Justice: For Arabs Only?

By Gerald A. Honigman

Well, the day has finally arrived. I now find myself in agreement with the Secretary General of the Arab League.

Recently, at the end of the Arab League Summit, Amr Mussa declared that peace could not arrive until there was withdrawal from occupied territories, the creation of another state, and the return of refugees.

He's basically correct. Except he has a few details mixed up.

Native Copts in Egypt—millions of them—had their country overrun by conquering, settling, subjugating, and occupying Arabs.

To this day, they never know when the next murder will occur, the next church will be burned down. They have learned that to survive they must consent to the forced Arabization process. Their leaders have even written that for Israel to 'get along,' it too must consent to a variation of this. Pretty pathetic. Uncle Butros instead of Uncle Tom—but the same breed, if you know what I mean. Just imagine the world-wide outcry if Israel's Jews did this sort of thing to Israeli Arabs.

The majority Berber population of North Africa saw its lands overrun as well over the past centuries by conquering, settling, and subjugating Arab hordes creating Arab empires. Imperialism is evidently only nasty when non-Arabs indulge in it. Berbers who dared to insist on keeping their own pre-Arab language and culture have been murdered for trying to do so. A look at any number of websites dealing with Berbers on these subjects will be revealing indeed.

In 1968, Ismet Cherif Vanly wrote The Syrian Mein Kampf Against the Kurds. A Kurdish nationalist, he described the murderous and brutal Arabization policies—Syrian settling, conquering, and occupying Arabs—employed against Kurds who predated them in the land by thousands of years. Settling, conquering, and occupying Iraqi Arabs did likewise to Mesopotamia's ancient native Kurds (the Hurrians, Guti, Kassites, and Medes of old), Assyrians, and other non—Arab peoples as well—Jews included.

Literally millions of native African Blacks have been butchered, maimed, enslaved, turned into refugees and seen their lands forcibly Arabized. All of this still going on today, and not just in the Sudan.

Half of Israel's almost six million Jews originated in the Arab/Muslim world. They too predated the Arabs in many of those lands that they were forced to flee as refugees, leaving far more property and valuables behind than Arabs who fled in the opposite direction after the latter's brethren invaded a reborn Israel in 1948.

The famous Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt, was prominent centuries before Jesus. The Jews of Iraq had been in that country at least since the days of the Babylonian Captivity and Nebuchadnezzar. The Jews of Yemen were on the Arabian Peninsula before Muhammad was born, and the latter Prophet of Islam fled Mecca to Medina, a Jewish date palm oasis on that peninsula where the Jews were still prominent when Muhammad sought refuge there during the Hijra. When they would neither convert to his new faith (based largely on their own), nor accept his religio-political leadership, he butchered and enslaved them. Jews also took part in the resistance against the Arab imperial invasions of North Africa in the 7th century C.E. Recorded history, replete with similar instances, is difficult to reconcile with Amr Mussa's demand that the Jewish state submit to the will of the Arab world.

A better course for the Middle East might be the following:

It's time that the Africans of southern Sudan gain independence from the Arabs who have butchered, subjugated, and enslaved them over the centuries—long before the hypocrites in the United Nations raised so much as a mutter.

It's time for thirty million truly stateless people—such as the Kurds—to finally get their own state. They were promised one after World War I but saw it sacrificed at the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism. An Arab Iraq was pieced together in its stead.

Trusting Arabs—whether Shi'a or Sunni—is probably an unwise decision, given the track records of Arabs of any stripe towards these people. With almost two dozen states already—including one carved out of almost 80 percent of the original 1920 borders of 'Palestine' and today called Jordan—Arabs now have an American-sponsored roadmap to help create yet another for themselves. Yet even as they demand justice for Arabs, they seem deaf, dumb, and blind to the plight of the Kurds.

It's time for the subjugation of North Africa's huge Berber populations to come to an end and for those folks to be able to decide if they want to remain forcibly tied to Arabs or not. If not, then why should they not get territory to create a Berber State if Arabs can get to have yet a second one carved out for themselves in 'Palestine?'

You see, Mr. Musa, justice should not be exclusively for Arabs.

Unfortunately, for the Copts, not too much to offer here...So many more will become refugees.

And the above Arabs' victims' list is by no means complete. Just ask native Christian, Semitic but pre-Arab Lebanese—as just one other example.

The hypocrisy of the conquering, racist, and subjugating Arab League is nauseating enough. That the latter, however, is widely supported in its demands on Israel by much of the rest of the world should be appalling to anyone with any notion of fair play.

Despite all of the international pressure on it to consent to becoming a reincarnated 1938 Czechoslovakia, ready to sacrifice itself for another 'peace for all time,' Israel must now muster the strength to do what it must do.

The only appropriate response of Israel to all of this should be to counter offer the Arab League peace for peace. Israel must not consent to slowly being eroded via the Arabs' openly admitted 'Trojan Horse' destruction in stages plans. And it must free itself from the belief that it must allow Arabs to determine the rules of the road if widespread violence erupts again. Abbas' folks have said that they would support quiet only as long as Israel continues to cave in to all of their demands. And they're the 'moderates.'

Millions upon millions of non-Arabs became refugees because of the Arabs. Many of these people fled to America, Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere. They're not returning to those 'Arab' lands. Likewise, Arabs will have to take care of their own refugees, created in a war that they started and far fewer in number.

The occupied territories Amr Musa mostly speaks of are disputed lands. They are not purely 'Arab.' Jews had as many, or more rights to be on those lands as Arabs had. Much has been written about this, including UN Resolution 242, and leading experts such as Eugene Rostow, William O'Brien, Arthur Goldberg, Lord Caradon, and others have been quite vocal on these matters as well.

Jews have a word describing demands such as those made by Amr Musa. It's called chutzpah. Israel must have leaders who will respond to such so-called Arab prerequisites for 'peace' by telling them where to stuff them.

 

Gerald A. Honigman

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