It's Time for Recognition, Truth, and Reparations

When I was growing up, in school we spent a lot of time in history class learning about the horrors of racism in the US, and in particular slavery.  This was understandable as it is a huge part of American history, and also considering that the school district was majority black.

But it is interesting to note that even though we covered the Middle Passage and Harriet Tubman and Uncle Tom's Cabin year after year, we never once learned in class which culture actually started the African slave trade.  Nor did we learn that even today, there are hundreds of thousands of black Africans still enslaved by members of that same certain culture.  These are things I had to seek out on my own.  Hmmm....

-------

There has actually been a lot of accounting for some of the atrocities that have transpired in the world in recent centuries.  Germany has admirably led the way by taking full responsibility for the Holocaust and the Nazi regime, by compensating the victims and zealously stamping out any symbols of that era.  The Western European colonial powers have largely recognized the injustices of their colonial empires.  America is aware of its shameful past of slavery, racism, and theft from Native Americans, and there is even discussion of financial reparations.  America has apologized and compensated victims of the WW2 era Japanese internment.  Japan has officially apologized for its use of foreign 'comfort women' in that same era.

Even when apologies, recognition, and reparations have not yet happened, there has often been a widespread movement to keep memories of the atrocities alive.  For instance people still fight for recognition of the Armenian Genocide, the Holodomor Famine, and the Rape of Nanking.

Now let's take a minute to realize the crucial point that there is, just to take one case from the list above, absolutely nothing anti-German or "racist against Germans" or "Germanophobic" in seeking to have Germany take responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era.  Keep this in mind.

--------

There is a litany of horrors perpetrated in recent centuries by one particular group that is almost completely unknown in the West, even among educated and informed people.  That group is Arabs.  The horrors include:

1) Starting the African slave trade

2) Continuing the African slave trade long after Western counties abolished it

3) STILL, in 2014, enslaving hundreds of thousands of black Africans in countries such as Sudan and Mauretania

4) Ethnically cleansing at least 750,000 Jews from Arab countries after 1948

5) The Barbary Corsairs' kidnapping and enslaving millions of Europeans and others from the 1600s until the Barbary Wars

6) Launching a war in 1948 with the stated genocidal intent to "drive the Jews into the sea."

7) Carrying out a cultural and now possibly physical genocide of the ancient Assyrian people

8) The recent near complete elimination of the ancient Mandean people

9) Collaborating with and supporting the axis powers during WW2

(It should be mentioned that the later was not nearly universal in the Arab world, but for reference neither was German support for the Nazi regime, and yet Germany took responsibility as a whole.)

---------

So, here we have an undeniable litany of horrors perpetrated by Muslim Arabs, any one of which would be widely acknowledged if it was perpetrated by a Western country.  And yet from the Arab world we have heard no hint of responsibility, no hint even of recognition.

In fact the Arab world has gone to great lengths of obfuscate and deny these events.  In the recent UN Conference on Racism (known as Durban III) the Arab and Muslim countries sponsored a resolution condemning the "Trans-Atlantic" slave trade, the text of which completely omitted the Arab and Muslim role in it and other slave systems of the time.

It is high time that the Arab world be held to account for these horrible injustices and crimes against humanity, just as Germany has been held to account for the Nazis, the Western powers have been held to account for Colonialism, Japan has been held to account for some WW2 atrocities, and so on.

-------

The Arab world is uniquely positioned to recognize and pay reparations for these atrocities.

- The coffers of the Gulf oil monarchies are overflowing with cash which could be used for monetary reparations for victims of the African slave trade, and the Assyrian and Mandean genocides.

- Given that European colonialism lasted for around 25 to 50 years in the Middle East (longer in Algeria, obviously), the Arab world should consider it a good deal if they and Europe could call it even when both the Barbaray slave trade and European colonialism are considered.

And finally

- Most of the Jewish victims of Arab ethnic cleansing ended up in Israel, so acceptable reparations for the ethnic cleansing of Jews and the launching of the 1948 war of genocidal intent could be 1) immediate recognition of Israel and 2) the dropping of all claims to compensation or any territory West of the Jordan River.

BYE FOLKS

Hey folks...

I am giving up PZ. My friend fizziks is going to take over the name and run the blog.

I simply don't have the time or the will to do this anymore. For me it is a fairly useless exercise. Of course that doesn't mean I won't be posting (if fiz lets me) and I will definitely be commenting but I am suffering from a bit of burn out here.

Honestly, I was accomplishing absolutely nothing writing here. Nada, Zero. I am not Israeli and as much as I love and care about the country, I am almost certainly not making Aliyah. I love the United States, a nation that took my family in from Russia and Romania when Jews that were in those nations didn't get many breaks. My father was an officer in the U.S. Army and served during WWII (I was born when he was older). So really if I am going to be political (and I am) I need to focus my writing on issues here at home about things I care about, issues like Global Warming, Gun Control, Healthcare, and frankly doing my part to get Democratic, and Liberal politicians elected (I really like Elizabeth Warren, and pretty much there is no Republican out there who can get my vote given how insane that party has gotten).

Do I still care about Israel? Very much. Do I still care about Israel on-line advocacy... to a degree. Frankly, there is no one out there that really represents what I would like to see as a result. AIPAC is too much to the Right for me, and J Street really has simply become a mouthpiece for anti-Semites and anti-Zionists despite their repeated claims to the contrary. I thought they were the "good guys" because I like their platform, but, since they don't live up to their platform with their deeds and allow anti-Semites and anti-Zionists a platform to speak... I am not interested in being part of their movement.

All that said, I am simply tired of the extremes (both Left and Right) taking over the arguments on line when really no one except the whacked out fringes of the political spectrum are posting. The Right Wing simply lies and continues to post those lies as if they were fact hoping that somehow by saying something enough it will turn into a truth. These people have no interest in offering up any solutions, it is all just "I hate the Left and President Obama so much...." Just another healthy dose of Obama Derangement Syndrome and a refusal to offer a solution or even present a factual argument.

As for the Hard Left.... That is all just "We Hate America and Love Teh Irans". These fools just spend all day slobbering over anyone who goes after the U.S. and the West (by extension Israel) no matter how fucked up they may be. They too offer no solutions and when presented with evidence of their brazen hypocrisy, they simply dismiss it.

In a nutshell, the Rightists are deranged liars, and the Hard Leftists are deranged hypocrites. It boggles the mind and it is a fairly toxic mixture to deal with on a day to day basis.

SO rather than continue this charade I am done. Instead of writing article after article which sometimes get read and sometimes not, I am going to focus on real life stuff like working on my Krav Maga (currently going P-5 to G-1), and getting good at Tactical Shooting. I only have so many years left for this kind of physical activity so it becomes a priority over the "blah, blah, blah of the internet".

Anyway, for friends of this blog... Thanks for being part of it. I hope we can comment here together under fizziks banner. Your comments and articles were greatly appreciated even if we disagreed. I think that we showed that there can be fact based discussions on both sides of any issue and that if people stuck to facts they could have productive discourse.

For my opponents out there - it really is too bad that you were too fucking stupid to read anything that we wrote here, because honestly you might have learned something and you would have been challenged to face up to your ideas. But c'est la vie... you couldn't be bothered. So keep on keepin' on with your deranged hate or hypocrisy... You do know that most people are not paying attention to you, right?

So peace all... and tomorrow when you see this it will be fizziks blog.

Jon