The University of Michigan's Juan Cole is, among other things, a contributor to Salon on-line magazine. He is a prolific spokesman for academia's numerous Israel bashers.
While I have written about Cole, specifically, and others of his ilk in my own new book (The Quest For Justice In The Middle East...The Arab-Israeli Conflict In Greater Perspective, http://q4j-middle-east.com), I have The Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick to thank for once again drawing him back to my attention. Her recent article, See No Evil, mentioned his March 23rd gem, "Ten reasons why East Jerusalem does not belong to Israel." Among Cole's many assertions, he indulges in a familiar anti-Israel favorite, attacking the peoplehood of the Jews. While he does also momentarily hint that others' identities might also be flawed, it's the Jews and Jews only who always seem to have his attention on such issues. His reason, of course, is to do what all Israel-bashers do--deny the right of the Jewish nation to exist.
Cole Claims that Jews are, by definition, simply "...adherents of the Jewish religion...founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews." While there are some elements of truth in that statement, it's what he constantly leaves out on such subjects which is revealing.
Since the peoplehood issue is central to folks like Juan Cole's thinking, let's explore what they conveniently omit in their discussions...
On July 3, 2003, the highly respected Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated an interview with Ahmed Qurei' ("Abu Alaa"), one of Arafat's chief marionettes.
When asked about the Arab problem with having the word "Jewish" placed in front of the words "State of Israel," he replied..."What is the meaning of a Jewish state? Do we say...Sunni state...Shi'ite state....Christian state? These are definitions that will bring...turmoil."
Cole and Abu Alaa are of the same mind, no doubt. The "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas has the same things to say, as well as numerous colleagues of Cole in the Ivory Tower.
Now, think about this for a minute...
Someone from England is English, from Poland is Polish, from Sweden is Swedish, from Ireland is Irish, etc.
While there are other ways of describing one's nationality or ethnicity, the addition of the suffix "-ish" denotes this "peoplehood" as well. Indeed, that's how Webster's Collegiate Dictionary primarily defines it.
So, what's the Juan Colish problem here. Is it really about claims to Jerusalem as his above article states? Naaaaa....
It's really very simple..
If the Israel-bashing crew admits that Jews are a nation or a people, it makes their rejection of the Jews' own national liberation movement--Zionism--more difficult to defend; i.e., how can one demand the birth of the Arabs' 22nd state, and second--not first--one in "Palestine" while denying Jews their one, sole state? Well, they could--as they do with Imazighen ("Berbers"), Kurds, and everyone else living on what Arabs claim to be "purely Arab land," and with silence on this from Cole and the Arabs' other assorted rah rah crews running the show in too many classrooms. Yet, it makes the selling of the argument to knowledgeable and reasonable minds that much more difficult. Cole takes care of the problem by simply stating that the "Palestinians" today are simply yesterday's Jews who converted to Islam. His March 16th Salon article, "The Unmaking of the Palestinian Nation," gets into this and other related issues as well.
Notice that he never asks such questions about the truly fabricated "Palestinian" people--Arabs, mostly from elsewhere, who simply renamed themselves much later to deny the Jews the same rights on one tiny sliver of land which Arabs demand on over six million square miles of territory which they themselves gained by waging centuries of imperialist, colonialist, murderous jihad against mostly non-Arab native peoples...still going on as I write this very article. The only "colonialism" Cole worries about in this vein is that which he refers to when he speaks of Jews building in Jerusalem...
Unlike Cole's claims for a purely religious identity of Jews (he deliberately places "Jewish People" in quotations), the truth is something far different. As Caroline Glick accurately observed, Cole indeed speaks in half truths and fabrications.
"Jew" comes from the name Judah, originally the Hebrew tribe named after one of Jacob's sons and later Judah/Judaea as the land was known in the times of the southern kingdom and the Greeks and Romans.
Judaean equals "Jew."
When Rome suppressed the first major revolt of the Jews for their freedom and independence after 70 C.E., it issued thousands of Judaea Capta (not Palaestina Capta) coins that can be seen in museums all over the world today. Judaea was the land, Judaeans were the people of that land.
Check out this quote from Vol. II, Book V, The Works of Tacitus, one of the most important of the ancient sources...
It inflamed 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.
Now, does the above sound like Tacitus was talking about a religion or a people? Look at the last word in the above quote if you need further assistance...
But, granting the Colish people their just due, here's the somewhat confusing part...
That particular other people--whom the Colites deny--also had a peculiar set of religious beliefs which Juan & Co. solely want to identify them by: Jews indeed worshipped a totally spiritual G_d, whom no man could see, and who demanded that man live by a strong moral code. The contemporary Roman historians--Tacitus, Dio Cassius, and so forth-- were amused and spoke of this peculiarity in their writings and had lots more to say about the Jews as a people as well. Hey, what do they know? Cole swears otherwise...
While it is true that the Hebrews were likely a Semitic group with similarities to others (though some Kurdish sources now claim an Aryan identity linking Jews to Kurds via the Medes and Hurrians), Abraham and the Hebrew patriarchs lived centuries earlier. Jews emerged as a people/nation after the experience at Sinai, some twelve hundred years or so before Jesus. They came to inhabit a distinct land, had their own culture, language, history--and, again, their own distinct set of religious beliefs.
While fabricating Cole claims that there is no documentation of anyone like Hebrews in the Egyptian or other sources, the Amarna Letters are an amazing archaeological treasure from ancient Egypt which show repeated correspondence between Pharaoh and surrounding Hittite, Hurrian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Assyrian and other kingdoms filled with complaints about invasions by the "Habiru"/"'Apiru."
While there is on-going debate about the Habiru-Hebrew linkage, and the names seem to identify different groups of people at different times, many if not most scholars agree that the Hebrews emerged from at least one group of such folks. And the Amarna treasure trove dates back to just around the time scholars have dated the Biblical conquests of Joshua and the Hebrew people. Given the Colite academic agenda, the deliberate and total omission of such information by such folks is beyond mere coincidence.
While Cole's half-truth is correct in that one may join one's destiny to the peoplehood/nationhood of Israel via religious conversion to the faith of that people, faith itself-- while a part of the picture-- is still just that... one part of the greater picture. So, Ruth the Moabitess, became a convert when she told Naomi in the Hebrew Bible, "Whither thou goist I shall go, your people shall be my people, your G_d, my G_d."
Note, please, that even here, in the religious writings of the Jews, peoplehood is mentioned before religion--perhaps a coincidence, most likely... not. But the Colites aren't interested in such things...
As I have written earlier, when Jews were repeatedly humiliated, massacred, demonized, and so forth throughout subsequent centuries (in the Muslim East as well as the Christian West), as soon as Napoleon released them from the mandatory ghettos and granted them citizen rights, many tried to redefine themselves so that their distinct peoplehood identity would not cause them future problems. So, they became "Frenchmen of the Jewish persuasion," "Germans of the Jewish persuasion," and so forth. Captain Alfred Dreyfus remained a dirty, "G_d-killing" Jew anyway to even much of the French elite, and the Nazis laughed as German Jewish World War I veterans showed them their metals. More Jews fled "Arab" lands than Arabs who fled the Mandate because of the fighting which Arabs started upon Israel's rebirth. So many Arabs were indeed newcomers into the Mandate themselves that the very definition of the word "refugee" had to be revised by UNRWA to accommodate them--a fact backed up by the Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, official correspondence of Churchill, Roosevelt, and others, and so forth.
Thus, I have two words for the duplicitous Coles on such matters...and they ain't Merry Christmas.
Indeed, it is far beyond ironic when Cole and other assorted Arab mouthpieces bring this Jewish peoplehood issue up. As usual, they rely on the innocent ignorance of most of their captive audiences on such matters.
Why, for example, do the Colites never discuss "Arab" identity?
Because of their own widespread imperial conquests and forced Arabization (still going in places like North Africa, where the once majority Berbers' language and culture have largely been outlawed; in the Sudan, where millions of Blacks have been killed, enslaved, turned into refugees, and so forth resisting this; the gassings, massacres, and such in Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan; etc.), the definition of "Arab" has come down to language spoken, paternal (so to claim the children of those conquered as their own) ancestry, and/or one's own actual or willingly adopted identity as such.
Not exactly precise, if you get my drift...
As just one of many examples of this, closely observe the pictures the next time you see "Arabs" on television, in magazine articles, or wherever. Frequently, you'll see some very obvious "Arabs" of black African ancestry--many born of slave mothers, grandmothers, and so forth. Black slaves are still arriving into Arab lands via the Sudan and elsewhere.
Now, keep in mind that these are the folks who, along with their Colite cheerleaders, like to focus upon alleged Zionist racism, colonialism and such.
Indeed, Juan constantly complains about Israeli "racialists" while ignoring tens of millions of Amazigh parents in "Arab" North Africa (who pre-date conquering Arabs by millennia) being told that they must name their own children with Arab names, can't even speak their own language, and forth.
Ditto for Kurds in "purely Arab" Syria. Typically, the Colites want to know nothing about such things as Ismet Cherif Vanly's book, The Syrian 'Mein Kampf ' Against the Kurds(Amsterdam, 1968).
As just one more of far too many other examples of this see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil attitude of the Colites regarding Arabs when it comes to such issues, perhaps Egypt's most famous modern day Copt, Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, warned Israeli author Amos Elon that Israel must be Arabized it if ever wanted to gain "acceptance" in the region.
But the only problems the Colites can see are those of the Jews.
The Colite stench nauseates--yet it pervades academia and elsewhere these days, where Israel is routinely placed under the high power lens of moral scrutiny while the far greater sins of the "Arab" world are more often than not simply given a free pass.
The same can be said for too many scholars dealing with the Turks as well. Many of these folks also jump on the Colite bandwagon, demanding that 22nd state for Arabs--on the ashes of Israel--while totally ignoring the plight of some fifteen million subjugated, native "Mountain Turks"...Kurds. I witnessed both of these deceitful behaviors firsthand during my own doctoral studies several decades ago. And those few of us who dared to protest and raise the unmentionable issues often had a severe price to pay as a result.
I certainly did.
Forget about "academic freedom" and such if you're a student in far too many courses on the Middle East. The Rashid Khalidis and Juan Coles mostly run the show these days and frequently intimidate those who might want to inject something contrary to the approved party line.
Returning to the definition of "Arab"--which the Colites don't seem to be concerned about while attacking the very existence of Israel on such peoplehood issues--we have seen above that there's certainly no purity of blood, genes, and/or nation demanded for the Arabs' own collective self-definition (even though there are ethnically pure Arabs). Yet that of the Jews becomes a prime concern for the Arab cheerleading squad.
Since the Colites stress the religious angle of the Jews, it is also worth noting that the 7th century C.E. Arabian Peninsula's Islam, of the millennial Dar ul-Islam vs. Dar al-Harb jihadi conquests, is the forcibly imposed official religion of state of virtually all of the almost two dozen Arab states that exist so far and is professed as such in most of their constitutions and so forth. And they let it be known in those same documents that all of those states are "Arab" as well--despite the blurriness of what that term means and the presence of tens of millions of native non-Arab peoples in those lands. Despite this, nothing stops the hypocrisy of the Colites from raising such issues of identity, racism, and such with the sole, microscopic, resurrected state of the Jews.
As just one last example of where the Colites are coming from in their version of "academic truth and objectivity," consider Juan's March 16th Salon article mentioned earlier.
Cole provides a series of maps of the Palestine Mandate in that piece and, by his own words, describes what he chose to include as "Palestine as of the mid-1920s."
Now, to the innocent, there may seem to be nothing wrong with this. Yet, Cole deliberately utilizes a bold-faced lie that all of the Arab rah rah crew promote to the rest of the world--that Jews got most of "Palestine," the name the Roman emperor, Hadrian, gave to the land after the Jews' second revolt for freedom in 133-135 C.E. To pour further salt onto their wound, Hadrian renamed the land itself after the Jews' historic enemies, the invading non-Semitic "Sea People" from the area around Crete," the Philistines."
Notice that the Colite maps start after 1920. They always do.
Not an accident...
The original Mandate of Palestine--that the Colites surely know but rarely, if ever, share with anyone--included all of the present Arab country of Jordan as well as Israel and the non-apportioned (not "Palestinian," as the Colites profess) parts of the Mandate...Judea and Samaria, for example (known by those names for millennia and also called the "West Bank" after the imperial division of the land by the Brits in the early 20th century).
That original Mandate was issued on April 25... 1920.
Why do the Colites ignore that map? Geez, I wonder...not.
To award Arab allies in World War I, British imperialism colluded with Arab nationalism in 1921 at the Cairo Conference where Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill engineered the separation of almost 80% of the Mandate as a gift to Arab nationalism the following year, 1922.
The Emirate of Transjordan was thus created from the lions' share of the total territory--a gift Emir Abdullah discussed himself in his memoirs. Among others fully aware of the meaning of this action in terms of balancing conflicting Arab and Jewish aspirations was none other than Britain's East Bank representative, Sir Alec Kirkbride, who had lots to say about this in his own account, A Crackle of Thorns.
Among others shafted by this collusion of Arab nationalism with British imperialism were the Kurds--some thirty-five million truly stateless people who saw their one best chance at independence aborted because of this. My own work on this subject, British Petroleum Politics, Arab Nationalism, and the Kurdish Struggle For Independence, can be found--among other places--on the recommended reference list in Paris's acclaimed Institut d'Etudes Politique--Sciences Po...not bad for someone denied a Ph.D. dissertation advisor by one of Juan's tenured, chief honcho, elder duplicitous clones.
Now, dear readers, the treatment of colitis varies.
For example, depending upon the cause, medication may be prescribed to control or cure it. Antibiotics may be helpful in colitis caused by infections, and anti-inflammatory and immune suppression drugs can be used to control the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease. That's the good news...
The bad news is that the treatment of Col(e)itis is much more difficult.
You see, it involves employing a true objectivity and openness in dealing with the admitted imperfections of all players in the Middle East in their respective quests for slices of the relative justice pie--something the Juan Coles refuse to do. If the real or alleged sin is not Israel's, most act deaf, dumb, and blind.
So, the reality, of course, to all of the above, is that whether the Colites are discussing peoplehood, maps, Jerusalem, or whatever, their biased agenda constantly has the same objectives in mind--regardless of the specific issues they are allegedly dealing with.
As always, the name of the game is denying Jews their one, sole state and the de-legitimization of Israel.
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/
