{"id":1114,"date":"2019-04-13T16:14:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-13T20:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2019-04-13T16:14:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T20:14:39","slug":"iran-bds-and-tales-tails-of-binx-and-jahandir-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/13\/iran-bds-and-tales-tails-of-binx-and-jahandir-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran, BDS, and Tales (Tails?) of Binx and Jahandir…Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran,\u00a0 BDS, and Tales (Tails?) of Binx and Jahandir\u2026 Redux<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

by Gerald A. Honigman<\/p>\n

With increasing popularity of assorted overt and covert anti-Semitic causes and individuals, such as those camouflaged by the so-called Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) \u00a0movement and characterized by folks like the plethora of duplicitous academics and emerging superstars of the Democrat Party like\u00a0The Three Amigas\u00a0<\/em>(https:\/\/ekurd.net\/the-three-amigas-2019-02-19<\/strong><\/a>), perhaps it’s time\u00a0to consult a real <\/em>expert on these matters…my cat, of blessed memory.<\/p>\n

Please allow me to backtrack a bit, and I guess it was my own fault.<\/p>\n

Way back in late 2004, my two elder daughters\u00a0brought home a momma cat and two small kittens they had found late at night wandering on the road. Another kitten was allegedly<\/em> spotted not far away which lost out in its chance encounter with a car…Who could say no<\/em> to them?<\/p>\n

The problem was that we already had three established<\/em> cats. While we earlier had similar situations involving the two original females, it was Binx, the young male, who (even after being neutered)\u00a0really proved\u00a0to be a pistol regarding the newcomers. And I suspect he began by first\u00a0blaming me.<\/p>\n

I kept a box in my bedroom closet with some important material and memorabilia in it. Not a problem–until after our new feline additions entered the picture. Soon after their arrival, Binx was caught in the act of leaving unpleasant souvenirs,<\/em> if you get my drift, in\u00a0the box.<\/p>\n

Not having much of a choice, I next had to gingerly weed through decades of materials I had saved. Funny what you’ll find when you do this sort of thing.<\/p>\n

Among the various correspondence\u00a0was a letter from Jahandir, a half Persian fellow student, who was commenting on a research paper I had written for one of our doctoral seminars.<\/p>\n

I liked Jahan, but we butted heads constantly. He’s probably teaching at some university now. His ideas and politics regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict–too often a major “litmus test” in Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and the like, and the reason that\u00a0Doctors Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum’s Campus Watch<\/em> and\u00a0Martin Kramer’s book, Ivory Towers On Sand,<\/u> were created and written years later–were\/are far more acceptable to the powers that be<\/em> than my own. I asked the\u00a0taboo questions and expected that the same lenses of historical scrutiny would be employed in the study of the rest of the neighborhood that were routinely used in the\u00a0dissection of Israel and Zionism. I paid\u00a0for those expectations dearly. Toe the line or else\u2026 So, I doubt that Jahan was denied a Ph.D. dissertation advisor the way I was.<\/p>\n

Knowing of the reputation regarding the tenured chief honcho in terms of anything having to do with Arab-Israeli politics, before resurrecting my studies, I had been assured by other professors\u00a0that there would be someone else to work with when the time arrived to start my Ph.D. dissertation. And like the Doobie Brothers’ song which came out just around the same time in 1979,\u00a0like a fool I believed…<\/em><\/p>\n

For those somewhat familiar with Middle East, imagine taking\u00a0advanced graduate courses on the Palestine Mandate, examining microfiche\u00a0documents and materials, and then subsequently never hearing anything at all being discussed in class about such pertinent subjects as Colonial Secretary Churchill’s all-important Cairo Conference\u00a0of 1921 (which did much to shape the modern Middle East); the original <\/em>1920<\/em> borders of the post-World War I Mandate of Palestine; the virtual separation of the East Bank of the Mandate (almost 80% of the original total), “Transjordan,” from the latter in 1922 to award London’s Arab allies; and so forth\u2026Or, instead, hearing about Hitler’s good buddy, who was made head of the Nazi Waffen SS Division in the Balkans, the Arab Mufti of Jerusalem, being lionized while Jewish nationalist leaders, with heads not stuck in the sand, like Ze’ev Vladimir\u00a0Jabotinsky, were being painted as the real<\/em> fascists. Or constantly being fed other slanted material sympathetic to Arab nationalist aspirations while ignoring the rights of everyone<\/em> else in the region.<\/p>\n

Does the\u00a0above sound a bit familiar? Welcome to\u00a0the world of those espousing causes such as the BDS movement and supporting groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) today\u2026 https:\/\/ekurd.net\/students-justice-palestine-2018-07-05<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The only time, for example, that Kurds were ever mentioned was when this same professor, <\/em>an expert on Turkey, made a mockery of their own aspirations upon reporting of his travels throughout southeastern Anatolia. And, again, forget about an assumed climate of academic freedom.<\/p>\n

As is even more typical today on numerous \u201cProgressive\u201d campuses, while Israel and Zionism were constantly placed under the high power lens of moral scrutiny, the far more real and gruesome sins and stories of the Arab and Muslim world were and are ignored. The Arab genocide of black Africans in the Sudan, slavery in the Arab World, atrocities against Kurds, the Amazigh\/\u201dBerbers,\u201d Copts, Assyrians, native kilab yahud<\/em> (Jew dogs), and other non-Arab peoples as well were going on back then as they still are in places today…but one would never know any of this coming out of the typical classroom\u2026 https:\/\/ekurd.net\/arabism-zionism-journeys-2019-01-12<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

So, while working full time while going to school, I did my time, was used by the department to get extra funding for their program, became a teaching assistant (TA) for course work on the Middle East, and did what few other graduate students had ever done…got published in a heavily Nobel Laureate-sponsored academic journal, the Fall 1982 Middle East Review<\/em> (“British Petroleum Politics, Arab Nationalism, and the Kurdish Struggle For Independence”). It sits to this very day on the recommended reference list of Paris\u2019s acclaimed Institut d\u2019Etudes Politiques\/Sciences Po and has been incorporated into others\u2019 published work\u2026https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=%22british+petroleum+politics,+arab+nationalism,+and+the+kurds%22+by+gerald+a.+honigman&filter=0&biw=1680&bih=887<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s where Jahandir again enters into the picture.<\/p>\n

Frequently demonstrating on campus against \u201cZionist colonialist occupiers\u201d on the West Bank, sitting across from me in class, and the like, Jahandir and I finally had a long-brewing exchange. After critiquing my own positions and work, it was my turn\u2026<\/p>\n

I hit my half-Persian colleague between the eyes with something as timely and relevant to the discussion today as it was when we did battle four decades ago.<\/p>\n

Prior to the Iranian nationalist era of the Pahlavi shahs, for centuries Iran’s oil-rich western Khuzistan province had an Arab<\/em> majority. In fact, it had largely been ruled by the Arab Sheikh of Mohammarah. Later, Arab chieftains had advocated the incorporation of “Arabistan” into Iraq. Undoubtedly, such memories played a major role in Iraq’s ill-fated decision to invade Iranian Khuzestan, sparking a long and costly war with Iran in the 1980s.\u00a0There are some eight million oppressed Ahwazi Arabs in Iran today.<\/p>\n

But, guess how Iranians like Jahandir, so quick to criticize Israel (which has been trying hard to arrive at a truly fair compromise with Arabs), dealt with their own Arab problem?<\/p>\n

Arabs were scattered, numerous Aryans were transferred into the strategic province, and any manifestations of Arab nationalism were ruthlessly squashed by whatever means necessary…but with no United Nations’ condemnations, university demonstrations, discussions in classrooms, trials in Geneva, and so forth occurring afterwards. This short, low tech (but potent) video should cause even the blind to see https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3EGETvB2-Bw<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Such above consequences, you see, are reserved almost exclusively for Jews and the sole, minuscule, resurrected Jew of the Nations<\/em> in their attempts to survive. Among other measures, serious thought was even given by Iran to outlawing Arabic as a spoken tongue–shades of both Iraqi or Syrian Arab and Turkish policies towards the Kurds.<\/p>\n

But, given the realities today, let\u2019s hear about The Three Amigas<\/em>, the BDS folks, and SJP deceitful hypocrites and their Progressive Hebrew useful idiots\u2019 complaints about allegedly nasty racist Zionists instead.<\/p>\n

The point, of course, to all of this is the blatant hypocrisy and double standards Jahan, the current Iranian rulers, much of academia and the rest of the world typically display in matters pertaining to the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular.<\/p>\n

And, oh yes, Jahan never did respond to my inquiries.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/q4j-middle-east.com<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran,\u00a0 BDS, and Tales (Tails?) of Binx and Jahandir\u2026 Redux by Gerald A. Honigman With increasing popularity of assorted overt and covert anti-Semitic causes and individuals, such as those camouflaged by the so-called Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) \u00a0movement and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,68,89,220,302,314,420],"class_list":["post-1114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arab-israeli-conflict","tag-arabistan","tag-bds","tag-iran","tag-mandate-of-palestine","tag-middle-east-studies","tag-sjp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geraldahonigman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}