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
August 6, 2012
Let's get the ball rolling here with a question…
Whom and what do you think the following excerpts
are referring to below?
_ _ _ _ _ has discriminated against the Arabs of _ _
_ _ _ since their homeland's occupation and
annexation; they are being treated as third-class
citizens, abandoned to primitive living standards
and without even the basic political rights.
The dispossessed _ _ _ _ _ Arabs…accuse the I_ _ _ _
government of racially-based political and economic
prejudice, which is why some groups are calling for
_ _ _ _ _ to be liberated and recognised as an
independent Arab state. However, the government is
attempting to manipulate demographics by setting-up
self-contained farming settlements and bringing in _
_ _ _ _ to work there.
According to Amnesty International, "Land
expropriation by the I_ _ _ _ authorities is
reportedly so widespread that it appears to amount
to a policy aimed at dispossessing Arabs of their
traditional lands…"
It is believed that the government is also trying to
eradicate the _ _ _ _ _ culture. I_ _ _ _
authorities will not register birth certificates to
Arab new-borns unless they assume _ _ _ _ _ names.
Schools in _ _ _ _ _ are barred from teaching
Arabic, which is also banned from parliament and
ministries. Arabic media is forbidden in the
territory. Journalists who write against this
cultural barbarism are routinely imprisoned.
Eight million _ _ _ _ _ Arabs…have as much Arab
blood flowing through their veins as nationals of
GCC states. I would, therefore, request Arab
countries to call upon the Arab League to put their
right of self-determination before the UN Security
Council. Their abandonment is nothing less than a
stain upon the Arab Nation to which the Arabs of _ _
_ _ _ proudly belong.
Okay…I think most of the world would agree that the
answer to this question is a "no brainer," as my
students would say.
I mean, who else could those poor souls described
above be but victims of those allegedly nasty
Jews--the "Palestinians"…correct ?
That's the message Iran's Ahmadinejad and the
murderous mullahs like to send out.
The Iranian leader repeated his rant recently while
addressing a group of ambassadors from Islamic
countries. Among other things, he claimed that the
“annihilation of the Zionist regime” is not just a
Palestinian issue, but the “key for solving the
world problems.”
The reality, however, is that the answer to our
opening question is in fact much closer to home for
the duplicitous Iranian bloviators.
You see, those excerpts above are from an article
which appeared on April 3, 2011 as a special to
GulfNews.com, Al Ahwaz Will Always Be Arab, and were
written by Khalaf Al Habtoor (http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/al-ahwaz-will-always-be-arab-1.786524).
So, to get the correct answer, just fill in all of
the above blanks with Tehran or the Iranians for the
victimizers and the Arabs of Al Ahwaz as the
victims--and then read those above excerpts again.
Al Ahwaz is the centrally-located capital city of
the western province Iranians call Khuzestan--where
most of the country's vast oil wealth is
located--but which has been known as Arabistan for
centuries because of its predominantly Arab
population.
Let's be honest…
How many of you, dear readers, knew about this
and/or ever heard of the plight of millions of
Iran's "own" Arabs?
Have you ever read an editorial by The New York
Times taking Tehran to task about this--or an op-ed
by its favorite Israel-bashing dhimmi Hebrew, Tom
Friedman?
Can you remember a United Nations resolution or a
lecture by "The Quartet" condemning Iranian behavior
about this…or an American State Department
proclamation of concern?
How about a "roadmap" for the creation of that 22nd
state Arabs insist they must have…but within Iran
instead?
Etc. and so forth.
What else is new? If folks aren't getting gassed to
death by the thousands a la Kurds, having genocide
waged against them a la Sudanese black Africans,
being slaughtered by the thousands by fellow
Arabs…if the sin is not allegedly Hebrew, it is more
often than not simply ignored.
And there is more than a bit of irony here…
As the lion's share of the original April 25, 1920
Mandate of Palestine was handed over to Arab
nationalism in 1922, with the creation of what would
later be renamed Jordan, a more than just partition
of the land favoring the Arabs had already been
completed between the two nationalisms competing for
it. Indeed, Arabs wound up with some 80% of the
total area.
Thus, the real place where relative justice (the
perfect variety rarely, if ever, exists among the
realm of man) for Arabs has not yet been addressed
and remains to be achieved is in Iran itself.
Ahmadinejad has his annual "Jerusalem Day" so that
there will be no Al Ahwaz Day. This year it falls
out on August 17th.
I've written about the plight of the Ahwazi Arabs
myself over the years and was pleasantly surprised
to find one of my own analyses in their own
publications. But, rather than quoting from my own
earlier work, let's return to a few more telling
excerpts from Khalaf Al Habtoor's op-ed…
The historic claim of the Ahwazi Arabs to their Arab
homeland is solid. Al Ahwaz was once a thriving
province of Mesopotamia known for its Muslim
scholars, poets and artists. From the mid-7th
century until the mid 13th century, its people were
ruled variously by Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs,
their numbers swelled by Arab tribes from the
Arabian Peninsula.
Al Ahwaz came to be known as the semi-autonomous
region of ‘Arabistan' towards the end of the 16th
century when it received an influx of Arab tribes
from southern Iraq as well as a clan of the powerful
Bani Ka'ab with origins in Central Arabia.
Led by Shaikh Jabir Al Ka'abi, the Bani Kaab fought
to stave-off British and Ottoman invasions. Shaikh
Jabir was a wise governor who established law and
order and turned the coastal city of Mohammerah into
a bustling free port. On the cusp of 20th century,www.ekurd.net
oil was discovered around Mohammerah when the
British founded the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and
entered into an oil exploration treaty with Shaikh
Jabir's son Khaz'al. The UK guaranteed Arabistan's
security and agreed payments to both Shaikh Khaz'al
and the Shah of Iran.
What should have been a blessing for the Ahwaz Arabs
was a curse. When Shaikh Khaz'al realised that Reza
Shah's ambitions extended to Arabistan's oil wealth,
he asked the British to defend the Ahwazi people and
back their homeland's independence as an Arab state.
Forced to choose, Britain reneged on its treaty with
Khaz'al and supported the Shah.
Please re-read that last line above, for that's
exactly what the Brits did with their promises to
the Kurds.
Prior to the League Of Nations' resolution of the
Mosul Question in 1925, London had promised the
Kurds independence in at least part of the Mandate
of Mesopotamia. Recall that the post-World War I
dismantled Ottoman Turkish Empire had controlled
much of the area for at least the previous four
centuries.
After 1925, when the oil-rich, predominantly Kurdish
north (Mosul, Kirkuk, etc.) was awarded to the
British Mandate at Ataturk's expense, the hopes of
the Kurds were abandoned as well. But in this case,
the Arabs were the sole winners. "Purely Arab" Iraq
emerged out of a multi-ethnic Mesopotamia--largely
as a result of the collusion of British petroleum
politics and Arab nationalism. My work on this very
subject has been on recommended reference lists of
academies such as Paris's acclaimed Institut
d'Etudes Politique (Sciences Po) since 1982.
Now, in light of what I've written above, in case
you have come to assume that I therefore endorse the
Arabs' own claims in their dispute with Iran, my
response is that this is also far more complicated.
And here's the reason…
By Khalaf Al Habtoor's own admission, it was not
until the 7th century C.E. that Khuzestan/Arabistan
was ruled by successive imperial Arab Caliphates.
That time frame above is no coincidence…
During the same era that Arab armies were bursting
out of the Arabian Peninsula north, south, east, and
west, spreading their Dar ul-Islam, massacring,
and/or forcibly Arabizing millions upon millions of
non-Arab peoples native to the region to one extent
or another, Iran fell to imperial Arab conquests the
same way that the land of the Jews did as well.
And the same way that Arabs next claimed that they
were the sole legitimate owners of all that they
came to conquer in Iran, they did likewise in the
land of the Jews, Judea.
The latter was not re-named "Palestine" until after
the Jews' second major revolt for freedom against
the Roman Empire just several centuries prior to the
Arabs' own invasion. As I like to remind readers,
here's how two of the most famous contemporary Roman
historians described this themselves…
It inflamed (the emperor) Vespasian’s ire that the
Jews were the only nation which had not
submitted…Titus was appointed by his father to
complete the subjugation of Judaea… he 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 (The Works of
Tacitus, Volume II, Book V).
Open to the front cover of my book (
http://q4j-middle-east.com ) to see one of the Judea
Capta coins Rome issued in honor of their victory.
Judea Capta--not Palaestina Capta.
Also please note that the Arabs mentioned above were
not "native Palestinians," as they and Arabized
stooges such as Ahmadinejad and the Iranian mullahs
now claim, but came in from nearby adjacent areas of
the Arabian Peninsula to join in the Roman slaughter
of native Jews fighting for their independence from
the conqueror of much of the known world. The Arabs
were foreign vultures moving in for a share of the
Roman imperial kill.
Here's a quote from. Dio's Roman History:
580,000 men were slain, nearly the whole of Judaea
made desolate. Many Romans, moreover, perished in
this war (the Bar Kochba Revolt). Therefore Hadrian,
in writing to the Senate, did not employ the opening
phrase commonly affected by the emperors, ' I and
the legions are in health.'
Enraged at the Jews' persistence, Hadrian became
determined to end their hopes once and for all. He
thus re-named the land after the Jews' well-known
historic enemies, the Philistines. Not only were the
latter not Arabs, they were not even Semites. They
were the "Sea Peoples" of ancient Egyptian records
and David and Goliath and Samson and Delilah fame
who came from the Greek islands near Crete and
settled in the area near Gaza.
In short, invading Arabs have as much claim to the
land of the Jews as they do to that of, ironically,
the Jews' ancient allies and liberators--the
Iranians.
Indeed, it was Cyrus the Great who freed the Jews
from Babylonian captivity and allowed them to return
to the very Jerusalem which Ahmadinejad & Co. now
claim Jews have no rights to. The Korash Prism, the
ancient Iranian record itself, gives historical
testimony on this very topic.
With Iran's Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day fast
approaching, and despite the dilemma over the quest
for justice illustrated above, I will end this
discussion abruptly by simply putting forth a second
question to leave you all with…
Why "Palestine" but not Arabistan ?
By Gerald A. Honigman for EKurd.net, August 6, 2012. You may reach the
author via email at: 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. 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."
Copyright © 2012 Ekurd.net.
All rights reserved
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