The Quest for Justice in the Middle East: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Greater Perspective

Spanning centuries, the Arab-Jewish conflict has been rife with brutality and injustice. But in recent decades, the Western press in conjunction with the commentariat have steered both coverage and debate toward a decidedly Arab and Muslim-centric focus. Constant terror attacks on Jewish and Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem are barely noticed by the worldwide news. But when Israel attempts to halt repeated Qassam rocket assaults on its urban populations launched by Arab and Muslim terrorists—from schoolyards and hospital rooftops, behind ever-present "human shields"—the news and commentary elites erupt in indignation, with ready-made talking points on "disproportionate responses" and the constant refrain that Israel has no right to protect herself.

Gerald Honigman’s The Quest for Justice In the Middle East finally blows the whistle on generations of duplicity, shifting the debate once and for all back toward the center—and justice. For too long, the horrors wrought against non-Jews in the Middle East have gone unspoken, but now the forced conversions, inquisitions, expulsions, subjugation, pogroms, and dehumanization—against Jews and non-Jews alike—are exposed, hopefully toward the realization of equal justice and peace throughout the Middle East.

Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs and National Security Policy Studies, created and conducted numerous programs for college youth, lectured on dozens of campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated many anti-Israel scholars and other spokesmen. His articles, editorials, and op-eds have been published in hundreds of print and online newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and other publications around the world.

Honigman received his Masters Degree and was a doctoral student at the Kevorkian Center For Near Eastern Studies, a consortium of New York, Columbia, and Princeton Universities based at N.Y.U.’s Washington Square campus. Illness and financial matters led to an interruption of studies, and he next found himself based in Columbus, Ohio in a full-time position as a specialist consultant.

The heavily Nobel Laureate-sponsored academic journal, the Fall 1981 Middle East Review, showcased Honigman’s extensive article, "British Petroleum Politics, Arab Nationalism, and the Kurdish Struggle for Independence." It covered many of the same problems on which this book now focuses, but with greater depth and detail. It was rare, indeed, for "just" a doctoral student to be honored this way. That article can be now be found on at least one major institution’s recommended reading list, one of the most prestigious universities anywhere, Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes Politiques.

Throughout the seventies (and occasionally thereafter), Honigman was invited to guest lecture at dozens of universities, colleges, and elsewhere across three states, often to balance a lecture or program by some anti-Israel spokesperson. He appeared on televised foreign policy programs several times as well.

Honigman’s main objective remains the same—to provide a greater sense of balance and broader perspective in the coverage of Middle Eastern Affairs in an era when vilifying Israel, especially in the media and academia, has become all too common.