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. •
Read more by the Author
July
21, 2012
Doris Wise Montrose, my friend at Children Of Jewish
Holocaust Survivors--Never Again Is Now, sent me a
great article by Daniel Tauber to commemorate July
19th's 72nd anniversary of the death of one of the
most important modern
Zionist leaders, Ze'ev
(Vladimir) Jabotinsky…
There is no doubt that Jabotinsky was both brilliant
and essential in the human aspects of Israel's
resurrection and survival. The above essay gives
some quick, useful facts about his too short life.
During my own graduate study days in the late '70s,
I will never forget a conversation I had with the
tenured chief honcho professor of one of the doctor
seminars. He would later see to it that my own
academic career would be nipped in the bud by
denying me a Ph.D. dissertation advisor. I was the
most advanced doctoral student in the program and
the department used me to secure additional funding.
But, I asked too many of the wrong questions.
Professor Daniel Pipes' organization, Campus Watch,
Professor Martin Kramer's book, Ivory Towers On
Sand…, and a brand new, break away academic
organization from MESA, ASMEA, would later emerge
over the same issues--all too late to help me,
however.
After hearing a fellow doctoral student's oral
summary of her own research project covering the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (Amin al-Husseini), it was
my turn to do likewise with the extensive research I
had done on Jabotinsky.
At no time during the presentation about the Mufti
was it reported that Hitler had made him the leader
of the Waffen SS Division in the Balkans in charge
of atrocities against Serbs, Gypsies, and Jews. And
the professor asked no prodding questions about such
things afterwards as well. He simply went along with
the whitewash.
Yet, after my discussion about Jabotinsky, the same
professor was quick to question about his alleged
"fascist connections."
Alas, such experiences were and still are quite
common in too many duplicitous MESA-run classrooms
where one set of lenses is used to scrutinize Israel
and Zionism and quite a
different set--if any at all--is used to critique
the "Arab" world.
Chapter # 17 of my own book
(http://q4j-middle-east.com) is completely devoted
to Jabotinsky (along with other references to him in
the book as well), and his famous 1937 quote to the
Palestine Royal Commission in London prominently
graces the back jacket cover.
In honor of the memory of this amazing man, a timely
gift from G_d for sure, please allow me to share
with you an earlier version of that chapter from my
book. It follows below…
Appetite Versus Starvation and Some Other Eternal
Truths (7/6/05)
Arabs have spent decades trying to convince the
world that they are both the old and the new Jews.
Arafat and others have claimed that Jesus, Peter,
and their comrades were actually
Arabs--"Palestinians" to be exact--and not Jews.
It seems that planes were not the only things that
Arafat's crew decided to hijack.
Too bad that besides the Jews themselves, the
Romans, who ruled the land in Jesus' day, also left
a clear record of the land belonging to the Jews--
whom they were in the process of conquering--and
also made a clear distinction between Jews and Arabs
as well.
Tacitus and Dio Cassius were famous Roman historians
who wrote extensively about Judaea's attempt to
remain free from the Soviet Union of its day, the
conquering Roman Empire. They lived and wrote
during, or not long after, the two major revolts of
the Jews for independence in 66-73 C.E. and 133-135
C.E. They make no mention of this land being Arab,www.ekurd.net
of it being called "Palestine," or its people
"Palestinians." On the contrary, they detailed the
difference between the native Jews Rome was fighting
and the Arabs from surrounding lands who decided to
join the massive Roman assault on their Jewish
neighbors.
Listen to this quote from Vol. II, Book V, The Works
of Tacitus:
...Titus was appointed by his father to complete the
subjugation of Judaea... he commanded three legions
in Judaea itself... To these he added the twelfth
from Syria and the third and twenty-second from
Alexandria... amongst his allies were a band of
Arabs, formidable in themselves and harboring
towards the Jews the bitter animosity usually
subsisting between neighboring nations...
After the 1st Revolt, Rome issued thousands of
Judaea Capta coins which can be seen in museums all
over the world today. Notice, please...Judaea Capta...not
" Palaestina "Capta. Additionally, to celebrate this
victory, the Arch of Titus was erected illustrating
legionnaires carrying away the spoils of the Jewish
Temple in Jerusalem. It stands tall in Rome to this
very day. The late Egyptian ghoul himself (Arafat)
and his buddies deny that such a Temple ever
existed.
When, some sixty years later, Emperor Hadrian
decided to further desecrate the site of the
destroyed Temple by erecting a pagan structure
there, it was the grandchildren's turn to take on
their mighty conquerors.
The result of the struggle of this tiny nation for
its freedom and independence was, perhaps, as
predictable as that which would have occurred had
Lithuania taken on the Soviet Union during its
heyday of power. Listen next to this next quote from
Dio Cassius:
...580,000 men were slain, nearly the whole of
Judaea made desolate. Many Romans, moreover,
perished in this war (the Bar Kochba Revolt).
Therefore Hadrian, in writing to the senate, did not
employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the
emperors, ' I and the legions are in health.'
The Emperor was so enraged at the Jews' struggle for
freedom in their own land that, in the words of the
esteemed modern historian, Bernard Lewis, "Hadrian
made a determined attempt to stamp out the embers
not only of the revolt but also of Jewish nationhood
and statehood... obliterating its Jewish identity."
Wishing to end, once and for all, Jewish hopes,
Hadrian renamed the land itself from Judaea to
"Syria Palaestina" -- Palestine -- after the Jews'
historic enemies, the Philistines, a non-Semitic sea
people from the eastern Mediterranean or Aegean
area. So, sorry Arafatians...Trying to hijack the
latter's identity, as you have tried to do with that
of the Jews, won't work either.
The reality, of course, is that the vast majority of
Arabs did not even begin to enter into the picture
regarding the land of Israel / Judaea / Palestine
until almost seven centuries after the fall of
Jewish Jerusalem--during the beginning of the Arabs'
own extensive imperial conquest, forced Arabization,
and settlement of much of the region. Imperialism is
evidently only nasty when non-Arabs so indulge.
Ditto for settlement and such. Most so-called
"native Palestinians" today came into the land only
recently themselves, beginning with thousands of
Egyptian troops who stayed after the invasion of
Muhammad Ali's army in the 19th century, and
ballooning after Jewish capital began to develop the
land soon afterwards. The records of the Permanent
Mandates Commission of the League of Nations and
other evidence document Arabs flooding into
Palestine after 1920. It is believed that many
others entered under cover of darkness and were
simply never recorded.
While the story of the Arabs' attempt at
establishing themselves as the "aboriginals" of the
land could be developed further, I'll let it rest
for now. So much for their attempt at becoming the
old Jews.
Let's next turn to the Arab attempt to become the
new Jews...
After Judaea's fight for freedom against the mighty
Roman Empire and the conversion of the latter to
Christianity, forced conversions, being branded the
deicide people (and treated accordingly),
inquisitions, demonization, dehumanization, ghettos,
blood libels, massacres, expulsions, and existence
as perpetual stranger in someone else's land became
the plight of the stateless, "Wandering Jew."
Estimates have placed the number of Jews murdered as
a result of these experiences, prior to the
Holocaust, in both the Christian West--where they
were considered to be "G_d killers"--or in the
Muslim East, where there was no Holocaust per se,
but where Jews were still frequently regarded as
"killers of prophets' and kilab yahud "Jew dogs," in
the millions. And this was without the benefit of
20th century methods of mass destruction aiding the
process.
Arabs have tried to convince the world that their
experiences and the plight of Arab refugees is
somehow the equivalent of that of the Jews. It has
worked to a great extent with a world largely--and
willingly-- deaf, dumb, and blind to the obvious
differences.
Let's turn the clock back some seventy years to hear
how one great Jewish leader explained these
differences in his Evidence Submitted To The
Palestine Royal Commission in London in 1937. Still
recovering from the murderous pogroms and massive
Jewish refugee problem which accompanied them just a
bit earlier, it had by now become evident that even
worse was yet to come. Let's listen to how this
Zionist leader dealt with all of this:
Three generations of Jewish thinkers...have come to
the conclusion that the cause of our suffering is
the very fact of the Diaspora, the bedrock fact that
we
are everywhere a
minority...The phenomenon called Zionism may include
all kinds of dreams...but all of this longing for
wonderful toys of velvet and silver is nothing
compared with that tangible momentum of irresistible
distress and need by which we are propelled and
borne...
Whenever I hear a Zionist...accused of asking too
much...I really cannot understand it...Yes we do
want a State; every nation on earth...they all have
States of their own...the normal condition of a
people. Yet, when we, the most abnormal of peoples,
and therefore the most unfortunate, ask for only the
same...then it is called too much...We have got to
save millions, many millions. I do not know whether
it is a question of one third...half...or a quarter
(indeed, one third of world Jewry would be
eliminated within just a few years of his remarks).
I have the profoundest feeling for the Arab case, in
so far as that case is not exaggerated...I have also
shown to you...that...there is no question of
ousting the Arabs. On the contrary, the idea is that
Palestine on both sides of the Jordan should hold
the Arabs...and...Jews. What I do not deny is that
in that process the Arabs of Palestine will
become...a minority...What I do deny is that that is
a hardship.
It is not a hardship on any race, any nation
possessing so many National States now and so many
more National States in the future. One fraction,
one branch...and not a big one, will have to live in
someone else's State: Well, that is the case with
all the mightiest nations of the world...That is
only normal and there is no "hardship" attached to
that. So when we hear the Arab claim confronted with
the Jewish claim, I fully understand that any
minority would prefer to be a majority.
It is quite understandable that the Arabs...would
also prefer Palestine to be the Arab State No. 4,
No. 5. or No. 6...but when the Arab claim is
confronted with our Jewish demand to be saved, it is
like the claims of appetite versus...starvation.
The presenter of this evidence was Ze'ev Vladimir
Jabotinsky, the patron saint of Israel's modern
Likud Party. And, as can be seen above, unlike too
many other Zionist thinkers, he was a realist
regarding what could and what could not be expected
in the Jews' relationships with Arabs.
As Jabotinsky correctly forecasted, Arabs made out
quite well after the breakup of the Turks' four
century-old Empire at the end of World War I. To
date, they have almost two dozen states. And most of
those were conquered and forcibly Arabized from
millions of Imazighen/"Berbers," Copts, Kurds, Jews,
black Africans, and other non-Arab peoples.
Appetite, indeed, Mr. Jabotinsky...and at everyone
else's expense.
Arabs declared the region to be purely Arab
patrimony, frequently outlawed others' languages and
cultures, and killed anyone who stood in their
way...literally, millions to date.
In failing repeated attempts to destroy militarily
the sole, minuscule state the Jews managed to get as
a refuge, the Arabs next turned to another ploy. In
the quest to defeat Israel on the battlefield of
ideas, the Arabs virtually transformed themselves
into the new stateless Jews. In a like manner,
Israel's attempts to survive and suppress repeated
acts of terrorism and Arab assaults on its life were
also twisted to be equated with the Nazis' treatment
of the Jews. Arabs became the new David to Israel's
Goliath, despite the fact that there are some 300
million of them on over six million square miles of
territory and there are five million Israeli Jews in
a state that one practically needs a magnifying
glass to locate on a map of the world.
Along these lines, there are those who make the
argument, "if Jews can have a state, why not
Palestinians?" For some, this is simply ignorance.
But for too many others--academics included--it
represents something far worse, for they know
better.
While I won't get into argument over whether a
distinct Palestinian Arab nationalism exists today,
it certainly did not exist before the rise of modern
political Zionism a little over a century ago. In
fact, the former arose specifically to negate the
latter. There are volumes of evidence to support
this. Virtually all the writings of politically
conscious Arabs on the eve of the collapse of the
Ottoman Turkish Empire spoke of a greater Syrian
Arab or Pan Arab identity. And there never was an
Arab country, state, or nation of "Palestine."
Indeed, the "Palestinians" were the Jews.
As in Jabotinsky's day, now, and before, this
conflict has never been about Jews wanting to deny
Arabs their just rights. On the contrary, it's
always been about Arabs not allowing any one else
even a tiny sliver of those very same rights they so
fervently demand for themselves.
In the war of ideas, the Arabs realized that the
very identity of the conflict would have to undergo
a major change.
In their attempt to create their 22nd state--on the
ashes of Israel, not along side of it--Arabs came to
realize that it would make better press and public
relations to speak in terms of creating a state for
"stateless Palestinians" rather than calling for the
creation of yet an additional Arab state at the
expense of the one of the Jews.
Hocus pocus, alakazam !
Arabs, with some two dozen states, would next be
magically transformed into the likes of previously
starving, stateless Jews.
This has manifested itself in many ways over the
decades.
Not that long ago, a United Nations and
International Court Of Justice that keep silent over
security fences being set up all around the world
(including some on disputed territories)--along the
Saudi-Yemen and Indo-Pakistani borders, in America,
and elsewhere as well--declared Israel's version,
designed to keep Arabs from deliberately blowing up
its kids, illegal. Leading specialists on
international law beg to differ.
That same court--which says nothing about Arabs
deliberately murdering Jewish civilians--insists
that some Arab inconvenience created by the fence is
more of an issue than the saving of Jewish lives.
Not to mention the fact that without Arab terrorism,
there would be no security fence.
Notice the pattern here. The same hypocrisy and
double standards which have allowed for the Arabs'
success at transforming themselves into the "new
Jews" constantly works to undermine the sole, real
Jewish State.
Listen to Zuheir Mohsein, official with the PLO's
military wing and Executive Council, in his
interview with the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, on
3/31/77, to see how Arabs themselves have explained
this identity transformation strategy:
There are no differences between Jordanians,
Palestinians, Syrians, etc...It is only for
political reasons that we now carefully underline
Palestinian
identity....this serves
only a tactical purpose...a new tool in the
continuing battle against Israel.
Despite the passage of time, these basic truths do
not change.
The Arab-Jewish (or Arab-Kurdish, Arab-Berber,
Arab-black African, and so forth) conflict is still
all about Jabotinsky's appetite versus
starvation...a conquering, subjugating appetite on
the part of the Arabs to deny any one else their own
share of justice in the region.
By rejecting repeated compromises over the 20% of
the Mandate of Palestine left after they had already
received the lion's share of it in 1922 with the
creation of purely Arab Transjordan (some 80% of the
whole), the Arabs created the impasse we are still
living with today. They invaded a reborn Israel in
1948 in an attempt to nip it in the bud...thereby
creating two refugee crises in the process: Arabs
who fled Israel and a like number of Jews who fled
"Arab "/ Muslim lands. But, unlike the Arabs, the
Jews didn't have other multiple states of their own
to potentially choose from.
What's even more depressing is that, in many crucial
ways, nothing has really changed for well over a
half century, as a look at Arab websites, textbooks,
maps, television programs, and such illustrates.
Israel simply does not (or shouldn't) exist. And the
most that will be offered to it will be a temporary
respite, a hudna, like that the Prophet of Islam,
Muhammad, allowed his enemies until he could muster
the strength to deal them the final blow...Arafat's
so-called "Peace of the Quraysh." Even the Arabs'
own moderates have admitted to this, calling any and
all such moves for "peace" a Trojan Horse.
Once again...the basic truths of this struggle do
not change. They are eternal.
And the Arab-Jewish conflict is still all about
appetite versus starvation.
By Gerald A. Honigman for EKurd.net, July 21, 2012. You may reach the
author via email at: honigman6 (at) msn.com.
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. Visit his
website at
http://www.geraldahonigman.com/
Gerald A. Honigman, a longtime contributing writer
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."
Copyright © 2012 Ekurd.net.
All rights reserved
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