ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS for Pax Arabica
With thanks to Sir Winston Churchill without whom I wouldn’t be alive to write this text. It was Churchill’s strength of character which inspired me to stand up against fascism and totalitarianism in all its forms. It was Churchill’s self-assurance in the face of public mockery and unthinking ridicule that called me to speak out against the political horrors of our own age.
With thanks to Sir Anthony Eden, Churchill’s protegee, and the man whose political legacy this works seeks to resurrect. As with his mentor before him, Eden was principled and resolute in the face of fascist imperialism. He railed against the appeasement of Mussolini, he foresaw the horrors of Hitler and he sacrificed everything he possessed politically to prevent Nasser’s Arab totalitarianism. Eden was a modern prophetic figure who uniquely understood the nature of Pax Arabica. He warned, he fought and he was ultimately betrayed. The result is the moral travesty we sanitise as the “Arab world”. Nasser may have died, but his horrific legacy lives on. Today, we pick up Sir Anthony’s gauntlet, seeking an ordered Middle East of free nation states.
With thanks to all those in the Anglo and Hebraic tradition of the nation state who set out the path to decency in a world of madness.
With thanks to the Prophet Isaiah whose transformative vision is at the heart of this work. He helped the world to understand that language inversion brings war, while truthful clarity brings peace.
With thanks to all those great intellectuals, past and modern, upon whose shoulders this work rests. Although I have never met or communicated with any of them, it was their insights that provided my intellectual ballast. It is therefore my honour to thank John Locke, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Jonathan Haidt, Paul Bloom, Stephen B Smith, Paul Freedman, Joanne Freeman, Vernon Bogdanor and Mary Wollstonecraft amongst others.
With thanks to Peter Biro, my friend and mentor, who gave me the courage to be a “public intellectual”. It was he who gave me the vision of what was possible and who I could become. It was he who set me on the path of book writing and extended argumentation whose product can be seen in this published work.
With thanks to Khaled Salih, Nachum Kaplan, Richard Neat and Charles Jacobs whose boundless enthusiasm for this project has encouraged me every step of the way. I thank them for evangelising this book far and wide from the forests of Costa Rica to the mountains of Kurdistan to the avenues of New York to the Asian redoubt of Singapore.
With thanks to Einat Wilf, Khaled Salih and General Yoav Gallant whose personal messages of support have been invaluable. I am thereby encouraged that my words have a genuine impact on Middle Eastern affairs.
With thanks to Ashok Panikkar, Alan Mairson, Eli Kavon, Susan Bordo, Michal Reznic, Vaishnav Sunil and Shlomo Levin without whose intellectual back and forth I would never have developed as a thinker. Alan’s ability to praise my writing, whilst never fully agreeing, was particularly formative to a “young” thinker . It modeled polite, civic disagreement in a time of echo chambers. It modeled how classic debate could lead to intellectual progress. As someone who worries about the future of democratic society, I’m sure that Ashok would be heartened by this renaissance of critical thinking.
With thanks to Richard Jacobi, Meital Brown and Anthony Witt whose early recognition of my abilities (and passion for this subject) have never been forgotten.
With thanks to Francisco J Bernal, Khaled Salih, Peter Biro, Jonathan Sandberg, Richard Neat and Sheldon Frank whose backing as “Guerre and Shalom” founder members helped finance this project both in terms of money and moral support. Without their vote of confidence, it is doubtful that I would be here today writing this page of acknowledgments. With particular thanks to Sheldon Frank, who was my first founder member, and Francisco J Bernal who has been very generous in his financial contributions.
With thanks to the 100+ paying subscribers of Guerre and Shalom Substack who, by sacrificing their earnings in return for something as ubiquitous as writing, showed a faith in my abilities which is truly humbling.
With thanks to all those that have publicly engaged with this work. I would particularly like to thank Noah Otte whose genuine and heartfelt engagement can never be forgotten. He has written detailed feedback on each of my chapters, often in the most glowing of terms. This level of kindness is both rare and genuinely helpful for a developing intellectual.
With thanks to the oppressed of Pax Arabica, whose brave personal testimony helped me understand the gravity of this issue and the necessity to fight for freedom. Given the horrific and dangerous nature of that Empire, it would be inappropriate for me to mention them by name — which, in itself, shows the importance of this work. The Arab Empire has erased all hope and individual freedom. It is detestable.
With thanks to the diverse group of friends with whom I grew up, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or of no faith. They helped me understand that there was a better way than the totalising dystopia of Pax Arabica.
Above all, I would like to pay particular tribute to my wife Sara Clarke-Serret, who has been steadfast, constant and ever loving during the tortuous process of writing this lengthy book. She has worked from dawn to dusk, in extremely stressful conditions, so that our family may have the money to support a badly paid writer. She has showed incredible support during my lengthy stints at the computer, all of which inevitably involved a lack of marital attention. She has loved and cared for our beautiful daughter Noa with all the kindness, courage and tenderness of an inspired mother. She has put up with my mood swings, intemperance and lack of self-awareness.
Perhaps most incredibly, she has shown these qualities in the face of indignity — of not being recognised publicly as a Jew. This book recognises the evils of the Arab Empire as compared to the beneficent qualities of a Jewish nation state. Nonetheless, we must be conscious of the groupish, exclusionary nature of many sections of the Jewish people which condemns its outcasts to the life of a social other. Whilst rightfully throwing stones at Arab imperialism, I am called to fiercely condemn our own wrongdoings.
Sara’s love saved my life. Many years ago I was in the depths of depression and in the teeth of a Jeremiaic despair. I was a passive, failed shell of a man — my dreams were in tatters, my hope was lost. I had nothing to live for. Only Sara saved my soul from the pit — and she did so at great cost and with unprecedented sacrifice. Hers is the eternal flame which shines ever so brightly in every word of this text.
To all those who I did wrong, I ask for your forgiveness.
To all those who did me wrong, knowingly or unknowingly, you are forgiven. It is the trials and tribulations caused by your actions that made the man. It is your efforts that gave me the time and material to work with. To misquote Dostoevsky: May I be worthy of my sufferings.
All I ask for is for the people of Pax Arabica to be free at last. Liberated from the ideological grip of the Arab Babel Terror, they will rise again to form a Middle East of free nations where each citizen may dwell under their own fig tree with none to make them afraid.
In the name of human dignity, in the name of peace, in the name of the much quoted, but never followed, Prophet Isaiah, let us recognize the divine spark in every man and woman, so that we may build a future of peace based on truth. With thanks in advance for all who contribute to this effort.
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PAX ARABICA
Introduction: The time to change the narrative is now!
PART 1: BABEL
Chapter 1: On Arab Imperialism // Chapter 2: On the Vanguard //Chapter 3: On Dictatorial Oppression // Chapter 4: On Islamist “Freedom” // Chapter 5: On Islamist Misery // Chapter 6: On Arab Apartheid // Chapter 7: On Middle Eastern Minorities // Chapter 8: On the Masters of Ethnic Cleansing // Chapter 9: On Genocide, Slavery and Racist Indifference //Chapter 10: On Unjust “Justice” and the Inversion of Language // Chapter 11: On Appeasement // Chapter 12: On the Man who stood against Pax Arabica
PART 2: EDEN
Chapter 13: On Nations, States and the Nation State // Chapter 14: On Sykes-Picot // Chapter 15: On Zionism and the duty to protect // Chapter 16: On the New Regional Sheriff // Chapter 17: On the Psychology of Strength // Chapter 18: On the Paradigm Shift // Chapter 19: On the Post-Imperial Two State Solution // Chapter 20: On the End of the Great Game
AFTERWORD by Khaled Salih: A Song of the Oppressor and the Parody of the Oppressed.
I’d like to start off by thanking, Daniel for his special thanks he gave to me which I am most grateful and honored to receive. I applaud these most gracious acknowledgments piece for Daniel’s epic book Pax Arabica. I don’t think I’ve ever read or even seen a book like Pax Arabica that discusses this very little talked about topic. That is why this book so well-argued and so well-researched is so important. In fact, I would go so far as to say it’s
indispensable right now! The Arab world is without question one of the few true empires left in the world. The Middle East must be decolonized now! Diversity is the only hope for a better future in the region. Israel is the undisputed sheriff in the region and has started to see greater cooperation with and the extension of an olive branch from Arab and Muslim countries via the Abraham Accords. This bodes well for the further of the Middle East as does the push back we’re starting to see against the Arab colossus by indigenous peoples all over the Arab world.
Arabs need to learn how to live in harmony with Jews, Berbers, brown and black Africans, Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, Arameans, Samaritans, Maronites, Mandeans, Bedouins, Yazidis, Druze, and Armenians. Only then will peace and prosperity come to the Middle East. When the Jewish state is embraced, all indigenous peoples have self-determination, Kurds and West African Christians have states of their own, Islamism dies, Palestine fades in historical memory and Levantia is born, the memory of the Jewish Nakba is restored, the apartheid against Arab women ends, and Jews stop fighting amongst themselves will a new Middle East be created, one where everyone no matter who they are are can thrive and rise as high as their merits can take them.
Daniel’s personal financial troubles are most distressing and concerning to hear about. This is obviously a very personal part of his life he has the right to share or not share at will. But he does because he is not ashamed of it as well he should not be. Let us all pray for his success and that this will change in the coming years! The Arab Empire needs to come tumbling down and as Yuval Raphael sang, a new day will rise! I would like to close by paraphrasing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” Speech. I have a dream that one day in the cafes and bizarres of Jerusalem the sons and daughters of Jewish extremists and the sons and daughters of Islamist terrorists will sit down together at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood.
I have a dream that one day in the Palestinian Territories where Fatah and Hamas rule, Israeli security measures are in place and poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and crime run rampant will be transformed into an oasis of peace, prosperity, stability, innovation, and brotherhood. I have a dream that one day people in the Middle East will judge each other not by religion, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, or the color of one’s skin but by the content of their character and the quality of their soul. Let freedom ring from the holy city of Jerusalem! Let freedom ring from the Great Pyramids of Egypt! Let freedom ring from the ancient city of Damascus! Let freedom ring from the bustling and vibrant city of Tel Aviv! Let freedom ring from the streets, orchards and beaches of the Gaza Strip! When we let freedom ring we speed up that day when all God’s children brown, black, white, and every shade in between, men and women, Jews, Christians and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians, Turks and Kurds, Arabs and Persians, gay, straight, bisexual, and transgender, disabled and able-bodied will be able to join hands in sing in the words of that old Afro-American spiritual “free at last! free at last! Thank God almighty, we’re free at last!”
What I see is not the historical figure, but the house behind, burdened with the history of all who have lived there.
The person arrives full of the urgency of power. They are here to change the course of things.
The place, through its historical weight and its permanence, imposes upon them the Implacability of Death.
They must then, out of pure psychological and political necessity, redouble their efforts in the urgency of power to prevent the location from simply dissolving them into the past.
In fact, this house reminds them of their mortality not through slowness, but through the speed at which others were erased...
And the urgency becomes a race against a historical stopwatch that never stops.
Nothing equals the indifference and coldness of the stone.