Middle East "Peace"?

ARABIC PEACE
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, 08 January 2009

No word is more overused and has less meaning than "peace" regarding any discussion of Arabs and Israel. One primary reason why "peace in the Middle East" (if you Google that phrase you'll get 1.5 million hits) is so elusive is because there is no word in Arabic that means the same thing as the English word "peace," or its equivalent in other European languages. So as Israel is trying to put an end to Hamas terrorism and the world media whimpers for "peace in Gaza," we should get a clear understanding of the Arabic words - there are three of them - translated as "peace."

It's an understanding that Hillary's husband lacked when brokering the Oslo Accords of 1993, that Hillary's predecessor at the State Department lacked in her endlessly pointless efforts, that Hillary's new boss will lack when he instructs her to negotiate an Arab-Israeli "peace treaty." None of the three Arabic words for "peace" mean what we mean - but one of them could come close if nailed down explicitly. They are salaam, hudna, and suhl.

Salaam is the peace of submission. It's the drawn out pronunciation of "slm" in "Islam" (written Arabic has no vowels), the Arabic word for submission and obedience, and in "Moslem" or "Muslim," the Arabic word for "one who submits." There is peace, salaam, among Moslems when they submit to Allah and the teachings of the Koran. There is peace, salaam, between Moslems and kafirs, infidels or unbelievers, only when the latter submit to the rule of the former. In other words, salaam, Moslem peace, is not the absence of violence as it is for us, but the absence of disobedience. Just like it was for the Communists. In Lenin's words: "As long as capitalism and (Soviet) socialism exist, we cannot live in peace. In the end, one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet republic or over world capitalism."[1] Or, as the Soviet Military Encyclopedia stated it: "Peace is impossible without Soviet socialism. A truly lasting peace is impossible and cannot be achieved without a proletarian revolution."[2]

Compare Lenin's words to the words of Allah, as dictated to Mohammed in the Koran: "Fight and slay the unbelievers wherever you find them. Seize them, confine them, lie in wait for them in every place of ambush. (Sura - verse - 9:5) Believers! Do not befriend your fathers or your brothers or your sons if they choose unbelief in preference to belief in Allah. (Sura 9:22) Fight those who do not believe in Allah, those who do not forbid what Allah and his apostle have forbidden, fight them until they pay tribute to the believers and are utterly subdued. (Sura 9:29) Mohammed is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are merciless towards the unbelievers but kind to each other. (Sura 48:29) O Unbelievers! We renounce you. Enmity and hatred will reign between us until you believe in Allah alone." (Sura 60:4) Just as there could not be peace with the Soviets until we sang a funeral dirge over the Soviet Union, there cannot be peace with Moslems who believe that salaam requires Islam to be a religion of the sword.

Hudna, the second Arabic word translated in English as "peace," means cease-fire, a temporary truce. It is a tactical, temporary break in hostilities, giving Moslems time to re-organize, re-arm, then renew the Jihad against the kafirs when they can be most caught off-guard. Whenever Hamas offers Israel what the media calls a "peace proposal," you can be sure the Arabic word Hamas uses is hudna.

Suhl, the third Arabic term for "peace," is the most interesting, the one we must insist on Arabs using, the one they always avoid and refuse to use. Suhl means reconciliation. The Encyclopedia of Islam describes sulh as a concept of Islamic sharia law: "The purpose of sulh is to end conflict and hostility among believers so that they may conduct their relationships in peace and amity"....In Islamic law, sulh is a form of contract (aqd), legally binding on both the individual and community levels.[3] Note that it applies only between believers. Once again, it's deuces wild with unbelievers. Nonetheless, insistence on using the word sulh in any Arab-Israeli agreement, putting it in writing in the Arabic version of the documents that this agreement is not a hudna and not a salaam, but a sulh, makes it a legally binding aqd, even though one of the signatories is not Moslem.

That these words matter is shown by Arab resistance to signing an agreement that makes it a binding contract using sulh. Anwar Sadat, for example, in signing the Camp David Accords in 1978 insisted on "salaam" and refused to have the word "sulh" in the Arabic version of the document. The absence of reconciliation meant that Egypt could abandon the peace agreement if and when circumstances changed. And salaam it has been, never sulh, in any agreement, attempted or signed, ever since: Oslo 1993, Camp David II 2000, George Bush's "Roadmap for Peace" initiated in 2002, Condi Rice's treadmill "shuttle diplomacy" culminating in the non-accomplishment of the Annapolis Conference in November 2007.

At this moment (1/08), Euroweenies are clamoring for a "cease-fire," a hudna that will prevent Israel from destroying Hamas. What is needed is a sulh imposed upon a defeated Hamas. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is not one between Jews and Arabs. It is one between civilization and barbarism. President George Bush has clearly chosen to be on the side of civilization, and has refused to back down for placing the responsibility of this war in Gaza on Hamas. Yet not even he has insisted his diplomats from Condi on down demand that any mention of "peace" in any negotiation with Arabs regarding Israel be translated as "sulh," with no phony substitutes. This is clearly an opportunity for Mr. Bush's successor - and for Condi's. Will they have the brains to comprehend the opportunity and the fortitude to take advantage of it - to impose what could be called the Test of Sulh on all Middle East peace negotiations from now on? If you believe that, you probably also believe in the Easter Bunny.

Especially now that Obama will name Dennis Ross as his envoy to the Middle East. For his work in this position for Bush I and Clinton, the media calls him "the architect of the peace process." But as you now know, there is no such thing as "the peace process." It might as well be called "the gleendon process," gleendon being a gibberish word I made up. Ross has never in his long career (he's now 60) shown any indication that he understands the difference between the meaning of "peace" in English" and that in Arabic, nor ever imposed the Test of Sulh in his negotiations. So he will waste his time as he has always done.

Thus Israel will remain on its treadmill struggling to survive and denounced for doing so. The only real difference now is the current Arab fantasy that Obama will take their side against Israel once he's in office on January 20 - and that fantasy's rapid crash into bitter disillusionment when he doesn't. Not that he'll stoutly take Israel's side either. Rather, his ineffectuality will make him increasingly irrelevant to both Israel and the Arabs. Which means there's going to be a lot more war between them in 2009 and lot less peace, in Arabic or in English...

Passed along by Spider