Gerald A. Honigman

Itbach al-Yahud Will Only Get You So Far
January 31, 2011

Lebanon, Tunisia, the Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan...Take your pick.

For a variety of reasons, civilian tempers throughout the region that Arabs like to call purely Arab patrimony have now either reached or are close to explosive levels. While coups d'etat are not rare in this area of the world, something more seems to be brewing this time around.

For over six decades now, Arabs--entrenched to date in twenty-one states on over six million square miles of territory carved out of largely non-Arab peoples' lands--have blamed virtually all of their failures--social, economic, political, and so forth--on one tiny state sitting on less than one-fourth of one percent of the region...the resurrected nation of the Jews.

After giving him refuge in their date palm oasis in Medina from his enemies in Mecca (the Hijra), the Jews, nonetheless, rejected Islam's Prophet, Muhammad's, 7th century C.E. religio-political claims. He soon slaughtered and enslaved his hosts, and the Jews have been on the Arab and Islam's hit list ever since.

You name the problem, and somehow or another it's always been the Jews' fault.

Itbach al-yahud--slaughter the Jews--is a favorite, distracting, rallying cry that has been chanted even when folks were complaining about jobs and the price of food. There is no doubt that the Jews and their nation have been scapegoats par excellence.

And, what has constantly made matters even worse is the contrast that is so obvious...

The nation of those whom Arabs call kilab yahud--Jew dogs--and sons of apes and pigs is one of the world's most advanced and amazing success stories--despite the tension and hostility it has faced since its rebirth. The very cell phones Arabs use today to coordinate revolt were first developed in Israel--along with much, if not most, of the computer technology as well.

Pick your category--economic, education, political freedom, technology, medicine and other sciences, human rights...whatever--some two hundred million Arabs, with all their oil wealth, are simply no match for Israel and its six million Jews. Furthermore, Arabs know this--and so hate the kilab yahud even more.

At some point, however, the Arabs will have to grow up and take responsibility for the success or failure of their own societies.

Polls continuously show that Arabs in Israel typically panic at the thought that they might be caught up in some future land swap and find themselves being ruled by their own brothers instead of having Israeli citizenship.

Think of the countless billions of dollars which have been wasted over the past century by assorted Arab despots and potentates to build up massive militaries--done largely to either confront the Jews' tiny sliver on the regional map or to suppress their own abused populations.

What if those billions had been spent on economic development, regional cooperation, social advancement, education, and so forth? And what if the various megalomaniacal Arab leaders allowed a true taste of freedom in their lands?

Chances are the revolts now taking place would not be.