ghetto of a state (that the rest of the world now demands the Jew of the Nations return to) look like it's trying to possess the equivalent of America's 3,000 mile wide (and much farther beyond) Manifest Destiny, the still existing massive Russian empire, Britain in the Falkland Islands, or the over six million square miles of land conquered, stolen, settled, and forcibly Arabized from mostly native, non-Arab peoples which Arabs now claim exclusively for themselves.

For Goldenberg, the Jews' claim is just "biblical," and they stand in the way of Arab desires to create their 22nd state in the West Bank. How dare Jews use religion to stake out such claims! And she quotes other like-minded kapo Jews to support her message. Yet, it's okay for Arabs to claim the land as a result of their own Jihadi religious wars which led to their acquisition of it in the name of the Dar ul-Islam in the mid-7th century C.E. Once territory in the Dar al-Harb (the realm of war) becomes part of the former, it's religiously forbidden for it to revert to its earlier status.

Now for a reality check, although such folks usually don't want to be bothered by the facts…

Unlike Goldenberg's insinuation that Jews have no claims to the territories in question besides the biblical ones, Jews owned land and lived in Judea (Judean=Jew) and Samaria until they were massacred by Arabs in the 1920s and 1930s.

And for those who make short shrift of the Jews calling those lands by those above names, Judea and Samaria didn't also become known as the "West Bank" until British imperialism made its presence there in the 20th century.

In 1922, Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill awarded Arab nationalism almost 80% of the original Mandate of Palestine which Britain received, after World War I, on April 25, 1920, via the creation of Transjordan on the east bank of the Jordan River. Britain's East Bank representative, Sir Alec Kirkbride, had much to say about this in his book, A Crackle Of Thorns--as did others as well, including Transjordan's Emir Abdullah in his memoirs (all carefully documented in my own new book, by the way).

Transjordan later annexed the "west bank" of the Jordan River after the 1948 fighting which saw Israel resurrected on about 12% of the original 1920 Mandate. Holding both banks, the Emirate soon changed its name to Jordan instead. To say that Arabs do not have a state in "Palestine" ( the name Rome bestowed on Judea after the latter's second major revolt for freedom ) is to simply tell a lie.

At the end of the '48 fighting, which began with an invasion of a nascent Israel by a half dozen Arab states, the United Nations imposed armistice lines--not final political borders--which made Israel a mere nine to fifteen wide at its waist where the vast majority of Israel's population, industry, capital, and so forth are located. As President George W. Bush once said, there are driveways in Texas bigger than that…

Jews were then barred from living on lands in Judea and Samaria where they had thousands of years of history and as much right as Arabs to live on.

Regardless of what Goldenberg and her ilk write, the question begs to be asked…especially since they all simply take the Arab version of this story as truth.

Just who is and who is not a "settler" in the land in question?

As I like to remind folks, when the United Nations Relief Works Agency--UNRWA--was set up to assist Arab refugees, the very word refugee had to be redefined to assist those people.

So many Arabs were recent arrivals--settlers--themselves into the Palestinian Mandate that UNRWA had to adjust the very definition of "refugee" from its prior meaning of persons normally and traditionally resident to those who lived in the Mandate for a minimum of only two years prior to 1948.

Get the picture?

Thousands of Arabs had come with Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha's invading armies from Egypt in the latter 19th century and remained behind and settled the land.

During the mandatory period after World War I, the Minutes of the League of Nations' Permanent Mandates Commission recorded additional scores of thousands of Egyptian, Syrian, and other Arab settlers entering into the sparsely populated Mandate of Palestine.

It is estimated that for each one of these incoming Arabs who were recorded, many others crossed the border under cover of darkness to enter into one of the few areas in the region where any economic development was going on because of the influx of Jewish capital. These folks later became known as "native Palestinians."

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from some of those same "Arab" countries--Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Yemen, and so forth--became labeled, by folks like Goldenberg, as settlers.

This influx of Arabs into the land is well documented (correspondence of Prime Minister Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and so forth), but few--except scholars--usually delve into these sources. And too many of the latter these days tend to have an anti-Israel bias and agenda for a number of reasons…including bread and butter ones.

While this is not to say that there were not native Arabs also living in the Mandate of Palestine, it is to say that many, if not most, of the Arabs were also relative newcomers--settlers--themselves. Many travelers in the 19th century--including Mark Twain--wrote of the sad, depopulated condition of the Holy Land.

Truth be told, many of the villages set up in the West Bank and elsewhere were recent, 20th century settlements established by Arab settlers. And there were Jews whose families never left Israel/Judea/Palestine as well over the centuries, despite the tragedies of two, well-documented major wars for their freedom and independence with Rome, forced conversions of the Byzantines, the Diaspora, Crusades, and other nightmares as well.

But, again, such folks as Goldenberg are not interested with facts...They might be interested in writing what their employers expect, however.

I have to apologize because so much of what I have to write has been stated over and over again. But what other choice is there? The answers to the issues, allegations, and nastiness which are also constantly repeated remain the same…

Whatever will or won't become of the disputed lands in question, it must be noted that they are indeed disputed territory, not purely Arab land, as Goldenberg and too many of her media colleagues, the United Nations, the American State Department, the EU, and others assume or proclaim. Again, Jews lived and owned property there clear into the 20th century until their slaughter by Arabs and Jordan's demand that the land become Judenrein after its own illegal land grab in 1948.

Judea and Samaria were non-apportioned parts of the Mandate, and leading authorities such as Eugene Rostow, William O'Brien, and others have stressed that these areas were open to settlement by Jew, Arab, and other residents of the Mandate alike.

Indeed, as we've already seen, numerous Arabs poured into the area from all over the Middle East and North Africa. Having one of the highest birth rates in the world, those allegedly "native Palestinians" soon greatly increased in numbers...more Arab settlers setting up more Arab settlements. So why are these "legal" and acceptable but those of the Jews not?

The final draft of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, in the aftermath of the 1967 War that Arabs started with their blockade of Israel (a casus belli) and other hostile acts, called for the creation of secure, more defensible, real borders to replace Israel's vulnerable armistice line existence which practically begged for it to be bisected by its many surrounding enemies. All the architects of that resolution, from Lord Caradon to Eugene Rostow and others concur here. Israel was not to be forced to withdraw to the suicidal status quo ante.

Yet, when Jews demand 242's reasonable territorial compromise so they have a bit more depth to fall back upon (beyond the 9-15 mile wide former ghetto existence allocated to them via the UN by the armistice lines of 1949) when they will be predictably attacked again (regardless of how much further Israel bares the necks of its kids for "peace") they get treated by the Goldenbergs as if they're trying to recreate the Arabs' own Umayyad or Abbasid Empires, aka Caliphates.

By the way, because of those Caliphal conquests (even though the Arabs ruled most of those lands for just several centuries before they themselves were replaced by others, notably Turks),in the 20th century's age of nationalism, Arabs claimed sole rights in a demographically diverse region where scores of millions of non-Arabs also live--subjugated and intimidated by Arab ruler--and denied even a tiny sliver of the same rights Arabs demand for themselves.

Most, if not all, of this is either simply ignored or evidently considered kosher by Israel's many critics. For them, imperialism, colonialism, settlements, and such are deemed only nasty when non-Arabs so indulge…at least for Tia Goldenberg & Co.

For the latter, it's not the Arabs' rejection of Israel, regardless of size, but only the Jews' attempt to obtain what every other nation expects--real, somewhat defensible borders, instead of the virtual ghetto allocated to them via the armistice lines of 1949--which is the subject of constant ridicule.

www.geraldahonigman.com

                                                                                                                    by Gerald A. Honigman

     A story in Jewish World Review on May 5th told of a pending confrontation between the United States Congress and the State Department when the Supreme Court takes up the case of a couple whose child was born in Jerusalem. This is set to occur after its next session begins in October 2011. The State Department refuses to add Israel, after Jerusalem, on such official birth documents, despite a law passed by Congress almost ten years ago directing it to do so.

     Ah yes--evenhandedness and neutrality. You know...

      How dare Jews declare a city, which they've inhabited constantly for over three millennia as their capital.All other peoples and nations may declare such things, but not Jews…it's that special treatment thingy again.

      I mean, after all, no other lands have ever been contested between various peoples where national capitals were later proclaimed…

      Right…and if you believe that, then you probably also believe that Libya's Qaddafi should have been targeted instead of the light years' worse butchers of Damascus.

      Moving on…

      Arabs claim Jerusalem as theirs--and theirs alone.

      They do this because, as with numerous other non-Arab cities north, south, east, and west of the Arabian Peninsula, Jerusalem also was conquered and settled by Arabian invaders in the 7th century C.E.  Afterwards, despite the presence of scores of millions of non-Arab peoples who predated the Arabs and their new religion by millennia, the entire region was proclaimed to be solely the domain of the Dar ul-Islam, and later, in the age of nationalism, purely Arab patrimony. Arabs had tried that latter routine much earlier too--but this backfired and led to the overthrow of the Arabist Umayyad Caliphate based in Damascus. The coup occurred largely because of the revolt of numerous disgruntled Iranian converts to Islam, moving the seat of power much further eastward with Baghdad as the new Abbasid capital.

      Modern times…

      With all the turmoil going on right now in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and the rest of the region, if you think those potatoes are hot, just wait…

      Indeed, not long ago we got a glimpse of what to expect. The Obama Administration teamed with the State Department to take Israel to task for not making at least parts of Jerusalem off limits to Jews. That's what the building freeze issue was/is largely all about…the one that both the President and his Secretary of State continue to excoriate Prime Minister Netanyahu and  other Israeli leaders who do not prostrate themselves low enough over.

         So, while it kept getting shoved onto the back burner for fear of the intense heat that it will undoubtedly generate, Jerusalem will be one of the most difficult issues to resolve in any so-called "peace process."

          Years ago I wrote an earlier version of this analysis, but given the attention the building freeze and settlement issues have been receiving, the time is ripe for an encore--despite the even friendly feathers that it might ruffle.

          Let's begin…

          While it's true that Christians, Muslims, and Jews all have ties to Jerusalem, these ties are not "equal."

          In religious Jewish sources, for instance, Jerusalem is mentioned over 600 times. It is never mentioned even once in the Qur'an. It is alluded to in the latter in passages about the Hebrew Kings, David and Solomon, and the destruction of the Temples of the Jews.

          The Hamasniks, Arafatians, & Co. deny that a Jewish Temple ever existed there. They call the Temple Mount "Buraq's Mount," after Muhammad's supposedly winged horse which, after Muhammad was given refuge in the Jewish oasis town of Medina during his flight from enemies in Mecca, took him on a flight to the Temple of the Jews before his ascent to Heaven. But a mention of Jerusalem itself is nowhere to be found in the Muslim holy book...interesting, since it was recorded in many other places besides the writings of the Jews themselves for over 1,500 years before the rise of Islam.

          The reality, of course, is that religious claims of both Christians and Muslims to Jerusalem exist first and foremost due to both of these religions' links to the Jews.

          Political claims--based upon facts on the ground--are, admittedly, more complicated. Even so, throughout over three millennia, no other people--none, zilch, nada--except the Jews has ever made Jerusalem their capital, despite its conquest by many imperial powers, including that of the Arab caliphal successors to Muhammad. The latter ruled for a few centuries until they too were replaced by others, notably Turks during most of the centuries leading up to World War I. Damascus and Baghdad were the seats of Arab caliphal imperial power, and Mecca and Medina the holy cities.

          While Jerusalem was not ignored by its Arab Muslim conquerors (the Umayyads built the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of 'Umar on the Temple Mount, making it Islam's allegedly third holiest city), Jerusalem became in no way the focus for Islam that it is for Jews and Judaism.  

          Since David made Jerusalem his capital and it became the site of his son Solomon's Temple, Zion became the heart and soul of Jewish national and religious existence. Jews from all over the early diaspora made their pilgrimages and sent offerings to its Temple.

          "By the Rivers of Babylon we wept..." and "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning..." were just a few of the many ancient Biblical expressions of the Jews for Zion. Such yearning persisted throughout subsequent millennia in the Great Diaspora as well.

          Next Year in Jerusalem sustained the Jew throughout countless degradations and humiliations ( in both the Muslim East as well as the Christian West) culminating in the Holocaust and is recited at the end of the Passover Seder each year. I wonder if President Obama got to hear this at the ones that he has attended…

          There is no Arab Muslim parallel to these claims, despite efforts to portray Palestinian Arabs (many if not most of whom were new arrivals--settlers--in the land themselves), as the "new Jews."

          Coming from a hundred different lands (including those native to Israel itself), Jews didn't have almost two dozen other states to potentially choose from and suffered dearly for this statelessness.

           Most Arabs want sole political rights over Jerusalem for the same reason that they want sole rights over Tel Aviv. Once, again, in their eyes, only they have legitimate political rights anywhere in what they regard as simply purely Arab patrimony and the Dar ul-Islam.

          Now, substitute Kirkuk in Kurdistan, the Atlas Mountains in the "Berber" lands of North Africa, Darfur in the west and the south of largely black African Sudan, and countless other examples, and you can see how the problems Arabs have with Jews are not so unique after all. The same subjugating Arab mindset victimizes any non-Arabs who dare to assert their own share of justice in the region. Half of Israel's Jews fled from "Arab" lands.

          Moving into the realm of religion, regardless of whatever theology one clings to, Jesus' actual historical experiences in Roman-occupied Judea and Jerusalem were those of a Judean--Jew-- living under extremely precarious conditions. Thousands of his countrymen had already been hunted down, killed, crucified, and so forth in the subjugation/pacification process.

          After Jerusalem fell, numerous Judea (not Palestina) Capta coins were minted in honor of the Roman victory. They can be found in museums and elsewhere all over the world, and a picture of one graces the cover of my own new book on the subject (http://q4j-middle-east.com). As I repeatedly like to remind readers, the contemporary Roman and Roman-sponsored historians themselves--such as Tacitus, Josephus, and Dio Cassius--had much to say about all of this. Consider, for example, just this one telling quote from Tacitus:

          Vespasian succeeded to the throne...it infuriated his resentment that the Jews were the only nation who had not yet submitted.

          These oppressive conditions led to both open revolts and guerilla warfare to rid the land of its mighty pagan conqueror…wars which would eventually lead the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, to rename the land itself from Judea to Syria Palaestina in 135 C.E. in an attempt to stamp out any remaining hopes for Jewish independence. Judea was thus renamed after the Jews' historic enemies, the Philistines--a non-Semitic (thus non-Arab) sea people from the Aegean region to drive home the point.

          For a modern analogy, imagine Lithuania as it was engulfed by the Soviet Union in the latter's heyday of power. Or, a Hungarian freedom fighter or Greek partisan taking on the Soviets or the Nazis…or, even more recently, Tunisians, Libyans, Egyptians, Syrians, and others taking on their own home grown Arab tyrants.  

          Think of the sympathy, support, and admiration often given to such peoples and situations... and next consider the treatment Jews have received over the ages for longing for this same worldly freedom and dignity over the millennia themselves.

          Whatever Jesus did or did not mean in his alleged and very debatable statement, "render unto Caesar...," this passage and others in the New Testament have been used to belittle this same desire for freedom among the Jews. Only they have been expected to think solely along higher, other worldly lines.

          In addition to Judea Capta coins, the towering Arch of Titus was erected after the first major revolt in 70 C.E. and shows, among other things, the Romans carrying away the giant Menorah, Jewish captives, and other objects from the Jewish Temple that most Arabs and other Muslims claim never existed. As with the coins, it stands in Rome to this very day to commemorate Rome's victory over the Jews and Jewish Jerusalem.

          Next…

          When Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, fled Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E. (the Hijrah), the inhabitants welcomed him. Medina had been developed centuries earlier as a thriving date palm oasis by Jews, with great agricultural knowledge, fleeing the Roman assault (the banu-Qurayzah and banu-al-Nadir tribes, etc.), and its mixed population of Jews and pagan Arabs who later joined them had thus become conditioned for a native prophet speaking the word of G_d.

          There is no doubt among objective scholars that Muhammad learned much from the Jews, including ideas crucial to what later would be known as Islam.

          In just one of numerous examples, while the actual timing of his decision on the direction of prayer (the qibla) may never be known, during his long sojourn with the Jews of Medina, his followers were instructed to copy the Jews and pray towards Jerusalem. Early prominent Arab historians such as Jalaluddin came right out and stated that this was done primarily as an attempt to win support among the influential Jewish tribes (the "People of the Book") for Muhammad's religio-politcal claims.

          As we've already seen, it is from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem that Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to Heaven on his winged horse. A shrine, the Dome of the Rock, would later be erected on this Jewish holy site after the Arab imperial conquest of the land in the 7th century C.E.

          There is no doubt that Jews had an enormous impact on both Muhammad and the religion that he founded.

          The holy sites for Muslims in Jerusalem (i.e. the shrine and mosque erected on the Temple Mount of the Jews) are now deemed "holy" precisely because of the critical years Muhammad spent after the Hijrah with the Jews.

         Simply put, the Temple Mount had no prior meaning to pagan Arabs.

          While there was some early Christian influence as well, intense scholarship has shown that the Holy Law (Halakha) and Holy Scriptures of the Jews had a tremendous influence on the Qur'an, Islamic Holy Law (Shari'a), and so forth.

          Muslim religious beliefs regarding such things as Muhammad's alleged conversations with the Angel Gabriel (introduced to the whole world via the Hebrew Bible) notwithstanding, events and ideas such as Muhammad's "Jerusalem connection" were most likely not established until after his extended stay with his Jewish hosts in Medina. This was no mere coincidence...

          And when the Jews refused to recognize Muhammad as the "Seal of the Prophets," he turned on them with a vengeance. Before long, with the exception of Yemen, there were virtually no Jews left on the Arabian Peninsula. The men were all slaughtered (largely beheaded--sound familiar?), and the women and children were taken as slaves. The direction of prayer was next changed away from Jerusalem and towards the Kaaba in Mecca instead...

         To state that Jerusalem has the same meaning for Muslims that it has for Jews is to simply tell a lie.

          Indeed, if Arabs can stake a claim to Jerusalem, then why should Jews not have a claim to Medina--the place which solid scholarship has shown that they indeed founded?

         In modern times, Jews constituted the majority of Jerusalem's population from 1840 onwards.

          When Jordanian Arabs--whose nation itself was formed in 1922 from almost 80% of the original Mandate of Palestine issued to Britain on April 25, 1920--seized East Jerusalem after their invasion of reborn Israel in 1948, they destroyed dozens of synagogues and thousands of Jewish graves, using tombstones to pave roads, build latrines, and such.

          When Jews were denied access to their holy sites for almost two decades, the whole world acted deaf, dumb, and blind. The United Nations, European Union, and American State Department--now so upset about the return of Jews to their former homes in East Jerusalem--simply stood by and watched.

          After Israel was forced to fight a defensive war in 1967 due to its being blockaded by Egypt's Nasser at the Straits of Tiran (a casus belli) and other hostile acts, Jerusalem became reunited.

          Access to all peoples and faiths subsequently became unhindered. It was at this moment that much of the world then chose to rediscover Jerusalem...demanding its re-division, internationalization, de-Judaization, and so forth.

          Over numerous centuries, Jews have been forcibly converted and/or expelled, massacred, humiliated, demonized, inquisitioned, ghettoized, subjected to genocide, and so forth. They have been labeled the "deicide people," children of the devil, sons of apes and pigs, and kilab yahud (Jew dogs) throughout much of the world…constantly unwanted strangers in other peoples' lands.

          Keep all of this in mind, when the next round of Israel-bashing occurs ( has it ever stopped? ) and understand that Jews will largely remain determined--despite the enormous opposition that they will face--that their rights in the sole capital of the sole, microscopic, resurrected state that they possess will not be sacrificed on behalf of any 22^nd state created for Arabs...especially since the latter show, in poll after poll, that regardless of how much  Jews will continue to bare their necks for peace, Arabs will not accept the legitimacy of a viable Jewish Israel anyway, regardless of its size.

 www.geraldahonigman.com

          Within a month of unrest spreading from elsewhere in the region into Libya, cruise missiles, naval and air support, and the UN managed to act against that nation's dictator to prop up his opponents. The French, the Brits, Americans and others have all managed to act remarkably swiftly to defend those who want Libya's leader, Mu'ammar Qaddafi, deposed.

         Now, don't get me wrong…I fully understand that Qaddafi's antics--frequently terror-linked--have won him few friends in the West, despite his oil wealth and the abundance of those addicted to the petro-spigot. And I understand that his open contempt for many of his fellow Arab megalomaniacs (especially the royal ones) won him few plaudits from that circle as well.

         Still, there are some gnawing doubts here…

         You know, as typical, in many respects, an Arab leader that he is, Qaddafi was one of a very few of his colleagues who dared to confront Syrian Arab despots right on their own turf about their murderous rape and  subjugation of Lebanon. And what other Arab leader do you know of has ever dared to say something like his remarks at the Second Afro-Arab summit in Srte, Libya in October 2010? Check these out…

         I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way. I regret and I am ashamed when we remember these practices. I apologize for this… Today we are embarrassed and shocked by these outrageous practices of rich Arabs who had treated their fellow Africans with contempt and condescension. We should now recognize this issue, denounce it vigorously and place it in its true dimension.

         Qaddafi is a character, no doubt, and before I appear to applaud his alleged humanitarian side too much, please understand that he is the same dude who claimed that the original, pre-Arab conquest natives of North Africa--the assorted "Berber" peoples like the Kabyle and Amazigh--do not even exist. Recall this Special Dispatch of MEMRI on May 3, 2007, written by Belkacem Lounes of the World Amazigh Congress, who responded to his denial with this…

         The people of whom you speak...speak their own Amazigh language daily... live their Amazigh identity...What worse offense to elementary rights is there than denying the existence of a people...30 million in North Africa? You menace the Amazigh, warning that whosoever asserts his identity will be a traitor...identical problems in Algeria and Morocco...There is no worse colonialism than internal colonialism--that of the Pan-Arabist claim that seeks to dominate our people. It is surely Arabism--an imperialist ideology that refuses diversity--that constitutes an offense to history and truth...

     Before moving away from this point, Qadaffi recently voiced trepidation over the prospect of independence for  (black) South Sudan prompting Barnaba Marial Benjamin, Minister for Information and Broadcasting for the South, to refute his claims and charges.

         The same Qaddafi, who asked his "fellow Africans" for forgiveness over the Arab black African slave trade, could next only advise blacks in the Sudan--who were slaughtered, maimed, enslaved, and so forth by the millions by Arabs and Arabized just in the past century alone (not including the earlier atrocities)--to not separate from the Arab north of the country.

         In other words, Qaddafi is first and foremost an Arab nationalist par excellence--and, like others of his ilk, sees the entire region as simply purely Arab patrimony…regardless of some nice words spoken to gain support at summits and such.

         Moving on…

         Now, since I brought up the Sudan, please explain the following to me--and there are many other examples of this disturbing situation which could be pointed out as well…

        During President Obama's January 25th State of the Union address to the nation, he
brought up the recent moves in the south of the Sudan towards independence. While it was great to hear him speak of this, I could not help but contrast the treatment this subject has received over the last five decades or so with that afforded to assorted Arab causes.

        Again, literally millions of black Africans in the Sudan--both in the non-Muslim south and the Muslim west of the country--have been murdered, displaced, subjugated, and so forth by the Arab/Arabized north.

        And in all of these decades, besides mostly empty words, what support (until just several years ago) did these folks get from the international community in the name of their own human and political rights?

         Where were the threats by the UN to create a no fly zone or, more relevant to the Sudan, as with the new UNSC Resolution 1973 passed to protect Libyan opponents of Qaddafi, to take all necessary measures to protect the Sudanese people as is now being done for the Libyan people?

         While I don't want to see any innocents die, Arab or otherwise, is it not troubling--to say the least--to try to understand why non-Arab folks in the region can be habitually slaughtered, victimized, and subjected to genocide (and not only black Africans) for decades before any real action is contemplated, yet the world community is quick to act in Libya?

         Who knows what's really going on over there right now anyway?

         Is anyone betting on democracy Western style to replace Qaddafi?

         Are Libya's native Berbers going to be treated any more civilly under an Arab regime which replaces Qaddafi's?

         Meanwhile, besides other expenses, over a hundred and twenty cruise missiles (at over one million dollars each) have already been fired at him, Stealth Bombers have already made round trip sorties from America to Libyan airfields, and so forth. Anyone interested in what those particulars--just by themselves --have already cost the American taxpayer?

         Now, I understand that Qaddafi's poor relations with his fellow Arab despots brought the Arab League to wink at Western action against him, but that still leaves some very disturbing questions unanswered.

         Millions of black Africans, Kurds, and others were slaughtered by Arabs for a half century before the world even took any real notice. Tens of thousands of Kurds were slaughtered by Arabs long before Saddam's gassings and the genocidal ANFAL Campaign against them in the '80s.

         While the blacks in the south of the Sudan are at long last slated for independence very shortly, those in the western Darfur region have no such light at the end of their tunnel. And while the world demands a twenty-second state for Arabs at the expense of the sole, resurrected one the Jews finally received, there is still no roadmap for thirty-five million truly stateless Kurds.

         I'd like someone to explain all of the above to me, please...unless the difference is just that while the Arab League may wink at some outside intervention on behalf of Arabs, any such moves on behalf of non-Arabs in the region will be dealt with punishingly.

        As Rogers and Hammerstein's King of Siam said to Anna…

         'Tis a puzzlement…

         And a very disturbing one, at that.

          http://q4j-middle-east.com