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The difference?
Arabs already had six million square miles of
territory (mostly conquered and forcibly Arabized
from various non-Arab peoples) and numerous states
to call their own (twenty-one states to date), and
Jews had nada, zilch, zero up until Israel's
rebirth--which the American State Department, along
with Arabs, tried real hard to prevent.
So, despite all of the assurances Israel had gotten
from American presidents, secretaries of state, and
so forth over the years since it turned the tables
on another Arab attempt on its life in 1967, the
Obama Administration is now determined to ignore all
of this and force Israel to yield to its demands.
The episode involving the announcement of Israeli
intentions to build more housing units ( in a Jewish
neighborhood in Jerusalem) at the same time of
Vice-President Joe Biden's recent visit is about
this very issue.
While an argument can be made whether it was or
wasn't wise to time this announcement as it was
done, one should keep this larger issue in mind.
When would the timing have been "good" for Israel to
tell the Gang of Three (Obama, Biden, and Clinton),
which then spewed venom upon it for
not caving in to what
they demanded--forsaking the territorial compromise
intrinsic in UNSC Resolution 242--that it would not
expose its people and endanger its very existence
this way?
Good timing or not, the real and more troubling
question is why would a bullying America place
Israel into such a bind?
Why would an American president and his crew demand
that Israel return to a situation which Presidents
Johnson and Reagan, Secretary of State Shultz,
Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and too many
others to list here called suicidal and simply a
recipe for renewed warfare?
Why would an American president and his crew act
like the very letters Israel received from his
predecessor, George W. Bush, dealing with the same
issue regarding the creation of that territorial
buffer did not even exist?
It is in this context that the events of the last
week or so need to be understood.
Prime Minister Netanyahu simply said by this move
(planned or accidental) that Israel, too, has
minimal lines in the sand beyond which it will not
retreat--regardless of who is tightening the screws.
The 22nd Arab state Obama promises for Arabs (and
their second, not first, in the original 1920
Mandate of Palestine...Jordan sits upon some 80% of
the total area) should not be created at the expense
of the Jews' sole one.
That was the message Joe Biden received when he
arrived in Bibi's Israel for a new round of Jew arm
twisting--er, "negotiations." He expected
prostration but got a dose of truth instead...
Now, also keep in mind that those proposed
apartments aren't just anywhere---they're in
Jerusalem...probably the hottest of the potatoes to
handle when it comes to Arab/Muslim -Jew
peacemaking.
Given all of this, apartments or not, it's time to
review some candid facts regarding Jerusalem and
those staking a claim to it, for, while Christians,
Muslims, and Jews all have ties to the city, these
ties are in no way "equal"-- as politically
incorrect it may be to say this these days.
In Jewish religious sources, for instance, Jerusalem
is mentioned over 600 times. It is never mentioned
even once in the Qur'an. It is alluded to in the
latter in passages about the Hebrew Kings, David and
Solomon, and the destruction of the Temples of the
Jews. Arabs deny a Jewish Temple ever existed there.
They call the Temple Mount "Buraq's Mount," after
Muhammad's supposedly winged horse with the head of
a woman. But a mention of Jerusalem itself is
nowhere to be found in the Muslim holy
book...interesting, since it was recorded in many
other places besides the writings of the Jews
themselves for over 1,500 years before the rise of
Islam.
Furthermore, religious claims of both Christians and
Muslims to Jerusalem exist primarily because of
those religions' links to the Jews.
Political claims --based upon facts on the ground
--are, admittedly, more complicated. Even so,
throughout over three millennia since King David
conquered it from the Jebusites, renamed it, and
gave it its Jewish character, no other people except
the Jews has ever made Jerusalem their capital,
despite its conquest by many imperial powers,
including that of the Arab caliphal successors to
Muhammad as they burst out of the Arabian Peninsula
in the 7th century C.E. and spread in all
directions. Damascus and Baghdad were the capital
seats of Arab caliphal imperial power, and Mecca and
Medina the holy cities. And there was never ever an
Arab state of "Palestine."
This is not to say that Jerusalem was ignored by its
Arab Muslim conquerors (the Umayyads built the Dome
of the Rock/Mosque of 'Umar on the Temple Mount of
the Jews, making it Islam's allegedly third holiest
city), but it is to say that Jerusalem was and is in
no way the focus for Islam that it is for Jews and
Judaism.
If the Vatican had been conquered this same way by
Arab Muslim invaders, who then built a giant mosque
in the center of it, would that mean that the
Vatican was then as important to Muslims as it was
to Roman Catholics? Or, more accurately, that
Catholic claims were totally invalid?
The situation is far worse regarding Jerusalem...It
involves an attempt by Arabs to deny the very
national identity of Judeans/Jews as a people...a
people with, admittedly, a very distinct set of
religious and ethical beliefs (which, by the way,
sired the above two daughter faiths).
Since David made Jerusalem his capital and it became
the site of his son Solomon's Temple, Zion became
the heart and soul of Jewish national
and religious
existence. Jews from all over the early diaspora
made their pilgrimages and sent offerings to its
Temple. "By the Rivers of Babylon we wept..." and
"If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand
forget its cunning..." were just a few of the many
Biblical expressions of the Jews for Zion. Such
yearning persisted throughout subsequent millennia
in the Diaspora as well. "Next Year in Jerusalem "
sustained the Jew throughout countless massacres,
degradations, expulsions, and humiliations--both in
the Muslim East as well as in the Christian
West--culminating in the Holocaust.
There is no Muslim parallel to these claims, despite
efforts to portray Palestinian Arabs (many, if not
most, of whom were new arrivals --settlers --in the
land themselves), as the "new Jews."
Jews, coming from a hundred different lands
(including those native to Israel itself), didn't
have almost two dozen states to potentially choose
from and suffered dearly for this statelessness.
Most Muslim Arabs want sole rights over Jerusalem
the same way they want sole rights over Tel Aviv. In
their eyes, only they have legitimate political
rights anywhere in a region which they regard as
simply purely Arab patrimony and the Dar ul-Islam.
North Africa's native Amazigh people
("Berbers"--some thirty-five million of them),www.ekurd.netwho
pre-date the Arabs there by millennia, are faced
with this same subjugating Arab attitude as they are
not even allowed to speak their own native language
nor, increasingly, even allowed to name their own
children with non-Arab names. Tens of millions of
other non-Arab peoples face similar problems as
well.
Shifting gears, regardless of whatever theology one
clings to, Jesus' historical experiences in
Roman-occupied Judaea and Jerusalem were those of a
Jew living under extremely precarious conditions.
Thousands of his countrymen had already been killed,
crucified, and the like in the
subjugation/pacification process. The contemporary
Roman and Roman-sponsored historians themselves--Tacitus,
Josephus, Dio Cassius, and others as well--had much
to say about all of this.
Consider, for example, these few of many telling
quotes from Vol.II, Bk.V, The Works Of Tacitus:
Vespasian succeeded to the throne...it infuriated
his resentment that the Jews were the only nation
who had not yet submitted...Titus was appointed by
his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea...
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...
This oppression led to open revolts of the Jews to
rid their land of their mighty pagan conqueror--wars
which would eventually lead the Roman Emperor,
Hadrian, to rename the land itself from Judaea to
Syria Palaestina in 135 C.E. in an attempt to stamp
out any remaining hopes for Jewish independence and
national existence. Judaea was thus renamed after
the Jews' historic enemies, the Philistines, a
non-Semitic sea people from the area around Crete,
to further drive home the point.
For a modern analogy, imagine Lithuania as it was
engulfed by the Soviet Union in the latter's heyday
of power. Or a Hungarian freedom fighter or Greek
partisan taking on the Soviets or the Nazis.
Think of the sympathy and admiration normally given
to such situations...And now think about the
treatment Jews have received over the ages for
longing for this same freedom. Don't you know, they
needed just a "Heavenly Jerusalem," not a life of
human dignity. How unspiritual those Jews are!
Whatever Jesus did or did not mean in his alleged
statement, "render unto Caesar...," this passage and
others in the New Testament have been used to
belittle this same desire for worldly independence
and freedom from oppression among the Jews.
Judaea Capta (not "Palaestina" Capta) coins were
issued, and the towering Arch of Titus was erected
after the first major revolt in 70 C.E. and shows,
among other things, Romans carrying away the giant
Menorah and other objects from the Jewish Temple
that many, if not most, Arabs and other Muslims
claim never existed. It stands in Rome to this very
day to commemorate Rome 's victory over the Jews and
Jewish Jerusalem. Open the url to my new book to see
one of those coins on the book's cover
http://q4j-middle-east.com
Another gear shift...
When Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, fled Mecca to
Medina in 622 C.E. (the Hijrah), the inhabitants
welcomed him. Medina had been developed centuries
earlier as a thriving date palm oasis by Jews
fleeing the Roman assault (the banu-Qurayzah and
banu-al-Nadir tribes, etc.), and its mixed
population of Jews and pagan Arabs had thus become
conditioned for a native prophet speaking the word
of G_d. Jews had so much influence in this area
that, just to the south, Yemen had a series of
Jewish kings not long before the birth of Muhammad.
Indeed, Muhammad learned much from the Jews.
While the actual timing of his decision on the
direction of prayer may never be known, during his
long sojourn with the Jews of Medina, his followers
were instructed to pray towards Jerusalem . Early
prominent Arab historians such as Jalaluddin came
right out and stated that this was done primarily as
an attempt to win support among the influential
Jewish tribes (the "People of the Book") for
Muhammad's religio-politcal claims.
It is from the Temple Mount of the Jews in Jerusalem
that Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to Heaven on
his winged horse. A mosque, the Dome of the Rock,
would later be erected on this Jewish holy site
after the Arab imperial conquest of the land in the
7th century C.E.
There is no doubt among objective scholars that Jews
had an enormous impact on both Muhammad and the
religion that he founded. The holy sites for Muslims
in Jerusalem (i.e. the mosques erected on the Temple
Mount of the Jews) are now deemed "holy" precisely
because of the critical years Muhammad spent after
the Hijrah with the Jews.
The Temple Mount had no prior meaning to pagan
Arabs. Period...
While there was some early Christian influence as
well, intense scholarship has shown that the Holy
Law (Halakha) and Holy Scriptures of the Jews had a
tremendous influence on the Qur'an, Islamic Holy Law
(Shari'a), and so forth.
Muhammad's alleged "Jerusalem connection" was most
likely not established until after the huge impact
of his extended stay with his Jewish hosts. This was
no mere coincidence...Muslim religious beliefs
regarding Muhammad's alleged conversations with the
Angel Gabriel ( yes, that same Angel Gabriel of the
Jews' Bible) notwithstanding.
When the Jews refused to recognize Muhammad as the
"Seal of the Prophets," he turned on them with a
vengeance.
Before long, with the exception of Yemen, there were
virtually no Jews left on the Arabian Peninsula. The
men were all massacred, and the women and children
mostly enslaved. Additionally, the direction of
prayer was changed away from Jerusalem and towards
the Kaaba in Mecca instead...
To say that Jerusalem has the same meaning for
Muslims as it has for Jews is to simply tell a lie.
In modern times, Jews constituted the majority of
Jerusalem 's population from 1840 onwards.
When Jordanian
Arabs--whose nation itself was formed from almost
80% of the original Mandate of Palestine issued to
Britain on April 25, 1920 --seized East Jerusalem
after their invasion of reborn Israel in 1948, they
destroyed dozens of synagogues and thousands of
Jewish graves, using tombstones to pave roads, build
latrines, and so forth.
When Jews were denied access to their holy sites for
almost two decades and not permitted in that part of
Jerusalem, the whole world remained silent. Keep all
of this in mind regarding the continuing problems
Israel is having with the Gang of Three.
After Israel was forced to fight a defensive war in
1967 due to its being blockaded by Egypt 's Nasser
at the Straits of Tiran (a casus belli) and other
hostile acts, Jerusalem became reunited. Access to
all peoples and faiths subsequently became
unhindered and has remained so to this day. Yet it
was at that very moment that much of the world chose
to rediscover Jerusalem--demanding its re-division,
internationalization, and so forth.
The American whitewashed "good cops" of Fatah's
Abbas have simply decided to play the game better
than the "bad cops" of Hamas. The former's late
leader, Arafat, indeed taught them well. The
millions of dollars he still has in Swiss bank
accounts, courtesy of the West, are legendary. It
pays to be portrayed as the Arab "moderates."
That Israel now finds itself with leaders with the
backbone to resist such unfair pressure from its
"friends"--involving Jerusalem or other issues--is a
blessing, not an embarrassment.
For centuries, Jews were forcibly converted,
expelled, massacred, humiliated, demonized,
inquisitioned, ghettoized, declared to the "deicide
people," killers of prophets, kilab yahud (Jew dogs)
and such in both the Muslim East as well as the
Christian West.
They are determined that their rights--building or
otherwise-- in the sole capital of the sole,
microscopic, reborn state that they possess will not
be sacrificed on behalf of any 22nd state created
for Arabs, especially since the latter show, in poll
after poll, that regardless of how much more Jews
will bare their necks for peace, Arabs will not
accept the legitimacy of a viable Jewish Israel
anyway.
As sad as it is to have to say, the actions of the
current folks in Washington will only bring shame
(or worse) upon our great nation down the line...
http://q4j-middle-east.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. Visit his
website at
http://www.geraldahonigman.com/
By Gerald A. Honigman. eKurd.net,
March 21, 2010. You may reach the
author via email at: honigman6 (at) msn.com.
Copyright © 2010 ekurd.net.
All rights reserved
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Articles by
Gerald A. Honigman
-
So, What Do the
Vatican, Hamas, and the Latter-Day Arafatians
Have In Common? 11.4.2010
-
Jerusalem and The Gang
of Three 21.3.2010
-
Hey Joe, What D'ya
Know.... 12.3.2010
-
There They Go Again...
26.2.2010
-
Syria . . . Seriously
(Take # 2) 8.2.2010
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President Obama's
Old/New Plan: Resolution To Kill The Resolution
23.1.2010
-
Mr. Prime Minister, Make
Your Decision... 11.1.2010
-
Apology Not Accepted...
25.12.2009
-
How Not To Treat A
Friend... 23.11.2009
-
A Proper Response To The
White House Rebuke... 6.9.2009
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Hallelujah...It's About Time! By Gerald A.
Honigman 11.7.2009
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Obama, Settlements, and
the Missing Two-State-Solutions 7.6.2009
-
Hamas, Gaza, And The
United Nauseating Nations 26.1.2009
-
Kurds, Jews, and Shi’a
shoes 22.12.2008
-
Of Kurds and Arabs: beyond
ignorance…The allegedly free press 7.8.2008
-
My Friends, Dare To Think
About What The Future Could Be… 2.3.2008
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Hamas, Fatah, & The
Missing Kurdish Dual Track. By Gerald A. Honigman
31.12.2007
-
The 1002nd Arabian
Night...By Gerald A. Honigman 4.11.2007
-
Turks, Kurds, and Jews. By
Gerald A. Honigman 24.10.2007
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President Bollinger? Keep
Your Promise. By Gerald A. Honigman 24.9.2007
-
Imagine For One Moment. By
Gerald A. Honigman 6.9.2007
-
Fall Foolishness. By Gerald A. Honigman
20.7.2007
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