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Gerald A. Honigman | Exclusive to Ekurd.net

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) movement and characterized by folks like the plethora of duplicitous academics and emerging superstars of the Democrat Party like The Three Amigas, perhaps it’s time to consult a real expert on these matters…my cat, of blessed memory.

Please allow me to backtrack a bit, and I guess it was my own fault.

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

The problem was that we already had three established cats. While we earlier had similar situations involving the two original females, it was Binx, the young male, who (even after being neutered) really proved to be a pistol regarding the newcomers. And I suspect he began by first blaming me.

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, if you get my drift, in the box.

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.

Among the various correspondence was 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.

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 Doctors Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum’s Campus Watch and Martin Kramer’s book, Ivory Towers On Sand, were created and written years later–were/are far more acceptable to the powers that be than my own. I asked the taboo 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 dissection of Israel and Zionism. I paid for those expectations dearly. Toe the line or else… So, I doubt that Jahan was denied a Ph.D. dissertation advisor the way I was.

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 that 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, like a fool I believed…

For those somewhat familiar with Middle East, imagine taking advanced graduate courses on the Palestine Mandate, examining microfiche documents 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 of 1921 (which did much to shape the modern Middle East); the original 1920 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…Or, 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 Jabotinsky, were being painted as the real fascists. Or constantly being fed other slanted material sympathetic to Arab nationalist aspirations while ignoring the rights of everyone else in the region.

Does the above sound a bit familiar? Welcome to the world of those espousing causes such as the BDS movement and supporting groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) today…

The only time, for example, that Kurds were ever mentioned was when this same professor, 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.

As is even more typical today on numerous “Progressive” 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/”Berbers,” Copts, Assyrians, native kilab yahud (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…

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 (“British Petroleum Politics, Arab Nationalism, and the Kurdish Struggle For Independence”). It sits to this very day on the recommended reference list of Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes Politiques/Sciences Po and has been incorporated into others’ published work…

That’s where Jahandir again enters into the picture.

Frequently demonstrating on campus against “Zionist colonialist occupiers” 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…

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.

Prior to the Iranian nationalist era of the Pahlavi shahs, for centuries Iran’s oil-rich western Khuzistan province had an Arab 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. There are some eight million oppressed Ahwazi Arabs in Iran today.

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?

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 the video.

Such above consequences, you see, are reserved almost exclusively for Jews and the sole, minuscule, resurrected Jew of the Nations 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.

But, given the realities today, let’s hear about The Three Amigas, the BDS folks, and SJP deceitful hypocrites and their Progressive Hebrew useful idiots’ complaints about allegedly nasty racist Zionists instead.

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.

And, oh yes, Jahan never did respond to my inquiries.

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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