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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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September 6, 2007 Imagine For One Moment… by Gerald A. Honigman
Let's step back a bit. For weeks now, Iran has been shelling Kurdish villages in Iraq, supposedly because it fears that Iranian Kurds, who wish for autonomy in Iran, are taking refuge across the border. Iran says PEJAK--a breakaway faction of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)--launches attacks from Iraqi bases. For some time now, Turks and Iranians have been collaborating in ways to deal with their Kurdish "headaches." In this, they're soul mates with Arabs as well. All have worked to deny over thirty million Kurds--who pre-date Arabs and Turks in the region by millennia and who are there at least as long as Iranians--political rights in a nationalist age. And it's worse than that. All three have killed many hundreds of thousands of Kurds, subjugated living ones, and denied them even their own culture and language over the past century. While the world demands a 22nd state for Arabs (their second, not first, one in "Palestine"…Arab Jordan sits on 80% of the latter), Kurds are still only referred to as separatists, terrorists, or the like when this subject comes up for them. The AP story on September 2nd was the latest to do this ("Iranian Shelling Angers Iraq," by Yahya Barzanji). And consider the following as well. There are millions of Arabs in Iran's own western, oil-rich Khuzestan province--so many that even Iranians have called it Arabistan for centuries. It was the main reason Iraq and Iran fought their bloody war several decades ago. Why not create Arab state #22 there--especially since the province did trade back and forth between Arab and Iranian rule over the centuries? Answer…Won't happen because the Iranians are total hypocrites. Iran brutally suppresses Arab, Kurd, Baluchi, Azeri, and so forth when it comes to the question of Iran's own unity and national security, yet it's quick to point the finger at Israel about the latter's reluctance to cave in to Hamas, Fatah, and other Arabs who still have the Jew of the Nations' destruction as their end goal. So, let's return to the beginning of this article. Over two years after Israel totally withdrew from Gaza, Israel's south is still being bombarded indiscriminately by Arab rockets and so forth from Gaza. One of the latest hit near a day care center, damaging a home next door and sending 12 young children to the hospital. Another exploded on a street in the center of the city. In their statements to the press, the Arabs called the attacks a "gift" for the new school year. Could you imagine the world-wide outcry, condemnations, editorials, and so forth if--in response to this barbaric, deliberate assaults on the most innocent--Israel merely repaid Arabs in kind? Folks, if I was running the show, best believe they'd get a mega dose of their own medicine--and with just a slight bit of hesitation. I'd probably first issue sufficient warnings that such equal treatment will soon be coming…and then exponentially with each new Arab "revenge" attack. Sorry, lefty, suicidal, liberals (and I'm an old fashioned Liberal, in many ways, myself…but a very different breed from the "new" species)--especially the head-in-the-sand Hebrew types. Let Arabs see what it's like when they're subjected to random, indiscriminate bombardment like they dish out…perhaps afterwards they'll think twice about allowing the deliberate murder and attempted murder of Jews from being launched from their lands. And, if not, the other way didn't work either. When you're outnumbered 300 million Arabs to 5 million Israeli Jews, perceived weakness and inaction is suicidal. Tit-for-tat responses don't work under these circumstances. Yeh, I know, the world would be screaming about "Nazi Jews" and such…the same world that watches Israel's Sderot daily targeted and victimized and says nothing. Whoops--sorry, I'm wrong…the world does say that Israel must cave in even more. So, being "nice" hasn't worked. Again, unilateral withdrawals and such are simply seen by Arabs as weakness and incremental victories towards their destruction-in-phases plans for Israel. Jews try to do it right and get shafted anyway. Israel tries its best to target the exact perpetrators--yet when the latter hide amidst their own populations (against the Geneva Conventions), civilians at times get caught in the middle…especially since Arabs love to use their own kids to retrieve rocket launchers after firing missiles at Israel. Sick…but again, no world outcry. Now, given this situation regarding expectations of Israel to pinpoint targets as it responds to Arab terror, why is it that Iran feels free to attack Kurdish civilians at will because of its quarrel with Kurdish "separatists?" Why is there no worldwide outcry for the plight of Kurdish victims and refugees--let alone the absence of support for Kurdish political aspirations? Where are editorials, nasty sermons and demands from the American State Department, and such? While I'm not endorsing PKK or PEJAK attacks on innocents if and when they occur, please understand that neither Arabs, Turks, nor Iranians have granted Kurds anywhere near the rights that Israel has already conceded to Arabs which seek its very destruction …including partitions of the land itself. Why is the latter a must for Israel, but autonomy (at the least) and political rights for suppressed Kurds unspeakable? Shortly, Mr. Bush's Fall Summit to shove a Fatahstan--the Arabs' second state in Palestine--down Israel's throat will commence--despite the fact that Abbas's allegedly "moderate" Arafatians have as much or more Jewish blood on their hands--and the same end goals regarding Jews--as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Just visit all of their websites, for starters. Is it not time for the plight of tens of millions of Kurds--who seek no one else's destruction, but just a slice of political rights themselves which has been denied them up until now--to also move onto the front burner of the world's moral conscience? 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://geraldahonigman.com/.
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…that
instead of Iranian artillery indiscriminately
shelling Kurdish civilians across the border in
Iraq, it was Israeli artillery doing likewise to
Arabs in Gaza.
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