U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands after Trump’s address at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem May 23, 2017. Photo: Reuters
Gerald A. Honigman | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
As I write this, President Trump is preparing to release his “deal of the century” for the Middle East.
The latter-day Arafatians-in-suits, led by Fatah and the Palestinian Authority/PLO’s Mahmud Abbas, have already called Trump a dog and have refused to take his calls over this. After all, they’re used to having their derriere’s virtually kissed by the previous American administration. But, I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s backtrack a bit…
I’m usually the last to enjoy the inventions and innovations of the times…
Whether it was my four adult children, wife, and mother–G_d bless all–acquiring their iPhones, while it took my flip flop getting dunked on a fishing trip before caving in to acquire one as well, or whatever…I just don’t think I inherited that particular gene on that specific chromosome that regulates such stuff.
So, it should not be a surprise that while most other folks that I know are now watching season #3 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, my wife and I have only just recently begun season #2.
I’ve got mixed feelings about it…Not that the show’s not entertaining, and the acting wonderful, but I’m a bit nervous about stereotypes that will likely be reinforced.
Anyway…
Right from the get-go, I had a serious case of déjà vu. And I didn’t read up about the Amazon Prime show beforehand.
The street where Midge performed–the very below ground night club she visited and performed in–rang a loud bell.
About a generation after Miriam “Midge” Weissman’s television adventures at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I attended the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, virtually right across MacDougal Street–where budding comedians and musicians often got their starts at places just like the one where Mrs. Maisel did some twenty years earlier.
Working full time and attending most of my graduate classes in the evening, Jews, Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Turks, Iranians, and so forth would go to the popular Café Feenjon for Turkish coffee, Middle Eastern foods and music, belly dancing, conversation, debate, and whatever afterwards. I swear, I remember the Feenjon, that you walked down into from street level, being like a resurrected Gaslight—although most of those clubs must have been similar.
On the days when I took my afternoon Arabic classes, I’d eat lunch across the street in the opposite direction near the famous big arch at Washington Square Park, across from the Kevorkian Center (in the ‘70s, a consortium of Princeton, Columbia, and NYU) and law school at NYU. The episode where Midge hears a woman giving a speech with the Arch in the background clinched this recollection for me. On numerous occasions, scenes from popular films, like When Harry Met Sally, were filmed there.
My days in The Village were especially raw ones for those concerned about the Middle East. And, as would become customary and even more true later, certain subjects never left center stage in most of academia and elsewhere, while others never made it onto a reading list, a United Nations discussion, or in a doctoral seminar.
The June ’67 War and its consequences were still of recent memory, and while we’re still dealing with those issues to this very day, the origins of that “Six Day War” are far more often than not simply ignored or given less than short shrift in the majority Middle East Studies Association (MESA)-dominated classrooms.
Try as they may to twist facts or ignore them, however, Israel was blockaded by Egypt’s President Nasser at the Straits of Tiran and Gulf of Aqaba (a casus belli) in an attempt to strangle it economically and prevent supply of crucial materials. Thousands of Arabs were dancing in the streets yelling “Itbach al-Yahud”–slaughter the Jews. I have a large cooler filled with pictures, magazine articles, news clippings, and other documentation of these events.
The United Nations peacekeeping force, in place since the 1956 hostilities (regarding Israel’s participation, started by another, previous Egyptian blockade and non-stop murder and terrorism from Egyptian-held Gaza and Sinai; Great Britain and France were angered by Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal), was expelled so to give the Egyptian military a clear path to attack the sole, resurrected State of the Jews that requires a magnifying glass to find on a world globe. The UN’s Secretary-General U Thant meekly complied, as someone later said, “like a fireman who flees as soon as a fire breaks out.” 100,000 Egyptian forces and hundreds of tanks thus amassed right up to the ’49 armistice line with Israel. Much evidence shows that the Soviets had been instigating these actions via Nasser’s Syrian partners.
Bottom line: The combined Arab plan to destroy Israel and slaughter its Jews backfired bigtime, and Israel–after wiping out several Arab air forces in six days (among other feats) subsequently found itself in control of territories which dwarfed its previous size.
By June 10, 1967, Israeli forces were looking at Egypt from their new positions along the Suez Canal; were now atop the Golan Heights, from which Syria shelled Jewish civilians below at will since 1949; and Judeans–Jews–were once again in Judea and had access to their holy sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere, from which Jordanian Arabs had previously denied them. Along with Samaria, these lands were not known as the “West Bank” until the early 20th century when Great Britain lopped off almost 80% of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine to give as a gift to Arab nationalism in one of its many subspecies in the creation, in 1922, of what today is known as Jordan.
To distinguish the remaining part (some 20%) of the Mandate of Palestine from Transjordan, created on the east bank of the Jordan River, Judea and Samaria–known by those names for millennia (the Judean Hills, Judean Desert, etc.; question–does the Gospel of Matthew say that was Jesus born in Bethlehem of the West Bank or Bethlehem of Judea, my Christian friends?), now received its new designation as well.
This became even more solidified after Transjordan joined other Arab states in attacking a nascent, reborn Israel in May 1948. After seizing Judea and Samaria, it annexed those lands and renamed itself “Jordan,” distinguishing the newly acquired territories as the “West Bank.” During this same time, Egypt grabbed Gaza as well. Funny how no one demanded a second state for Arabs in the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine while Jordan and Egypt held these territories…don’t you think? “Funny,” however, is too generous a description for this hypocrisy.
Ergo, so much for Jews getting most of “Palestine,” as is typically related in most Arab taqiyya (legitimate lying for “the cause”) fairy tales. That statement is as truthful as the Arab accounts of Americans destroying Arab air forces in 1967 instead of Israel–accounts intercepted by radio intelligence, by the way. Check this recorded conversation between Nasser and Jordan’s King Hussein for a good laugh… but then please keep this in mind regarding anything else that Arabs claim regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict as well.
Even more timely at the Café Feenjon in the early ‘70s was the then newest attempt on Israel’s life–one which came very close to succeeding–the combined Arab attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, in October 1973…when I was deeply immersed in graduate studies at the Kevorkian Center, some virtual stone throws away from where Mrs. Maisel probably wet her television feet, so to speak, a generation earlier.
When the dust from the latest hostilities began to settle, a number of us crossed MacDougal street once again one evening after class and sat at a few tables mesmerized by belly dancers and listening to our favorite music.
As usual, the Jews in the group were arguing among themselves about how much territory Israel should return to make the Arabs love–or at least not want to behead– them. I was as nauseated by their ilk then as I am with their counterparts today. I had to travel many times the 9-15 mile width of Israel, by its 1949 Auschwitz/armistice lines existence, to get to class from where I lived in Brooklyn.
The Arabs’ problem has never been a question about how BIG Israel is–but that Israel IS. The region is supposedly, after all, by their own words, just “purely Arab patrimony”…and if you don’t believe that, just ask the scores of millions of native non-Arab Kurds, Copts, numerous Semitic but non-Arab Lebanese, Assyrians, black Africans, Amazigh/Kabyle/”Berbers,” kilab yahud (Jew dogs), and others whose lands Arabs conquered and forcibly Arabized to create the almost two dozen states Arabs now call just their own on over six million square miles of territory.
Watching these pathetic Hebrews from another table were my very amused Arab colleagues. They were just having a grand time watching Jews arguing among themselves.
Well, I just couldn’t resist …
I walked over to the Arab table, pulled up a chair, spun it around, leaned my arms on its back, smiled and said:
“Hey, don’t stop enjoying what you see over there on my account. I find those folks amusing too. But keep this in mind…Some of us indeed have your number on all of this stuff. We know that it’s not Israel’s size nor the additional territories that’s the real problem for you, but that Jews–or anyone else besides Arabs–having the audacity to want their own small share of justice in a region you claim solely for yourselves. You’re going to have to deal with at least some of us with our eyes wide open and our heads out of the sand.”
Hushhhhhh
Even with my favorite Ya Mustapha being played on stage in the background, you could have heard a pin drop.
I then got up and walked back to my original table.
These events happened almost a half century ago, and I wish I could say that things have changed much…but that would be a lie.
We see this played out almost daily when some “Progressive” Hebrew indulges in the same fantasies and calls those who disagree right wing fanatics. And the academic Ivory Tower is loaded with them.
Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs. He has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites all around the world. You can visit his website at geraldahonigman.com Gerald A. Honigman is a longtime senior contributing writer, from 2007, and columnist for Ekurd.net. Honigman has published a major book, “The Quest For Justice In The Middle East–The Arab-Israeli Conflict In Greater Perspective.” For more see below.
The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Ekurd.net or its editors.
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