A Lesson From Kosovars And Palestinians For Atlasians...

A Lesson From Kosovars And Palestinians For Atlasians...

by Gerald A. Honigman

Now tell me…What would you do in the age of nationalism--which came relatively late to the Middle East--if your national group already had almost two dozen states on over six million square miles of territory (conquered mostly from other national groups), wanted to create at least one more, but another people’s sole, tiny, resurrected nation state stood in the way?

Well, please take a look--like many of us have over the decades--at the answer through the oft-quoted words of a spokesman for that above national group itself, PLO executive committee member Zuheir Mohsen, on March 31, 1977, in the Dutch newspaper Trouw.

The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese… Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism…

Before having to deal with the politics and sensitivities of at least some in the West, Arabs simply gave no thought to Mohsen’s tactics.

As I deliberately like to reemphasize time and again (for those who like to place Israel under the high power lens of moral scrutiny while playing deaf, dumb, and blind to what surrounds it), millions of native peoples were simply conquered and forcibly Arabized in the name of the Arab Nation and the spread of its Dar ul-Islam--imperialism and colonialism, pure and simple--and millions of native Egyptian Copts, black Africans, Kurds, Imazighen (Berbers), Jews, and others are still suffering the consequences of this murderous subjugation.

In a post-Holocaust age, however, in the struggle to win over hearts and minds from abroad, how could Arabs demand twenty-two states while denying Jews their one?

The answer--as Mohsen so correctly stated above: Reinvent yourselves.

From now on, you’re “Palestinians.” And then depend on the ignorance of most of the rest of the world to back your claim, “If Jews can have a state, why not Palestinians?” And, don’t you know, “Palestinians” are the new formerly stateless Jews.

Forget the facts…

Like most Arabs never saw the land of the Jews--Judaea--until their own murderous imperial conquests brought them out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century C.E. when they spread out in all directions.


Or that the very name “Palestine” was dubbed upon Judaea by the Roman Emperor Hadrian after the Jews’ costly second revolt for freedom. To pour salt onto their wound, he renamed the Jews’ land after their historic enemies, the Philistines--a non-Semitic sea people (i.e. not Arab) from the area around Crete. Tacitus, Dio Cassius, and other contemporary Roman historians wrote all about Judaea and Judaeans--not “Palestine” or “Palestinians.” Listen to one of my favorite telling quotes about the Jews’ first revolt in Vol. II, Book V, The Works of Tacitus:

Vespasian… succeeded to the command.… it inflamed his resentment that the Jews were the only nation that had not yet submitted…Titus was appointed by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea… he commanded three legions in Judaea itself… To these he added the twelfth from Syria and the third and twenty-second from Alexandria… amongst his allies were a band of Arabs, formidable in themselves and harboring towards the Jews the bitter animosity usually subsisting between neighboring nations.

Or that, not having endured the forced exile and diaspora of many (but not all--many still remained in the hill country and elsewhere clear up to the Arab conquest) of the Jews, still...so many Arabs were newcomers themselves to the Mandate of Palestine after World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Turkish Empire which had controlled the land for over four centuries, that when the United Nations Relief Works Agency--UNRWA--was set up to assist Arab refugees (after a half dozen Arab states invaded a nascent Israel in 1948 to nip it in the bud and their attempt backfired), the very word “refugee” had to be redefined 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 to assist these people. Hamas’s own patron saint, for whom its terror brigade and rockets are named for, Sheikh Izzadin-al-Qassam, was born in Latakia, Syria. Arafat was from Egypt. And both “native Palestinians” had plenty of company, pouring into the Mandate because of the economic development going on due to the Jews.

And so forth.

Now, using this same tactic, Serbs have been similarly shafted.

Albania is an independent nation southwest of the former Yugoslavia. The Serbs fought their first major battle for Kosovo against the spread of the Dar ul-Islam (this time led by Turkish imperialism) in 1389--over six centuries ago.

Albania had become at least nominally converted to Islam via the Ottoman conquest. Over the centuries, ethnic Albanians encroached upon traditionally Serbian lands.

Enter the late 20th century…

Everyone knew that with the death of Tito, Iraq’s twin, artificially glued together state of Yugoslavia would fall apart.

Now, if you’re an Albanian in Serbia and you already have an ethnic Albanian state in existence (so you can’t claim “statelessness"), how do you stake your claim for additional territory--at another people’s (Serbs’) expense?

Hitler played a somewhat similar game with the large population of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. World War II soon followed, as his sights were set far beyond the Czechs’ and Slovaks’ domain.

According to this reasoning, America also better watch its own southwest very carefully--especially since it really was once part of Mexico anyway. And what’s Russia up to these days, since we’re on this subject? Think non-Russian peoples’ lands, with Russian ethnic minorities, and how this game could be played out.

The answer, however, regarding Albanians in Serbia is…You follow Zuheir Mohsen’s advice.

But instead of renaming yourselves “Palestinians,” you, of course, call yourselves Kosovars instead. And then get assorted Jihadis from the rest of the Arab/Muslim World to assist you--along with America and NATO.

There is no doubt that too much of the conflict regarding the breakup of Yugoslavia was deliberately biased against the Serbs.

Atrocities occurred (as they had for centuries)--but on both sides, with Serbs often the victims…victims the American State Department ignored as it sought Muslims it could point to as championing while America was fighting others in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. American bombers led the final dismemberment.

There’s a lesson here…and Jews, Kurds, Imazighen, and others need to pay close attention.

Instead of demanding just the rebirth of their one state, Jews need to demand others as well.

Jews have a long history in Morocco, as just one example--long before Arabs conquered both Jews and Imazighen alike there.

Over 600,000 Moroccan Jews now live in Israel--part of the other side of the Middle East refugee problem few ever talk about...more Moroccan Jews than Arabs who got their own nation states in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, etc. when they were created. Additionally, many more Moroccan Jews live in America, France, and elsewhere today, including Morocco.

Why multiple states for Arabs and not Jews?

As early as Roman times, Jews fleeing the Roman wars in Judaea began to travel inland in North Africa and forged both economic and cultural ties with the Imazighen--especially in the Atlas Mountains. Some of the latter folks even adopted the faith of their Jewish neighbors.

When Arab Muslims invaded, Jews and Imazighen fought them together. Across the Atlas Mountains, Queen Dahlia al Kahina (whom the famed Muslim scholar, Ibn Khaldun, called “the Jewess” ) led both Jews and Imazighen in battle against invading Arabs, who would later massacre and subjugate both peoples.

Why not states for the Atlasians--at least one for Jews and one for the Imazighen--in North Africa?

Why “Palestinians” and “Kosovars,” but not “Atlasians?”

While we’re at it, some thirty-five million stateless Kurds need to jump aboard as well.


Kurds predate Arabs in “Arab” Syria as well as in “Arab” Iraq…and in “Turkish” Turkey. But we all know what happened/happens when Kurds try to assert their rights there. Their best hope right now is in the place where they were indeed promised independence after World War I--in northern Mesopotamia, part of today’s renamed Iraq.

While I don’t really expect that much of the above will happen, it’s worth asking those academics, State Department folks, left-wing knownothings, and other hypocritical practitioners of the double standard… Why not?

If Kurds played the Arab game regarding trading “Arab” for “Palestinian,” how many Kurdish states might they be entitled to?

The reality, of course, is that all of these peoples are still struggling to maintain or obtain basic political and human rights in what Arabs call “purely Arab patrimony.”

That others buy into their subjugating mindset is the real travesty.

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Of Arabs And Kurds: Beyond Ignorance

Of Kurds And Arabs: Beyond Ignorance…The Allegedly Free Press
by Gerald A. Honigman

If it was just another State Department travesty, I could accept it.

After all, I’m used to the Foggy Folks doing such things as fighting President Truman over his supporting Israel’s very rebirth; concocting latter day Arafatian Fatah “good cops” to force down Israel’s throat (knowing that on the issue of a permanent Jewish Israel, Abbas’s boys totally agree with the Hamas “bad cops”); demanding that Israel itself supply weapons to Fatah--which has as much, if not more, Jewish blood on its hands than Hamas--only to see such things as yeshiva students later massacred as a result; setting up equivalency standards whereby murderer and those in pursuit are placed on the same moral plane; and so forth.

The Arabists who wield too much say at Foggy Bottom have played such games for well over a half century now.

Demanding a second, not first, state for Arabs within the original 1920 borders of the Mandate of Palestine (Jordan, sitting on the lion’s share of the land, carved out in 1922), the State Department has no problem pressuring Israel to make one suicidal concession after another so that Arab state # 22 may arise.

One of the latest issues involved Arab students (“Gaza Fulbright Scholars”) Secretary Rice wanted Israel to allow to come to America to study. Reports stated she was fuming over Israel’s reluctance to grant this request for these particular students.

Guess what…? Turns out State has now also “seen the light” on this matter (connections to terror groups, etc.). Don’t expect any apologies, however.

What’s worse, in all the decades I’ve closely followed the Middle East, I can’t recall any Foggy Folk “fuming” over anything Arabs did--be it blowing up Jewish teens in nightclubs, students on buses, mothers and babies in pizzerias, gassing and massacring Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, black Africans in the Sudan, or Berbers in the rest of North Africa, and so forth. Nonetheless, Baker, Rice, Dulles, etc. fume/fumed a lot over Jews, however.

No doubt, America needed oil, and--like many other nations--did what it could to make nice to those who would one day be controlling the spigots. Many of the latter are Arabs. Not to mention that long before former Secretaries of State James Baker made $$$ millions and Condoleezza Rice had a Chevron oil tanker named for her, other Foggy Folks, under cover of the flag, also prospered via that oil spigot.

So, that brings me to the real problem of this current article…the press.

As with the Foggy Folks, I’m sure there are bright people in the print and other media. So, the problem cannot simply be due to ignorance…which makes it much worse.

Furthermore, far too few of us have written of this problem--as glaring as it is--and far too many academics have shamed themselves by indulging in such hypocrisy as well.

The problem I’m speaking of is the double standards the press constantly uses when covering the Arabs’ quest for state # 22 versus the plight of some thirty-five million stateless Kurds.

A free press is one of the cornerstones of a true democracy…yet ours routinely acts like it takes its cue from the State Department when it comes to the Middle East. State has the same animus and set of Arab-colored glasses when it comes to Kurds as it has with Hebrews. As just one of numerous examples, when--as National Security Advisor--Dr. Rice spoke at the U.S. Institute of Peace on August 19, 2004, here’s some of what she said about the birth of Arab state # 22:

The President believes that the Palestinian people (Arabs) deserve not merely their own state, but a just and democratic state that serves their interests and fulfills their decent aspiration.

She later went on to say something to the effect that there would be no greater cause than the birth of Palestine.

Now contrast this with how, on this same occasion, she simply brushed off a question regarding a Kurdish referendum on independence (which showed that at least 80% of Kurds wanted this) with the following disdain:

…It’s the role of leadership to convince people that they really ought to stay in the same body.

Sucking the Arab oil teat quite well since leaving office, James Baker led the Baker-Hamilton Commission (Iraq Study Group) for President Bush not long ago and proposed similar shaft the Kurds ideas. The list, unfortunately, goes on and on.

We’re supposed to expect better of our press, but it has mostly behaved as if the Foggy Folks are its mentors.

Countless editorials and op-eds have been written on behalf of the birth of Arab state # 22--knowing full well that Arabs of either stripe have no intention of living peacefully with a Jewish neighbor--regardless of its size. A visit to either good or bad cops’ maps, textbooks, websites, and so forth soon reveals this.

Yet I still have not seen the press editorial calling for the birth of Kurdish State # 1...or even for meaningful Kurdish autonomy. The same papers who call Arabs who blow up buses “militants” have no problem calling the PKK in Turkey “terrorists.” Why the double standards? Where’s the courage of a free press to confront such injustice?

Are there problems associated with addressing the aspirations of tens of millions of repeatedly used and abused native, stateless Kurds?

Sure, but no more--indeed less--than with those associated with the creation of Arab state # 22.

I have written of this many times before, such as in State Department Math...
http://www.krg.org/articles/detail.asp?rnr=77&lngnr=12&anr=6589&smap= Keep in mind that Kurds were indeed promised such a state in the north of Mesopotamia after World War I but were shafted by…guess what?

British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism.

A united, Arab-controlled Iraq was created instead in all of the former Mandate of Mesopotamia.

Among other places, you can find my work on this (while a doctoral student) on Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes Politique (Science Po) recommended reference list:

http://bibliotheque.sciences-po.fr/produits/bibliographies/question_kurde.htm

Keep in mind that all the Kurds are asking for is meaningful autonomy within a federated Iraq--far less than what they truly deserve. But to have the former, they must secure their finances as well. And that brings me to the press again…

Recently, just days apart, my local paper carried photos and articles supplied by the Associated Press (July 29th and August 3rd).

One showed a “Palestinian” (Arab) boy with “The Dome Of The Rock Mosque” in the background.

The overwhelmingly vast majority of the time, what’s missing from such reporting to mostly unaware readers is that that mosque was deliberately built--after the Arabs’ own imperial conquest of Israel in the 7th century C.E.--on the Temple Mount of the Jews. Using this case as an example, the most you’ll read is that the place is holy to three faiths and such.

The second piece, by the AP’s Robert Reid, was entitled, “Kurdish Demands Over Kirkuk Spur Protest.”

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.

Now, if Israel captured Arab oil fields, Judaized the area, and so forth, the whole world would have a hissy fit. Actually, it did develop the Abu Rodeis oil fields in the Sinai, captured as a result of the ‘67 War started when Egypt blockaded Israel at the Straits of Tiran. Subsequently, in return for a very cold peace (the arms and explosives coming into Gaza to kill Jews are entering largely via Egypt), Israel gave up its chance at energy independence by returning the whole shebang to Egypt.

Now, apply this to Iraq.

Why is it okay for Arabs and Iranians to control ‘their’ oil, but not so for Kurds?

And please don’t respond--as that second article did--that Kirkuk is composed of mixed nationalities (largely due to Saddam’s forced Arabization of the area).

Kirkuk is as Kurdish as Londonistan--er, I mean London-- is British…despite all of those other nationalities now living there. Iran’s major oil fields are in its western province of Khuzestan…but that area has been known as Arabistan for centuries…Guess why?

There is no doubt that Kurds lived in the area of the Mosul and Kirkuk oil fields for millennia before a Turk or Arab even knew it existed. As Hurrians, Kassites, Medes, Guti, and so forth, they were neighbors of the Jews. As for the presence of some Turkmen as well, recall that, besides Turkey, there are a half dozen other Asiatic Turkic states as well. It’s the Kurds who are still lacking a national liberation…

We Americans take pride in our sense of fair play.

We can’t do much about the State Department’s shameful shenanigans--except elect strong Presidents (as with Truman )--while making sure that both the latter and Congress also strongly receive our messages.

But we can demand that our press lives up to the source of pride it should be for any free nation--let alone America--which calls itself a true democracy. It should not simply become anyone’s virtual mouthpiece.

Sadly, when it comes to the Middle East, reading the news today is like reading a State Department press release…like those we’ve seen above.

That’s not what a free press is supposed to be about.

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