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The Insult And The Rant ...? By Gerald A.
Honigman
16.3.2007
By Gerald A. Honigman, eKurd.net Contributing Writer |
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Reaction on Rubin’s “Enabling Kurdish Illusions”
article in Weekly Standard
March 16, 2007
You decide.
Recently, as one of my favorite baseball players of
all time, Yogi Berra, would say, it was like déjŕ vu
all over again.
Not long ago, yet another example of a scholar--this
time, Michael Rubin, a rarity these days who should
know better--took Kurds to task in the 3/19/07
Weekly Standard for pressing for independence (or as
much secured autonomy as possible), distancing
themselves from Arabs who have repeatedly
slaughtered them to the tune of hundreds of
thousands over this past century. Indeed, he labeled
such endeavors “illusions.”
Here’s a chunk of the article to check out…
…(Senator) Biden is correct that federalism cannot
be avoided. However, he is incorrect to assume that
federalism should be based on ethnic and sectarian
division rather than on Iraq's existing geographical
provinces. Ethnic division will not bring security.
Rather than embrace peace with his neighbors,
Barzani now mimics the strategy of the late
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat--seeking diplomatic
legitimacy while refusing to renounce violence. |
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. |
Rubin’s “Enabling Kurdish Illusions” mostly focused
on the PKK’s fight with the Turks and--as can be
seen in his analogy of mainstream Kurdish leaders
with Arafat (how many Arab school buses,
restaurants, pizza parlors, etc. and so forth have
Talabani or Barzani ordered blown up?) and other
comments--holds that Kurds are asking for too much
to want something beyond their perpetual, insecure
existence among their various butchers and
tormentors.
I subsequently asked Rubin in our correspondence if
he holds that Arabs should not get their proposed
22nd state (and 2nd, not 1st, one in “Palestine”)
because of the terror of both Hamas and Abbas’s
alleged “moderate” Fatah.
I received no reply from him on this or my other
points. Rubin labeled them all a rant and then
claimed that my suggestion that too often sins of
both commission and omission in what is and what is
not taught in the classroom are tied to financial
support--in one way or another--received by those
institutions was an insult.
Forget about his real insult to the plight of 30
million repeatedly massacred, subjugated, used, and
abused stateless people that his Weekly Standard
article represented. That was of no concern.
Keep in mind that much of Rubin’s analysis was on
target, and I do agree that as part of a better
Kurdish future, the PKK will have to be dealt with.
I’ve written this myself.
I, too, see the Turks as friends and valued allies.
Here’s a slice from one of my own articles on this
topic, “Are You Ready? Here’s The Plan”:
* “…The one place where American military bases
will probably be welcome in this strategic part of
the world (where they increasingly are not) is in
Iraqi Kurdistan...like the one America has at
Incirlik in Turkey.
This would accomplish a number of things.
First, under the right circumstances, it could help
calm the nerves of the Turks. The latter have their
own ideas about what to do upon the breakup of
Iraq…or even sooner.
Ankara has long pouted over the loss of Mosul and
northern Iraq’s Kurdish oil wealth after the Brits
manipulated the League of Nations to tie it to its
Mesopotamian Mandate gift to its Arab allies in
1925...at the expense of earlier-promised Kurdish
independence.
American bases could help insure that the border
remains stable…in both directions.
Hopefully, the leftist, militant Kurdish PKK could
be convinced, with an independent Kurdish state or
secure and highly autonomous Kurdish region as the
prize, to avoid problems with the Turks. American
forces and Kurdish Peshmerga would have to show
Ankara, however, what the alleged “moderate” Abbas
refuses to do for Israel…that Kurds are willing to
use force even against their own people for the sake
of peace with their neighbors. This goes for dealing
with jihadist Islamist Kurds as well, notably those
associated with Ansar al-Islam.
While one fifth of Turkey’s population of about
seventy million is Kurdish and this population is
adjacent to Iraqi Kurdistan, it is obviously in the
Kurds’ overall best interests to assure their
powerful Turkish neighbors (whose armed forces are
already amassed on the border, set to pounce) that a
peaceful Kurdish state will not be a major headache
for them.
Keep in mind that an Israel that can fit almost
forty times into Turkey has a similar problem yet is
expected to see yet another hostile Arab state
(Arabs 22, Kurds 0 ) created in its very backyard.
One fifth of Israel’s six to seven million people
are Arabs. Why is this not "destabilizing," but mere
talk of the birth of an independent Kurdistan
constantly gets branded this way Stating the
obvious, Kurds would help insure peace with their
neighbors since it would be their own best guarantee
for their sustained independence or secured
autonomy.” *
Again, the above was among what Rubin simply called
a rant when I answered his note to me complaining of
my “insult.”
When “Enabling Kurdish Illusions” was first brought
to my attention, it brought back bad memories.
These included my never receiving a doctoral
dissertation advisor for daring to bring up such
inconvenient truths in a program led by a tenured
chief honcho at Ohio State whose only mention of
Kurds--while constantly lionizing the cause of Arab
state # 22--was when he mocked their plight while
speaking of his travels through Turkey.
But this time, decades later, it was even worse, for
I was certain that the fairly recent renewed
slaughter and gassings of Kurds would finally open
eyes a bit more to the hypocrisy which prevails both
on the world arena at large and among academics in
particular.
Recall , again, that thirty million Kurds remain
stateless today, their promised dream of
independence in the new age of nationalism aborted
on behalf of British petroleum politics and Arab
nationalism.
Caught between a constricted yet invigorated Turkish
nationalism led by Ataturk after the breakup of the
Ottoman Turkish Empire post-World War I and its
eastern Iranian counterpart under Reza Shah Pahlavi,
Mesopotamian Kurdistan became the focus of the
Kurds’ main struggle. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) drew
his line in the sand beyond which there would be no
further retreat. Turkey’s large eastern Kurdish
population became “Mountain Turks” from then
on…language and culture outlawed, etc. and so forth.
Arabs would do likewise.
Ismet Cherif Vanly’s The Syrian Mein Kampf Against
The Kurds (Amsterdam 1968) and the Kurdish
experience among Arabs in Iraq are stories that are
well known to all who want to know.
To this day, Kurdish kids in Syria are forced to
sing songs in school praising their “Arab” identity.
Unfortunately, those who you’d expect would be among
the most tuned in have been, instead, among the
worse offenders who have played deaf, dumb, and
blind to the plight of Kurds while never allowing
“Palestine” to move off of the front burner in the
halls of academia.
Before going any further, check out this haunting
analogy and excerpt from a presentation by a leader
of another victimized people in 1937:
* 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)…
* 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 was Ze'ev Vladimir Jabotinsky, the
patron saint of Israel's modern Likud Party,
testifying before The Palestine Royal Commission in
London.
Does this sound just a bit familiar? A rant and no
analogy here, Dr. Rubin?
Having seen Arabs, Turks, Iranians, Jews, Armenians,
and others in the region live to see their quest for
independence eventually fulfilled, it did not take
Einstein to figure out how Kurds would react to
repeatedly being ignored by the world community and
deprived of the same thing…that same world community
which today insists that that 22nd state be created
for Arabs (on lands conquered and forcibly Arabized
from mostly non-Arab peoples) while Kurds remain
stateless.
Continued Kurdish frustration, oppression, and
subjugation has led to repeated revolts and conflict
in Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. And again, while
those same Arabs, Turks, and Iranians saw the
emergence of their own modern nation states, tens of
millions of Kurds were told that they were to simply
accept their perpetual victimization…including by
such folks as Rubin.
After receiving a favorable decision from the League
of Nations tying the oil-rich Mosul region to their
Mesopotamian Mandate in 1925, the Brits decided that
their future depended more on Arab good will than on
promises to the Kurds. An Arab Iraq was created with
the oil of the Kurdish north tied to it for
strategic and economic viability. The British
imperial fleet had not long before switched from
coal to oil….
The area around oil-rich Kirkuk and Mosul was the
heartland of Kurdistan for millennia--long before an
Arab or Turk ever set foot in the region. In the
1960s and ‘70s, the competing Talabani and Barzani
factions of Kurds joined forces and took on their
latest Arab butchers, including Saddam. Yes, he was
around for that long.
A country as artificial and unstable as Yugoslavia
was thus sired under similar circumstances (upon the
collapse of empires and with groups often at each
others‘ throats glued together largely for others‘
interests), with British military support aiding in
the suppression of the Kurds’ subsequent responses
to this travesty.
Unlike the Brits’ other Mandate, Palestine, which
would witness several partitions and partition plans
to take into account competing nationalisms (like
those which would also result in a Muslim Pakistan
and a largely Hindu India), Kurds would simply be
ignored in the even larger Mandate of Mesopotamia.
Keep in mind that Arab nationalism was rewarded some
80% of the original April 25, 1920 Mandate of
Palestine with the creation of what would later be
renamed Jordan in 1922. Again, the fight today is
over the birth of the Arabs’ second state in
“Palestine,” not the first.
Arabs declared the whole area to be purely Arab
patrimony, and woe unto those who demanded their own
slice of justice in the new nationalist age…be they
Jabotinsky’s Jews, Kurds, black African Sudanese,
etc. and so forth.
So, back to Rubin‘s piece…
Yes, it was déjŕ vu yet again…
Back in the ‘70s when I was doing masters and
doctoral work in New York and Ohio and also a
consultant for a major organization guest lecturing
on dozens of universities across several states, I
noticed those obvious acts of omission and
commission mentioned earlier in the halls of
academia itself. While it later became obvious to me
what was going on, back then I was still too naďve
and starry eyed about the positive aspects of the
ivory tower to believe…
But, to reiterate, I noticed that while certain
topics and issues never left center stage , others
rarely--if ever--were even mentioned. At least Rubin
now mentions them…
So, while Arab genocidal behavior towards African
blacks--Muslims as well as non-Muslims, and not only
in the Sudan--has been going on for decades, too
many act now as if Darfur and such are new
developments.
Ditto for the revolts of the Kurds for freedom
against their Arab and other oppressors, the plight
of native Middle Eastern Jews (kilab yahud--Jew
dogs--in Arabic), Copts, Assyrians, Berbers, and so
forth.
Most often, such subjects were/are simply ignored by
the same professors who constantly scrutinize Israel
under a high power lens and espouse the cause of the
Arabs’ 22nd state.
That same tenured chief honcho I referred to earlier
who liked to call Jabotinsky a fascist, all but
canonized Hitler’s good buddy, the Mufti of
Jerusalem. And this was the same academic who taught
a doctoral seminar on the Palestine Mandate and
never mentioned the Cairo Conference of 1921 where
Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, engineered
the future separation of Transjordan--over 75 % of
the territory--from Palestine on behalf of the
Brits’ Arab allies in World War I. Included, such
information would put to the lie the Arab claim that
the Jews wound up with the whole shebang. A mere
accident from an academic expert in this field?
Guess again…
Worse yet, academic freedom only goes one way in
such classes. Students risk their future careers (as
I know all too well) by asking for such balance.
Another professor, who I suspect was more
reasonable, allowed me, as a doctoral Teaching
Assistant, to do a one day’s lesson on the Kurds.
The Arabs in class were disturbed by this deviation
from having the Jews frequently under the lens, so I
soon “heard” about it. And note that the T.A. was
chosen to do this lesson…No professor dared touch
such a topic with a ten foot pole.
This was all too typical in Middle Eastern Studies
then, and I suspect it remains so today as well.
And seeing articles such as Rubin’s “Enabling
Kurdish Illusions” is not promising in this regard
either.
Copyright by Gerald A. Honigman, (honigman6 @
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.
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