So, What Arab/Arabized Nation Should Be The Next Israel Seeks “Normalization” and Peace With?
Since the recent signing of promising accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, there has been much talk that the Sudan may be next to desire such a new relationship as well….for a price, that is. There’s always a price—just ask Egypt and Jordan, for example. But the latter is for another article.
Khartoum would like to be taken off Washington’s official terror sponsor list, for starters. And it has been very vocal that better behavior should not be linked to whether or not the huge amount of economic and other support it will expect (mostly from America) in return will not be linked to its posture towards Israel https://www.timesofisrael.com/sudan-reportedly-requesting-billions-in-aid-in-exchange-for-ties-with-israel/
Meanwhile, Israel seems to be pleading for such an additional deal with this huge North African member of the Arab League. And that’s troublesome, for many reasons—so let me explain…
To begin with, I can’t help but cringe at what has transpired over the more than half century that I have been actively involved in the history and politics of the Middle East and North Africa.
While the oil-rich, non-Arab/non-Arabized Republic of South Sudan finally received a troubled independence back in 2011, this was not attained until after millions of black Africans were enslaved, maimed, displaced, or slaughtered–just in the last half century or so alone–in the name of Arabism and the Dar ul-Islam (ignoring earlier victims) by the Arab and Arabized north.
Earlier, as a card-carrying member of the London-based Anti-Slavery Society for years, I had access to appalling information. But what made matters worse was the fact that was going on was no secret–even though it was treated as such in too many circles.
The Arab north stated its view quite clearly. 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).
As I like to ask and point out, while many observers are quick to identify Rudyard Kipling’s late 19th-century poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” as typifying Western colonialist and imperialist attitudes towards the Third World, why have such Arab racist attitudes and mindset in the Sudan and elsewhere throughout the region been routinely ignored?
Is it that the Arab Man’s Burden is acceptable on the moral plane–but the White Man’s is not?
It has been commonplace in academia, on international forums, in the media, and so forth, for example, for Israel to be placed under the high power lens of scrutiny, yet hardly a word was ever mentioned about the slaughter, enslavement, and so forth that were being perpetrated in the name of Arabism and the Dar ul-Islam in places such as the Sudan. And when Darfur finally got some attention, one would be hard pressed to find out who the perpetrators of the atrocities were.
This continues to this very day. And the Sudan is the next nation that Israel is pleading to be recognized by? Why ?
Ever since I can remember, the Anaya Nya and other tribesmen had been struggling for basic human (let alone political) rights in the Sudan’s south, yet one would have never known that they even existed if the typical academic course curriculum was relied upon.
Outside of academia, until fairly recently given how long this problem has existed, the situation has been as bad or worse.
The same international list of hypocrites, which have demanded that the sole, minuscule nation of the Jews do all but slit its own throat for the sake of creating Arab state # 22, have also stood by and watched the subjugation and murder of millions of black Africans by Arabs for many decades. And that sin is even worse than it initially appears…
While the south of the Sudan was non-Muslim, the western province–the Darfur region– had been forcibly converted and was part of the Dar ul-Islam…so there was no religious reason for the slaughter that has also been waged by the Arab and Arabized north against it.
Indeed, the violence in Darfur has perhaps even a more disturbing and revealing twist…
Back on June 15, 2006, an AP article by Nick Wadhams dealt with the findings of an UN-backed court, finally prodded into action, probing war crimes in Darfur. In the middle of the article (a small blurb on page nine…after all, this wasn’t Jews being forced to go after Hamas murderers in Gaza, so forget about the front page), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor, stated that eyewitnesses spoke of Arab perpetrators of the atrocities telling black victims such things as, “we will kill all of you blacks and drive you out of this land.”
So, while earlier Arab atrocities against the south could largely be seen as “merely” a modern extension of the fourteen century-old murderous clash between the Dar (realm) ul-Islam and the Dar al-Harb, the violence in Darfur (as those in Arab-occupied Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan, much of the rest of heavily non-Arab, Amazigh–“Berber”–North Africa, and elsewhere) have been mostly about Arab racism and chauvinism, pure and simple…being conducted by those very same folks who like to lecture the rest of the world about alleged “racist Zionism.”
Before Jerusalem accepts any deal with Khartoum, it must have its own demands and price tag. Surely, a concerted effort by the Arabs and Arabized who rule in the Republic of the Sudan to cease and desist in the above behaviors must be seriously included in any such deal. As I write this, slaves are still arriving elsewhere via the Sudan.