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Still Not There Yet...
29.12.2006
By Gerald A. Honigman |
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December 29, 2006
New York Times syndicated columnist, Thomas L.
Friedman, has gained some wisdom over the years.
For a journalist, he has achieved a level of
knowledge on matters pertaining to the volatile
Middle East that most others in his profession
seldom achieve.
Having said that, what I have forgotten over the
decades at professional and academic levels, Tom
will never
come to know--regardless of how many free trips his
boss sends him on.
First, let’s look at the good side…
He’s correct when he states in a recent op-ed that
America must end its oil addiction as it attempts to
exit Iraq and presumably try to solve other issues
in the region as well. And, in another recent
article, he proclaimed that Iraq is so severely
fractured, that it is beyond being the Arab
Yugoslavia anymore.
I can agree with all of that and have written the
same things much earlier in many of my own
widely-published articles--including ones showcased
by the Kurdish Regional Government itself in Iraq.
But Tommy fails to make necessary connections to
what he himself writes. |
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. |
While repeatedly expecting Jews to bare the necks of
their kids in a return to the Auschwitz/armistice
lines (which made Israel a mere 9-miles wide at its
strategic waist)--not borders--of 1949 with an Arab
enemy sworn to the destruction of Israel no matter
who is at the helm of the Arabs’ proposed state #
22, here’s what he had to say to some 30 million
truly stateless Kurds, who have been slaughtered and
displaced by the hundreds of thousands over the last
century by Arabs both in Syria and Iraq (and many
more by others as well) in a March 26, 2003 op-ed.
Friedman advised that the Kurds in Iraq should be
told point blank:
"What part of ’no’ don’t you understand? ..You Kurds
are not breaking away."
Just imagine if Israel was to say that under no
circumstances would another state be permitted to be
created for Arabs in “Palestine“ (Jordan having been
carved out, in 1922, of some 80% of the original
borders of Mandatory Palestine as Britain received
it on April 25, 1920).
Tommy would have a bloomin’ fit.
Yet he told Kurds, who were repeated massacred by
Arabs, that they were not entitled to even one of
what he claims Arabs are entitled to some two dozen
of--most created, by the way, by the conquest and
forced Arabization of non-Arab peoples and their
lands.
I guess, for Friedman, imperialism is only nasty
when non-Arabs are engaged in it.
But I will give him his due. In another op-ed which
appeared in my local Florida paper on March 12,
2006, he finally came around a bit and stated that
we should now tell the Kurds, “You’ve behaved most
responsibly…If Iraq falls apart, we will make sure
you’re taken care of.”
Notice, however, he still doesn’t call for a roadmap
for Kurdistan. That's still only reserved for his
Arab buddies.
You know...such a Kurdish state would be
"destabilizing" and all that stuff.
Of course, we all know that a murderous Fatah or
Hamas-run state (makes no difference--despite what
the Foggy Folks say), set up in Israel's very
backyard after its forced return to its nine-mile
wide existence, won't be destabilizing...
And would you also like to buy a bridge I'm selling?
Now, I’m sure Tommy knows that, besides the Jews,
the Kurds are the one people in the region whom
Foggy Bottom has shafted over and over again the
most…with often bloody results. And since President
Truman was correct regarding where the buck stops,
that means American Presidents have gone along with
this as well. Which brings us at least partly back
to Friedman’s correct observation regarding
petroleum politics.
While it’s well known that the very rebirth of the
Jew of the Nations was opposed by the Foggy Folks,
it perhaps is not as well known that British
petroleum politics--in collusion with Arab
nationalism--put the kiss of death on the one best
chance Kurds ever had--before right now--at
independence with the break up of the Ottoman
Turkish Empire after World War I.
Kurds were indeed promised that independence, but
after the Brits received a favorable decision from
the League of Nations regarding Mosul and the oil
around it in 1925, Kurdish hopes and dreams were
aborted. A British-supported, united, and Arab-ruled
Iraq emerged in all of the Mandate of Mesopotamia
instead.
While the Brits’ other Mandate, the Mandate of
Palestine (which was smaller than Mesopotamia) could
undergo successive partitions and partition plans to
address the needs of competing nationalism, the
Kurds were told that their cause was not worthy. And
it has remained this way for three quarters of a
century now.
Where have Friedman’s op-eds been over the decades
regarding this tragic issue?
After all, he likes to write from an alleged
position of morality, ethics, and such.
He’s not afraid, for example, to demand that Jews
return to those Auschwitz lines, while anyone truly
familiar with the goings on after 1949 (after Israel
survived a massive Arab attack on its miniscule
rebirth) would realize that this just ain’t so.
A reading of the U. N.‘s Ralph Bunch’s ‘49 armistice
dealings would help Tommy as would readings of Under
Secretary of State Eugene Rostow, U. N. Ambassador
Arthur Goldberg, Britain’s U. N. Ambassador, Lord
Caradon, and other architects of U. N. Security
Council Resolution # 242 after the Six Day War in
‘67. They all explained why Israel was not expected
to return to the status quo ante and was entitled to
secure and real borders--not indefensible armistice
lines. Yet that’s what Tommy continues to chastise
Israel for.
Here’s Lord Caradon, for example…
“ It would have been wrong to demand that Israel
return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because
those positions were undesirable and artificial.
After all, they were just the places where the
soldiers of each side happened to be on the day the
fighting stopped in 1948. They were just armistice
lines. That's why we didn't demand that the Israelis
return to them.”
In Friedman’s most recent op-ed which appeared
locally on December 26, among other things, his Rule
#11 ( Mideast Rules For U.S. to Live By) proclaims
that the Arabs have really “…been hurt by Jewish
settlements on Palestinian land.” True, he also
mentions the Arabs own faults here as well.
So, there’s Tommy’s continuing problem…despite some
admitted improvements.
Forget the fact that most of his so-called
“Palestinians” were newcomers themselves into the
Mandate--to the point that the very word refugee had
to be redefined by the United Nations Relief Works
Agency (UNRWA) to accommodate all of the Arab
newcomers…some only arriving a mere two years before
the combined Arab assault on Israel.
But, just where does Friedman think those
territorial rectifications (allowed by 242, etc.) of
the travesty of Israel’s 1949 armistice line
existence are to be made if not in Judea and
Samaria---aka, only via British imperialism in the
last century, now known as the “West Bank.” Israel
has already totally withdrawn from Sinai and Gaza.
Again, Tommy needs to read Rostow & Co. very
carefully. And if he has already done so, why does
he act otherwise?
And why has he repeatedly championed the Arabs’
twenty second state and still has not come out for
even one for tens of millions of victimized,
stateless Kurds--who predate the Arabs in both Syria
and Iraq by millennia?
I can understand--but not like--the real politik,
use and abuse, games of the Foggy Folks and such.
But for a justice for poor Arabs (who now have
“only” over six million square miles of territory
under their rule) Friedman to take this hypocritical
stance is beyond nauseating.
He perpetually worries about Jewish settlements in
Judea (“land of the Jews“), but is mum about the
majority of Arabs who were newcomers there
themselves, i.e. Arab settlers setting up Arab
settlements.
A look at the Records of the League of Nations
Permanent Mandates Commission only tells part of
this story.
Indeed, there is plenty of evidence and solid
documentation for this if one is truly interested.
And has Tommy read Ismet Cherif Vanly’s The Syrian
(Arab) Mein Kampf Against the Kurds (Amsterdam,
1968), accounts of the Arabs’ ANFAL Campaign against
Kurds in Iraq, the Arabs' decades' old genocide
against black Africans, their continuing subjugation
of Assyrians, Berbers, Copts, native kilab yahud
“Jew dogs,” etc. and so forth in what Arabs proclaim
as purely Arab patrimony?
While Mr. Morality complains about colonialism as
well as settlements in his latest op-ed, why does he
ignore all of the Arabs’ own victims mentioned above
who were and are still subjected to the same
thing--but only far worse --at the hands of his
alleged Arab “victims” of injustice?
Where are Friedman's op-eds about them and their
share of justice?
He’s written many articles--reaching millions of
readers--taking Israel to task for not unilaterally
caving in to Arab demands regarding disputed
territories which he incorrectly calls
“Palestinian.” Again, a reading of Rostow on this is
a must.
Well, this article must now come to end (while
there‘s still much more to write)--or my publisher
will have a fit.
But I think you get my drift.
Friedman has improved…a dose of reality seems to
have set in. But he still has much to learn.
One day he’ll arrive at being able to point the
finger of blame in the right direction without
trying to look politically correct by “balancing “
it with defaming the Jew of the Nations’ mere
attempts at survival as well. No terror...no
checkpoints...no fence, etc. and so forth.
Get it?
Few nations--if any--would show the restraint Israel
is repeatedly expected to display to those who
deliberately try to kill and maim its people and
destroy its very national existence.
One day, perhaps…but as of December 26, 2006, Tom
obviously isn’t there yet.
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.
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