White House senior adviser Jared Kushner stands behind President Donald Trump White House in Washington, October 1, 2018. Photo: AP
Gerald A. Honigman | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
President Trump and his chief advisor, Jared Kushner, have worked very hard to come up with a plan to fairly and realistically address both parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict. For those who call this a Palestinian-Israeli conflict, you need to go back to school–not simply, out of intimidation or ignorance, recite Arab fairy tales. You know, like it was America–not Israel–which eradicated the Arab air forces in the June ’67 War. Audio tapes were intercepted of the actual discussion between Arab leaders plotting that whopper in order to explain how their then latest attempt to destroy Israel and its Jews backfired big time. And there’s many others which rival it. Arabs have a name, adapted from its original meaning, for such legitimate lying and obfuscation for “the cause”…taqiyya.
Thus, airplanes have not been the only things that the late murderous Egyptian ghoul, Fatah’s Yasser Arafat’s, virtual progeny have attempted to hijack over the decades. They’ve also tried very hard to turn themselves into the old and new formerly stateless, frequently-persecuted Jews.
Repeated attempts and at least one past official United Nations’ vote to recognize Arab state # 22 has been a typical case in point–all while ignoring the real plight of scores of millions of other native, non-Arab peoples in the region who got shafted largely due to Arabism in its assorted subspecies and the latter’s international pusillanimous and/or Big Oil-connected and/or antisemitic (overt or covert) cohorts.
To better understand why “The Deal of the Century” hit a very-predictable obstacle, let’s turn the clock back a bit…
Not having to yield anything whatsoever in utter rejection of anyone else’s dreams and rights in the region, on November 29, 2012, Arabs simply had their own one-sided vision of justice–which is no justice at all–endorsed by most of the rest of the world at the United Nations…the same body which passed the infamous “Zionism Equals Racism” resolution in the ‘70s.
Very little has actually changed since then either. Arabs and Muslim (i.e., Arabized) Turks, who have massacred, outlawed scores of millions of other native peoples’ language and culture (Kurds, Amazigh/Kabyle/“Berbers,” etc.), and so forth still continue to get free passes in too many circles (especially academia) while the Jew of the Nations–Israel–and the national liberation movement of the world’s most oppressed people, Zionism, continues to be exposed to endless hypocritical vilification.
Arabs timed that 2012 event so that the date fell on the anniversary of the November 29,1947 United Nations’ vote to partition what was left of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine, after Arab nationalism–in another of its many permitted varieties–was already awarded almost 80% of the total area in 1922 (“Transjordan”), into one Jewish and a second Arab state.
Obviously disappointed, Jews nonetheless accepted the ’47 partition plan (at almost the same moment in history that the Indian subcontinent was being divided between Muslim Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, with similar population exchanges as well)–even though their state would emerge on a mere 12% of the original post-World War I Mandate’s territory. On a world globe, Israel appears as a mere fleck adjacent to the over six million square miles of territory Arabs got to claim for themselves in the region. Try finding it without a magnifying glass. Arabs claim Jews got most of the land…taqiyya.
Images from that day in November 1947 showed Jews dancing in the street with tears in their eyes as they were about to go home to the resurrected nation which they had some 3-4,000 years of history connecting them to. Open this link for some good background. For Jews, unlike Arabs, this was not simply just another state being created for them because twenty-one others already existing were not enough–for whatever reason.
The sad fact, therefore, is that there was no justice served in the United Nations on November 29, 2012. There was only a lie–a grotesque one at that.
True (relative) justice in the human realm demands a sense of fair play. That’s not what most Arabs have ever had in mind on this or any other related issues.
The dancing in the street by Arabs in the wake of that 2012 UN vote was a victory dance–not one of fair play. If the latter was the determining factor, Arabs could have had their additional state in the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine decades ago. But “fair play” for Arabs means only one thing: they’re the rulers, everyone else are the ruled.
As for the real desperation some Arabs suffered in this conflict, it can mostly be put square on their own leaders’ doorsteps. The same fellow Arab folks who routinely use them as human shields have also used them as human pawns. This next link is useful as well.
The plain truth is that any objective study of the conflict would reveal that there were indeed serious attempts (including the current Trump Plan) made to provide relative justice for both parties over the last century. Arabs have not been simply ignored, as they would have the world believe. But this also begs the question…
Once again, when have Arabs ever allowed such attempts to address the plight of scores of millions of non-Arab peoples to occur on lands that they themselves conquered, colonized, forcibly Arabized, and then claimed to be merely “purely Arab patrimony?”
A while back, my Kurdish friends told me a nauseating, revealing episode related to this. If you want to understand the ARAB (not “Palestinian”)-Israeli conflict, pay close attention to what follows…
Various Syrian opposition groups had come together to discuss a supposedly post-Assad future.
The Kurds–probably at least 6 million (just in Syria alone), when the Arabized part of their population are added to the Kurdish speakers–asked that the new nation be called something like “The Republic of Syria,” recognizing the multi-ethnic make-up of the land. Keep in mind that Kurds have been in the forefront fighting Assad’s Alawi Shi’as’ main rivals, ISIS, and other assorted Sunni Jihadis.
The Arab response to the Kurds’ request?
The Arabs–mostly Islamist soul brothers to folks like Hamas, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and the Turkish crew now at the helm in Ankara–laughed in their faces and would have none of it. The new country would be called The Syrian Arab Republic…Period. Recall that there are about 40 million truly stateless Kurds in the greater region. When do they get to have their day at the United Nations? They were indeed promised independence after WWI, but their aspirations were aborted via a collusion of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism after London got what it wanted in the northern oil-rich, largely Kurdish area of the Mandate of Mesopotamia with the League of Nations’ Mosul decision in 1925…
I’ve drifted–so let’s go back to partition and November 29th…
While Jews, like Arabs, have many countries of origins (including more Jews who fled so-called “Arab” lands as a result of the attack by a half dozen Arab states on Israel in 1948 than vice-versa), that did not translate, however, into Jews being able to demand multiple states–as Arabs have been permitted to do–in the new age of nationalism. More Jews, for example, are of Moroccan, Tunisian, Algerian, and other North African origin than Arabs who got to have states in Kuwait, Oman, Abu Dhabi, and so forth. Using the Arab argument for “Palestine,” why not a Jewish state in North Africa? Along with their Amazigh neighbors (and allies), they predated the Arab conquest of the area by centuries, if not millennia.
The parties to the conflict over “Palestine” were/are Arabs and Jews, and the 1922 actual and 1947 planned partitions addressed both of these peoples–not “Palestinians.” The Brits’ East Bank representative, Sir Alec Kirkbride, had much to say about this in his book, A Crackle of Thorns, as did Emir Abdullah himself in his memoirs, and others as well. My own book also validly documents this story in great depth and detail.
Colonial Secretary Churchill’s separation of the lion’s share of the original Mandate of Palestine in 1922 on behalf of Arab allies, created after the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire after World War I and referred to above, was most definitely related to this attempt at achieving balance, as were other events. While Churchill had other pressing issues he was also dealing with in this decision, the struggle between Jew and Arab in the land was ever present as well.
For those interested, “Palestine” is the name Rome gave to Judea (see the Judea Capta coin Rome issued here) after the Judeans’–Jews’–second revolt for freedom.
To rub salt into the wound, the Emperor Hadrian, in 135 C.E., renamed the land after the Jews’ legendary, historic enemies, the Philistines. And just as Arabs have claimed that they are the land’s real aborigines, not the Jews, they also claim they are the modern Philistines as well. Too bad the latter were a non-Semitic (let alone “Arab”) sea people from islands around Crete, and that Arabs got to the land of the Jews the same way they got to lands of the Kurds, Iranians, Indians, Assyrians, pre-Arab Lebanese, Copts, Imazighen/”Berbers,” black Africans in the Sudan (and elsewhere), and so forth:
In the 7th century C.E., Arab armies burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and spread their imperial, colonial conquests in all directions. Scores of millions of the survivors of such earlier murderous conquests, such forcibly-Arabized folks to this very day still have to deal with the consequences of the subjugation. Have a chat with an émigré, refugee Copt, Kurd, or Assyrian if you have any doubts. If you don’t know what “dhimmitude” is, for example, it would be useful to research that term.
Yet, Israel’s alleged “peace (of the grave) partners,” Mahmoud Abbas and his latter-day-Arafatians-in-suits act as if none of this matters and are still able, as was done on November 29, 2012, to get most of the rest of the world to buy into their argument.
So, perhaps it’s time for Jews, Kurds, and others to start playing this same Arab name game…
For Kurds, rename yourselves Qamishlians, Mahabadians, Erbilians, Suleimanyans, Diyarbekirians, etc. and then demand umpteen Kurdish states instead of just one.
In case you think I’m kidding, follow this former PLO (today’s Palestinian Authority–PA) leader on this very tactic. Here’s oft-quoted Zuheir Mohsen, on March 31, 1977, in the Dutch newspaper Trouw…
The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese… Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism…
Thus, instead of asking for a 22nd ARAB state (while still seeking destruction of the Jews’ sole, minuscule one), Arabs transformed themselves into “stateless Palestinians,” allegedly just asking for the “same thing” the Jews got.
Recall that no documents from the era of the Mandate–or before–ever show Arabs calling themselves “Palestinians.” Indeed, there never, ever, ever was an Arab state, kingdom, emirate, or whatever of “Palestine.” And when Arabs ruled the land, they did so out of their two imperial Caliphal capitals, Damascus and Baghdad.
Also again recall that during the above November 1947 partition plan, Arabs themselves rejected that offer…
Roughly 90% of Palestine was not enough for them. Arabs demanded it all.
“Their” kilab yahud–Jew dogs–were worthy of nothing. And certainly no part of what had been turned into the Dar ul-Islam by conquest could ever revert back to the Dar al-Harb, realm of war.
The same rejectionist, subjugating mindset which steered Arab attitudes and policies back on that November 29th seventy-three years ago persists to this very day. That’s why they nixed Trump and Jared Kushner’s “Deal of the Century.” Any plan which leaves a viable Israel still standing on the morrow is unacceptable.
In supremacist Arab eyes, Jews are still entitled to nothing. Even the Sunni Arab folks who seem to be changing their minds a bit, are likely doing this so that Hebrew blood and treasure will be used to confront the Iranian Shi’a bogeyman–and not their own.
Abbas’s gang, unlike Hamas, is simply willing to play the game more with a willingly-gullible West. It pays ($$$) big time to be the “moderates”–and by the billions. Arafat’s Swiss bank accounts are legendary.
Yet, ask Abbas and his Fatah crew what their statements calling deals with Jews being merely a “Trojan Horse” are all about; or repeated comments that they’ll never recognize Israel as a Jewish State (while demanding Arab state # 22–most created on largely non-Arab peoples’ lands); never give up insisting upon their right to inundate Israel with millions of Jihadi alleged refugees; and so forth. And about all those maps which show “Palestine” replacing Israel–not living beside it? Regarding that adjective, “Jewish,” see here.
Not even considering the simply more honest Jihadis like Hamas, Islamic jihad, & Co., the “moderates,” like Abbas, have openly called such tactics part of their destruction-in-phases strategy: force Israel, bit by bit, back to its suicidal, 1949 armistice lines, which made it 9-15 miles wide at its waist, where most of its vulnerable population lives, and then let the axe fall…
No, the November 29, 2012 was not about justice. Neither is the Arab rejection of the Trump Plan. It was–and is–about continuing to impose a purely Arab agenda onto everyone else. That the UN voted to recognize a new nation which has openly stated it will never recognize its neighbor and more than likely launch aggression against it in the name of yet more Arab “rights” is a cruel joke.
Before concluding, there’s one last thing to consider.
Since Arabs have moved unilaterally on this issue, it’s time for Israel to reciprocate…
The major United Nations doctrine for peacemaking between Arab and Jew, the final draft of UNSC Resolution 242, specifically stated, in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, that Israel would be able to expect more secure, defensible, and real borders (not suicidal armistice lines) at the end of the peacemaking process. Read what the chief architect of 242 said about this here.
The settlement issue in the non-apportioned (not “purely Arab”) parts of the Mandate of Palestine in Judea and Samaria/”West Bank” is largely about this need for a meaningful territorial compromise in the area–lands where Jews have thousands of years of history and where valid sources, such as the Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, correspondence and writings of contemporary world leaders, and so forth recorded huge numbers of Arabs pouring into the land from outside the Mandate—i.e., Arab settlers setting up Arab settlements in Palestine.
The earlier Arab rejection of the November 29,1947 deal involving granting them a total of some 90% of Palestine via the various partitions and partition plans occurred because Arab nationalism–Arabism– stakes claim to it all.
It is the same reason why, even in a possible post-Assad age, non-Arabs such as Kurds, will fare no better in Syria, and other non-Arabs, like Assyrians, “Berbers,” and Copts, are worried now perhaps more than ever before in the region which Arabs claim solely for themselves.
This is what the Arab victory dance over the November 29, 2012 United Nations’ vote to recognize their 22nd state is all about…
Sham justice. And as I like to explain it: Arabs, 22…Everyone else: 0
Whatever the above might be, true justice it is not.
If Arabs refuse a fair compromise, Israel must move ahead unilaterally to annex territories where Jews have millennia of history and which will give them the more secure, defensible, real borders–not the absurdly vulnerable, pre-’67 armistice lines–that UNSC Resolution 242 assured 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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