GERALD HONIGMAN: AS’AD ABU KHALIL AND THE ANGRY JEW NEWS SERVICE
As’ad Abu Khalil And The Angry Jew News Service…
Cinnamon Stillwell over at Professor Daniel Pipes’s Campus Watch recently reported about a California State University Arab professor’s reaction to Dr. Norman Finkelstein’s apparent flip flop on some key Arab-Israeli issues… http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2012/02/the-angry-arab-slams-finkelstein-wants-to
Best known for his own rabid, one-sided anti-Zionism, for some unknown reason, Norman seems to have suddenly received a revelation about the true nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict–the genocidal nature of the Arabs, that is.
Best known for his own rabid, one-sided anti-Zionism, for some unknown reason, Norman seems to have suddenly received a revelation about the true nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict–the genocidal nature of the Arabs, that is.
Whatever…he’s still not to be trusted.Well, Arabs don’t take kindly to anyone who challenges their rights to what they routinely call their exclusive “purely Arab patrimony” (i.e., practically all of the Middle East–despite scores of millions of native, non-Arab folks who also live there), so it’s no shock that their venom is now being directed not only against any who challenge that notion, but especially towards former sycophants and banner wavers like Finkelstein as well.
Professor As’ad Abu Khalil–of Cal State and the Angry Arab News Service–pulls no punches. I give him credit for that. But I know that any professor doing likewise–but, in the opposte direction in terms of Arab-Israeli politics–would, more often than not these days, not have a job. And students challenging one-sided, anti-Israel positions in too many classrooms like those of Abu Khalil’s would not even get their degrees…I indeed know of such things firsthand.
So, As’ad, if you’re reading this, let me say that I’d love the opportunity to debate these issues with you on any patform you chose–but preferrably at your home base. Consider me the Angry Jew News Service…at your service.
I have guest-lectured on dozens of universities over the years and have had the pleasure of exposing your colleagues for what they truly are…the duplicitous bigots and racists that they accuse Israel and the Jews of being. I’ve wiped them all over the stage we shared repeatedly–several times in televised debate. I’d love to splatter you likewise…
Mind you, I won’t bother with such things as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement currently popular on campus and being used to delegitimize Israel.
We both know–as does Finkelstein, per his recent comments that you’ve responded to–that that’s just a diversion from the real, gut issues involved here.
But, before we go any further let me state that you, As’ad…you are a wonderfully deceitful liar–which makes the thought of exposing you that much more appetizing.
Like others of your ilk, you depend on the ignorance (or the intimidation) of those whom you lecture to from your bully pulpit to advance your cause.
Having read some of your spoutings, I see, for example, that you also like to make that favorite Arab claim that Jews were handed or stole most of the Mandate of Palestine right from the get-go.
No surprise…
And like the rest of your lying crew, you completely ignore what recorded history thankfully does not…that the original April 25, 1920 Mandate of Palestine included all of the territory clear up to the border of the Mandate of Mesopotamia (later renamed “Iraq”). That 35 million truly stateless Kurds, some of whom pre-dated Arabs in Mesopotamia by millennia, got shafted out of their own one best chance at independence by a collusion of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism is also non-issue for purely self-centered folks like yourself–no doubt. But more on that kind of stuff a bit later…
Now, As’ad, you’re a professor. I’ve done extensive doctoral studies in this field as well. My work is on the recommended reference list of Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes Politique (Sciences-Po) since the early ’80s, and my book on the very subject you’re taking Finkelstein to task about is in at least a dozen major universities so far–including UC-Irvine in your own general neighborhood. So, we both know what the significance of the above fact about the original 1920 borders of the Mandate of Palestine really means. The difference is that you deliberately choose to ignore it to spout your one-sided manure instead.
For the sake of those readers still guessing, however, the deal is that the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine included all of present day Jordan as well as Israel, Gaza, Judea and Samaria (not called the West Bank until the Brits’ imperialist shenanigans of the post-World War I era)…and the Golan Heights as well.
In 1921, Colonial Secretary Churchill convened the Cairo Conference and gifted almost 80% of “Palestine” (the name the Roman emperor, Hadrian, bestowed upon Judea after the Jews’ second major revolt for freedom) to Arab nationalism as a result–all of the territory east of the Jordan River. As a result of this first partition of the land between competing Jewish and Arab nationalisms, when the Mandate was officially drawn up in 1922, Arabs had thus already acquired the lions’ share of the land. The Arabs’ Emir Abdullah wrote about this gift in his Memoirs, and the Brits’ East Bank representative, Sir Alec Kirkbride, discussed the significance of this separation of Transjordan from the rest of Palestine as well in his book, A Crackle of Thorns. Others did too.
Folks like As’ad, however, deliberately start the discussion with the proposed partition of 1947 instead, when the 20% of the land remaining after the creation of Arab (Trans) Jordan in 1922 was to be divided into a second Arab state and one Jewish one. The latter would have emerged on about 11 or 12% of the original 1920 Mandate…not the 60, 70, or 80% of Palestine that folks like Abu Khalil routinely claim that the Jews received.
The Arabs rejected the ’47 plan themselves because, even though Arab natonalism in its various species would have wound up with almost 90% of the total area, it was still not enough for them. In the Arabs’ dominant, subjugating mentality, no one besides themselves (and grudgingly, perhaps some other powerful Muslim states) was entitled to any territory in the region at all–regardless of how small.
The reason Abu Khalil and his other lying buddies leave such facts as this out of their lectures and rantings is obvious…
How can they claim that Jews got most of Palestine if Arabs were handed almost 80% of it right from the start?
And left out along with this is the fact that many, if not most, of As’ad’s alleged “native Palestinians” were indeed newcomers into Palestine themseves…including Hamas’s own patron saint, whom its missiles and military wing are named after, Sheikh Izzidin al-Qassam. Old Izzy was from Latakia, Syria–along with numerous other “native Palestinians”–a fact documented by solid sources such as the Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations and elsewhere as well. Don’t hold your breath, however, waiting to hear or read any of this from the Abu Khalils…
As’ad also takes poor vacilating Norman to task over the latter’s mention of the plight of non-Arab minorities in the region, merely sweeping it under the rug, to get back to the only issue that the Cal State (and many other profs just like him) is concerned with–Arab rights.
Yet, that’s really the whole point…
With scores of millions of non-Arabs also living in the region, what law of morality states that, after the breakup of the empire of the Turks (which ruled much of the territory for some five centuries), only Arabs should be worthy of dignity and political rights in the new age of nationalism emerging in the region?
And for the above to occur, the dominant, subjugating Arab mindset–exemplified by those like Abu Kahlil–would have to be trashed.
The reality is that that mindset simply declares that the entire region is simply purely Arab patrimony–and to hell with anyone else who dares to claim otherwise.
The result?
Millions of slaughtered blacks in the Sudan; hundreds of thousands of massacred Kurds in Iraq and Syria; scores of thousands of murdered “Berbers,” Copts, Assyrians, native Semitic–but actually non-Arab–Lebanese, kilab yahud “Jew dogs,” and others as well. The first three of these peoples, by the way, are Muslims–but non-Arabs. Racism…pure and simple.
Indeed, the reality is that, despite all of its real and alleged sins, when objectively compared with anything that As’ad Abu Khalil’s so-called “Arab” world has to offer on the very same isues that he attacks Israel about, Israel shines brightly in comparison.
And that’s why Abu Khalil took the apparently now perplexed Finkelstein to task over such issues as well…
In the dominant Arab mindset, there are no such comparisons allowed. Only an admittedly imperfect Israel is to be scrutinized and dissected over such matters.
But, in a world in which there is really no such thing as perfect justice among the realm of man, the most we can strive for is the relative variety.
And just because Arab nationalism comes in numerous stripes, that does not mean that it should be able to cancel out the hopes and aspirations of scores of millions of non-Arab peoples in the region as well. Yet, that is precisely what it demands. Twenty-two (or more) states for Arabs–but none for Kurds, Imazighen/”Berbers”, Jews, and so forth. Indeed, while As’ad’s Angry Arab openly calls for Israel’s destruction, he also utterly dismisses the anti-Zionist Finkelstein’s call for concern for “minorities” in the Arab-dominated region. For folks like Cal State’s professor, there is no justice in the region other than Arab justice. Perhaps, somehow or another, Norman got his wake up call (will Noam Chomsky be next?)…Again, I doubt it.
What is really sad is that folks like Abu Khalil more often than not these days get a free pass to spread their venom in academia. They use our freedoms and the willing gullibility of a pseudo-Liberal/Leftist Ivory Tower to turn truth on its head.
And what Cal State and other places just like it need is something to balance this discussion in the classroom…something like a book dealing with the quest for justice by all of the region’s peoples–not only, but not excludng, Arabs.
I know of just such a book–and it’s written by Yours Truly http://q4j-middle-east.com. It is no accident that its Foreword is written by the President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, major jacket comments are by an Amazigh/”Berber” publisher, and two-time New York Times best selling author, Act! For America’s Lebanese-American Brigitte Gabriel, calls it a must read on this very subject.
The problem involves how to get courses dominated by professors such as Finkelstein or Abu Khalil to add such texts to the reading lists. Short of that, it’s still possible to introduce it to other professors, even in different departments, or at least get universities to acquire such books as my own for their libraries. The latter often purchase books on the recommendation of faculty, librarians, and other members of the university community. The concerned public indeed has some doors open to it this way…if it will only show concern, take action, and tap into them more.
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