Gerald Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral work in Middle East studies, has lectured on numerous university and other platforms. He has debated many of the best Arab and pro-Arab academics in public debates and on television. Mr. Honigman is widely published in academic journals, magazines, newspapers and other publications.
Sun Jun 20, 2004 9:59 pm On The Evolution of the Suicide/Homicide Bomber
On The Evolution of the Suicide/Homicide Bomber
By Gerald A. Honigman
June 2004
While the year 2004 has brought other issues back to the front burner that also demanded immediate attention (the future of the Gaza Strip and the rest of the disputed territories as just a few examples), it's worth rethinking another all-too-real fact of life that had driven events over recent past years, especially since the onset of the era of the so-called Oslo "peace, " and still very much with us. I'm speaking, of course, about the Arab suicide/homicide bomber.
Unfortunately, we have heard too much about suicide/homicide bombers in the Middle East, and when Israel pursues the deliberate murderers of its innocents, this then becomes the next excuse for Arabs to kill more innocents. Of course, the way many --if not most--Arabs see all of this, there are really no Israeli "innocents." They're all simply Jews who have stolen "purely Arab" land. That's the way it's taught in their textbooks, preached in their mosques, and inbred elsewhere as well.
After the September 11, 2001 tragedy, when nineteen Arabs (mostly Saudis) hijacked civilian aircraft and flew them as guided missiles into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing some three thousand Americans and others as well, the situation has become even more of a concern. Officials believe that it's just a matter of time before the United States, itself, once again becomes victimized this way. The Arab suicide / homicide bomber has also since made his (or her) debut in other places as well--notably in the fight for the future of Iraq. Young children have also been utilized as living bombs.
There is no doubt that this is a horrendous human tragedy. But while Arabs and their supporters place the blame for this on Israel, the truth is actually far more depressing.
Like in many other places, there are conflicting historical and political claims over the land contested between Arabs and Jews. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scholarly books written about the connection of the Jews to the land of Israel. The very name Jew, itself, comes from the later name of the land, Judaea, which in turn was named for the Hebrew tribe of Judah--one of Jacob's sons. Judaean equals Jew. Early Muslim Arab historians recorded this in their works, as does the Qur'an itself, the Holy Book of Islam.
Similarly, there are many books which deal with the imperial Arab conquest, settlement, and incorporation of the land of Israel / Judaea / Palestine--and much of the rest of entire region as well--into the two earlier Arab Caliphates based in Damascus and Baghdad. Imperialism is evidently only a nasty word when non-Arabs so indulge in it.
Suffice it to state, therefore, that a quest for relative justice demanded some sort of compromise over the land in question. Unfortunately, that was too much to ask...
Arabs saw themselves as the only legitimate heirs to a defeated Ottoman Turkish Empire which had replaced the Arabs (and others) as imperial rulers and had ruled most of the region for some four centuries prior to the end of World War I.
After the Allied defeat of the Turks, Arabs subsequently treated the region as "purely Arab patrimony" and acted accordingly. Despite the presence of scores of millions of non-Arab Berbers, Kurds, Jews, Black Africans, Copts, Semitic but non-Arab Lebanese, and others as well, Arabs saw these as purely Arab lands.
As just a few of many other examples of what next transpired, both Berber and Kurdish languages and cultures were periodically "outlawed," churches of the Copts were burned down, Black Africans in the Sudan and Kurds in Syria and Iraq were massacred, and more Jews fled "Arab" lands than Arabs who fled Israel...the other side of that famous refugee problem that few folks ever talk about. Those who resisted this forced Arabization process were simply killed, turned into refugees, and the like...millions over the decades, and continuing to this very day.
Returning to our main topic, the Arab rejectionist response to the question of a compromise with the Jews over the question of Israel / Palestine falls into this same pattern. Arabs rejected any solution which would grant Jews any rights at all. They attacked a miniscule, reborn Israel in 1948...and thus the continuing problem regarding Arab refugees. But it didn't have to be this way...
Hundreds of millions of people became refugees in the course of the last violent century (not to mention the millions before then). Many were displaced between the two world wars. Scores of millions were uprooted in the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Many more examples exist, like that involving Turks and Greeks; but, as is already hinted to above, one truly stands out in light of the current turmoil in the Middle East: The one half of Israel's five million Jews whose families fled Arab/Muslim lands around the same time Arabs fled in the opposite direction because of the invasion of Israel by five Arab states upon its rebirth in 1948. This does not include another million of these Sephardim who fled to other lands in the Diaspora, notably France and the Americas. Greater New York City alone now has tens of thousands of Syrian Jews. They were known as kelbi yahudi --"Jew Dogs"--in those "Arab" lands...So much for what Arabs like to claim was their alleged tolerance of "their Jews" before the rise of modern political Zionism. Again, how dare anyone else but Arabs demand a sliver of national dignity in the region!
At virtually the same time that the partition of the Indian subcontinent was taking place, the Arabs rejected a similar plan that would have created a second state for themselves in historic Palestine. Jordan had already emerged on some 80% of the original territory of the Mandate issued to Great Britain in the wake of the Paris Peace Conference on April 25, 1920. Colonial Secretary Churchill had separated all of Palestine east of the Jordan River and handed it over to Britain's Hashemite Arab allies in the creation of Transjordan in 1922.
Listen to what Sabri Jiryis, a prominent Palestinian Arab researcher at the Institute for Palestinian Studies in Beirut, had to say about all of this in the Lebanese newspaper, Al-Nahar, on May 15, 1975:
"While it is estimated that 700,000 Arabs fled the 1948 war...against this...Arabs caused the expulsion of just as many Jews from Arab states...whose properties were taken over...a population and property exchange occurred and each side must bear the consequences."
Much more evidence for this exists in books written by Arab kings, officials, and others as well.
So, why is it that over a half century later, Arabs-- who have received billions of dollars in aid from the United Nations, the European Union, America, oil revenues, other international funds, and elsewhere as well--still have not relieved the plight of their own refugees...a problem which, by their own rejectionist attitudes, they largely created themselves? They have, after all, almost two dozen states on some six million square miles of territory--lands that belonged mostly, as we have already discussed, to other non-Arab peoples before they were conquered in the name of the Arab nation. Jews absorbed their own refugees into a sole, tiny state roughly the size of New Jersey.
The answer to the above question can perhaps best be illustrated by Arab actions.
Some years back, with the status of the disputed territories Israel found itself in control of in the aftermath of the 1967 War still unresolved, Israel offered to knock down the dilapidated refugee camps and replace them with new housing and better living conditions.
It's worth remembering that Egypt and Jordan occupied these territories from 1948 to 1967 and not only did nothing about this problem but never discussed the creation of that additional Palestinian Arab state here either.
So, how did the Arabs respond to that Israeli offer?
They demanded that Israel do nothing to remedy life in the camps.
Again, why?
It's really not hard to understand...
Quite simply, and as it has been known for decades, Arabs have used their own refugees as pawns in their perpetual war to delegitimize Israel. For them, there is no justice nor suffering besides their own.
Arabs don't want the refugee problem solved--not as long as it means that a viable Israel will still exist on the morrow. That's why they tacked on the "right of return" of millions of real or alleged Arab refugees to the so-called Saudi peace plan a few years back and Arafat walked away from an offer to get some 97% of the disputed territories, half of Jerusalem, and other major Israeli concessions as well at Camp David 2000 and Taba.
The result of both Arafat's and the "moderate" Saudis' so-called "peace plans" still envisions Israel's Jews being overwhelmed so that a second Arab state will replace Israel, not live side by side with it. This should come as no surprise since all Palestinian (and many other) Arab maps, school books, web sites, and the like omit Israel as well. This is also why talk about creating a "provisional Palestinian Arab State" under these circumstances is scary. Faisal al-Husseini, the late showcase moderate of the PLO, said that while he'd accept any land diplomacy would yield, a purely Arab Palestine from the River to the Sea was the real goal...the same old "destruction of Israel in stages" strategy dominant since after the "one fell swoop" alternative collapsed as a result of its failure in the 1967 Six Day War.
Thus, tragically, this conflict still really has no end in sight. And the horrendous human costs specifically associated with suicide/homicide bombings for both sides has been created and sustained by the Arabs themselves.
Reasonable compromises have been repeatedly offered--and rejected--to end the Arab-Israeli conflict...certainly more than anything Arabs have ever offered to the numerous native, non-Arab peoples they have conquered and forcibly Arabized in carving out most of the almost two dozen states they now call their own.
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Wed Jun 23, 2004 6:25 am Worthwhile article, but missing important point
The article regarding the historical rationale for the current use of Shuhada, misses a salient point. Yes, there has been intransigence on the part of the Palestinians, some of it based on Islam, some of it a perversion of Islam promulgated by the politics of the Authority, but much of it deeply felt by those who believe contemporary fatwas issued to remind Islam of the concept that any lands that Islam has conquered at any time in history must remain Islam. What the article doesn't mention is the major blunder that Israel made with the unilateral decision of the late Moshe Dayan to take over the left bank at an auspicious moment during the '67 war. This has been a major cause of the current situation and, although historical records now are available to anyone who wishes to see them in Israel, the fact that the Israeli government did not act immediately to return the land to the Palestinean people in a gesture, from strength as soon as possible was a mistake. We were never in a position to "rule" over these people and history has proven this.
Wed Jun 23, 2004 8:26 am Israel's alleged "blunder" regarding the left bank
In response to the Rabbi's comment about this article--in which he claims Israel should have uniltaterally withdrew from Judea and Samaria immediately after the Six Day War, regardless of Arab actions and attitudes, as a "good will gesture"--he himself misses a key point:
Israel was never meant to be a 9-mile wide rump state.
Armistice lines are not borders. And the former are what Israel had, for the most part, since the UN imposed those lines after the 1948 fighting. They simply marked the points where fighting--initiated by the Arabs in their attack in '48 to nip a reborn Israel in the bud--came to a halt. As would become a pattern, the UN stepped in only after Israel turned the tide of the Arab assault--to save the Arabs, not the Jews.
Judea and Samaria were unapportioned parts of what was left of the Palestinian Mandate after Arabs were rewarded some 80% of it in 1922 with the separation of Transordan from the original 1920 borders. Leading international scholars such as Eugene Rostow pointed out that these lands were open to settlement by all people--not just Arabs. And masses of Arabs indeed poured into these areas from elsewhere...Arab settlers setting up Arab settlements. Jews had owned land and lived here as well until their massacres in the 1920s.
The Rabbi evidently agrees with the Arab attempt to force a retreat by Israel to those 1949 Auschwitz/armistice lines. Luckily, the folks drafting UN Res. 242 didn't. The final, approved draft deliberately left out language which would call for total withdrawal and called instead for the creation of "secure and recognized borders" to replace those fragile lines.
While no one is suggesting that Israel rule over millions of Arabs here, on the other hand, Israel was entitled to a reasonable compromize, a buffer zone--keeping in mind, again, that the area was unapportioned land, not "Arab," although Arabs see it that way. But they see Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and the like that way too.
Israel is entitled to exist as something other than a rump state constantly under the threat of being cut in half. And that's what a compromise over the Rabbi's "left" bank is really all about. Strategically placed Israeli villages on high ground areas are not too much to ask for. Other nations have conquered and acquired lands hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own security interests. Israel becoming 15-20 miles wide at its vulnerable waist, instead of 9, is a tiny piece of justice, not conquest. Again, Israel was denied access to much of those unapportioned lands in the first place due to the land grab by Arabs in the wake of their attack in 1948 and the imposition of the 1949 armistice lines which prevented Jews access to those lands. Arabs received a monopoly of free access to pour into them...and they did, both before then and afterwards.
Arabs have almost two dozen states today due to their own conquest of mostly other peoples' lands--Berbers, Copts, Kurds, Black Africans, Jews, etc. If some Arabs wind up living on the new Israeli side of the final border, then all that will mean is that like Berbers, Jews, Kurds, Armenians, etc. who have to live in "Arab" states, some--not many--Arabs will also have to live in someone else's state. And, if they don't like it, they can always move. Unlike Arabs, the Jews don't have almost two dozen other states of their own to choose from.
Any additional Arab state that might eventually arise must not be created at the expense of the security of the one the Jews have. And Arabs have continuously made it quite clear that it's not how big Israel is that bothers them...but that Israel is.
Wed Jun 23, 2004 11:09 am Re: Worthwhile article, but missing important point
gkmintz@aol.com wrote:
... What the article doesn't mention is the major blunder that Israel made with the unilateral decision of the late Moshe Dayan to take over the left bank at an auspicious moment during the '67 war.
You are ignoring one, very important, fact:
Israel wanted to "use" the land for peace. Right after the 6 days war, Israel announced that she'll return the occupied territories for a peace agreement with the Arab world.
The Arab answer? The famous three No’s of Khartoum: No recognition of Israel. No negotiations with Israel. No peace with Israel.
Today, it is very easy to look back and say that it was a mistake to keep the territories. However, If Israel would have return the land, without a peace agreement, there’s a probable chance the she would’ve lost one of her biggest achievement ever: the peace agreement with Egypt.
Same with the Golan. Syria didn’t attack Israel since ’73 mainly because the Golan Heights is under Israeli rule.
gkmintz@aol.com wrote:
This has been a major cause of the current situation and, although historical records now are available to anyone who wishes to see them in Israel, the fact that the Israeli government did not act immediately to return the land to the Palestinean people in a gesture, from strength as soon as possible was a mistake.
"return the land to the Palestinean"?
As you may recall, it was never belong to the Palestinians... Gaza and the West Bank were under Egyptian and Jordanian rule.
I wish the Palestinians will have a new leadership soon - a leadership that will agree for a Palestinian state next to Israel, and not instead Israel.
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