Israel at 60...Happy Birthday To Us!

Happy 60th Israel…Good Timing, Mom & Dad!
by Gerald A. Honigman

My father, Edward Honigman, of blessed memory, returned home after spending four years as a gunner in the U.S. Navy’s Armed Guard (assigned, especially, to protect Allied shipping from U-Boats and such) in World War II, met my mother, Sylvia, and soon joined the ranks of many others siring another baby boomer…me.


While their timing wasn’t perfect, it was close enough.


I made my grand debut on May 8, 1948, Harry Truman’s birthday…the President who would fight his own State Department within just a few days of my birth when he officially recognized the rebirth of Israel on May 14th. Thirteen years later I would become a Bar Mitzvah on that very same date.


So, I guess you could say that modern Israel and myself have sort of grown up together.


I have watched, with pride, as an Israel reborn arose from the ashes--the risen phoenix of my millennially persecuted, subjugated, and massacred people. It did so on a miniscule portion of the world’s real estate, where Jews have 4,000 years of continuous history, and proceeded to produce one of the most vibrant, advanced, and productive societies on Earth…things which only make assorted anti-Semites (including those masking themselves as anti-Zionists) hate it even more. While imperfect for sure, as all human endeavors are, compared to the largely tyrannical mess which surrounds the Jew of the Nations in its neighborhood, Israel is indeed a light unto the nations…the Biblical mission of its “chosenness.”


While Arabs deliberately target the most innocent of Jews, Israel’s Hadassah Hospital flies in Arabs for life-saving medical treatment unavailable in their own countries.


Recall that when Theodore Herzl--the father of modern political Zionism--approached Pope Pius X for support around the turn of the 20th century, he was told that this would be impossible since Jews--the alleged deicide people--were condemned to be perpetual wanderers since they rejected the divinity of Jesus. Herzl was later quoted as saying that, in retrospect, maybe his refusal to kiss the Pope’s ring ticked the latter off even more and sealed the fate of their meeting.


No surprise here, however.


The road to Auschwitz was paved by many of such “sacred” teachings…including those of the Vatican’s nemesis, Martin Luther, and even earlier in the Christian New Testament itself. The Gospel of John calls the Jews--not “just” Pharisees--children of the Devil. Not to mention similar problems in the Muslims’ Qur’an.


If ever an Hebraic prophesy could send chills up one’s spine, certainly Ezekiel 37 (the Valley of the Dry Bones) rang true in the aftermath of the slaughter of one third of all world Jewry during the Holocaust. Listen…


“The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.


And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord GOD, thou knowest.

Again He said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.


Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live:


And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.


So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.


And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.


Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.


So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.


Then He said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.


Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.


And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves...”


Within a few years of the Holocaust, besides remnants from the West, more Jews would flee Arab/Muslim lands to Israel than Arabs who fled in the reverse direction as a result of the combined Arab invasion of the renascent Jewish State in ‘48.


I have watched (and fought with my pen) from afar as an Israel, constantly under the spotlight’s glare and subjected to hypocritical double standards by much of the rest of the world (including the American State Department--still fighting Truman’s ghost), struggled as hard as humanly possible to honor the moral and ethical imperatives of its Hebraic traditions while fighting enemies who delight in disemboweling Jewish children and their own as shahids.


As I have often noted, how dare Jews want, in one resurrected state covering less than one-sixth of one per cent of the Middle East (requiring a magnifying glass to find it on a world map), what Arabs have carved out for themselves in almost two dozen nations on over six million square miles of territory. Recall also that most of that territory was forcibly conquered and Arabized from native, non-Arab peoples. To Arabs, however, the area is simply purely Arab patrimony.


And resurrected, indeed Israel was…


To understand the meaning of reborn Israel to the Jew, one needs to know what Jewish history was like for two thousand years after the Jews dared to take on the conqueror of the world for their independence. A reading of the contemporary Roman-sponsored historians--Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Josephus, etc.-- gives a ‘non-Zionist’ account of the fervor with which Jews fought for the freedom of their land.


Listen to Tacitus 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.”


This was during the first revolt in 66-73 C.E. The Arch of Titus stands in Rome to this very day to commemorate this victory over the Jews.


Later, the emperor Hadrian became so enraged at the Jews’ persistence that in 135 C.E., after the second major (and even more costly) revolt, he renamed Judaea Syria Palaestina--Palestine--after the Jews’ historic enemies, the non-Semitic, non-Arab Philistines (who originated in the area around Crete), in an attempt to end the Jews’ hopes once and for all.


Forced conversions, being branded the “deicide people,” inquisitions, demonization, dehumanization, ghettos, blood libels, massacres, expulsions, the Holocaust, and constant existence as perpetual stranger in someone else’s land became the plight of the Wandering Jew.


Estimates have placed the number of Jews murdered as a result of these experiences, prior to the Holocaust, in both the Christian West--where they were considered to be “G_d killers” and children of the Devil--or in the Muslim East, where there was no Holocaust per se, but where Jews were still frequently regarded as “killers of prophets” and kilab yahud “Jew dogs” (frequently never knowing what the morrow would bring) in the millions.


With all the imagined, real, and potential sins of nationalism, if ever any people needed the protection of their own nation state for just their very survival and to preserve their dignity, the Jews certainly fit the mold. Even the United States’ General Ulysses S. Grant (the future President) issued expulsion orders to the Jews of the South during the Civil War.


As we approach both of our birthdays, my wish for Israel is that it regains leaders who will maintain the highest standards for Israel being a light unto the nations, but not at the sacrifice of its own long awaited resurrection and well being…no matter who is tightening the screws.


The hopes, dreams, and prayers of countless Jews over the millennia are at stake.

Israeli Yeshiva Murders...NPR & The Curse Of The Jew Idiots

NPR And The Curse Of The Jew Idiots...

by Gerald A. Honigman

It’s not the first time that National Public Radio has committed such a travesty.

Right after eight young Jews were deliberately murdered--and many others wounded--in a Jerusalem yeshiva, NPR’s Linda Gradstein briefly mentioned the story on the air waves and then gave almost (if not) the same amount of time immediately afterwards to explaining how this came in response to Israel’s incursion into Gaza which left over one hundred Arabs dead, allegedly half civilians. Israel’s numbers greatly dispute the Arab ones. She then, as a footnote, added that the incursion was due to rocket fire from Gaza.

I saw a movie recently, The Kingdom, about terrorism in Saudi Arabia. One of the scenes was telling, indeed.


When going after the leader of a terror group in a civilian apartment building, FBI and Saudi forces had to work their way through women, children and other alleged “innocents"--some of which turn out to be not so. A dangerous and complicated matter, to say the least. And another invalid, “innocent,” seated old man turned out to be the terror mastermind.


The above is a scene out of the predicament Israel faces daily in Gaza--with Arabs using kids as human shields, to retrieve weapons from dead comrades, rocket launchers, and so forth. Arabs who blow apart Jewish civilians routinely set up shop in civilian Arab areas. Israel has faced this predicament constantly, and America faces this now as well in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, no one more than Israel has tried as hard as humanly possible to pinpoint its attacks--and has indeed suffered itself in many ways because of it...not taking out prime terror targets because of civilian presence (and later having it later backfire on Jews), and so forth.

Unlike Arabs deliberately butchering students in schools as per the Linda Gradstein comments, the plain, unfortunate fact is that harboring murderers and their collaborators must be recognized for what the Geneva Conventions say it is: a fair military target.

Article #51/7:

The presence of the civilian population shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attack…

Article #58b:

The parties to the conflict shall...avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas...

Arab terror headquarters and dens are typically set up in, or adjacent to, civilian apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, and so forth.

Article #51/2:

The civilian population...shall not be the object of attack. Acts of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited...Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited.

Arabs typically target Israeli civilians.

The Hebraic Prophetic legacy of morality, mercy, ethics, and justice has unfortunately backfired on too many of my people. They can’t find enough other cheeks to turn to enemies who would have their heads on pikes...And you thought that was just a Christian thing! Yet how many Christian nations would turn their own cheeks facing what Israel faces?

As the Hebrew Bible commands Thou Shalt Not Murder (not kill), allowing for self defense, Jews (or anyone) are not expected to watch their kids get massacred in restaurants, on buses, in schools, pizzerias, etc. and not take action to prevent the slaughter.

Should be a no-brainer...but not so for too many of my tribe who, at best, prefer to jump on the “moral equivalence” bandwagon of the world’s assorted anti-Semites and/or anti-Zionists. And too often the latter two are, indeed, one of the same. After Auschwitz, it’s simply more politically correct to openly direct hatred, double standards, and so forth towards the Jew of the Nations rather than towards individual Jews themselves.

We have always had Jews like Gradstein and many other of her Hebrew colleagues associated with NPR and such. You know, the ones who grill Israeli officials, but give Arabs a free ride. And this has manifested itself in worse ways as well...Jews who collaborated with Nazis; conversos who exposed fellow Jews to the Inquisition; politicians, professors and journalists who place Israel under the high power lens of moral scrutiny but act deaf, dumb, and blind to the much greater sins of the Arab/Muslim world which surrounds it; Jews who ingratiate themselves with non-Jews by mocking, attacking, or exposing their own people; and so forth.

The students who were recently buried represented some of the best of Israel reborn. Investigations have shown that they were most likely killed by weapons America ( Condi Rice and the State Department, in particular) pressured Israel to supply Arab “moderates.”

May the non-idiot Jews learn these lessons well in the upcoming days of even more external pressure to further expose the necks of Israeli children.

And may new Israeli elections come very soon...before it’s too late. Some of those very same Jew idiots are currently running Israel’s show.

Israel, Turks, and Kurds

My Friends, Dare To Think About What The Future Could Be…
by Gerald A. Honigman

I’ve watched the recent Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan closely.

I have not commented until now because I have written extensively about what’s needed previously.

What I will now say I’ve largely said before, but it’s now time to reassert what I believe to be hard truths to two friends.

I cannot condemn Ankara’s decision to invade Iraqi Kurdistan anymore than I could condemn Israel’s decision to go after Arabs who target Jews from Gaza, Judea and Samaria (renamed only recently in history the “West Bank”), and so forth. I’m glad to see that, for whatever reasons, the Turks have now withdrawn.

The PKK’s refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan was an open invitation for a Turkish invasion. I’m surprised it took so long in the coming. And I wrote that in the Kurdish media itself long ago.

Having said this, there’s another hard series of truths…

Unlike the plight of one fifth of Turkey’s population who are Kurds, Israel’s Arab population (also one fifth of Israel) are the freest Arabs anywhere in the Middle East. Despite many of the latter composing a real fifth column (siding with fellow Arabs who call for Israel’s total destruction), Arab language, culture, political rights, and so forth flourish in the land of the Jews.

Perfection? No…but compared to the plight of non-Arabs in so-called “Arab ” lands--especially those whom the Arabs call “their” kilab yahud (Jew dogs), the Jews who are left (more Jews fled those lands to Israel than Arabs who fled Israel)--Israeli Arabs live in Paradise. Just ask black African Sudanese in Darfur and southern Sudan, for starters (and Copts, Kurds, Assyrians, Amazigh/Berbers, and so forth).

I was pleased to hear that the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) recently invited Turkey to hold talks to resolve differences, while the President of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, Masud Barzani, expressed readiness to contribute to finding a peaceful solution to the problem. This is not the first time they’ve extended these invitations either.

In a statement, the PKK expressed a readiness to seek a peaceful solution to the issue of Kurds in Turkey through mediation by the government of Iraq’s Kurdish Region and supported the KRG’s call for establishing dialogue.

On his part, President Barzani expressed his readiness to “actively participate” in finding a peaceful solution to the PKK-Turkish problem, which he hoped would “end violence in the region and build better relations of cooperation and consolidate security and stability for our people.”

On the surface, this might appear to just be just wishful thinking. But U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s statement openly addressing the need for Ankara to address the real grievances of Turkish Kurds seems to be a welcome new development. I don’t recall an American official vocalizing this as firmly prior to now. 

Let’s step back again…

Over the past century in particular, after the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the wake of World War I, the Kurds were renamed Mountain Turks, had their language and culture outlawed, etc. and so forth to insure that the new, constricted Turkey which arose with Mustafa Kemal--Ataturk--would suffer no further geographical losses. Understandable, but not a just solution to the problem. After all, long before a Turk or Arab was in that vicinity, Kurds long lived there.

Turkey has been a valuable ally of America and has resisted Islamic extremism better than any other Muslim country. It also has relatively good relations with Israel…especially when its relations with neighboring Syria take a dive.

So, as with my Kurdish friends, I truly wish nothing but good for our Turkish friends as well.

But, as I’ve written often before and will repeat until it sinks in, friends should be able to disagree and still remain friends.

When Israel goes after Hamas terror masters, Ankara is quick to criticize and lecture about the need to create the Arabs’ 22nd state and second, not first, one in “Palestine”--Jordan having surfaced on some 80% of the original April 25, 1920 territory over the past century. Turkey knows full well what the Arabs’ plans are for the Jewish State, yet makes these demands anyway. But talk about the need for justice for 35 million truly stateless Kurds, and Ankara goes ballistic.

Turkey is some forty times as large as Israel geographically and eleven times larger in population.

Despite this, Ankara sees nothing wrong, after demanding the creation of the Arabs’ 22nd state, with telling Kurds--who have been massacred and subjugated in all the lands where they have lived in the new nationalist era--that they must remain forever in that stateless condition because of the potential threat independence in Iraqi Kurdistan might have to Turkey. The Turks fear the effect this will have on their own large, adjacent--and suppressed-- Kurdish population.

As we all know, the fear is well founded, and I understand it.

But if a Turkey which dwarfs Israel in size and population has reason to fear this, then what is Israel to say?

Again, one fifth of Israel is Arab…like the fifth of Turkey which is Kurd. Yet the Jews are told by virtually all--including Turks--that they must allow yet another Arab state, dedicated to their very destruction, to be set up in their backyard.

Keep in mind that whatever its flaws may be, the PKK does not seek Turkey’s destruction. The calls for independence by some largely are sired by real, unaddressed grievances--as Secretary Gates acknowledged.

Despite the potential for problems, justice does not demand that Kurds remain forever politically powerless in the nationalist age. A miniscule Israel faces worse problems regarding such things but is expected to allow for the creation of yet another rejectionist Arab state.

So, what’s to be done?

Once again repeating what I’ve written earlier, there is no doubt that the Kurds must do what the Arabs refuse to do…

Iraqi Kurdistan must show Ankara that an independent or highly autonomous Iraqi federal Kurdish region will not be a threat. Had it done so earlier, a Turkish invasion--even with Ankara eying Kurdish oil--would not have occurred or at least wouldn’t have been justified.

As President Barzani (whose late father will forever be a hero of mine) has stated above, there must be serious discussions with the PKK about what the greater good for Kurdistan will require. This means Kurdish leaders must get their own acts together as well…beyond protecting their own virtual fiefdoms--be they Talabani, Barzani, or whomever. If need be, they must use military force to subdue their own extremists.

Hopefully, it will not come to this. And nothing will be expected in this regard if the Turks don’t show that they will be willing to grant Iraqi Kurds the same right to have in one of which they expect Israel to allow Arabs to have almost two dozen of. Ankara must also seriously address the rights of Turkish Kurds as well instead of collaborating with both Syria and Iran in suppression of their respective Kurdish populations.

There is room for coexistence and cooperation if both peoples can get beyond their fears. A brighter future awaits them. Besides problems with the PKK, there are already real benefits materializing for Turks in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Both have a history of opposing Islamic extremism, though some are to be counted amongst both populations.

Kurds from Turkey, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere wanting to live in an independent Kurdish state can have in Iraqi Kurdistan what Jews have in a reborn Israel.

Like formerly truly stateless Jews, Kurds have suffered greatly because of this political powerlessness.

Again, renaming Arabs “Palestinians” (most of whom came from elsewhere) does not change the fact that Arabs have almost two dozen states--conquered from mostly non-Arab peoples. If there is a rough analogy to the Jews, it is the Kurds, not the Arabs. The Turks especially must also understand this since, besides Turkey, there are also a half dozen other Turkish states.

Both Turks and Kurds must examine each others needs and fears.

The future can be a promising one for both peoples.

While Arabs of different stripes blow each other apart, Turks and Kurds have mostly shown that they want no part of this sort of thing. Positive nationalism is better than negative nationalism.

Think of the possibilities which can arise if both peoples can get themselves to grant each other the humanity and respect both deserve.

Turkish Kurds must understand that the realm of the Turks will not see itself geographically split again. But this does not mean that Kurds should continue to be suppressed in Turkey. To insure Turkey’s integrity, the Turks have demanded Turkification of all who live there. This needs to be changed drastically. Imagine the outcry if Israel was doing this sort of thing to Arabs.

Ironically, Kurdish autonomy or independence in Iraqi Kurdistan has the potential to ease these very problems…under the right conditions.

Having the potential to live in a Kurdish-ruled area will give Kurds everywhere less grievance and reason to resort to violence.

Will there be risks and problems?

Of course. There is much that will be needed to be worked out. And all thirty or forty million Kurds will not fit into Iraqi Kurdistan.

But reasonable people can come up with reasonable solutions.

It’s time for both peoples to look ahead for a better future for both of their children…something Arabs who use their kids as human shields and who send them on suicide missions in pursuit of their own one-sided version of justice have proven incapable of doing.