What Else, O Medieval Saudi Oil Potentate? Try These For Starters\u2026<\/p>\n
by Gerald A. Honigman<\/p>\n
A stop along President Bush\u2019s recent Middle East trip\u2014after further pressuring Jews to accept his vision of Abbas’s latter day terrorist Arafatians as being the good cops\u2014took Dubya to the sands of the Saudis and other Arabian Peninsula nations. <\/p>\n
A photo soon was published worldwide of the President wielding a sword along with Bahraini hosts, and Dubya brought along a New Year\u2019s present–tens of billions of dollars in military aid to the Saudis. Hey, if we don\u2019t sell it to them, the Brits, Germans, French, and so forth certainly will. So goes the argument\u2026<\/p>\n
During the visit, Bush asked if perhaps the Arabs might reach out to Israel a bit more. Saudi King Abdullah responded that he didn\u2019t know what else he could do. After all, he came up with his own \u201cpeace\u201d (of the grave) plan some time ago. If the Jewish State merely agreed to return to its pre-\u201967, 9-mile wide \u201949 armistice line\u2014not border\u2014existence and agreed to be swamped by millions of \u201creturning\u201d jihadist refugees (many, if not most, of whom were new-comers to the Palestinian Mandate themselves) created because the Arab attempt to nip a reborn Israel in the bud backfired, then the Saudis might normalize relations with Israel.<\/p>\n
The Desert Kingdom has long gotten away with a virtual free pass from America and most of the rest of the world. The same folks\u2014including academics and others who should know better\u2014who routinely scrutinize Israel and the actions it\u2019s forced to take merely to survive, act deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to the Saudis and too many other Arabs controlling much of the world\u2019s oil and influencing many other petrodollar-connected, multi-national corporations in the process. Together, this power and influence–via their many tentacles and manifestations– make the much spoken about \u201cZionist lobby\u201d look pitiful. <\/p>\n
Years back, when I was a card-carrying member of the London-based Anti-Slavery Society, persistent reports spoke of slavery throughout Saudi Arabia and other Arab lands\u2026in the oil fields, and other places as well. It was still \u201cabove ground\u201d up until the middle of the last century. But it was all treated as though it didn\u2019t exist. Have you ever noticed the many black Saudis and other Arabs? Guess who and what their mothers mostly were? Hush…<\/p>\n
Okay. Let\u2019s get back on track.<\/p>\n
What else can the Saudis do to reach out to the Jews? Here\u2019s some suggestions\u2026<\/p>\n
On this last trip, Dubya pledged some twenty billion dollars in state-of-the-art aircraft, missiles, bombs, and so forth to the Saudis, supposedly to bolster them against the Iranian bogeyman.<\/p>\n
The problem is, despite all of those Arabs prancing around with their swords, each time they were threatened\u2014by fellow Arabs like Saddam or Iranians–America had to pull their chestnuts out of the fire with our own blood and money anyway\u2026despite billions of dollars in military aid given previously. Not to mention the Saudis’ gift of most of the suicide\/homicide bombers of 9\/11.<\/p>\n
Previous sophisticated weaponry and aircraft that the Saudis pledged to place to face the Iranian threat were stationed a stone\u2019s throw from Israel instead. Indeed, they\u2019ve been expanding the King Faisal Air Base at Tabuk. Prior to Bush\u2019s new holiday gift, the base contained about 50 advanced F-15S fighter-jets, which were sent to the northwestern facility on the eve of the U.S.-led war against Iraq in March 2003. Other promises related to those sales later proved to be worthless as well.<\/p>\n
So much for past and future similar Arab guarantees… <\/p>\n
What else could the Saudis do for Israel? How about honoring the pledges above, for starters.<\/p>\n
The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion is perhaps one of the most flagrantly anti-Semitic doctrines ever written. Guess who was one of the latter day leaders in endorsing and spreading it around? <\/p>\n
While the Saudis aren\u2019t the only Arabs still doing this sort of hate-spreading stuff (\u201cpeaceful\u201d Egypt still freely indulges), ending such practices is another suggestion for the \u201cwhat else\u201d\u2026as is ending dehumanizing \u201ckilab yahud\u201d\u2014Jew dogs\u2014even further by routinely also calling them sons of apes and pigs. Extend this further by revising the textbooks of Arab children, hatred in the media, sermons, and so forth which routinely demonize Jews and Israel, and an Arab \u201cpeace\u201d might become more believable.<\/p>\n
Ready for more?<\/p>\n
When Israel was squeezed by President Clinton at Camp David and Taba to cave in to Arafat and abandon its right to defensible \u201csecure and recognized\u201d borders instead of pre-\u201967 Auschwitz\/armistice lines a la resolution 242, while Arafat rejected the plan, Clinton and the State Department\u2019s Arabist \u201cdeal\u201d Prime Minister Barak was forced to accept became the new starting point for President Bush\u2019s recent Annapolis travesty.<\/p>\n
During the era of Clinton\u2019s \u201cOslo Peace,\u201d the more Israel tangibly conceded to Arabs, the more it bled. <\/p>\n
Guess who was paying Arab families tens of thousands of dollars each for having a “shahid” member blow up Jewish kids in teen night clubs, buses, pizzerias, and so forth during the Intifada (conducted under Arafat and Abbas\u2019s Fatah good cops\u2019 watch\u2014not that of Hamas\u2019s bad cops)? Maybe Saudi despots, who condemn women victims of rape to hundreds of lashes and humiliation, could revise their policy here also\u2026<\/p>\n
The Saudis, like other Arabs, are always quick to claim the whole region as \u201cpurely Arab patrimony.\u201d Hence their additional concern about Iranians and others who call the body of water in the north the Persian Gulf instead of the Arabian Gulf. More than just words are involved here.<\/p>\n
Since Arabs claim all that they acquired after Muhammad and successor caliphal armies burst out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century C.E., conquering and forcibly Arabizing millions of non-Arab peoples and their lands, and then rejected the rights of Jews (one half in Israel who were refugees from \u201cArab\u201d\/Muslim lands), Kurds, Berbers, black Africans, and so forth in a later age of nationalism to resurrected political rights of their own, perhaps the Saudis need to be reminded of another time period in what is now their country\u2026<\/p>\n
When Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, fled enemies in Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E. (the Hijrah), the inhabitants welcomed him. Medina had been developed centuries earlier as a thriving date palm oasis by Jews fleeing the Roman assault on Judaea (the banu-Qurayzah and banu-al-Nadir tribes, etc.). Medina\u2019s mixed population of Jews and pagan Arabs opened their doors to the future Prophet of Islam.<\/p>\n
Muhammad learned much from the Jews. While the actual timing of his decision on the qibla, the direction of prayer, may never be known, during his long sojourn with the Jews of Medina, his followers were instructed to pray towards Jerusalem. Early prominent Arab historians such as Jalaluddin came right out and openly stated that this was done as an attempt to win support among influential Jewish tribes (the \u201cPeople of the Book\u201d) for Muhammad\u2019s religio-politcal claims.<\/p>\n
It is from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (which Arabs now claim Jews have no connection to\u2014including Bush\u2019s good buddy, Abbas) that Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to Heaven on his winged horse. A mosque, the Dome of the Rock, would later be erected on this Jewish holy site after the Arab imperialist caliphal conquest of the land in the 7th century C.E. <\/p>\n
Arab imperialism? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh\u2026\u2026 Only nasty westerners do that stuff. <\/p>\n
There is no doubt among objective scholars that Jews had an enormous impact on both Muhammad and the religion that he founded. The holy sites for Muslims in Jerusalem (i.e. the mosques erected on the Temple Mount of the Jews) are now deemed \u201choly\u201d precisely because of the critical years Muhammad spent after the Hijrah with the Jews.<\/p>\n
Not mincing words, the Temple Mount of the Jews had no prior meaning to pagan Arabs. <\/p>\n
While there was some early Christian influence, intense scholarship has shown that the Holy Law (Halakha) and Holy Scriptures of the Jews had a tremendous influence on the Qur\u2019an, Islamic Holy Law (Shari\u2019a), and so forth. Muhammad\u2019s \u201cJerusalem connection\u201d was most likely not established until after his extended stay with his Jewish hosts. This was no mere coincidence\u2026Muslim religious beliefs regarding Muhammad\u2019s conversations with the Angel Gabriel notwithstanding.<\/p>\n
When the Jews refused to recognize Muhammad as the chief political honcho, \u201cSeal of the Prophets,\u201d and so forth, he turned on them with a bloody vengeance. Before long, with the exception of Yemen, there were virtually no Jews left on the Arabian Peninsula. And the direction of prayer was changed away from Jerusalem and towards the Kaaba in Mecca instead. <\/p>\n
Now, imagine, since Arabs claim all of Israel because of their previous conquests, that descendants of Arabian Jews staked their own claims as well? How about Medina as a Jewish city?<\/p>\n
Certainly, when demands by Arabs for compensation and the like regarding Arab refugees comes to the front burner, Jewish refugees from \u201cArab\u201d lands\u2014who number more and who left behind far more property and financial assets than their Arab counterparts did due to a war that Arabs themselves started\u2014need to put forth their own demands and need to backed by an Israeli government which will state unambiguously that there will be no fulfillment of the one claim without the other.<\/p>\n
What else can the Saudis and other Arabs do to convince Jews that the Saudi \u201cpeace\u201d is indeed not simply a peace of the grave? After all, Muhammad made his \u201cPeace of the Quraysh\u201d too\u2014a temporary hudna designed to buy time until he could conquer his enemies. Arafat loved to talk about this regarding Israel. Dubya\u2019s darling, Abbas, was Arafat\u2019s # 1 lieutenant and choice for Prime Minister.<\/p>\n
Lots more to relate\u2026but this essay is already too long.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s end for now by simply stating that if the Saudi king and other Arab potentates and despots (they\u2019re all either one and\/or the other) want to really reach out to Israel, all they have to do is to grant Jews in their sole, tiny, resurrected state a microscopic portion of the same rights they claim for themselves in demanding the official creation of the 22nd member nation of the Arab League\u2026.and second, not first, Arab one in \u201cPalestine\u201d\u2014Jordan carved out of some 80% of the Mandate\u2019s original 1920 borders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What Else, O Medieval Saudi Oil Potentate? Try These For Starters\u2026 by Gerald A. Honigman A stop along President Bush\u2019s recent Middle East trip\u2014after further pressuring Jews to accept his vision of Abbas’s latter day terrorist Arafatians as being the … Continue reading