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The Litmus Test
22.4.2007
By Gerald A. Honigman, eKurd.net Contributing Writer |
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April 16, 2007
To my Jewish brothers
To my Arab brothers
so that we can all
be free men at last
In honor of Holocaust Memorial Day, National Public
Radio had a program focusing on Israel's nominating
a deceased man from Tunisia, Khaled Abdulwahab, as
its first Arab Righteous Gentile…one of the non-Jews
who risked their own lives to save Jews during the
Holocaust.
It was a great program and interviewed family
members from both sides…a Tunisian Jewess and her
new friend and Arab counterpart.
Having given NPR its due, this all begs the
question…
Why the silence over all the years about the other
side of this story?
Hajj Amin al-Husseini--the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
in the era of World War II--was Hitler's great
friend and ally. Among other things, he personally
recruited the Bosnian Muslim Hanjar (Saber) Division
of the Waffen SS. And there were not a few other
examples of Arab/Muslim collaboration with Nazis as
well. |
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. |
The normal Arab response has often been that in
their war against the Jews, the enemy of my enemy is
my friend. And, "After all," Jew hatred and the
Holocaust were a "Western" problem.
Nice try…and the often all-too-willingly
gullible--like NPR--buy into it.
Were politics involved in the Arab decisions to join
the Nazis?
Sure…
For Arabs, politics mixed with religion are always
involved.
During the very same NPR program, the subject of
Darfur came up…another genocide against another
people.
Yet--surprise (not)--while the hero of the Holocaust
's identity, Arab, was highlighted (while ignoring
Arab collaboration with the Nazis), no mention was
given to the identity of the perpetrators of the
decades old massacres, rapes, expulsions,
enslavement, etc. and so forth of some two million
black African Sudanese…Arabs.
A little comparison, please.
Imagine the unimaginable…Jews raiding Arab villages
and doing the above to millions of Arab civilians
posing no threat, harboring no terrorists, or
committing no aggression against them.
Would the world have stood by for decades and not
stopped this? Would the identity of the perpetrators
have been ignored or, at best, placed in the
umpteenth paragraph of the news article where it
could be very likely missed altogether? Would it
have taken NPR decades to do a program about this?
Do I even need to ask these questions?
You see, there is, unfortunately, a good analogy
here.
Arabs opposed the rebirth of Israel because of
religio-politcal reasons. But religion and politics
are virtually always intimately intertwined in
Islam.
Once a land is conquered in the name of Islam, it
can never revert back to its non-Islamic identity--
the age-old Dar ul-Islam vs. the Dar al-Harb thing.
The rebirth of Israel--half of whose Jews who are
descendants of refugees from Arab/Muslim lands --was
thus opposed on religious grounds.
But the other, political side of this coin is that
upon the collapse of the Ottoman Turkish Empire
(which ruled most of the region for over four
centuries), Arabs declared the whole area to be
purely Arab patrimony. And woe unto those who didn't
play ball.
Scores of millions of non-Arabs were caught up in
this racist Arab game…including fellow non-Arab
Muslims.
That's what Darfur is about today, Arab genocide
against black African fellow Muslims. But you would
have never known this listening to that NPR program
discussing Darfur while praising Abdulwahab. Decades
earlier, the main Arab targets in the Sudan were
non-Muslim blacks in the south whose crime was
wanting freedom from the oppression of the Arab
north.
A similar story can be told about Arab actions and
attitudes towards Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, Berbers,
and so forth…massacres, gassings, subjugation,
outlawing of native cultures and languages, etc. and
so forth. As I frequently point out, how dare others
demand a sliver of the justice Arabs so forcefully
demand for themselves.
Now, please revisit the opening quote at the very
beginning of this article.
It is the beginning of Professor Albert Memmi's
book, Jews And Arabs.
Memmi--like the Jewish family saved by Khaled
Abdulwahab--is a Tunisian Jew.
Despite having actively fought for independence
against the French, Memmi and the vast majority of
Tunisia's Jews felt unable to stay upon the creation
of the new Muslim state. Most went to Israel or
France and became part of the other side of the
refugee coin--created after the attack by a half
dozen Arab nations on a miniscule, resurrected
Israel in 1948--no one ever talks about.
As for the Arab line--too often repeated by the
ignorant abroad--that Jewish suffering was solely a
Western Christian problem, "so why should Arabs be
'victimized' for it?," please listen to how Memmi,
the Tunisian Jew who fought for Tunisian
independence and whose ancestors very likely
predated the Arab conquest of Berber Tunisia,
answers this…
"…The truth is that we lived in the Arab countries
amidst fear and humiliation. I will not take the
time here to recite another litany, that of the
massacres that preceded (Memmi's own emphasis)
Zionism, but I can make it available to you whenever
you wish. The truth is that these young Jews from
the Arab countries were Zionists before Auschwitz.
The State of Israel is not the result of Auschwitz
but of the Jewish condition everywhere, including
the Arab countries."
Indeed.
Now, NPR travels the world to conduct interviews for
its programs. Too often those interviews are slanted
against Israel.
Memmi has been a world famous academic and author
for decades--and, by the way, very much a
"left-winger" as well. Should be right up NPR's
alley, don't ya think?
The litmus test for fairness and objectivity when it
comes to the study of any conflict should be whether
the same lenses of moral scrutiny are used when
critiquing the parties involved.
So, to answer my own question about that proposed
NPR Memmi interview…
Don't hold your breath.
Copyright by Gerald A. Honigman, honigman6 (at) 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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