How Can One Compromise with Those Holding Such Positions?

One of the leading representatives with Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, Jibril Rajoub, was giving an interview on Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV when he allowed the truth to leak out. Mr. Rajoub when queried as to whether the Palestinian would ever plan to return to negotiations with the Israelis replied that negotiations would be considered only if the Palestinian Authority’s preconditions are met. It was in further explaining what he viewed as the Palestinian Authority’s desire in place of negotiations that he stated, “Listen. We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.” Rajoub is the Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and chairman of the Palestinian Authority Olympic Committee. This should make for some serious doubts as to the sincerity of any position including compromise with the Israelis the Palestinian leadership express in interviews given to western media outlets. As many other as well as we have pointed out, if only the world would take the time, investing some effort even if only to satisfy curiosity and translate what the Palestinian spokespeople express when speaking in Arabic translating and placing them in their reports with equal prominence they give their articles denouncing Israeli efforts at self-defense, the public would be well served in making an informed and balanced evaluation of the realities of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Unfortunately, it appears that truth and honest reporting are the first two casualties in the mainstream media coverage of virtually all things concerning the Middle East and its relevance and importance to the current world struggles.

 

In another recent television appearance, another senior PA official, Sultan Abu al-Einein on Palestinian Authority TV stated about the recent stabbing murder of Evyatar Borovsky by a Palestinian terrorist recently released from Israeli custody, Salam al-Zaghal, “We salute the heroic fighter, the self-sacrificing Salam al-Zaghal. He insisted on defending his honor, so he went against the settler and killed him. Blessings to the breast that nursed Salam Al-Zaghal.” Such comments being broadcast on Palestinian, Lebanese, Egyptian and other Arabic broadcast media are far from being the exception, they are by far the rule. It is solely due to the willful negligence of our Western mainstream media that prevents such claims from being widely known and the hidden truth behind who are the true impediments to peace being more broadly recognized. When covering the Middle East much of the media either omits information or represents misinformation unchallenged as if it were fact. There is a near constant drumbeat claiming that the presence of Israeli communities on established Palestinian claimed land which prevents any possibility for peace and stands in the way of negotiations. What is not explained are the facts that the Palestinians not only claim the areas known as the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem but also the rest of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Galilee and all of the land that makes up Israel, every single square inch. The Palestinian leadership reserves the right to continue the resistance until all of Palestine is freed which is an actual declaration that the terrorist attacks must continue even after any peace accord which may be signed in the future. Whenever this fact is admitted in the Western media it is portrayed as belonging only to Hamas and Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are represented as being moderates who are willing to make peace. The unfortunate truth is that the Fatah, the PLO, the Palestinian Authority and the entire Arab League all hold fast to their claim to replace all of Israel with an Arab state and the eradication of any trace of Judaism as their only acceptable goal. Since the Khartoum conference of 1967 the entire Arab World has held to the Declaration of the Three No’s; No peace, No negotiations, and No recognition. Such a position does indeed make holding peace talks rather difficult.

 

The truths which are lost because of the ruse known as the Palestinian’s claim to reconstruct their ancient homeland called Palestine are that there never was in all of history such a place as Palestine, the British used the term Palestinian to describe the Jews who resided within the British Mandate, The Balfour Declaration addressed the rights of the Arab populations residing within the British Mandate, Transjordan (currently called Jordan) was created as the Arab State for those Arabs living within the British Mandate and required the Jews to relinquish their legal claim to 78% of the British Mandate, Israel was not required by UNSC Resolution 242 to relinquish any of the West Bank but to relinquish only those lands acquired as a result of the 1967 War that were not determined by Israel to be vital for secure borders. Of the lands under UNSC Resolution 242 Israel has already relinquished well over 75% of the area by returning the Sinai Peninsula to the Egyptians, and lastly the original conflict was never between the Israelis and the Palestinians but between the Arab World and Israel.

 

Even should one look at the Oslo Accords one would almost immediately draw some interesting conclusions. The Oslo Accords drew three distinct areas within what is often referred to as the West Bank, and was historically referred to as Judea, Samaria and Benyamin (which kind of explains why those wishing to prevent Israel from claiming these areas had to rename them), into three separate areas, A, B, and C. Area A was given over to complete control of the Arabs under the auspices of the PLO and Yasser Arafat. Area C was given over to total Israeli control. Area B was jointly controlled by both the Arabs and the Israelis. This makes an obvious demarcation suggesting the intended solution originally was that Israel required all of Area C as their minimum needs to have basic security and the Arab population already, as it existed, was concentrated within Area A. This left Area B which held some concentrations of Arab villages and farms, some open lands, and some lands claimed by Jews who had their lands confiscated by the Jordanians after the 1948 war which the Arabs referred to as the war to eradicate the Jews and Israel calls their War of Independence, which gives some insight to the perspectives of the two sides. Since Area B was placed under dual control one might be led to think that these were the lands disputed between the two sides as originally observed when the Oslo Accords were enacted. It also would be prudent to believe that the negotiations should have been over where the border should be placed in order to fairly divide the lands within Area B. Instead we have muddied the original intents to the point that there have been discussions of granting the Palestinian Arabs a corridor across the Negev Desert so that their areas near the Jordan River have easy access without entering Israel to Gaza and the Mediterranean Sea, never mind that by doing such Israel is cut in two and is no longer contiguous, as long as the Palestinian areas are contiguous everything should be wonderful. There was a period when Mahmoud Abbas felt he had such a strong position he began claiming the entirety of Jerusalem as the capital city for the Palestinians. Fortunately, somebody managed to disavow him of such a felonious concept. All of this is a prime example of how far removed today’s perceived realities are from the original ideas of the Oslo Accords, let alone from the decisions, treaties, conferences, and even the White Papers which were all ratified soon after World War I and blessed by the League of Nations, the United States, Russia, and even the leadership of the Arab World, King Faisal. Sometimes time worsen wounds, not heals them.

 

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

Israel is the Jews Last and Final Chance

The original promises made to the Jewish people at the beginning of the twentieth century through the end of World War I and the ensuing conferences, conventions and treaties that soon followed was intended to award the Jewish people with a State of their own. The British were to hold the lands referred to as the British Mandate which was intended to be held as an actual trust in its entirety until the Jewish people had sufficient numbers to take the lands and govern them with complete autonomy with a proviso to grant the Muslims, Christians and other peoples living inside these lands rights equivalent to those they held when under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. These terms and ideals were set forth in the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference, the Versailles Treaty, the original Charter of the League of Nations among other conferences and treaties and finally reconfirmed by the founding Charter of the United Nations where all previous agreements originated or enacted by the League of Nations were declared to continue to be valid. I am not going to go through all of these items step by step as I have done numerous times before and have also been documented by various academics and organizations which can be found easily with a little effort, time and a decent search engine.

When one realizes that the Jewish State, namely Israel, was supposed to be incorporated to include all of the British Mandate Lands this raises a question regarding how we ever came to the state of affairs as it is now defined. These lands ranged from the western border of Iraq all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. This would have included all of today’s areas of Israel (within the Green Line), the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and all of Jordan. When it is claimed that Israel should be required to surrender the lands which constitute the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the formation of an Arab State for the Palestinian Arabs as it is just under one quarter of the land which Israel could conceivably try to claim, they are ignoring a fairly large piece of real estate, namely all of Jordan. Jordan was part of the lands which were promised to be kept as a trust by the British along with the areas west of the Jordan River for the state of Israel. The British reneged on this promise and took the lands east of the Jordan River which constituted approximately 78% of the Mandate Lands reserved for the Jewish State and formed what was then referred to as Trans-Jordan and was intended to be a state for the Palestinian Arabs placed under the rule of the Hashemite Kings. Truth be told, Israel has already had over three fourths of the lands set aside by treaties and conferences by many of the world powers in what was a bold faced illegal theft by the British done to repay the Hashemites and the Arabs who had assisted in the fight against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Surely that was sufficient land taken from Israel to allow the Palestinian Arabs to have a country of their own, but apparently the world has a faulty and short memory.

Another point often claimed to be investigated by the properly concerned are the conditions under which the Arabs within Israel are presumed to be denied rights, ignoring the equality and rights guaranteed by Israel to every one of its Arab citizens. Contrary to the propaganda we hear, there are more than 1.6 Million Arab citizens within Israel. All of the 1.6 Million plus Arabs residing within Israel have exactly the same rights as do every other citizen of Israel including the Jewish citizens. They have the right to vote, hold political office, work in any field they desire, be judges, serve in the military, be in the police, own land, practice their religion, and every other right a citizen of Israel is granted. Unlike the Jews and Druze who are required to serve either in the IDF or approved community service related work, the Arabs are not required to serve in the IDF or do the required community service related work though they may do so and many do avail themselves of these opportunities. If one should desire to be technical, Israel is only required to allow the non-Jewish citizens of the state the same rights they held while under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Such rights would not include the right to vote and would have numerous other limitations and restrictions as the Ottoman Empire was not an open, free, democratic society as is Israel. Thus, the non-Jewish citizens of Israel being granted the exact same rights as the Jewish Israelis actually goes well beyond the requirements of the various treaties, conferences, conventions, and other agreements. But there is one other item that makes Israel have somewhat a different meaning and importance for the Jewish People.

The Palestinian Arab claim their interest in the lands due to the fact that these are their ancestral homelands which are claimed to have belonged to their people, according to some claims, for as much as 9,000 years, using the historic age of Jericho as the reference for being the beginning of the Palestinian history. Of course then there are the claims that the current day Palestinian Arab people are the descendants of the Phoenicians, a seafaring people who migrated to the area from the area of the Greek Islands. The claim made by modern Jews is that they are the decedents of the Israelites who trace their lineage beck to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and who first lived in the areas in and around Hevron before spending four hundred years in Egypt before returning to these lands at the end of the Exodus out of Egypt led by Moses as far as the Jordan River. From that point it was Joshua who then proceeded to bring them into the land where they took possession from the Canaanite Tribes who resided there. But all of this is ancient history which leads to claims and counter-claims and endless arguments, strife, and what we know affectionately call the Arab Israeli Conundrum, aka the Arab Israeli Conflict. But what is the modern importance of Israel to each side?

The Arabs wish to establish a Palestinian Arab state which would bring the total number of Arab states in the Middle East from the 22 which currently make up the Arab League to 23. For the Arabs the replacing of Israel with a twenty-third Arab state called Palestine is not so much the founding of another Arab state as it is denying the existence of a Jewish state in what they define as an all Arab area under their complete and total control. Many in the PLO leadership have even stated that once they have erased the Zionist Entity they would immediately petition to be included as part of Jordan and not even bother with establishing Palestine as they do not want to rule over a state with all the responsibilities and problems, they simply want to deny the Jews a state where the Jews rule. The Palestinian Arabs simply want for the order of the world to be in alignment with their idea of what makes sense, namely the Jews are to be tolerated as long as they know their place as second class denizens under the rule of their Arab masters.

The Jews, on the other hand, want only to reclaim what they claim with the Old Testament as their proof is their homeland and to live in peace there after almost two thousand years of being the world’s foremost homeless people. This would be the reestablishment of the only Jewish state that has ever existed and not an additional Jewish state but the reestablishment of the only ever existing Jewish state. The claims that the Jews wish to rule all of the lands from the Tigress River to the Nile River, aka Greater Israel, are a false claim stated to place fear in many Muslim and Arab people who would be presumably conquered by this super-sized Israel. As stated earlier in this article, the Jewish people have already released claim to all of what they had been promised by recognizing Jordan and quitting any claim to the lands east of the Jordan River. After a defensive war with numerous Arab countries the Israelis gave back the Sinai Peninsula even at the price of destroying numerous Israeli neighborhoods which had been built there simply to achieve a cold peace with Egypt. Warm relations would have been an answer to dreams and hopes, but you settle for what is achievable. But Israel is even more than the historic homeland of the Jews; it is also representative of their religious covenant with G-d. That is what makes this little strip of land so unbelievably valuable and irreplaceable to Jews.

But for those who prefer a more earthly reason, there is one more reason, existence without the need to be constantly looking over one’s shoulder and not having to live with a suitcase always packed in order to flee at a moment’s notice should the winds of fate change. Jewish history is a story of places they used to live. The Jews have been blamed for any ill that befell a city, state, country or empire and then enslaved, slaughtered, dispossessed, oppressed, or attempted to be eradicated from existence and history itself from somewhere near two hundred countries, nations, empires and kingdoms. The Jews were dispersed and driven from their historic lands last by the Romans somewhere around 73 AD and forced to the farthest corners of the empire in an attempt to drive them from the pages of history. This was how Rome eliminated troublesome peoples and in virtually every case the people so treated were never again to be heard from, except for the Jews. From that fateful date of the Roman exile, the Jewish people lived until May 14, 1948 as, at best, guests and otherwise as unwanted or despised people always in some other peoples lands. Whenever diseases, plagues, famine, economic failures, or any conceivable hardship came upon the lands in which the Jews resided, they were often singled out as the cause and treated accordingly. This spanned the spectrum from being driven from the area simply carrying what they could and being dispossessed of the rest to imprisoned, enslaved, burned at the stake, slaughtered in pogroms, all the way to systematically hunted down and destroyed like one would a pack of rabid dogs during the Holocaust. After this final and most heinous of all victimizations during World War II the world finally came to allowing the Jews to return to their ancestral homeland. Such a return had been denied the Jews by the British who had been assigned with coordinating and facilitating in order to establish a Jewish state but instead cut Jewish immigration to 75,000 a year with the White Paper in 1939. This act assured trapping the millions of European Jews within Europe which resulted in their being eradicated by the Nazis. The British were fully aware of what was occurring to the Jews in Europe and had even been requested by Hitler to allow them to be exiled to the lands of the British Mandate but the British would not hear of such. They quoted their need to placate and acquiesce to the demands of the Arabs throughout the Middle East where the British already had sufficient troubles with the native populations. Israel is the only place Jews have ever been allowed self-rule. Israel is the only place throughout all history where Jews have been permitted to defend that which is theirs. Israel is the only place Jews have ever desired to own and call home. The Jewish people do not want to take other peoples lands nor do they desire to live forcing themselves upon others, they simply wish to live in their ancestral lands and are willing to have others who wish to live peaceably live amongst them. But, apparently that is too large a request to be allowed.

If anyone wished to acquaint themselves with the state of the lands and the near total lack of a society which existed in the areas that today make up Israel, including Judea and Samaria, need look no further than the writings by some of the English officers and military men and governors who were assigned and posted to the Mandate Lands. Without exception they described a land which had apparently been deserted by nature and whose fate was barren scrub, rock, swamp, and assorted wastelands. They could read Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) writing and account of his visit to the Holy Land in the second half of the Nineteenth Century where he described a land so desolate that even the camel and the cactus had forsaken it. They could read the Ottoman accounts, the few there were, of the lands and the descriptions of the grants given to absentee landowners who never visited their holdings and often gave little bother to even collecting rents due them from those unfortunates who resided on those lands. There is even the anecdotal accounting reputedly given by a Gaza grandfather to his grandson sometime in the early 1970s where he commented that the rains had not fallen in all his memory and that of his father and his father before him until the Jews returned, then the rains fell twice a year as one would expect. Such are the descriptions of the land given the Jews to inhabit as their own. One might be put to ask is Israel that consists of the lands from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea too much for the Jews to request and be awarded. Apparently so. And one last question, how does the world explain that the area named Judea does not belong to the Jewish people, honestly, how?

Beyond the Cusp