No, My Friends, “Europe” Ain’t The Problem…
by Gerald A. Honigman
Recently, during an Internet discussion regarding Arab-Israeli issues, one commentator suggested that the Jews’ European connections were the main source of the Arab problem with Israel. Not so…
While there never was such thing as “the fastest gun in the West,” there is also no one reason for why Arabs are at war with Israel. Arabs, indeed, would have others believe what that gentleman above suggested–one version or another of those “nasty Crusader invaders” arguments.
But, far more truthful to their kilab yahud “Jew dog” problem is something far worse–something rarely discussed, for a variety of reasons.
As I have written often about (but, given the world’s persistence in unfair treatment of Israel, must be repeated over and over again), there are scores of millions of non-Arabs who are native to the region and who pre-date the Arabs in much of it by millennia. Since the 7th century C.E., they fought, were massacred, and watched their lands turned into what Arabs refer to today as “purely Arab patrimony.” This is something which did not happen just “long ago” in history. It is happening right now, but most of the outside world plays deaf, dumb, and blind. If a problem doesn’t involve Israel, few want to know…
Today, scores of millions of non-Arab “Berbers” (Imazighen), Kurds, Copts, black Africans, native Semitic but pre-Arab Lebanese, Assyrians–besides those kilab yahud (half of whom in Israel who were refugees from the “Arab” world and who know nothing of Europe)–suffer the consequences of this conquering, subjugating Arab mindset which declares that the whole region must be Arabized with Arabs and only Arabs as the rulers and everyone else the ruled. Indeed, when the Israeli author Amos Elon visited perhaps the most famous Egyptian (non-Arab) Copt of the 20th century, Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali (President Anwar Sadat’s Foreign Min. and later Secretary General of the United Nations), Elon was told point blank that for Israel to be accepted, it must be Arabized. I have the book with the exact quotes.
For Christians and Jews, they were the “protected” people–the dhimma. The Egyptian scholar and Jewess, Bat Ye’or, and the Tunisian Jewish scholar, Albert Memmi, have written about dhimmitude, as have others. The latter’s Jews and Arabs is short and powerful. I have incorporated this topic into my own writings for over 4 decades as well. Arab and willingly-Arabized, non-Arab Muslims allowed the “People of the Book” to live if they paid large taxes and submitted to various, demeaning degrees of subjugation. But this brought no guarantees, and such folks never knew/know what the morrow has in store for them. Others–millions–had to either convert to Islam or were massacred.
Today, tens of millions of “Berbers” in “Arab” North Africa are not allowed to practice their own culture, speak their own language, and are increasingly being told that they must use only Arab Islamic names to name their own children. Ditto with millions of “Arab” Syria’s Kurds. Ismet Cherif Vanly wrote The Syrian ‘Mein Kampf’ Against The Kurds back in 1968 (Amsterdam). Now, what does that title tell you?
Things are no better today. This was the same for millions of “Arab” Iraq’s Kurds until the overthrow of Saddam Hussein–but he was not the cause of the problem, just the latest Arab leader to try to find a “cure.” Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds were indeed slaughtered, however, during his rule.
Now, keep in mind that both Kurds and Berbers are Muslim…but non-Arab. Ditto for the western Darfur region of the Sudan’s black Africans (though the Arab/Arabized north has waged war against the non-Muslim south of the Sudan for much longer as well).
So, “the problem” goes far beyond the religious issue. It is, racism–pure and simple…and being perpetrated by those who dare call Israel and Zionism racist…a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black to deflect attention away from the Arabs’ far more horrendous sins. And much of the ignorant (whether innocently or deliberately so) world concurs.
My book, The Quest for Justice In The Middle East…The Arab-Israeli Conflict In Greater Perspective (http://q4j-middle-east.com), covers such topics–ones not touched with a 10-foot pole in far too many college courses nor discussed at State Dept. briefings nor in the mainstream media. Who demands a roadmap for 35 million truly stateless Kurds? Careers are indeed at stake–as mine was deliberately nipped in the bud during my own doctoral studies–over such issues.
Among numerous other places where my work on these taboo subjects–key to really understanding the root cause of many of the Middle East’s problems–can be found is Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes Politique–Sciences-Po. It includes my earlier extensive study, British Petroleum Politics, Arab Nationalism, and the Kurdish Struggle For Independence, on its recommended reference list.
As but one of too many examples of how this works, the same expert on non-Arab, but Muslim and increasingly Islamist Turkey, who taught one of my own doctoral seminars, placed Israel constantly under the high power lens of scrutiny while never even mentioning the subjugation of 1/5 of Turkey’s 70 million people–some 14-15 million Kurds who Turks refer to as “Mountain Turks” and treat as Arabs have treated the others mentioned above.
Millions of dollars in funding comes from the Arab oil spigot, Turks, and others in the region. If you don’t believe that this has an impact upon what does and doesn’t make it onto the typical academic syllabus, I have 10 bridges to sell you. And, beyond this, the American State Department has been in bed with the Arabian American Oil Co. (ARAMCO) since before Israel’s rebirth, and this has also had a huge impact on our foreign policy. Folks tied to the Arab petro-buck routinely move from government to those businesses and back again. Former Sec. of State, “f_ _ _ the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway” James Baker III, is but one of many other cases in point.
Thus, it is no accident that half of the Foreword to my new book is written by the President of the Kurdistan National Assembly/Syria and some of the jacket comments are written by the publisher of an Amazigh (“Berber”) publication, Afrique-du-Nord.
Simply put, forget the European excuse…
Arabs have a problem with an independent state for kilab yahud–Jew dogs–for the same reason why they call the birth of an independent Kurdistan “another Israel,” etc. and so forth. And this, indeed, goes far beyond the Europe thing. The latter is simply used to mask what the real problem has always been and continues to be…a conquering Arab Islamist mindset which allows no room whatsoever for compromise, partition, nor anything else which grants anyone else but themselves a slice of the justice pie in the new age of freedom and nationalism which came to the region after the collapse of empires in the late 19th/early 20th century.
Now, If you want to grasp this even more, please contact me at my e-mail address Honigman6@msn.com (best way) or by http://q4j-middle-east.com to see the book that The New York Times best-selling author, Brigitte Gabriel (one of those pre-Arab Lebanese victims of the Arabization of Lebanon), calls “a must read” for a true understanding of what is happening today in the region. I will send you your own personalized copy.