SARAH HONIG: OLD ANTIPATHIES DIE HARD
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Another-Tack-Old-antipathies-die-hard-375129
Some things just never change: Otherwise sterling democracies still
hold fast to their archaic prejudices despite the dizzying flux and
scary savagery of our times.
Why are the White House, Whitehall and hubs of diplomacy in all the
capitals of the EU so irascibly indignant over Israel’s decision to
declare 400 hectares in Gush Etzion state lands?
Under whichever conceivable future compromise (if any) this minuscule
area is sure to remain Israeli, as it was even before Israeli
independence.
The Etzion Bloc fell to Arab besiegers in 1948 and its Jewish
defenders were cold-bloodedly massacred after they had already
surrendered. Destroyed and desolate, it languished under Jordanian
occupation for merely 19 years. Nonetheless, the dysfunctional family
of nations decrees that for the sake of world peace the Etzion Bloc
must forever revert to its brief erstwhile judenfrei status.
Why? Because old antipathies die hard. In some cases they just never
die at all, the staggering volatility around us notwithstanding.
Otherwise sterling democracies still hold fast to their archaic
prejudices despite the dizzying flux and scary savagery of our times –
especially in the logic-defying Middle East.
Until lately hardly any statesmen, observers or scholars dared
question the region’s national divisions or the borders delineating
them. The sole exception, not unexpectedly, was their inimical
perception of the Jewish state’s legitimacy. To all and sundry it
seemed that Iraq, Syria or Libya were ancient nations with distinct
characters and cohesive identities all their own.
Casting doubt on this was not only politically incorrect but it was
castigated as heresy of the most profane and preposterous kind. Most
unwelcome were reminders about the imperialist post-World War I deals
between Britain and France which blatantly invented nationalities,
defined their jurisdictions and even assigned them rulers.
Highlighting any of this was judged to be arcane nitpicking,
irrelevant and even subversive.
What was imposed by the superpowers of a hundred years ago on the
Fertile Crescent, for example, was accepted as irrevocable.
Opinion-molders inculcated in the masses worldwide the notion that
yesteryear’s capricious concoctions are for keeps.
Doubters – few and far between – were derided and denounced.
Who, for example, cared that His Majesty’s government once sucked up
to the Hashemite clan that ruled Islam’s holiest sites in what was
known as Hejaz? In return for (not very valuable) Hashemite support
during the Great War, Sharif Hussein bin-Ali, Mecca’s Hashemite emir
(also self-proclaimed Caliph of all Muslims) was assured that his sons
Abdullah and Faisal would be handsomely rewarded.
Hussein, by the way was the one who in 1924 lost control of Islam’s
sacred city and surrounding provinces to a rival clan, the Saudis. Had
he won, we’d be speaking today of Hashemite Arabia instead of Saudi
Arabia (which is also no long-established monarchy in situ from time
immemorial).
Abdullah, the older Hejazi princeling, was to get as his gift/payoff
nearly 80% of the British Mandate over Palestine, which originally
extended over both banks of the Jordan. It was all land designated by
the League of Nations as the National Home for the Jewish people.
To be sure, Hashemite appetites weren’t quite sated by the freebee.
Abdullah sought the title of Emir of Palestine – a country to which he
had no previous connection whatsoever. Britain made him settle for
Transjordan – on the east bank of the mini-river.
No Transjordanian nation appears in human annals and neither does
Jordan, as the kingdom is now known. What today parades under the
Jordanian moniker was conceived on Palestinian soil by Perfidious
Albion.
That was the first division of Palestine. Betrayed, the Jews were left
with only one-fifth of what was initially promised them and this puny
remainder too has been violently disputed ever since.
If it’s any consolation, though, Palestine is as remarkably absent
from history as is Transjordan/Jordan. In 135 CE, after the Bar Kokhba
uprising, the Romans renamed Eretz Yisrael. They dubbed it Palaestina,
with the expressed purpose of humiliating defeated Jews. Europe
inherited the epithet and its latter-day English variant became what
the British chose to call the land they mandated.
Local Arabs, who first deeply resented the name as an imposed alien
import, later adopted it as their imaginary nation’s 9,000-year-old
(!) appellation. They, however, cannot to this day so much as
pronounce it correctly. In their diction Palestine has been warped
into the Johnny-come-lately Filastin, a wholly fictional entity.
Palestine/Filastin never had any existence, self-determination,
cultural uniqueness, linguistic distinctiveness or religious
idiosyncrasy to differentiate it from the surrounding Arab milieu.
But then neither did Iraq or Syria, both of which feature prominently
in the 1920s Hashemite saga. Out to recompense their Hashemite
lackeys, the Brits enthroned Abdullah’s younger brother Faisal as King
of Greater Syria on March 7, 1920.
It was as simple as that. Nations were invented, named arbitrarily
according to the cultural precepts of the new European powers-that-be,
and then cynically served these powers’ interests.
Conflicting interests inevitably kindled quarrels among the
imperialist overlords. Paris, which claimed sway over Syria and
Lebanon (another satellite of its manufacture), owed the Hashemites
nothing. It had no use for Faisal and considered it colossally galling
of London to have crowned him king in Damascus. Therefore – on July
24, 1920 – the French disdainfully chucked out Britain’s protégé.
In response, Britain earmarked its follow-up fabrication, Iraq, for
Faisal’s subsequent make-believe realm. His next coronation took place
in Baghdad on August 23, 1921.
The Iraqi Hashemite dynasty was deposed in 1958 when its
third-in-line, Faisal II, was assassinated and his corpse dragged
through Baghdad’s streets. Even so, England’s unnatural Iraqi fusion
continues to disturb the world.
That’s because artificial Iraq, like synthetic Syria, doesn’t mirror
any ethnic reality. Both are hopeless hodgepodges of tribes, clans and
incompatible religions. In no way, shape or form do any of these
assemblages remotely resemble what in western terms constitutes a
nation.
Moreover, the very last thing components of the mismatched mishmashes
want is to cozily coexist with each other beneath one national banner.
They only did so involuntarily, when under a tyrant’s thumb. Despots
like Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad and Muammar Gaddafi kept a tight lid
on their respective non-nations until the West
arrogantly-cum-ignorantly sought to democratize those who didn’t quite
yearn to be free (leastways not as we conceive of freedom).
The upshot of the misnamed “Arab Spring” – as many uncool Israelis had
the temerity to warn from the outset – is that the counterfeit
nationalities of the Arab sphere disintegrate chaotically before our
eyes.
As things stand, the global jihad spawned five relatively recent
Islamist mini-theocracies.
There is a much overlooked Islamic dominion in Libya and in Nigeria
Boko Haram controls sizable swathes. Al-Qaida’s breakaway outfit ISIS
does likewise in parts of Iraq and Syria. Al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat
al-Nusra runs its own separate Syrian bailiwick. Finally, and
chronologically the first of the five, is the Hamas hegemony in Gaza.
The world prefers to avert its gaze from Hamastan despite its
irrefutable aggression, rigid radicalism and homicidal fanaticism.
Worst of all, Hamas, every bit as barbaric as ISIS, is significantly
stronger – both in terms of manpower and military hardware.
The fact that Hamas executes by firing squad rather than by beheadings
is incidental. It’s as immaterial as is Hamas’s predilection is for
public execution in the streets versus ISIS’s fondness for parched
desert backdrops.
There are other minor disparities. ISIS decapitates its victims
without blindfolding them while Hamas wraps sackcloth around the heads
of the unfortunates selected for summary capital punishment.
The differences perhaps arise from whom the particular executioners
seek to horrify. When severing foreign heads, ISIS aims to shock the
West. Hamas intends to instill fear in the hearts of fellow Gazans
which makes the shooting of the regime’s alleged enemies a must-see
communal spectacle.
These superficial differences apart, Hamas executions are no less
draconian than the headline-grabbing ISIS variety and as deficient of
even the faintest shadow of a hint of the façade of legal due process.
So why does the international community not view Hamas with the same
repugnance and dread it reserves for ISIS? Pardon us for suspecting
that this has everything to do with whom ISIS opposes and whom Hamas
attacks.
ISIS’s primary enemies were Iraq’s Shiite government and Assad’s
Alawite-led regime. The world could countenance this. Barack Obama
never stomached Iraq’s elected leadership and his cold-shoulder is
considerably more than an anecdotal factor.
No one fetes Assad anymore, though Obama’s America once lauded him as
a “reformer” and pressured Israel to cede the Golan to him. Israel’s
own cognitively-challenged left-wing also hoarsely clamored for
handing the Golan to Assad’s celebrated stewardship. Our homegrown
“peaceniks” now prefer we forget their ill-counsel, even as they
advise us to turn Judea and Samaria to Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah
cohorts.
ISIS only started to trouble the smug democracies when Western
volunteers became increasingly visible among the renegade ranks and
starred as the decapitators of prominent Western hostages. The specter
of transplanted terror now haunts Europe.
Hamas, in contrast, only lobbed thousands of rockets at Jews, the
abiding dislike for whom (to resort to understatement) is the one
reliably unchanging theme in two millennia of European history. That’s
why four-square-kilometers of inherently Jewish land generate such
unanimous acrimony abroad.
Much as we might resist unpalatable conclusions, we regrettably cannot
but infer that deep inside Europe’s heart (as well as in some US
settings) there still reverberates hostility to the national revival
of the Jewish people, i.e. to Zionism.
Since it’s a decided faux-pas to own up to what incontrovertibly
smacks of anti-Semitism, the alternative is to censure the Jewish
state over any and all pretexts.
This is the ongoing betrayal against the region’s one unquestionably
bona fide and distinct nation – a betrayal that continues unabated
since Abdullah was ensconced in Amman and Faisal in Damascus.
Feisal, by the way, conferred with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of
the World Zionist Organization, on January 1919 and they produced the
Faisal-Weizmann Agreement for Arab-Jewish Cooperation. Thereupon
Faisal issued the following statement, which appears quite fantastic
in view of all that ensued:
“We Arabs… look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement…
We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home… I look forward,
and my people with me look forward, to a future in which we will help
you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are
mutually interested may once again take their places in the community
of the civilized peoples of the world.”
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Another-Tack-Old-antipathies-die-hard-375129
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