American Delegation Visits Israel About Embassy

 

United States delegation led by Congressman Ron DeSantis (R-FL) visited Israel this past Saturday and Sunday and has studied the possibility of placing the United States Embassy in Jerusalem. In the past, Palestinian and Jordanian leaders have warned moving the embassy could spark violence in Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Middle East region as a whole. We posit the question of how one would be able to find this any different than the current situation. Obviously there would be little if any noticeable effect on Syria, Yemen, Iraq, the Sinai or even Turkey which has had a number of large terrorist bombings in the past few months. In Israel and the Palestinian Authority ruled areas it runs hot and cold on the levels of terror all depending on the signals they get from the ruling media. When Abbas takes to the airwaves and claims that he cannot control the uprising which is solely the expression of the desperation of the people oppressed by Israel, they know that this means it is time to rise up and try to kill Israelis by any means available. Then whatever means they find, stabbings or ramming with vehicles become the name for that Intifada which was how the last Intifada was called the Stabbing Intifada. The Palestinians decided by personalizing their uprisings instead of numbering them they would not be drawing attention to their nearly constant level of violence. Though Israeli defensive measures brought the level of stabbings down measurably, we still have the vehicular assaults as proven by the recent truck attack in Jerusalem. The reality is that the threat of added violence is exactly that, a threat. There will be no change in the levels of violence, especially in Jordan where their militarized law enforcement will not tolerate even peaceful demonstrations, let along any violence. Should Mahmoud Abbas decide to elevate the levels of violence and terrorism against Israel, then Israel will find the solution and implement one as rapidly as possible. That would be an Israeli problem and should have little effect upon the American decision to locate their embassy in the Israeli Capital City of Jerusalem. Israel promises that your embassy will be safe and guarded equally in Jerusalem as it has been in Tel Aviv and those guarding it will feel a small measure of greater pride guarding it in Jerusalem, trust us.

 

United States Embassy Tel Aviv, Israel

 

But it will cost the United States status in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as the Arab and Muslim worlds react to the move. Well, allow us here in Israel to give you a little insight. You already lost that little edge you are so afraid of losing just by bringing up the subject for debate. Further, the level of loss will continue to increase for as long as the debate continues. Now there are two means of ending the sliding effect of the United States in the MENA world’s view, either by moving the embassy or declining to move the embassy and announcing that you are fearful of moving the embassy. Oh, you claim that fear would not be the reason; it would be so as to respect the feelings of the nations who have stated their opposition. Really, you think that works? Here is the reality, should you decide not to move the embassy then whatever amount of respect you believe you had lost in the MENA world would instantly be surpassed immeasurably. By not moving the embassy you signal now that you can be bullied by the nations of MENA simply claiming that your intended act would hurt their feelings and you have no stomach for any disagreement, let alone an actual fight. You claim you really want to not lose any respect from the MENA nations by moving the embassy but the truth is to regain everything that they claim you are and will be losing by moving the embassy and gain measurable amounts of extra credit for making the correct choice, then simply move the embassy because ignoring threats and saying what you believe and then acting on it counts for everything in the MENA world.

 

What you need to learn if you do not yet understand the MENA world is that everything is a threat and every threat is a bluff. The only thing which gains you respect is calling everyone else’s bluff. When you call their bluff, then they need to decide whether going through with their threats is worth what it may cost in the future and if they back down, how they can mitigate their timidity. Their reaction to your not moving the embassy is pocketing the knowledge that if their world threatens violence then the American back down. This will only serve to make their actions towards the United States as cowardly and able to be scared by threats of violence. Once you decide to move the embassy, the ones who threatened you will influence others from their world to join in making greater threats hoping to still make the United States back down. The announcement that you will move the embassy threatens their image of the United States as a nation which can be backed down with simply threats as that has happened ever since the first announcement for moving the embassy in the 1990’s. These threats will continue and grow or lessen according to the believed potential for the United States to move the embassy. Remember that a certain level of violence equal to the ability of the terrorist organizations to penetrate the security and intelligence of the United States exists at all times. Their efforts increase whenever the United States either acts against the terror interests or when the United States announces plans that those controlling the terror interests wish to prevent.

 

 

There is but one means to remove the threat level over moving the embassy to Jerusalem once and for all, move the embassy. Do not even announce the move, simply in secret in concert with the least number of Israeli departments and individuals as the less number of people knowing of the plans, the less the possibility for any leaking of the plan. It should be possible for the United States to build an embassy building using security approved construction personnel from the United States who can hold to a cover story. Make the building being constructed be referred to as a new office building from where a series of headquarters of American companies will be operating. This would qualify for why a building is being built by American workers in the center of the modern downtown of central west Jerusalem. Then once the building is completed and everything is readied for operations, the grand opening can reveal the new name which will appear on the outside of the building which has been covered since it was first mounted. The cover comes off and it states “United States Embassy” and then be ready for about ten to twelve weeks of screaming and shoe throwing. Place additional Marines around every MENA embassy and meet the reaction head on. Once the MENA nations and groups have vented sufficiently to make their chest beating need be satisfied they will quiet back to normal, which is not all that quiet as the NSA, CIA, Military Intelligence and other data gathering agencies can tell you and back it with evidence in spades. Then everything can return to its nominal level, not its normal level as nothing about the MENA nations of the world can be deemed normal, so nominal will have to suffice.

 

Imagined New Style for United States Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel

 

Further, the embassy will be in Jerusalem, West Jerusalem but still Jerusalem, and that will set a precedent for other nations and it will remove the claims from some out of the MENA world who claim that all of Jerusalem belongs to Islam and that neither the Jews nor the Christians have any rights, claims or history to or from Jerusalem and that neither Jews or Christians ever held Jerusalem because before Islam conquered Jerusalem it had no previous history because everything in Islam begins and ends with Islam and no other existence holds even the level of fancy as far as the Muslims are concerned. Moses, not a Jew, Noah, well, he really was not a Jew, Abraham, not a Jew, Isaak was never taken for sacrifice on Mount Moriah because that was Ishmael just as the Koran says and the Hebrew Bible is a misrepresentation because Judaism made up everything because only the Quran is true and the Christian Bible is also just a pack of lies and misrepresentations also because only the Quran tells truths and Jesus was an Islamic prophet, nothing more. Jesus will play a role in the end times according to the Quran. Jesus will return as a prophet readying the world for the return of the true final prophet of Allah, Jesus will return and make the world suitable for Muhammad who will come and lead the world into the age of perfection Islamic style. With this as the prescription for our future according to the Quran and Islam, what possibly could be the terrible consequence for moving an embassy to the Israeli capital city? Face it, there is nothing to fear but prolonging the agony by continuing the debate as the law declared the embassy move into law and all any President can do is prolong the agony so why not go for the ecstasy and just move the embassy to Jerusalem and get ‘er done!.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Jewish Divide Over Trump Very Telling

 

Here’s a news flash that the media thus far has refused to mention, there are many Jews who support President Donald Trump. The media has been quite vocal of those Jews who are vehemently protesting the Trump Presidency. Probably the most telling example has been the Senate hearings to approve his Ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman. We will gladly grant the media that President Trump’s choice for Ambassador to Israel of David M. Friedman is a novel appointment when compared to previous appointments made by all the previous Presidents throughout Israeli history. There have been Ambassadors, Middle East Special Councils, Palestinian Israeli Peace Ambassadors and all sorts of other appointments made concerning Israel and her Arab neighbors plus the fact that American Ambassadors to the United Nations often have to interdict in matters concerning Israel, especially in United Nations sanctions against Israel often brought by Arab and European nations at the behest of the PLO or Palestinian Authority (PA) which have more often than not been vetoed by the United States Ambassador.

 

All of these past officials have more often than not been career Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) with the remainder have been political appointees. There have been more than a few of the most recent Israeli Ambassadors and Special Appointees who have been Jewish and thus touted as being most obviously as pro-Israeli. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Some in particular, Thomas R. Pickering, Martin Indyk and Denis Ross have been some of the most antagonistic to the Israeli cause. Both Martin Indyk and Denis Ross were said to be very much favorable to Israel because of their being Jewish which is like claiming that someone had to be favorable to illegal immigration across the southern border because they were Hispanic, an insult and very likely false. Indyk and Ross attempted to force Israel to make concessions in exchange for empty promises which had been given by the PA before and never acted upon or immediately broken often with an in-your-face attitude. David M. Friedman is a different Jew, he is also a Zionist. This is a first for an Ambassador to Israel and many Israelis are expecting great things if only our leaders can be bold, even brash for a change. Some here in Israel have placed David M. Friedman as being to the right and more Zionist than Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu or most of the other Ministers of the Knesset. Additionally, Israelis have begun to believe that President Trump will be good for Israel providing Israel acts good for Israel.

 

Additionally, Orthodox Jews mostly voted for President Trump over Hillary Clinton while Democrat Jews voted almost universally for Hillary Clinton and are extremely upset by her loss and screaming mad over President Trump. During the hearings for Ambassador David M. Friedman there were Jews disrupting the hearings blowing Shofars. Traditionally the sounding of the Shofar other than as part of religious observance has been used as a warning sign often used as an alarm that enemies were advancing or other calamity. Sounding the Shofar at the hearings for the new Israeli Ambassador they were meaning that a calamity was occurring threatening Jewish lives. Their actions were over the top as no lives were being endangered and no emergency was coming for Jews and if anything this appointment was going to be good for Israel, a new page in appointments of advisors to Israel.

 

This brings us to what for us is one of the saddest things we will ever discuss, Israel and the American Jewish left. Often at demonstrations denouncing Israel some of the most virulent demonstrators will come from leftist, liberal Jews. These Jews are more attached to their leftist principles than they are to Torah and Israel. These are Jews who will never consider making Aliyah and were the members of our Synagogue who when we made Aliyah asked us why in the world we would want to go live in Israel of all places. They were stunned that somebody they knew would do something which was such an anathema to them. These were the same members of the Synagogue who had to get past the horror that we might actually be Republicans as we had admitted. Many initially thought we were joking and trying to be funny and some when they realized we actually were Republicans never spoke with us again. Israel has actually become a divisive issue in the American Jewish community.

 

For Jewish Democrats it is a serious problem. There are still a goodly number of friends to Israel remaining in the Democrat Party but their numbers are diminishing and some have actually needed to go underground in their support. Pro-Israel Jews in Reform Synagogues have to act like the Marranos during the Inquisition where they practice their Judaism silently and with little visible evidence at home and were good Catholics in public even to going to church daily and every action including rosaries and confession to avoid the Inquisition and the tortures and death sentences which would be their punishment if their being a Jew was ever rooted out. These new Marranos support Israel but must do so while in conversations in Synagogue or at Temple functions, as most Reform Synagogues refer to themselves as Temples; something less Jewish in its identity, these Jews either remain silent on issues Israel or denounce those sensitive issues such as Bibi Netanyahu, the greatest force of evil in the Middle East.

 

 

For far too many American Liberal Leftist Jews, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has been the reason why President Obama was unable to make peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis and had Netanyahu simply followed the instruction, the orders from on high at the Oval Office, then Israel would have peace. There are no arguments which they would ever accept and they honestly believe that the Arabs would be happy if only Israel would surrender everything to the Green Line and half of Jerusalem and all the terrorism and demands would end. Never mind that Mahmoud Abbas refuses to even say, let alone guarantee, that the terror and violence would end with such an agreement, he has instead stated that any agreement would be but the initial step to the removal of the Zionist entity and that all resistance, that would be terrorism, would continue until the Zionist entity has been eradicated and the Jews defeated completely. Never mind that in Gaza there is Hamas which has promised to murder every Jew on Earth which includes these American Leftist Jews who happily claim that Hamas can be reasoned with. One would think with the history of the Jewish People, especially their recent history, specifically since the last century, that when some group of extremists claim they have designs for the complete annihilation of the Jewish People they would take things like that very seriously.

 

That Israel, and even additionally President Trump to the point of violence and lost friendships, have become the two most divisive issues in the Jewish community is the saddest commentary one could imagine. Israel, the hope and the prayers of Jews for thousands of years now a matter for derision and splitting the community is beyond sadness. Israel and Jerusalem, the final desire of every Seder is, “Next year in Jerusalem” and Psalms 137, Song of Babylon, which demands that as a member of the Jewish People, Jerusalem must be our first love and, allow me to quote, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill (strength). (And) May my tongue cling to my palate, if I do not remember you, if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my (chief and most important) joy.” Yet somehow Israel, and even the surrender of the Old City of Jerusalem and the surrendering of the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives Cemetery, has become a sticking point, an issue for debate and for too many simply something too trivial to be bothered with when supporting those for whom Israel is a bother is the real issue. How can Jews unfriend other Jews or shun them in the Synagogue because they support Israel. They demand, ‘how can one support Israel’ which is simply just for those other Jews, those religious Jews, those Jews who are just too Jewish and the ones the anti-Semites hate. They believe that because they support the right causes and they rub elbows with the right people that should the anti-Semites ever get their dream again and Jews are hunted down that they will be granted exceptions because they are those good Jews. They do not realize that to an anti-Semite the only good Jew is a dead Jew. But these Jews would gladly sacrifice those Zionist crazies if it would advance their standing at the club, or even sadly their Synagogue. We hold some truths to be very troubling and beyond our ability to accept. How can there be an ingathering when so many Jews refuse to even accept the concept of a Jewish State, a Jewish People or of Hashem and instead view their Synagogue as just another social club. This makes one remember that a minority of slaves left Egypt with Moses and a similarly percentage returned after they were liberated from Babylonia by Cyrus the Great and the majority either remained in Babylon or migrated to the major cities of Persia.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

My Guilty Verdict of Identity Political Sins

 

I awakened this morning realizing the horrid truth that I am an affront to identity political fears. Of all my sins, probably my most egregious is that I am a male. Not just male but also heterosexual. Well, I may as well admit to my further crimes, I am white as well. At least I do not fit the final box on the White, Male, Heterosexual privilege chart, I am not a true WASP as I am not Protestant. But as it turns out, I may be in an even worse category; I am a Jew, and not just a Jew but a Zionist and conservative Jew. I may as well admit it as it has cost me dearly in the past making me a pariah in more than one Synagogue across the fruited plains and both coasts as well. But I am even worse than the run of the mill White, Male, Heterosexual, Conservative, Religious and pro-Israel individual, I am proud of my guilt because I know that there is no real guilt to be had. The only true sin I have committed is not having any difficulty owning up to my presumed guilt and will gladly profess my preferences before my accusers. Of course this simply infuriates them further as they only gain advantage when people like me act ashamed and defensive to their accusations. Me, I simply revel in them and laughingly watch as those who would greedily stand pointing out my guilt over my groveling and writhing body on my face and begging forgiveness as they haughtily instruct me that I must confess my sins. They cannot utilize someone who refuses to beg and instead stands proudly before them stating that sure I am exactly what you accuse me of being, so what! That is the wrong stance and they are used to people that apologize for their sins, not reveling in them and using the identities as a badge of honor that it should be and not a sash of shame. I will not eat humble pie nor will I claim to be sorry for my accomplishments as I earned each and every one and none were simply given to me because of my so-called privilege.

 

You see I refuse to play by the rulebook of Identity Politics. This book states that in order to win every argument one only need accuse the other side of committing some unforgivable sin. The person is white or male or heterosexual or conservative or belongs to any group which can be cast as a majority, well, except being male as men are actually a minority. Their rules are to hit any sensitive spot where they can accuse you of being one of the deadly privileged kinds of personhood and if no prime example exists, then they just throw accusations until they hit a nerve. The accusations start with the obvious but let us say their adversary is someone such as Star Parker who is an American syndicated columnist, Republican politician, conservative political activist, author and very attractive (see below). Her disqualifying identity is that she is famous and even more unapologetic than I. They would strike her for being a known conservative and a Republican and those would be the last words they manage before she would tear them apart piece by piece. That is a side effect of proud and informed conservatives; we usually are not at a loss for words. But even those of us who are capable of giving as good as we get, if not better, is that we are defenseless against the current dilemma, the massive attacks such as are showing at Republican politicians’ town hall meetings.

 

Star Parker

 

Protesters exploded in anger after a chaplain prayed in the name of Jesus at a town hall meeting in Louisiana hosted by U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy. They did just as decent, or should we say indecent, a job heckling at a decorated Viet Nam veteran when he attempted to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The hecklers shouted things such as, “Pray on your own time. This is our time,” and “Amen. Let’s get on with it,” while others insisted, “Separation of church and state” and so on and so forth. Chaplain Sprague told the media, “I’ve never been shouted down throughout a time of prayer like that,” adding “I’ve never been in a situation like that. It’s sad there wasn’t honor and respect for God.” Cassidy said in remarks reported by the Times-Picayune, “Wow, they booed the name of Jesus.” Some mentioned that they were suspicious as to the origin of these disrupters as they claimed people from their area would never have acted in such a manner. Our sense was it had been noted that there were numerous vehicles which arrived early with out of state license plates which we found to be suspicious explaining why the event had been hijacked with some of the locals betting that the disrupters were likely paid for their disruptive and disgusting performances. Their providers likely should be happy as it appears they got their money’s worth.

 

 

This has been the recent explosion across the width and breadth of the United States at numerous conservative town hall meetings held by Republicans. These have been in concert with the events we spoke of in our article from yesterday titled, “The Left and Their Dream with the Shadow Government” where there have been concerted rioting taking place in major liberal cities and college campuses with many locations security personnel and police instructed to stand back and allow the “demonstrators” space to express themselves. In an event not too long ago where Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to give a performance or something at the University of California Berkley Campus where because he was perceived as a conservative speaker, he is more libertarian than conservative, there was a riot staged with the campus police instructed not to interfere resulting in over one-hundred-thousand-dollars damages to the campus before everything calmed. He was denied speaking so their actions were rewarded and this will serve Berkley, the birthplace back in the 1960’s of free speech, poorly and probably just serve to encourage a much larger disruption the next time anybody considered controversial is invited by anybody to appear.

 

All of these actions have been far from amusing and have served to reinforce that my making Aliyah was the correct action even though my doing so had nothing to do with American political scene, it was the result of a promise made to myself when I was quite young, nine to be exact. My wife probably would have preferred my informing her of this little item before we were married and the look on her face when I announced we were moving to Israel one evening in passing as if it was simply another casual remark. Her reaction was less than casual and in the end we made the trip and it has made us both quite happy to be here. She still holds dearly to her Americanism and the politics are a sort of interest though she does not dwell politics quite as I do. She spends more time socializing and having events with other ladies and groups, often dragging me along (well, not always dragging as I do enjoy many events and am going to pay for admitting this). Perhaps we can take less of a panicked look at events in the United States, at least far more relaxed than our friends still back there, especially those residing near and about the nation’s capital. That space allows for a more unattached review where things do not strike us as if it were right outside. For that we have our own set of political and other possibilities which take center stage over the events in America, as they should. Still, we at BTC still need to stay up to date on events back in the United States in order to write on them, so we still know and react to events, just do not need to worry if the demonstrations will be coming down our street or block our way to the store or wherever. As stated, for that we have our own difficulties from time to time.

 

Beyond the Cusp