Long Live Arabistan!
by Gerald A. Honigman
The latest news coming out of Syria told of at least a hundred protestors being mowed down in the streets by Assad’s military. Conservative estimates claim that over 5,000 such folks have already lost their lives this way since the Arab Spring sprung in that country.
Pouring salt onto the wound, the history of such Syrian Arab barbarism, towards both Arabs and non-Arabs alike, has long been known–at least to those who wanted to know. But, too many didn’t…and when they did, acted like they didn’t.
Arab atrocities and subjugation of millions of Kurds, for example, in the Syrian part of geographical Kurdistan date back well over half century. The title of Ismet Cherif Vanly’s book, “The Syrian ‘Mein Kampf’ Against The Kurds…(Amsterdam 1968),” is indeed revealing. And before the elder Alawi Assad went after the Sunni Arab Muslim Brotherhood stronghold in Hama several decades ago (massacring 20,000 to 40,000 people in short order), what was left of Syria’s ancient Jewish community was also living in its own tenuous nightmare. There were others with their own tragic stories to tell as well.
There is no doubt that Syria’s human rights record has been nothing less than atrocious; but again, most of the world simply opted–until very recently this past year–to basically look the other way. If Israel was not the alleged villain, nobody wanted to know anything–not the American State Department, nor the United Nations, nor the Russians, European Union, mainstream media, academia, or whomever. A few of us tried to sound the alarm over the years, but it was mostly wasted effort. Here were a few of my own attempts: “Hunting Quail and Sitting Ducks” (2004) http://www.israelnationalnews…….aspx/3870 ;”Syria…Seriously” (2005) http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/ar…..tan57.htm; and “Wrong War…”(March 2011)
http://www.kurdnas.com/en/inde…..;Itemid=55
Indeed, despite Syria’s deadly hegemonic attitudes and actions towards what it still sees as its Lebanese “provinces;” despite its appalling treatment of Kurds, native Jews, and others as well; despite its recent support for terrorists undermining Iraq’s attempt at democracy; despite the great likelihood that many of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (poison gas and so forth) found a home in Syria; despite Damascus’ support of major terrorist organizations whose aim is the destruction of the Jew of the Nations and giving safe haven to those organizations like Hamas within its own borders; despite its long term record as mass slaughterer of any and all who dissent, author of the infamous “Hama Solution;” etc., etc., and so forth, the cold, hard fact of life is that America would be squeezing Israel right now (even more than it is already indeed doing)–not Syria–if circumstances were just a bit different.
Sad…but all too true.
Had Syria not opposed America in Iraq and become bosom buddies with the Iranian mullahs (the enablers of Hizbullah in Lebanon), the Foggy Folks would be pressing forward with former Secretary of State James Baker III’s earlier pledge to Hafez al-Assad of a total Israeli retreat from the Golan Heights. Baker, Presidents Bushs’ close family friend (whose law firm represents the Saudis, including against American 9/11 victims), was made the younger Bush’s Special Middle East Envoy. I’ve written much about Baker’s Jew problem elsewhere (see the Hunting Quail article above), so I’ll drop it for now.
Shortly after President Obama moved into the White House, he sent his friend Robert Malley for a visit to the younger Assad to reassure him along these lines as well.
Obama has repeatedly stated that Israel should return to the ’49 armistice lines (which made it a mere 9 to 15-miles wide at its waist), the main provision of the so-called Saudi Peace Plan which the President said Israel “would be crazy” not to accept. The President demands that Israel abandon the promise of UNSC Resolution 242, enacted in the wake of the ’67 War (which the Syrians were largely responsible for starting), that those fragile “Auschwitz” lines be replaced by real, more secure borders instead. That’s what the whole fuss over building freezes and settlements is all about. A total return of the Golan–used by Syria to repeatedly shell Israel from prior to ’67–is part of that same deal.
And that brings us back to today’s news of a hundred more Syrians being slaughtered in one day on the streets.
Prominent in the news were reports of Iran flying commercial, not military, airliners into Syria to provide Damascus with arms, other supplies, and men. Keep in mind that Assad’s Syria is a crucial link between the Shi’a mullahs in Iran and the would-be Hizbullah Shi’a masters of Lebanon.
The Syrian-Iranian-Hizbullah alliance got me thinking about the irony of all of this.
All three players habitually target Jews, vilify, and call for the destruction of their sole, virtually microscope state. With the other two’s help, Hizbullah now has scores of thousands of rockets and missiles pointing at Israel.
So, since oil-rich Iran is, in many ways, the main player here, it’s time to once again expose Ahmadinejad and the Twelver Shi’a Ayatollahs for what they undoubtedly are…
When Ahadinejad murdered Iranians in the streets after stealing the election in 2009, besides blowing a little hot air, no one–including the new American President and his State Department–did a thing. They were too worried about Jews building homes in Jerusalem instead–where Jews have been doing such things for over three thousand years.
Back on May 8, 2006, Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush in which, among other things, he proclaimed Israel’s alleged original sin and the need to create yet another state for Arabs in the region. He has repeated this frequently over the years.
Having given this some serious reflection, I’ve come up with a way to at least meet some of his demands… well, sort of.
Let’s begin…
As the lion’s share of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine was handed over to Arab nationalism in 1922, with the creation of what would later be renamed Jordan, a more than just partition of the land favoring the Arabs had thus already been completed between the two nationalisms competing for it. Indeed, Arabs wound up with some 80% of the total area.
So, the real place where justice for Arabs has not yet been addressed is in–now hold onto your seats–Iran itself.
During the 7th century CE, Arab Caliphal imperialist armies burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and colonized, settled, forcibly Arabized, and spread the Dar ul-Islam by a conquering sword in all directions.
Judaea–renamed Syria Palestina (for the Jews’ historic enemies, the non-Arab Philistines) by conquering Romans after the Jews’ second revolt for their freedom–became occupied by Arabs at this time.
And so did Iran.
Using southern Iraq as a springboard, southwestern Iran–Khuzestan province in particular–traded back and forth between invading Arab and Iranian rulers. While it became subsequently linked to Iran despite repeated Arab invasions over the centuries, Khuzestan became so extensively Arabized that, in Safavid times (16th-18th centuries CE), the province was commonly known as “Arabistan”. In modern times, not until Iran’s Reza Shah Pahlavi defeated him in 1924, the Arab Sheikh of Muhammarah ruled much of the area.
Arabs remembered all of this very well. Indeed, latter-day, Iraqi-based Arabs, under Saddam’s banner, launched the long and bloody Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. It was fought largely over this oil-rich and strategically important area…Khuzestan for Persians, Arabistan for Arabs.
To deal with this “Arab problem,” Iran has ruthlessly suppressed any manifestations of Arab nationalism by any and all means necessary. By the early 20th century, a proposal had been put forward to even outlaw the Arabic language. Here are some excerpts as to how the British Ahwazi Friendship Society reported the situation on July 29, 2005:
“The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) released a statement condemning the recent violent repression of ethnic minorities in Iran following the election of right-wing hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. …Pointing to clashes between security forces and Ahwazi Arabs and Kurds, Nicola Dell’Arciprete, UNPO Assistant General Secretary, said: “The UNPO condemns the Government’s repressive policies against all the Iranian citizens. Iran is a multi-ethnic country in which half of the population belongs to ethnic minorities such as Azeri, Gilaki and Mazandarani, Kurds, Arabs, Lurs, Balochis, Turkmen….”
And more recently still, see this April 2011 account…
http://gulfnews.com/opinions/c…..b-1.786524
Now, recall how Ahmadinejad likes to sit on his high moral horse lecturing Israel about such things.
“Palestine” underwent partition, as did the Indian subcontinent (with the creation of predominantly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, and later Bangladesh as well). Since the current rulers in Iran are so quick to point fingers elsewhere, please tell me why the human and political rights and aspirations of other peoples should not also be addressed in Iran itself?
Had Arabs accepted the additional 1947 partition plan, they would have wound up with about 90% of the territory of the original 1920 Palestine Mandate. They rejected the 1947 division of the remaining 20% of the land left after purely Arab Jordan was created from the rest of it in 1922, because, in Arab eyes, there is no justice other than their own. Jews–like Kurds or Imazighen (“Berbers”) or Assyrians or Copts or black African Sudanese and so forth–were entitled to nothing in what Arabs like to call their exclusive “purely Arab patrimony” instead. Note that the vast majority of Arabs themselves were newcomers into the Palestine Mandate, as the Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League Of Nations and other solid documentation testify to.
Ahmadinejad refuses to acknowledge any of this, claims all Israeli Jews were from Europe (tell that to Israel’s former Iranian-born President and chief of staff) and the like; yet, he answers the political aspirations of millions of non-Iranians living on his own soil only with massacre and repression. Again, hypocrisy at its worst.
Turning to the Arabs of Khuzestan/Arabistan in particular, at any hint of unrest, Iran has been quick to act in its own national interests. Arabs have been ethnically cleansed from the area and replaced by others. As just one of many examples, when Arabs of the Nahda (Renaissance) movement bombed Iranian targets several years back in Ahwaz and elsewhere, Iran arrested thousands of them and set out to “fix” the problem by any means necessary. Iranians continuously do likewise to Kurds, Baluchis and others who dare to assert their own political rights. Thousands have been killed as a result over the years in the name of Iranian nationalism. There has been a wave of hangings of Iranian Kurds of late for daring to demand basic rights.
So, this all begs the question of both the man and the nation he represents…
As they continue to bolster their butcher friends in Damascus, why does justice supposedly demand that the sole, resurrected state of the Jews–half of whom were refugees from the “Arab” and Muslim world–consent to national suicide so Arab settlers and colonizers can have their 22nd state, and second, not first, one in Palestine, but millions of Arabs in Khuzestan/Arabistan should not gain independence from Iran?
If a Palestine much smaller than Iran could undergo partition in the name of justice for competing national groups, then why should the same principle not apply for millions of Ahwazi Arabs, millions of Kurds, and other oppressed peoples in Iran as well?
It’s time to stop mincing words and for the duplicity to end…
The next time Ahmadinejad or the mullahs open up their mouths on such issues, there is but one response that they should get, for it is indeed time for that 22nd state for Arabs that they demand to be born…
Long live Arabistan !