How Things Have Changed in Egypt

Egypt was among the countries to have a change in their governance due to the Arab Spring, or so the media and the United States State Department and numerous Western leaders will inform anyone willing to listen. Unfortunately, once the full truth becomes so painfully obvious that no rational argument can deny, we will plainly see that the change was the result of an Arab Winter, not Spring and the changes is Egypt were not for the better and democracy was not the final result. We will discover that the new boss resembles the old boss with some distinct differences, many of which are for the worse. So, let’s take a somber and sober inventory of what exactly happened both going into the Egyptian election and what the resultant governance and changes to Egypt have been produced. We should also take note of who were the winners and who the losers.

Going into the Egyptian election for President we had the eventual winner, Mohamed Morsi, who ran as the candidate put forth by the Freedom and Justice Party which was a recognized and admitted front party for the Muslim Brotherhood. But, if as the candidate for the Freedom and Justice Party Mohamed Morsi was already the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, then why did the Muslim Brotherhood put forward Khayrat el-Shater as their direct representative candidate when they supposedly were also running a candidate under the political party formed and named by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party? The reason was that they put forward Khayrat el-Shater as a sacrificial lamb when they began to suspect that the Military governing Supreme Council of the Armed Forces might be planning to remove candidates they declare to be questionable or tainted such as having been a member of the Mubarak rule or too deeply tied to the Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood or what they considered extremists in order to promote the more secular candidates which was the preferred choice of the Military hierarchy, Ahmed Shafik. By placing a directly tied candidate who was a current member of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood could now further their claim that Mohammed Morsi was not a member in good standing with the Muslim Brotherhood and was a legitimate candidate for the Freedom and Justice Party which they had now established some space between them and the Brotherhood. This feint worked exactly as the Muslim Brotherhood had hoped and even though they technically did not win and get the direct Muslim Brotherhood candidate elected President, they did get their preferred and presentable front candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party elected. The reality was that the Muslim Brotherhood had placed two candidates on the ballot for the position of Egyptian President, one as a sacrificial lamb who made the other appear to be independent of the Muslim Brotherhood and thus gave Western nations the wiggle room they would need and anxiously utilize to back Morsi as a legitimate non-Muslim Brotherhood winner of the Egyptian elections.

So, what has happened to the power structures in Egypt since the Presidential election and how does it differ from the Mubarak regime? One of the first moves taken by President Morsi was to oppose the ruling of the Military Supreme Court ruling which dissolved the Parliament due to presumed election fraud and irregularities. Morsi almost immediately reinstated the Parliament and initially did compromise and only met with one of the two houses of the Parliament, the upper house. From this confrontation against the Military’s attempts to retain as much power as they could and limit the newly elected officials’, including President Morsi’s, powers, the Military clearly lost and thus has had the leadership completely revamped and made Muslim Brotherhood compliant. Morsi simply ignored their rulings and removed the limiting amendments to the new Constitution put in place by the Military and regained all the powers given the office of the President in the initial Constitution.

Within the next month, President Morsi worked around every attempt to restrict his powers and block the maneuvers he was taking. The end result came when President Morsi replaced nearly the entirety of the Military high commanders and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood approved and sympathetic officers. Now Egypt has a President Morsi with his own hand-picked Generals in command of the Military. This is entirely different than when Egypt had a Military picked President Mubarak who, over time promoted the officers he most trusted into the top positions and thus had his own people in command of the Military. Under President Mubarak the Muslim Brotherhood was kept in check and forced to maintain a low profile or face arrest and imprisonment. The Military had complete and total control of all of the levers of power. Currently, with President Morsi Egypt has a Muslim Brotherhood controlled Parliament and Muslim Brotherhood approved commanders over the Military and is working to taking over the rest of the levers of power. See, totally different. Before the Muslim Brotherhood controlled nothing and the Military had all the control, now the Muslim Brotherhood controls everything using the Military under their control to take command of everything. The real test will come in the next Egyptian elections for President. If the results show obvious signs of vote fraud and any other signs of a controlled outcome, then we will know that all the Egyptians have accomplished was to replace the heads of the Military from restricting the Muslim Brotherhood and enforcing a secular state with a Muslim Brotherhood controlled Military and a Sharia compliant state. The worrisome part of this is that despite the obvious Muslim Brotherhood control, thus far the Western powers and countries have treated the new governance in Egypt as if it were still a secular state and they are ignoring any signs that Egypt is no longer even going to try and have the appearance of compliance with Western objectives. Despite this, the United States is fully committed to continuing the billions of dollars of aid to Egypt even though deep down they have to have realized that this money will no longer buy them even one iota of influence, let alone any measure of control as they previously possessed.

But what are the changes for the people of Egypt, will their plight be improved or will it likely worsen? If you are a Coptic Christian it will most definitely worsen. As bad as things may have gotten from time to time under the Military rule of Mubarak and Sadat and Nasser before him, the non-Muslim population of Egypt was granted at least a modicum of protection and had rights as citizens including even the right to vote. With the Muslim Brotherhood now in control, the Coptic Christians will eventually likely be granted some amount of protection, but only after they have accepted their position as Dhimmi within a Muslim State. Even during this past election where it was supposed to be the first true election in modern Egyptian history, the Coptic Christians were denied their right to vote as in some Coptic neighborhoods Muslim gangs occupied the voting places and refused to allow them to cast any ballots. Even towards the end of the Military control in the run-up to the election the Coptic Christians found their neighborhoods threatened from confrontations with bands of Jihadist Muslims. Such likelihoods are now to become a part of Coptic daily life in Egypt where such eruptions will be a potential and when such violence is loosed on their neighborhoods, they can expect they will be allowed a certain amount of permissiveness and only brought to a halt once the authorities feel the anger has had sufficient venting. Egypt will slowly sink onto Sharia and life for non-Muslims will sink along with it.

And what does this mean for the United States, Israel and the rest of the world? The news this week has exclaimed and featured a signal of what the world, especially the West and Israel, can expect from the new Egypt when it has been reported that while attending the upcoming NAM (Non-Aligned nations Movement) conference being held in Tehran, Iran; President Morsi will be in attendance and is planning on reestablishing relations between Iran and Egypt which have been in a frozen state since Egypt signed its peace with Israel. President Morsi and President Ahmadinejad reestablishing relations will signify a ceremonial sign that the Egyptian Israeli peace has been unofficially abrogated. This has already been made evident through any number of actions and statements made since the election of President Morsi. Morsi and other Egyptian leaders, both inside and outside of the Muslim Brotherhood, have boldly stated that the Camp David Accord must be amended to allow Egypt to exercise its full authority in the Sinai Peninsula which will, for all intents and purposes, be a complete abrogation of the treaty. There have even been some attacks on the troops located in the Sinai as peacekeepers in the last few weeks. This has been swept under the carpet as to let this news out would wake up Americans to the fact that they have troops stationed in the Sinai Peninsula, something that has not received any attention but is now becoming relevant as another place their young men and women are now in harm’s way. Egypt has already strengthened their ties with Turkey, another nation that has been quietly slipping into Islamism. With Egypt now strengthening their bonds with the Islamist tendencies of Turkey and the Iranian extreme Islamism, the world is watching as the new Caliphate is being assembled while the first target of this new Caliphate, Europe followed close behind by the United States, blithely carry-on as if nothing possible could be going awry and whistling past their own graveyard. Israel has been awake and warning but nobody cares to hear their warnings. Even when they make sufficient claims ardently enough to be heard, the United States dispatches some high level government personnel, be it the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or even the Vice President, anybody but the President, of course, to tell Israel to calm down and let those who are adults and know the real truth handle this situation. Poor Israel has been relegated to being the boy who cried wolf, only there is a wolf and he is not even bothering to wear sheep’s clothing, he is snarling and bearing a mouth full of teeth and nobody wants to know. This has all the signs of ending very badly, say Czechoslovakia and the Sudeten Lands or Kosova.

Beyond the Cusp

Coming Presidential Race Comparisons Accurate by a Half

The temptation to compare the coming presidential contest of incumbent President Barack Obama against his Republican adversary, Mitt Romney, to the 1980 contest between incumbent President Jimmy Carter and his Republican adversary, Ronald Reagan, are not a totally accurate comparison. President Barack Obama is not exactly a President Jimmy Carter and Mitt Romney, despite the expected attempts to describe him so, is no Ronald Reagan. Granted, there are some similarities between the Presidency of Barack Obama to the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, but there are also differences. The differences of Mitt Romney to Ronald Reagan are somewhat more glaring and is the weaker half differentiating these two periods. The other differences are the state of the United States, the composition of the American populace as well as the electorate, and the current state of the world in general. So, let’s make a more detailed inspection and determine the similarities which may be helpful and the differences which could change the outcome.

We will start with a comparison of both the men and the Presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama and how they apply to the coming contest. There is little doubt that many parallels can be drawn between the economies each President experienced with peaking unemployment, a weak dollar, high gasoline prices, and a general sense of malaise and a high misery index, two terms invented to describe the economy under President Carter. But the differences are probably more important than are the similarities. The most evident difference is that we do not have lines forming at 6:00 or earlier in the morning to fuel your car or odd and even day rationing as we experienced during the Carter years. High prices are one thing, getting up hours earlier and hoping the station does not run out of fuel before you get to fill your tank is another. Despite the lagging economy, President Obama is not being berated by the press on the evening news every night with terms like malaise and misery index becoming a part of the daily discourse. The other helpful item which President Obama enjoys that President Carter did not is the fact that the economy has had its ups and downs over the last twenty-five years while the twenty-five years before the Carter Presidency was one of the longest and fastest growing economic periods in American history. Another large difference is that Wall Street has had periods of recovery that has given hope that maybe the worst is over, unfortunately right before the next bubble bursts or reports come in with lower profits or other negative economic indicators forcing the next crash. Despite the truth that in many ways the two Presidencies of Carter and Obama may numerically appear very similar, somehow the coverage and mood of much of the populace does not seem to hold President Obama as directly accountable as the populace did President Carter. The months leading up to the election will end up telling the whole story and it may result in the economy being an even larger problem for President Obama if anything else goes seriously bad on the economic front.

Both President Carter and President Obama have had their share of difficulties in dealing with the Middle East. Even though President Carter could claim the Egyptian and Israeli peace treaty as a major accomplishment, it meant absolutely nothing as the hostage crisis took center stage. As for President Obama, he had his most ambitious military operation with the capture and death of Osama bin Laden which was seen as a complete success despite the loss of the stealth helicopter compared to President Carter and the horrific failure of his attempt to go in and free the embassy hostages in Iran. On the other side, President Carter only turned one Middle East country over to the rule of hostile Islamic rulers, Iran; while President Obama has managed to turn a number of countries over to hostile Islamic rulers. The list includes Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. During the Obama Presidency, Turkey has also completed its long and drawn out march from being a secular country towards becoming an Islamic ruled country under Prime Minister Erdogan. The final plunge was assisted by the actions of the European Union and a number of the member states along with President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton when they all backed Prime Minister Erdogan and preempted any attempt by the Turkish military to force Erdogan from office setting up a new election when it became obvious that the country was slipping away from its secular governance as they are empowered by the Turkish Constitution to implement as a protection of the state from overt religious influences. The main advantage that President Obama has over the predicament President Carter faced is that unlike President Carter who faced the daily reminder of his Middle East problems with the ongoing hostage crisis throughout the election cycle, nothing has yet to completely blow up in President Obama’s face, though Iran may once again provide such for an incumbent American President.

The comparison of Mitt Romney to Ronald Reagan is both stark and subtle. The most obvious difference is the ease with which Candidate Reagan was able to appear with the people. He had a level of comfort and reassurance that has not been duplicated by Mitt Romney. Where both men have the air of assurance and a strong presence, Ronald Reagan had a certain comfort about him where Mitt Romney sometimes seems a little stiff and almost out of sync. Ronald Reagan had an earthiness that is lacking in Mitt Romney though both men have a good sense of humor and are quick on their feet though Mitt Romney comes across more formal while Ronald Reagan appeared more folksy. The biggest difference between Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney is that Ronald Reagan had a definitive turning point in his life where he made an obvious and complete change of views and a longer run as a true and strong conservative while Mitt Romney still needs to assure many that his conservatism is real and he has made an honest change from his more liberal leanings when he was Governor of Massachusetts. This will very likely be where Mitt Romney will sink or swim gliding into the presidency, assuring the most conservative of his base that he is truly allied with their desires and meets their demands while still satisfying those in the Republican Party and those independents who are demanding he prove to be a moderate. How he can satisfy both camps without being cast as duplicitous is the real test Mitt Romney will face. Perhaps he may want to watch some of Ronald Reagan’s speeches and debates and realize that one can be a real conservative and still sound rational and a man of the people. Ronald Reagan did it; can Mitt Romney pull it off?

This race may appear on the surface to have numerous similarities to the 1980 Presidential election but I have my suspicions that it will turn out to be very different. Granted, President Obama cannot run on his record just as President Carter had to try to hide from his record. President Obama is a much more accomplished speech maker than was President Carter and he will need every ounce of that ability if he is to sway sufficient voters to give him another term. Truthfully, I believe that Mitt Romney is facing the greater challenge as he not only has to compete and defeat the incumbent President, he has to go against a press that is far more hostile against him than the press faced by President Reagan. Still, Mitt Romney has to win over a large portion of his base to have any hope of becoming President. Polls have shown Mitt Romney actually comfortably ahead of President Obama among independents but they also show Mitt Romney being very weak among the conservative Republican base, and without the base his chances are almost nil. The one thing that is guaranteed to put an end to President Obama’s chance for reelection is if the Middle East catches fire and explodes in his face. Such could obviously happen with Iran, but there are also some very precarious problems which could come to the surface and make things very difficult coming out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the possibility of a conflict between Israel and any one or more of the neighboring countries as well as the Palestinians. This election is just another case of the more things change, the more they appear to be the same.

Beyond the Cusp

Reply to Lady Catherine Ashton and Those of Like Minds

European Union Foreign Minister Lady Catherine Ashton proclaimed regarding Israeli moves to grant full legal status to three communities founded within Judea and Samaria, “I am extremely concerned about the decision of the Israeli authorities regarding the status of the settlements of Sansana, Rechelim and Bruchin in the occupied Palestinian territory. I call upon them to reverse this decision. The EU has repeatedly called on Israel to end all settlement activity. Settlements are illegal under International Law, an obstacle to peace and threaten the viability of a two-state solution.” She further complained that such actions went against the wishes of the Quartet and their mission as peace builders and “expressed concern about unilateral and provocative actions, including continued settlement activity.”

The United States State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland speaking to reporters basically echoed Lady Ashton’s rebuke of the Israeli actions stating, “We are, obviously, concerned by the reports that we’ve seen. We have raised this with the Israeli Government and we are seeking clarification. You know where we are on settlements. We don’t think this is helpful to the (peace) process and we don’t accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.” Unsurprisingly, France and Jordan condemned the Israeli decision as did United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon whose office released the following statement, “The Secretary-General is disappointed that such a decision comes at a time of renewed efforts to restart dialogue,” Rounding out the top tier of the regular condemning of Israel is Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee member and lead negotiator Saeb Erekat who said that the Palestinian Authority may ask the United Nations Security Council for a condemnation of Israel’s move. None of these statements or positions came as even the slightest of surprises as these are the same people and groups which would decry if a Jew were to add a deck to the back of their house or remodeled their kitchen with new appliances.

I would like to take a moment to address those who are almost constantly demanding that Israel take self-destructive and injurious actions in order to prove their desire for a real peace yet do not even request the Palestinians come to the negotiation table. I would like to answer their claims that Israel has not made sufficient quantity or quality of sacrifices to satisfy the Arabs or the rest of the World. I would like to clarify the lies that are presented as fact in reference to the Israeli obligation to reestablish a Palestinian State for the Palestinian refugees who deserve to have their state returned to them. So let us start and try taking these items one at a time.

Starting with the last item, namely that it is an Israeli obligation to reestablish a Palestinian State for the Palestinian refugees who deserve to have their state returned to them. No matter what actions Israel could implement, they would never be able to reestablish a Palestinian State. A Palestinian State has either never before existed or was established when the British founded Transjordan which continues to exist today as the country of Jordan. Either way a Palestinian state cannot be reestablished as either the one which was established continues to exist thus is not in need of being reestablished or one never has existed thus cannot be reestablished. The main reason behind those professing the need for Israel to reestablish a Palestinian State where one has never existed is to establish a falsity of a preexisting Palestinian State in the minds of the world public thus allowing the inference that Israel had conquered the State of Palestine some time in their manufactured history thereby supplying the call for the return of their stolen land for a country named Palestine to be somehow accurate. This call and insistence that there once was a Palestinian State which was destroyed by Israel in 1948 and then again in 1967 is a bald faced deceit being plied in order to lead to the destruction of Israel in stages, the stated plan of the PLO and Hamas as well as the other myriad of terror groups gathered against the Jewish State and Jews worldwide. Pushing this deception is simply an attempt to destroy the Jewish people starting by destroying Israel as the first step towards completing a genocide which has been ongoing throughout much of human history. This has nothing to do with a Palestinian State as much as it has to do with the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.

Concerning the proposal that Israel has not made sufficient quantity or quality of sacrifices to satisfy the Arabs or the rest of the World, let us first list the sacrifices made by Israel and the Jewish People since 1900 to the present. The initial lands set aside in trust by the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations Charter, the Peel Commission, the Versailles Treaty, and numerous other documents and treaties included all the lands from the Mediterranean Sea to the western edge of Iraq. These lands included all of what today is Israel, Gaza, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), and Jordan. These lands which were the British Mandate were in truth mandated to become the state for the Jews which Britain was tasked with facilitating the immigration of Jews from wherever they resided in the World in a voluntary manner through enticement and being under the protection of the British Empire until such time as the Jewish population grew to become the dominant peoples when a Jewish State was to then be established. The inks had barely dried on many of the documents and treaties validating this obligation when the British decided, to quiet Arab rioting and disruptions reward the recently exiled Hashemite family who had aided Britain against the Ottoman Empire during World War I with the country of Transjordan. The British made a promise at this juncture that all of the remaining twenty-two percent of the British Mandate lands would be reserved for the Jewish State. That remaining lands was all of the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. So, the Jewish People already surrendered under force of the British Empire all the British Mandate lands east of the Jordan River to the western edge of Iraq. This included seventy-eight percent of the lands which were theoretically held in trust for the Jewish State. This was only the initial surrender of land which was legally reserved or belonging to the Jewish State, now for the rest.

When the United Nations General Assembly suggested in November of 1947 that the Jews allow for another Arab State to be given as an Arab State and the Jews settle for only half of the remaining lands promised with two-thirds of the land given for the Jewish State being the Negev Desert and much of the remaining land being a small strip along parts of the coast near Tel Aviv and the northern mountains of Samaria while the Arabs were to receive the fertile valleys of the central lands and half of the shore line of the Mediterranean. The Jewish authorities were willing to accept this suggestion but the Arab powers declined this deal and declared a war of total annihilation against the nascent Jewish State as soon as it was declared in May of 1948. When the Arab war failed to destroy the Jewish State a peace was signed establishing the Green Line as a temporary armistice line that, at the insistence of the Arab powers, was demanded to never be considered or used to imply or be in actuality as a border. The reason around this was the Arab countries were determined not to recognize the Jewish State thus Israel could not be allowed to have recognized borders. The theory was that should they succeed in denying a universally recognized border it would be easier to challenge and destroy Israel in the future. After the peace was established, Israel’s neighboring countries returned to their terror style guerrilla warfare which had been being waged against the Jews of the area since the early 1920s if not earlier. At this time and over the next decade numerous Arab countries expelled their Jewish citizens often confiscating their property, jewelry, savings, businesses, and anything of value allowing them a suitcase or two which were to only contain clothing.

When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and barred all shipping from using the waterway the British and the French requested Israel to ally with them to reopen this vital waterway. When time ran out on the demand and the Egyptian President refused to concede to the demands from Britain and France, Israel fulfilled their part in the agreement while Britain and France moved to deploy troops and while Israel was taking the entire Sinai Peninsula the Egyptians relented and reopened the Suez Canal. The closing of the Suez Canal was the equivalent of an act of war which would have allowed Israel to retain the land gained but Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula almost immediately upon the request of the other World Powers, especially President Eisenhower who lead the demands upon Israel. When in 1967 the Egyptians closed off the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, they were breaking International Law and treaties thus committing an act of war. Egypt and Syria had both massed troops on Israel’s northern and southern borders while threatening to annihilate the Jewish state. By the end of the Six Day War and after Jordan joined the fight beside Egypt and Syria; Israel had once again taken the Sinai Peninsula as well as Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and the Golan Heights. According to International Laws it would be permissible for Israel to annex the lands gained in a defensive conflict. Despite being legally entitled to incorporate the acquired lands, Israel offered to return all the areas lost by each country during the conflict in exchange for peace and a treaty. Despite the three no’s of the Khartoum Declaration; no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel; Israel offered to return both the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza to Egypt and Judea and Samaria to Jordan when each made their peace with Israel. Egypt accepted the return of the Sinai Peninsula while rejecting the Gaza Strip and Jordan refused to reestablish their influence over Judea or Samaria releasing their claims ceding the lands to Israel. So, Israel gave back the Sinai Peninsula which is many times the size of Israel itself. Do not pretend that Israel has not sacrificed any areas of land in order to make peace with their Arab neighbors. Israel has returned the Sinai Peninsula twice even though anybody interpreting International Laws honestly and seriously would be forced to grant that subsequent to the Six Day War Israel had a legal right to retain possession of the Sinai Peninsula but chose to return the area as a gesture of good faith. Israel already offered to return the Gaza Strip and the West Bank but the Arab nations in negotiations relented any claim to these lands which means they were ceded to Israel, period. Even if Israel retains these lands lost to her in a war she was forced to fight in self-defense, Israel is under absolutely no obligation to grant citizenship to those people living in these areas, especially in the West Bank as they had been granted Jordanian citizenship thus are free to return to their countries of origin, Jordan and Egypt.

In regard to the first concept that Israel must take self-destructive and injurious actions in order to prove their desire for a real peace, this demand is about as disingenuous as it gets. A quick reading of the United Nations declarations, almost all of which are nonbinding, will reveal they all refer to the establishing of boundaries which allow for a secure and defensible border securing Israel’s determined requirements. Technically, this determination could allow Israel to declare that the Jordan River is necessary to assure a defensible border as a maximum claim but minimally the first ridge of the Judean and Samarian ridge are the absolute minimal requirement to protect Israel and her citizens from coming under direct sniper fire as well as placing spotters on these ridges overseeing all of the plains to the sea who could adjust artillery and other indirect weapons fire. The Green Line, the armistice line which the Arabs insisted should never be used to designate a border is also indefensible which leaves Israel so vulnerable to attack cutting the country in halves that they truly are suicidal borders. Before the Six Day War there were documented reports of sniper fire from the Golan Heights from Syrian snipers and Muslim snipers also shot at Jews who happened to come within their line of sight from their vantage points in East Jerusalem. The numbers of infiltrations by suicide bombers and terrorist teams to attack Israelis were near impossible to prevent before the Six Day War but have been successfully curtailed significantly since the building of the anti-terror fence. So, at a minimum Israel would need to retain at least the lands west of the fence and also need to retain at least a military presence along the Jordan Valley and western shore of the Jordan River. Demanding any less shows a complete disregard for the people of Israel and likely reveals an antagonism towards the Jewish State that can only be interpreted as a modern day anti-Semitism, nothing less.

All of the people who make endless and repetitious demands that Israel surrender this or give back this or establish another Arab state or release terrorists from detention and never make a single demand of the Arab side of the equation reveal their true aims through their one sided and critical singular attention to Israel while forgiving any behavior by the Arabs and Palestinians. Those who hold Israel to the strictest of standards while ignoring similar and worse actions by the rest of the world reveal their true colors through such specialization of their convictions. It has gone beyond rhyme and reason how much of the world demand of Israel total and complete capitulation to the Palestinians while asking the Palestinians if there is anything else they would like them to press Israel to surrender. Between much of the European ruling class, the world leaders controlling the United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations related Agencies and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and the Islamic apologizers, the demands upon Israel are slowly evolving into an endless list of suicidal demands with no coexistent requests made of the Palestinians and have relinquished their rights to claim the title of peace-makers. They are plain and simple agents for the Palestinians against the safety or even the continued existence of Israel. My suggestion is simple, just pose the simplest of requests of the Palestinians, ask that they recognize that Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish State. Once you get the Palestinians to agree that the Jews have any right to self-determination, then we will talk of what Israel needs to do to make peace. I bet you will claim that I ask the unreasonable and impossible. If what I ask is impossible, then what can we make of your request for Israel’s destruction through the cuts of a thousand concessions?

Beyond the Cusp