Ahmadinejad...Liar, Hypocrite, and/or Arabs' Stooge?

by Gerald A. Honigman

2006/01/23 

     Upon the death of Islam's Prophet, Muhammad, in the early 7th century C.E., the armies of his caliphal successors burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and spread out in all directions. 

     Over the next centuries--and continuing to this very day--Arab colonialism and imperial conquests would either directly or indirectly forcibly Arabize millions of native non-Arab peoples.  

     As just a few examples of this lingering ordeal, in Syria, Kurdish children are currently forced to sing songs praising their "Arab" identity; millions of Black Africans (not only Sudanese) have been killed, enslaved, and so forth in the name of the Arab nation; prominent Copts in Egypt have advised Israel to consent to the same Arabization they have been forced to undergo in order to "be accepted"; Berbers have been slaughtered for asserting their own cultural identity; etc. and so forth. Get the picture? 

     But before we leave this thought, keep one other key example in mind... 

     Iran 's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has recently called on Europe to make a place for Israel 's Jews. He, like Arab and other Iranian leaders, calls for Israel 's destruction and actively participates--via supplying arms and support to Arab terror organizations and states--in trying to accomplish this even before Iran becomes nuclear. 

     It seems that the Iranians--who at least partially jumped on the Arab bandwagon centuries ago--have also bought into the Arab delusion...at least when it fits their own needs. 

     So, Ahmadinejad simply ignores one half of Israel 's 6 million Jews who know nothing of " Europe " as a home. They are from Jewish refugee families who fled what Arabs refer to as "purely Arab patrimony" where, despite Arab claims of tolerance; they were commonly known as kilab yahud--Jew dogs--and treated as such. Over a million more of these Jews who fled Arab murder and subjugation live in France , the Americas , and elsewhere as well. 

     Iran itself, Muslim but not Arab, was the home of over 6,000 Jews who now live in New York . Thousands of other Iranian Jews fled elsewhere.  

     Iran 's Jewish community dates back over 2,500 years--at least since the days when Cyrus liberated them from Babylonian captivity. The Jewish holiday of Purim, recorded in the Bible's Book of Esther, is about this allegedly "European" Jewish community.  

     Iran supported Judaea's fight for independence against Rome , and on the eve of the Arab conquest itself in the 7th century C.E., an army of tens of thousands of Jews was recorded to have allied themselves to Persian armies fighting the hated Byzantines.  

     Today, with Jews intimidated, tried as spies for Israel , and the like, there are only some 20,000 Jews remaining in Iran itself. Most of the 100,000 present earlier last century are now in Israel . Indeed, Israel 's president, Moshe Katsav, was born in Iran .  

     Lots more could be elaborated upon here on this subject. Suffice it to say that Ahmadinejad and Iran have simply used the Arab (and others') ploy of denial to further their own national interests. So, he sees no Jews native to the region in his midst. They're all simply European transplants. The Tunisian Jewish professor, the Sorbonne's Albert Memmi, is an important source for all of this. His book, Jews and Arabs, is must reading for anyone wanting to get a sense of balance here. But I've jumped ahead a bit, so let's return now to how this lie has been perpetuated... 

     In the wake of their own imperial conquests and colonialism of the region, the very definition of "Arab" appears to have been deliberately muddied so to allow for the Arabs to claim the whole region as "purely Arab patrimony." So, the children of Arab fathers, all Arabic speakers, and any who simply wish for convenience sake--i.e. among other things, to escape taxation and subjugation--to identify as such are as "Arab" as the Arabs who conquered and colonized them in the first place from the Arabian Peninsula. 

     We thus currently speak of twenty-one "Arab" states--where this identity is professed in constitutions and so forth--allowing Arabs to live their lie and delusion. The 22nd (and second, not first, within the original borders of the Palestinian Mandate as Great Britain received it on April 25, 1920...Jordan emerging on some 80% of it after 1922) expects to be born soon...and on the ashes of the Jews' sole, microscopic state--not as its neighbor. 

     Before the age of nationalism, where one empire after the other (including the Arabs' own caliphal varieties) absorbed numerous different peoples, this had an imperfect unifying effect.  

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