Not One Without The Other...

Not One Without The Other...
by Gerald A. Honigman

Please take a look at these two (of many other) telling quotes before we begin...

The Sudan is the basis of the Arab thrust into... black Africa, the Arab civilizing mission...

The Arab fatherland belongs to the Arabs. They alone have the right to direct its destinies.... The Arab fatherland is that part of the globe inhabited by the Arab nation that stretches from the Taurus Mountains, the Pacht-i-Kouh Mountains, the Gulf of Basra, the Arab Ocean, the Ethiopian Mountains, the Sahara, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea.

The first quote is from the Sudan's ex-president, Gaafar Muhammad al-Nimeiry, stated during the earlier slaughter of a million blacks during the last half of the 20th century and is found in "Arabism and Pan-Arabism in Sudanese Politics," Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 11, no. 2, 1973, pp. 177-78. Like the second quote as well, it is one of hundreds of other sources used in my own new book, The Quest For Justice In The Middle East--The Arab-Israeli Conflict In Greater Perspective (http://q4j-middle-east.com), which gets into these issues (and many more) in great depth and detail.

The Arab/Arabized slaughter of black Africans in the Sudan has continued ever since, and victimizing not only non-Muslims in the south, but now also Muslim--but not Arab/Arabized enough--blacks in the Darfur region in the west of the country as well. And the Sudan is not the only black African victim along these lines.

The second quote is taken from the constitution of the ruling Arab nationalist (Baath) party of Syria.

As I like to say (only half jokingly), I can't tell for sure--are there any Eskimos included in these Arab claims and overall plan of conquest?

Millions of non-Arabs have been massacred in this process, and the slaughter, intimidation, subjugation, and forced Arabization indeed continues as I pen this article. Just ask tens of millions of native, pre-Arab "Berbers" (Imazighen) in North Africa--who are not allowed to speak their own language, increasingly not allowed to even name their children with their own, non-Arab names, practice their own culture, and so forth. Ditto for millionsof native, pre-Arab Kurds in Syria, and before the overthrow of Saddam's own Baath in Iraq, the same for the millions of pre-Arab Kurds there as well. Talk to a native, pre-Arab Copt from Egypt to find out what the story is that nation, or one of the native, pre-Arab kilab yahud--"Jew dogs"--as well.

Keep in mind that both of those above quotes are not exceptional regarding the overall conquering, subjugating attitude and approach that continues to this very day, over thirteen centuries after Muhammad's armies stormed out of the Arabian Peninsula, launched murderous jihad, and spread out in all directions.

All of the above is summed up by an openly-professed Arab attitude which sees virtually the entire region as merely "purely Arab patrimony."

Having said this, we are now ready for current events...

Recently, Arabs and Jews began their latest rounds of "negotiations" in Washington, supposedly to achieve peace between them. Unfortunately, the Arabs unabashed approach to such things is that Jews will be doing all the giving while they just do the taking.

Palestinian Arab Authority President (and Arafat's Fatah successor), Mahmoud Abbas, insists that Israel will never be recognized as a Jewish State --regardless of whatever additional concessions Israel's "friends" squeeze out of the Jews. Abbas and other "moderates" have been consistent about this--and a review of the first part of this article is useful for the reader on this matter.

Years earlier, other Arab "moderates" said the exact same thing. For the vast majority of all Arabs, virtually the entire region is simply and exclusively their own.

Recall this one example I like to use in such discussions...

On July 3, 2003, the highly respected Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated an interview with Ahmed Qurei', aka Abu Alaa. Among other things, he was asked about the Arab problem with having the word "Jewish" placed in front of the words "State of Israel" at earlier summits. Here was his response:

"What is the meaning of a Jewish state? Do we say... Sunni state... Shi'ite state... Christian state? These are definitions that will bring... turmoil."

It's not unusual to hear critics of Israel, even some academics, mouth those very same words.

Now, follow me...

Someone from England is English, from Poland is Polish, from Sweden is Swedish, from Ireland is Irish, and so forth. While there are other ways of describing one's nationality or ethnicity, the addition of the suffix "-ish" denotes this as well. Indeed, that's how Webster's Collegiate Dictionary primarily defines it.

So, what's Abu Alaa's, Mahmoud Abbas's, and their "moderate' buddies' problem here?

It's no minor issue, after all, but involves the very acceptance of a state for Jews. If Arabs are allegedly serious about wanting a true peace with Israel (which they're not), then they must be confronted head-on about this.

What's going on here is, unfortunately, really very simple.

If Arabs admit that the Jews are a nation or a people, it makes Arab rejection of their national movement--Zionism--more difficult to defend; i.e., how could Arabs demand some two dozen states for themselves while denying Jews their one?

Please look at this quote from one of the most important ancient Roman historians regarding the nation and people-hood of the Jews. It was written around the time of the Jews' fight for freedom against their mighty imperial conqueror( 66-73 and 133-135 C.E.)...Vol. II, Book V, The Works of Tacitus:

It inflamed Vespasian's ire that the Jews were the only nation which had not yet submitted...Titus was appointed by his father (Vespasian) 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.

Or, how about this one, Ruth's famous quote to Naomi in the Hebrew Bible...

Whither than goest, I shall go, your people shall be my people, their G_d, my G_d.

Note, please, the word order above...people-hood before religion...perhaps a coincidence, probably not.

While it is true that others' may join the people-hood of Israel via conversion to the particular faith of that people, the latter is but one (very important) aspect of that people's identity...not the sole source of that people's identity, as Arabs and their assorted mouthpieces like to claim.

It is beyond irony when folks like Mahmoud Abbas bring these issues up.

Consider, for example, how you identify "Arab"...

Due to, as we read above, their widespread imperial conquest, colonization, settlement, subjugation, and forced Arabization of scores of millions of native, non-Arab peoples and the latters' teritories in the region--going on to this very day-- the definition has come down to language spoken, paternal (so to claim the children of those conquered as their own) ancestry, and/or one's own actual or willingly adopted identity as such...Not exactly precise.

The point is, there's no purity of blood, genes and/or nation demanded for the Arabs' own collective self-definition (even though there are ethnically pure Arabs), yet they demand this of Jews to prove themselves worthy of statehood and so forth.

Furthermore, Islam is the forcibly imposed official religion of state of virtually all of the almost two dozen Arab states that exist so far. Check out their constitutions and so forth. And they let it be known in those same documents that those states are "Arab" as well, despite the blurriness of what that term really means and the presence of often tens of millions of native, non-Arab peoples in those lands.

Of the twenty-one "Arab" states to date in the Arab League (with the PLO having observer status as the 22nd in waiting), many indeed have numerous non-Arab folks not only living in them, but forced to deny their own identities while catering to the subjugating "purely Arab mindset" of their conquerors. Contrast this with an admittedly imperfect Israel which made Arabic the second national language of the state, has Arabs calling for Israel's own destruction serving in Israel's Parliament (the Knesset), and so forth.

Israel is at least as Jewish as those Arab states are Arab.

If scores of millions of non--Arabs are expected to live in almost two dozen states proclaimed to be "purely Arab patrimony," then some Arabs--not very many--will have to live in someone else's state...that of the Jews.

If Arabs cannot recognize this, then Israel's leaders must look them straight in the eye and say goodbye...and stay away from any further arm-twisting, one-sided "negotiations" until this and a few other crucial points are accepted. And if they never are, then the alternative was a fake peace anyway, just another ploy to wring more one-sided concessions from the Jews. In the meantime, Israel must prepare wholeheartedly for the next round of warfare with their rejectionist enemies.

Despite all of the whitewashing, the only real difference between Hamas and Abbas in terms of Israel is that the latter chooses to play the openly-admitted, "destruction-in-stages," Arab Trojan Horse game to enrich himself and his cohorts like his predecessor did. Arafat's Swiss bank accounts, filled with dhimmi gelt, are legendary.

Peace--true peace--must be achieved via true compromise, where both parties to the conflict give and take on hard, tangible issues. Unfortunately, this is not now, and has only very rarely ever been, the Arab approach here.

There must be no creation nor recognition of a second--not first--state for Arabs within the original April 25, 1920 borders of "Palestine" (Jordan sitting on almost 80% of it since 1922), without official Arab recognition of the sole state of the Jews. Any Israeli leader who accepts anything less is simply courting disaster.

Hint:The Arabs demand that Israel allow itself to be inundated by millions of allegedly returning refugees (note: more Jews fled "Arab" lands because of the fighting Arabs started in 1948 than vice-versa)...

Guess why ?

Add all of this together and see that the current so-called "peace" negotiations are simply the latest chapter in the Arabs' perpetual campaign to delegitimize Israel and to deny Jews their one, sole, resurrected, miniscule state .

The Jews themselves must not be a party to this fiasco.