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.
Read more by the Author
January 23, 2012
I'm upset.
My wife, Elisabeth, was a 4-H owner of horses; my
daughter-in-law, Isabelle, still loves to ride; and
I have always admired them as one of G_d's
magnificently noble creatures.
I really wanted to see Steven Spielberg's movie, War
Horse.
Unfortunately, after what I've recently learned, I
won't.
No doubt, Steven won't miss the cost of my and my
wife's theatre tickets--as he didn't when I refused
to see his earlier Munich as well. Still, I don't
have to support such stuff.
I'm getting ahead of myself, however, so please let
me explain…
Like millions of other Jews around the world, I'm a
"survivor."
I'm one of those who escaped the Holocaust--the
predictable endpoint of a road carefully paved and
prepared for millennia. Indeed, scholarly estimates
place the number of Jews massacred--often for "holy"
reasons--prior to the 20th century to be at least
that of those slaughtered in the age of Zyklon B
gas.
No, I didn't live in Europe during the 1940s…I was
born in the U.S.A. on President Harry Truman's
birthday in 1948--just several days before Israel's
own rebirth.
On my Dad's side (of blessed memory), we've been in
America since the late 19th century. My Grandfather
and Father were vets of World War I and II
respectively (along with many other members of my
family).
But, on my Mother's side, her Mother--my
Grandmother--escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe
just before the rise of Hitler in Germany. Most of
her family stayed behind and became Nazi statistics.
Had Grandma not made it here, I would not be writing
this essay right now…
Despite the deniers seeking to murder the victims
yet a second time--like Israel's alleged "peace
partner," Mahmoud Abbas, and Iran's Ahmadinejad--it's
legit, in most circles, these days to cry at least
crocodile tears for Auschwitz' dead Jews. Even
school curricula now often include Holocaust
studies. I've been nervous about this and expressed
my fears to a friend, a non-Jewish lady teaching the
subject.
Too many folks, you see, want to hear that the Nazis
were from Mars instead of being real people who went
to church on Sundays and turned Jews into lampshades
and soap on Mondays.
No one wants to know that all that Hitler had to
know on this subject was taught to him in Luther's
Second Treatise on the Jews centuries ago, and that
the Nuremburg Laws had their precedents in church
law and other religious teachings for millennia.
Church Fathers such as St. John Chrysostom came
right out and called for the Jews' slaughter.
The problem is exacerbated in that those same
schools teaching the Holocaust increasingly are
adopting textbooks which promote much of the
Palestinian narrative as "Gospel" when dealing with
the study of the Middle East. So, while it's not
proper to be an anti-Semite, it's now fine to be an
anti-Zionist. The Jew of the Nations--rather than
individual Jews--is now the preferred, or at least
acceptable, target.
So, the Holocaust was really not unique.
Indeed, the Jews themselves have allegedly become
the new Nazis and the "Palestinians" (Arabs) the new
Jews in this thinking.
Sympathy for dead Jews is kosher, but empathy for
admittedly imperfect live ones struggling to survive
is not.
Israel is subsequently held up to standards and
expectations demanded of none others--certainly not
the so-called "Arab" world which surrounds it and
routinely subjugates, deliberately massacres, and
has waged literal genocide against millions of
non-Arab peoples in its midst.
Now, this is not to say that suffering has not
occurred outside of the Jewish experience…among
Arabs too. Look what the latter routinely do to each
other (let alone to non-Arabs) in places like Iraq,
Syria, and so forth. Of course it has…horribly so.
But, to compare the plight of Arabs at the hands of
Jews resisting Arab attempts to wage another Final
Solution, to that which Jews have faced--in the
Muslim East as well as the Christian West--for
millennia is to simply tell a lie or to be ignorant
beyond excuse.
Yet, Jews themselves have indulged in this
themselves--including prominent ones whom you and I
have both come to admire…which brings me back to the
first part of this essay's title, horses.
Look, there's plenty of talent out there amongst
writers. Given a timely break and the right opened
door, many a book would make a great tale to tell on
the silver screen.
So, please tell me why one of Tinseltown's current
main Hebrews, Steven Spielberg, can only manage, far
too often, to discover such worthiness in the likes
of folks who spout such anti-Israel venom as the
author of the book for which his latest movie was
made, War Horse?
I'll let Richard Millett from Great Britain explain
what I mean. Follow these excerpts from
http://richardmillett.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/war-horse-writer-michael-morpurgo-israel-shoots-palestinian-children-like-video-game/
…
Michael Morpurgo claims that Israel shoots
Palestinian children “like a video game.”
The film of War Horse, adapted from the novel by
Michael Morpurgo, has just been released in the UK,
but as well as horses being killed on screen there
is something else for filmgoers to cry into their
popcorn over. Morpurgo is happy to repeat vicious
lies about Israel without seeming to bother checking
facts.
Last February Morpurgo was given the honour of
reciting the richard Dimbleby lecture,which has been
delivered by an influential figure every year since
1972, and he chose to speak on the lack of childrens’
rights around the world… He pointed out that 8
million children a year die before the age of 5…
Most of those 8 million children die from AIDS, war,
malaria, malnutrition and other diseases in Africa.
But Morpurgo failed to say anything about that
instead choosing to spend a large portion of this
high profile speech on the darlings of the left, the
Palestinians, and invoking the modern day version of
the anti-Semitic blood libel. He relied on
statements of those with an anti-Israel agenda.
As Millett pointed out, Spielberg's buddy did make
some afterthought comments about Israel's
predicament as well, but his attacks and venom were
saved for Jews…those imperfect live Jews--not the
"okay" dead ones of Spielberg's apparent preference.
Nowhere does it seem to bother folks of Morpurgo's
ilk that the real barbarians here are those who
commit the double war crime (the Perfidy Clause,
etc.) of using their own children as human shields
while deliberately attacking the children of others.
He simply dismisses all of this as inconsequential
in the other comments which Millett cites.Just for
the record, however, see what the Geneva Conventions
have to say about this below…
Article #51/7:
The presence of the civilian population shall not be
used to render certain points or areas immune from
military operations, in particular in attempts to
shield military objectives from attack...
Article #58b:
The parties to the conflict shall...avoid locating
military objectives within or near densely populated
areas.
The rats' dens are typically set up in or adjacent
to civilian apartment buildings, hospitals, schools,
etc., as America learned for itself in Iraq.
Article #51/2:
The civilian population...shall not be the object of
attack. Acts of violence the primary purpose of
which is to spread terror among the civilian
population are prohibited...Indiscriminate attacks
are prohibited.
Arabs typically target Israeli civilians.
These details do make the difference--regardless of
what the Morpurgos say and what the Speilbergs
choose to present in their "moral equivalence"-type
movies..
The deal is that it's easier to demand perfection
from live Jews--something not expected
elsewhere--than to confront the real sources of such
tragic problems.
Indeed, while Morpurgo's counterparts sail on
flotillas on behalf of Hamas's Gaza--which wants
both Israel and its Jews dead (and maybe then
meriting the world's sympathy again)--I don't see
them afloat on behalf of many different victimized
folks in Syria, Copts in Egypt, Kurds in Turkey,
Berbers in North Africa, black Africans in the
Sudan, or elsewhere right now. With few exceptions,
if Israel is not the alleged villain, such
enlightened "Progressives" care not.
While Morpurgo is not a Jew, Spielberg is. And Jews
too have long been in the forefront of demanding
perfection from Israel in an extremely imperfect
world. Now, to an extent, that's a good thing…but it
should be done with eyes wide open, not to the point
of suicidal expectations. When the great rabbi,
Hillel, said two thousand years ago to care for
others, he did not demand to do so at one's own
demise.
Related to this current episode, when Spielberg came
out with his movie about the Israeli attempt to
eradicate the perpetrators of the Munich massacre at
the Olympics a while back, he also had many choices
to select from with regards to the movie he was
making on this subject.
For the all important position of screen writer, he
went with Tony Kushner--a well-known, anti-Zionist
Jew. I dealt with this issue at that time, and I was
told by a friend and prominent writer herself, who
frequents Steven's mother's restaurant in
California, that she personally hand-delivered
copies of my articles to Mom so they would get to
her son.
Here they are. This version of Can Kushner was sent
to Los Angeles's Independent Media...
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/132528_comment.php
. Here's one of Steven Meet Mahmoud...
http://www.anglicanfriendsofisrael.com/2005/12/steven-meet-mahmoud-so-what-did-you-expect/
. And here's another of Steven--Say It Isn't So...http://americandaily.com/article/8180
While I don't expect simply a whitewash when such
films are made, moral equivalence between victims
and victimizers is not the ticket either.
If Arabs suffered tragedy because of the fact that,
to date, they "only" possess almost two dozen states
carved mostly out of scores of millions of truly
stateless, non-Arab peoples' lands, then what,
indeed, should those latter victims claim?
Here's an idea…why don't the Three Amigos--Tony,
Michael, and Steven--team up to do a blockbuster
movie about the plight of the region's 35 million
Kurds,www.ekurd.net
another 35 million Berbers, tens of millions of
black Africans, Copts, and so forth? If tragedy on
the screen is what they seek, there's plenty of it
there…real tragedies--not mostly self-inflicted ones
which resulted from the Arabs' own attempts to deny
Jews any justice at all and their attempts
backfired.
And while we're on the subject, why does it take an
anti-Semite like Mel Gibson to announce that he
intends to do a film about Judah Maccabee (Judah the
Hammer…the hero of Chanukah and the fight against
Judea's Greco-Syrian conquerors), but Jews like
Spielberg don't seem to be interested? And who is
finally going to put the amazing story of Masada on
the big screen?
See the pattern here?
If it does not involve dead Jews and Jewish
victimization, the Spielbergs won't touch it with a
ten foot pole.
You'd think the sire of the movie, Schindler's List,
the Shoah Foundation, and such would have learned
the ultimate lesson from those very endeavors. But
perhaps that was part of the problem...at least for
Jews like Spielberg.
Should any nation's raison d'etre be simply its
perpetual victimization...even if, as in terms of
the Jews, it has been the bloodiest and longest
recorded in history? I had earlier come to expect
this sort of thing from the Woody Allen types, but I
thought the man who also brought the world The
Prince of Egypt knew better.
It seems that, while becoming somewhat of an expert
on the ashes of the Holocaust, Spielberg,
unfortunately, seems oblivious to its lessons and to
the role of Israel as the risen Phoenix of the
Jewish people--just as G_d's Prophet, Ezekiel,
predicted over 2,500 years earlier in the Biblical
passages of the Valley of the Dry Bones. Look them
up…they'll send chills up your spine.
As Richard Millett continued in his January 16th
commentary…
If Morpurgo was really concerned about the rights of
Palestinian children he would have highlighted the
child abuse prevalent in Palestinian society where
children are used as human shields…where Hamas
destroys childrens’ summer camps in Gaza, and where
television programmes are regularly aired by the
Palestinian Authority on which children claim a
desire to grow up to become martyrs…Instead he chose
to believe the propaganda of those…spreading lies
about Israel...
What a waste of an important speech…Instead of
bravely speaking up for Palestinian children like he
could have, Michael Morpurgo probably only succeeded
in adding a little more hatred of Jews into the
world.
The truth has always been that, like all other
nations of humans, Israel will also make mistakes
from time to time.
But the truth is also that no other nation surpasses
Israel in its attempts to seek true compromise and
accommodation with enemies who will settle for no
other solution other than another final one
involving itself. Any objective study of the
Arab-Israeli conflict would soon reveal that fact.
And, like I always like to ask, what compromises
have Arabs ever agreed to with any of their own
scores of millions of non-Arab competitors in the
region? The answer is none--but that does not seem
to bother the likes of the above Three Amigos at
all.
That folks like Steven Spielberg feel that they have
to give further prominence to people who specialize
in duplicitous demonization of Israel is beyond sad.
It is pathetic and sickening.There are indeed many
other talented people in his industry to choose
from. Those selections have largely been Steven's,
and only he knows why he's made them.
Sadly, I cannot get myself to cater to his and other
Hollywood Hebrews' self-flagellating indulgences--in
this instance teamed with nastiness and blatant
hypocrisy of at least one non-Tribal collaborator as
well.
Having said this, I truly regret that I will have to
miss War Horse. That's a shame. I hear that it is a
good movie and love the magic that Spielberg can
bring to films.
Perhaps, as my good friend Jerry Sobel writes
http://www.teapartytribune.com/2012/01/19/a-jewish-genetic-disease
/, Steven also suffers from a somewhat more subdued
strain of a particular genetic disorder...
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/
Gerald A. Honigman, a longtime contributing writer
and columnist
for ekurd.net. Honigman has published a major book,
"The
Quest For Justice In The Middle East--The
Arab-Israeli Conflict In Greater Perspective."
By Gerald A. Honigman for eKurd.net, January 23, 2012. You may reach the
author via email at: honigman6 (at) msn.com.
Copyright © 2012 ekurd.net.
All rights reserved
-
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