The questions raised by the article or elsewhere are

1) Does Arab nationalism exist?

2) What does it consist of?

3) What is the relation of Islam to Arab Nationalism?

4) What is the relation of jihad to Arab Nationalism?

5) If jihad overlaps, at least for some people, with Arab Nationalism, can this set of some people also include non-Muslim Arabs?

Do specific people in the US like Spencer Abraham fall into the group of non-Muslims who identify with, at least in part with Arab Nationalism and the overlap of Arab Nationalism, at least in part, with jihad?

Debbie Schlussel , Vanishing American , and others have been commenting on Fred Thompson hiring Spencer Abraham.

Are there people in these groups who make statements consistent with such views?

Act consistent with such views?

Actually advocate this?

Deny this exists for any person?

Posted by: Old Atlantic at July 31, 2007 2:58 PM

The Palestinian Christians are among the most persecuted of Christian minorities living under Islam.

So Robert, why do you say "Yet most Palestinian Christians still identify entirely with the jihad imperative. Will they awaken to the fact that this is not in their best interests before it's too late?" which is clearly not the case according to the article.

I live among Palestinian Christians and, as you know, my parish is overwhelmingly Palestinian. These people are not dhimmis. Most rightfully loath the fact that the Islamic takeover of their homeland was stupidly facilitated by the Israelis. Nevertheless, despite discrimination and hatred by a certain segment of Israeli population, they still favour Jews over the Muslims, whose crimes they know all too well. When their children visit Ramallah, Bethlehem or Nazareth. they are warned never to trust the Muslims but only go to the Jews or other Christians if they need help. A common warning to Christian girls is "Jews and Christians won't rape you, the Muslims will!"

Every Israeli-Palestinian youngster in my Sunday School class have expressed thier pride that they have an Israeli passport and would be happy to fight the Muslims if the Israelis would let them. Their parents remember with sadness how they all voted for Menachem Begin, remembering the Likud's promise to restore the Christian towns of Kafr Bir'im and Iqrit. A promise that Begin tried to keep but was prevented from fulfilling.

Others remember how the Christians under the leadership of the late Mayor Elias M. Freij of Bethlehem literally begged the Israelis to annex them into Israel but the the US State Department and the dhimmified Israeli left wouldn't let that happen.

Beyond this, most Palestinian Christians are quite aware that they are descended from the first Christians, most of whom were originally Jews. Because of this they see the Jews not only as spiritual brothers but as blood relatives. This is not the case with Muslims.

Lastly, most Palestinian Christians insist that the Muslims are not real Palestinians anyway. They will tell you that places like Ramallah and Bethlehem are Christian cities and there is simply no such thing as a Muslim Bethlehemite or Ramallahi. All the Muslims there are just Arab squatters from Jordan and other places.

If Israel were smart (and had someone other than the corrupt dhimmi Olmert in charge), they would organize the Christians into an armed militia to fight Hamas. This "Kataeb Filistin" could get away with effective actions that the IDF can't dare to carry out.

Posted by: Provoslavni at July 31, 2007 4:26 PM

If Israel were smart (and had someone other than the corrupt dhimmi Olmert in charge), they would organize the Christians into an armed militia to fight Hamas. This "Kataeb Filistin" could get away with effective actions that the IDF can't dare to carry out.
Posted by: Provoslavni

RIGHT ON!!!!!!

Posted by: Ynkedoodl2 at July 31, 2007 6:12 PM

Provoslavni - your comments are very intriguing and surprising for me. I understand that one should not generalize from particulars, but after considering Hanan Ashrawi, Tariq Aziz, Saeb Erekat, and the organization called Sabeel, I came to the conclusion that among Christian Arabs outside of Lebanon, opposition to Israel was nearly universal. Yet you seem to think that there is some grudging acceptance of Israel as an alternative that is preferable to the jihadists. You seem to know much more about the subject than I. Forgive me for being skeptical, but is this analogous to the case of the well-known "moderate Muslims"? Can you give me examples of outspoken Christian Arab Zionists who are not Lebanese (thus ruling out Joseph Farah and Brigitte Gabriel)? Thanks - Surak

Posted by: Surak at July 31, 2007 8:55 PM

Surak,

Saeb Erekat is a Muslim. His full name is Sa’ib Muhammad Salih ‘Urayqat. Here's his bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeb_Erekat

As for Hanan Ashrawi and her ilk, they are mostly creations of the dhimmi media. I don't know if you're in the US but they are the equivalents to what Al Sharpton is to African-Americans.

Unfortunately, the Christian community currently lacks political leadership like the late Elias Freij. There are true leaders such as Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour, but they get little coverage in the media. That's why dhimmis like Ashrawi or Communists like Azmi Bishara fill the vacuum. Bishara, although officially classified as a "Christian" by the Israelis is an atheist and a criminal who was elected by the Muslim Arabs to be their "representative" in the Knesset.

If you want to see how the silent majority of Palestinian Christians who are Israeli citizens think, look at who they vote for. If this is the case among Israeli-Palestinians you can be sure it's even more true for those stuck living under Hamas.

The Christians in Gallilee have overwhelmingly voted for the Likud since 1977 when they were a unified vote contributing to the landslide that put Menachem Begin in power. The one recent exception to this right-wing voting pattern was when they went for Ehud Barak, but he betrayed them completely. (Christians like to say that Israel should never again elect anybody named "Ehud".)In the last election most went back to Likud but Christian "Arabs" were also some of the few non-Russian votes that went to Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu party.

Unfortunately, the Christians are now so greatly outnumbered by these Muslim squatters that even Nazareth is becoming a Muslim city. Unless the Israelis wake up and embrace these indigenous Christians, they will suffer the same fate. To be a dhimmi to protect your family and property is understandible. Ehud Olmert, on the other hand, has no excuse.

Posted by: Provoslavni at July 31, 2007 10:57 PM

Surak/Provoslavni

Are any of the following people - Maronites, Copts, Assyrians/Chaldeans, Berbers, Mandeans - Arabs? Would they be candidates for supporting Arab nationalism?

While Maronites are split (I believe that the Lebanese Forces of Sameer Gaegae are pro-Israel, or at least were, but Israel's treatment of the former South Lebanon Army and letting that territory fall overnight to Hizbullah would have made it unpopular even to Lebanese Christians - something that has in the past been analyzed in the Jerusalem Post), is it true that Copts and Assyrians by and large support the Arab position against Israel? How about Kurdish Muslims?

Posted by: Infidel Pride at August 1, 2007 1:10 AM

Provoslavni,

The subject of Palestinian Christians is of particular intrest to me. There are several things I'd like to ask you. If you could please contact me at this address: travincal at prodigy dot net, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

Posted by: Jr. at August 1, 2007 2:41 AM

Surak, I like Provoslavni - find your comments very intriguing and surprising. Is not the destruction of Palestinian Christians attributable to the fact that the community itself refused to stand up and take a stand against its destruction, rather it adopted policies of appeasement trying to make accommodation with its Moslem neighbors. Is this not the same story anywhere in the de facto jurisdictional boundaries of the Caliphate whether it be Copts in Egypt or Christians in Sudan or Hindus in Kashmir or Christians in the Philippines etc. ad nausea. Is it not just the case that nationalism in the moslem world has been replaced by an imperialist islam that has attacked, brutalized and destroyed any religious groups where islam is in the majority and where the hapless infidels have not connected the dots and have chosen instead to try accommodate or keep the peace with Herr Islam at all costs.

Is this not a prelude to what is happening in Europe and the United States and elsewhere in the world if we do not wake up to the worldwide menace Islam?

Posted by: David England at August 1, 2007 7:57 AM

To those of you who don't know much about Justus Reid Weiner, he is also a lawyer and took on the late Edward Said over the issue of Said's claim to Palestinian nationality in "My Old Jerusalem House".

Posted by: waterdragon52 at August 1, 2007 8:34 AM

I will vouch for what Provoslavni posted. There is only one Israeli family in my parish (Antiochian Orthodox) but their opinion seems to be roughly the same as posted above.

Posted by: Mitri El-Murr at August 1, 2007 11:37 AM

Infidel Pride,

Israel's betrayal of the Lebanese Christians (the Kataeb, Lebanese Forces, and the SLA equally)) undermined all respect for Israel by any potential allies in the future. As for Copts, they are forced to echo the government line for their own safety. Copts in the West express a different view. However, Israel has done nothing to create an alliance with the Copts so even they would be hesitant to make the first move.

As for the Assyrians, Israel has foolishly chosen to support the Muslim Kurds at Assyrian expense. The least of evils for Assyrians has been the secular Ba'athists. As bad as Saddam was, forcing them to call themselves "Arabs" at least he protected the churches and did not try to exterminate them. In fact, he protected them from the Kurds who are bent on their destruction.

Many Palestinian Christians are rightfully harsh on the Israelis. Except for the Irgun, in the 1948 War, Israel failed to distinquish between Christians and Muslims. In November 1948, the Christian villagers of Kafr Bir'im, Ikrit, Nabi Rubin, and Tarbikha, were outright expelled by the Haganah "without Cabinet knowledge, debate, or approval -though, almost inevitably, they received post facto Cabinet endorsement." Kafr Bir'im's inhabitants and their descendants are still fighting for the right to return to their homes.

While committing this injustice against Christians, Israel has all but facilitated the Muslim population explosion. Originally, the Christians, being highly educated and middle class, were wrongly seen as a threat to Israel's legitimacy, while the mostly poor and illiterate Muslims were seen as easily controllable. This is the roots of Christian resentment for Israel.

Nevertheless, when Christians criticize Israeli "Jewish recism and discrimination" it is a criticism based on sadness that the Jews are violating their own principles. It is therefore based on respect, something which the Christians don't have for Muslims.

I guess the analogy is like this: If my dog breaks my model airplane, I'm not going to criticize it too much because it's just his nature. If my son breaks it, I will loudly criticize him because he should know better. Likewise, many Christians criticize Jews because they are of the same family with similar moral priciples. Criticizing the Muslims is a waste of time since they are outsiders who don't have these principles.

Posted by: Provoslavni at August 1, 2007 11:46 AM

Prosolvani:

Muslim Kurds helped thousands of Iraqi Jews to escape Saddam in the 1970s, so perhaps there's some cause for any friendliness between the two. That and the fact that, as I understand it, one of the leading Kurd politicians is a Jew.

By contrast, I am not sure how nice the Assyrians were to the Jews of Mesopotamia over the milenia.

And the root of middle-eastern Christian resentment stretches back one hell of a lot earlier than recent memory and has a great deal to do with the preference to believe that Pontius Pilate was only doing the Jews' bidding when he agreed to crucifying Christ. The Damascus Blood Libel that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Jews happened in 1840 or thereabouts.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at August 1, 2007 3:33 PM

Waterdragon,

While the blood libel has sadly infected much of Western Christianity (read Luther's "The Jews and their Lies" if you want proto-Nazi anti-Semitism), it has never been officially accepted by the Orthodox or Byzantine Catholics. It is true that there is much anti-Semitism in Russia but this can be traced back to the reaction against the heresy of the Judaizers in 15th century Novgorod, a heresy which dominated Moscow during the reign of Ivan III.

As for the case in Damascus, it is unique among Middle Eastern Christians and was initially limited to the tiny French-oriented Roman Catholic and Maronite communities. The case was when on February 5, 1840, a Roman Catholic Franciscan Capuchin friar Father Thomas (himself, a European) and his Greek servant were reported missing, never to be seen again.

The Turkish governor and the French consul Ratti-Menton believed accusations of ritual murder and blood libel, as the alleged murder occurred before the Jewish Passover. An investigation was staged, and Solomon Negrin, a Jewish barber, confessed under torture and accused other Jews. Two other Jews died under torture, and one (Moses Abulafia) converted to Islam to escape torture. More arrests and atrocities followed, culminating in 63 Jewish children being held hostage and mob attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East, almost all by Muslims.

The affair drew wide international attention in particular due to the efforts of the Austrian Consul in Aleppo Eliahu Picotto who made representations to Ibrahim Pasha in Egypt who ordered an investigation.

Notice that the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic communities played almost no role in this sordid event. The perpetrators were almost exclusively Europeans and Muslims.

As Daniel Pipes (my source for the above) writes "...the real impact of the Damascus affair ... lay in Europe, where it led to a formidable backlash against Jews, the greatest in years. Jews found themselves completely unprepared for the tribulations they suffered but learned from this tragedy to organize and lobby, and from that came the first stirrings of modern Jewish solidarity, the basis of the formidable institutions that followed."

Posted by: Provoslavni at August 1, 2007 7:01 PM

Infidel Pride - always good to hear from you - "Jaya vijayi bhavi!" (Hey, I just finished reading the Ramayana - now on to the Mahabharata!)

You raise a point I discussed here a few months ago regarding Arab ethnic imperialism as another problem for the Middle East beyond Muslim religious imperialism. You are absolutely right - there are numerous non-Arab ethnic groups in northern Africa and southwestern Asia, and their languages are routinely suppressed. Assyrians, Berbers and Copts are only the beginning. They are Semitic, along with the Tuareg, while Kurds are Indo-European and Turkomen are Turkic.

For better or for worse, linguistic unity is essential for national unity. As for multiculturalism, that's great if it means more festivals and more diverse restaurants and music; it's a disaster if it means multiple value systems, such as Shari'a.

I would imagine that non-Arab nationalist movements would be likely to achieve success roughly in proportion to their population. In that case, the people with the best chances would be the Kurds, the world's most numerous stateless people, with about 20 million total, I think. The Assyrians claim almost the exact same land as the Kurds, yet have only about 1.5 million people, I think. Ain't gonna happen.

A more provocative question is the following. To what degree did the Muslim conquest rewrite the historical consciousness of northern Africa and southwestern Asia, convincing non-Arab peoples that they were in fact Arab? Sure, various dialects of Arabic are spoken all across the region. But - Arabs are by definition natives of Arabia. Prior to Muhamad, the residents of northern Africa, for example, were Moors, Berbers, Tuareg and Copts (roughly west to east). Were there really so many Arab conquerors that they displaced the original people - or did they use Islam in order to intimidate the natives into accepting Arab culture as their own? Similarly, the non-Jewish people of the Levant were not Arabs in the period between the Roman Empire and Muhamad, or before the Roman Empire. There were Greeks and Phoenicians (I think the latter were Semites; the former were not, of course).

On the other hand - look at all the indigenous peoples of the Americas; Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, Ireland; Gallegos, Vascongadas, Catalonia; Bretagne, Provence, Corsica; Sicily; the numerous peoples of Russia, India and China (hey what about Tibet?); the Ainu and Ryukyu peoples; etc. Where does irredentism end, once it's let loose?

Posted by: Surak at August 1, 2007 8:28 PM

Proslovani:

I don't have Martin Gilbert's account of the same event handy, but the one outcome of it that I do recall was that the attack on Damascus's Jews was what prompted Sir Moses Montefiore -- who was not a Zionist -- to finance the first purchase of land to re-settle Jews in their ancient homeland.

I know a few Maronites, and you get a real mix in that community when it comes to their attitudes towards Jews ranging from extreme bitterness that long preceded the first Lebanese Civil War and subsequent invasion by the IDF, to deeply regretting that pressure from family members made it impossible for them to marry Jews they were in love with. (I suspect that if any genetic testing was done, you'd find a lot of common DNA between Maronites and Jews from certain regions.)

If you have an opportunity to see it, a couple of Canadian film makers recently made a documentary entitled "Disengaged from Reality" that consisted of interviews of Muslim and Christian "Arab" citizens of Israel in a 50:50 mix, speaking about their lives and conditions. It's not that well made, but it was a fair attempt by two young filmmakers to allow the world to hear what these people really thought.

With the exception of one clearly mentally unstable Christian labourer, and an amazingly hypocritical Muslim shop owner, all noted that although they feel a subtle degree of racism in Israeli society, that they would never want to come under the rule of the PA.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at August 2, 2007 8:32 AM

Dispossessed Arab Christians should go on the 11th September Brussels demo

Stop Islamisation of Europe

http://sioe.wordpress.com/

Posted by: Al.R.O'Ackbar at August 3, 2007 4:42 PM