Requiem for Turkey, the Final Chapter

 

There have already been six-thousand arrests made since the abortive coup. Three-thousand Judges and prosecutors as well as three-thousand officers of varying ranks and soldiers all from lists supposedly gathered as a result of the coup. There will be mention of how these individuals were all cooperating and coordinated by Fethullah Gulen from Pennsylvania, USA. Sure, an aging Imam in Pennsylvania organized and commanded step-by-step including telling the pilots of F-16 fighters who had missile lock on President Erdogan’s jet while he was known to be onboard and never fired a single shot, some coup. This coup smells, plain and simple, smells. You do not produce a list of a complete list of judiciary and military personnel within twenty-four hours, if even that long as the list was obviously already prepared. The threat of such a purging may have triggered the coup attempt before the planning was complete if the coup was actually a subversive group. Had the coup been an attempt to return to actual free and open elections and a return to secular rule and bringing an end to the Muslim brotherhood agenda being enacted by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Freedom and Justice Party, then it would have been well worth supporting. Had that been the case, then constitutionally the entire military should have supported the coup. The fact that this was not the case is another accusation against Erdogan as he has flushed much of the military hierarchy in his last purge and with the current purge all will be loyal to Erdogan who will now wield absolute power.

 

The purge being executed in Turkey would have made Stalin proud. Erdogan will have little if any opposition left in all of Turkey once he completes gathering names from those already arrested and the completion of his purge has removed every vestige of secularism and of all Islamic opposition securing Erdogan President for life status. He and his Freedom and Justice Party, a political party that neither supports freedoms or justice, will rule Turkey with an unopposable outright majority for the foreseeable future. This was Erdogan’s intended desires even when he made his agreement with Fethullah Gulen in order to come to power in his initial election. In each election after this agreement Erdogan has done all in his power in order to attain an unopposable majority even if it, like the last elections, took a second election and the elimination of opposition to attain that majority. Erdogan has been anything but an angel in office often playing power politics and taking any and all steps as required, including intimidations, executions, assassinations and outright military pressures suppressing certain sectors of the society from participating in elections in order to reach absolute power. Absolute power without the need of any compromises has been the desired end which Erdogan has pursued ever since his first election and now that he has attained such he is not about to permit any challenge to his powers. This cements Erdogan as the singular choice for those who desire Sharia and spurn the ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his dream of a secular Turkey. It has been Erdogan’s desire from day one to impose Islamic law, Sharia, and he is closer than ever to accomplishing exactly that by ridding himself of all opposition, both secular and Islamic. Such a turn of events has been a long time coming and expected eventually by all who know Turkish politics and Erdogan’s desires from the beginning. He has succeeded where Egyptian President Morsi failed by being cautious and taking things one slow step at a time. That time has now passed and he will enact Sharia in rapid succession as he no longer need fear a challenge from any direction and should anybody be fool enough to oppose Erdogan and his Islamization of Turkey will find themselves either in a cell permanently or hanging from a rope. President Erdogan has attained what he always desired, absolute power which will in time corrupt him absolutely and thus be his failing as Sharia will be the instrument of his downfall.

 

 

Turkey had an opportunity to survive Erdogan and his Islamist desires but such a move by the military as required in the Turkish Constitution was repudiated and prevented by President George W. Bush and the European Union allowing for Erdogan to purge the General Staff of opposition while the current lists go deep within the officer ranks and lists many middle level officers and senior NCOs which will lead to more names under torture and other forms of distress leading to a witch hunt the likes of Turkey has never seen. In the coming weeks every and anybody who even the slightest might ever stand in opposition of Erdogan will be purged from Government, the military and anyplace else where influence might rise against him. This is the second purging executed by Erdogan and he is hoping the final time. The bad news for Erdogan is that the purges never reach an end once they have started as there will always arise those who will oppose his rule and some might even rise to the position of posing an actual threat. At this moment in time Fethullah Gulen holds this honor and anybody affiliated with him is in dire threat as Erdogan is intensifying his aim to remove any of those who are aligned with the man who was originally responsible for placing Erdogan in power. As the original person with whom Erdogan shared the reins of power, Fethullah Gulen has now become a threat which Erdogan is no longer willing to permit to exist as Fethullah Gulen could potentially stand in opposition to Recep Tayyip Erdogan any point in the future and actually pose a real risk to take power and end Erdogan’s efforts to subvert all of Turkey under Sharia. Gulen is an Imam who also supports democracy and universal rights, a kind of idiosyncratic personality who supports a reformed Islam which subverts itself to universal freedoms and equal rights. This purge is designed to put down any vestige of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the secular ambitions subverting them permanently placing all of society under the crushing oppression of Sharia where all independent thought and acts are punishable by severe and often life threatening punishments. Erdogan is shutting down all opposition securing Turkey in much the same manner as Stalin shut out all opposition in Russia within months of taking the reins of power in Soviet Russia. Ataturk is done and all who dreamed that the secular Turkey was protected by the military and would continue forever is done, dead and over. It actually was mortally wounded the last purge which was facilitated by President George W. Bush and the European Union which insisted that should the military ever move to remove a government, a responsibility placed with them by the Turkish Constitution, then Turkey could forget ever being permitted to join the European Union because no normal democracy relies upon the military to protect the realm. Well, Turkey was not a normal democracy and did rely on the military to protect Turkey from Islamic power grabs as Erdogan has slowly enacted since he first took power. Now even that avenue to correct the Islamization of Turkey has been decimated by Erdogan and is now an enforcement of Sharia and Islamic sovereignty over secular governance.

 

This should pose a threat to NATO, a threat which has long existed dating from the initial election of Erdogan. He started his slow but inexorable march towards Sharia from the very outset of his Presidency. His final aim was to alter the Constitution such that it would not only allow for Islamic Sharia governance but welcome such as the desired end all of any government. Soon it will be forgotten that Turkey had dreams of joining the free world and enjoying the advancements of science and technology as the sheath of Sharia falls over the land. Soon simply memorizing the entire Quran will be the ultimate conclusion of a successful education. The Quran will become viewed as the ultimate source for all knowledge as Sharia is incompatible with modernity. What is frightening is the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO which worked as a check on Russia during the Cold War. Such is no longer the situation with Russia standing their Mediterranean fleet docked along the Syrian coast in the Alawite areas which remain loyal to Bashir al-Assad and thus far not under direct threat by the Islamic State or other Islamist forces and are provided with support both from Iran and if needed Russia. Turkey has lost its importance to NATO and with its current threat to become another Sharia ruled Islamic nation should, as we have pointed to before, be dropped from the NATO rolls. The European Union (EU) has thus far refused entry to Turkey and should be glad they had such luck. We refuse to give the EU credit of foresight in not permitting Turkey entrance. We are not even assured that Turkey will not be permitted entrance into the EU as they start their expansion into the Middle East. Once Turkey has been permitted EU membership the ‘refugee’ problem will explode as Turkey allows free access to any and every Arab and Muslim desiring entrance to Europe, Germany in particular. Allow Turkey into the EU and they would become the welcome mat for all peoples desirous of leaving the poverty and backwardness of their Middle East and North African hellholes. From an EU affiliated Turkey these ‘refugees’ would be permitted free travel throughout the EU nations and be permitted settling wherever and whenever they desire and collecting the guaranteed wage proffered by most EU members.

 

The EU already desires entering the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as explained in their releases to the media and academia. We have discussed these plans in an article titled The European Union Actually Planning Empire and figure the EU plans on surrendering to Middle Eastern pressures. With Turkey on the fast track to Sharia and an end to freedom as the member states of the EU likely remember, the addition of Turkey as a first step to incorporating the Middle East and later Africa into EU membership, then the EU population had best prepare for having Sharia as the basis of their laws. As a member of the EU or just a member of NATO, Turkey holds a prestigious spot; especially when one considers that Turkey has the second largest military in NATO after that of the United States. As such Turkey demands a certain amount of respect but only as long as Turkey maintained a respect for individual rights and freedoms. No matter how the media and others wish to spin the new direction which Turkey has planted itself, those found to favor Erdogan should be watched with additional scrutiny. It is highly doubtful that there would be any changes in how the United States views Turkey as Erdogan has been best of friends with Obama as they are with Hillary through the Clinton Foundation and contributions made to influence Hillary when she was Secretary of State. These influences will likely spend a large amount in campaign contributions, both legal and otherwise as Hillary believes herself above the law; something made abundantly clear at her Senate hearings where she prevaricated, dancing around any truth until the lies became the facts in many a media report. Unfortunately for most Americans, this has become what they expect from the media and the editorializing of the news stories to fit their political leaning tainting many a news story until it is unrecognizable by the truth. Both ends of the political spectrum suffer this affliction.

 

Such twisting, messaging and reworking of facts will inevitably be the only permitted truth out of the media in Turkey. This, once it is not necessarily their fault as the Erdogan controlled government, courts and military; will own the truth and decide what the truth is for the people of Turkey and for the world for good measure. Erdogan knows that his citizens, at least the urban citizens, have access to the world media and thus his spin on reality must therefore become the only story permitted. He, even with the Muslim Brotherhood’s assistance, will find that accomplishing this task will be far more difficult than preventing the poorly executed coup from success. The obvious fact that Erdogan was at the cusp of executing a purge may have pushed those supporters of a truly democratic Turkey or possibly the supporters of Erdogan’s chief rival, Fethullah Gulen, who may have struck a deal with the democracy forces interested in reestablishing Ataturk’s secular Turkey dreams and aspirations for progress, into acting earlier than they had planned facing Erdogan’s imminent purging of their ranks. Whether this was a well played trap or a rushed into execution actual coup will make absolutely no difference down the road a piece. The only item which will matter is, who will survive the sweeping broom of Erdogan and the Islamists as they clean house in the judiciary and the military and likely soon the population at large. The next step is to take those they have rounded up and get public confessions from the most recognized names amongst them. This will definitely be followed by the extracting of names of others who may be of a similar mindset as the coup participants and the others on the prepared lists. This housecleaning was very obviously already planned and just as the coup may have been rushed into execution, so have the cleansing of the Turkish government, military and eventually the public itself.

 

We are witnessing the end of Turkey as it had been known and the birth of Turkey as the hoped rising leader to assume its rightful place as the leaders of the Islamic world. Turkey’s military is both large and well equipped with top of the line NATO equipment, arms and hardware. They have a modern Air Force equipped with F-16s, F-15s as well as other supporting aircraft. Their ground forces have top of the line main battle tanks and armored support. The infantry have modern weapons systems and are supported by highly accurate artillery. The size of the Turkish military is such that they will hardly miss the three-thousand officers arrested in relation to the coup and could lose an equal number before there may be some residual effects. The real question is what will Erdogan do once he attains ultimate and absolute power? Will he use his military against the Kurds, the forces supportive of Bashir al-Assad, attempt a breaching of the Israeli blockade of Gaza to help his Hamas allies, or is Erdogan really planning on a second Ottoman Empire as he has stated in the Past? These questions have ramifications within Turkey, as well as throughout NATO, to Israel, Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Erdogan has oft spoken of how he would be the right man to reestablish the Ottoman Empire as well as he has claimed the right to being the Caliph of the next real Caliphate which will be perched to spread Islam throughout the world vanquishing all other religions bringing every man, woman and child to bend and surrender to Allah. Sure that sounds crazy but one must bear in mind that it is solely Western Culture which has given up on world conquest, others still believe they were destined from birth to rule the world. Some such people holding to such insanities include but are not limited to North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, Russia’s President Putin, European Union and Germany’s Angela Markel, United States President Obama and presumed President Hillary Clinton, numerous institutions and financial giants, and of course the Grand Ayatollah of Iran and Erdogan of Turkey. This may sound absurd to you and me but it is real for these crazies who walk amongst us.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Islamic Reformer in Egypt

 

The video below is what will hopefully be the opening salvo placing Islam on a path to having its own reformation. The timing is pretty much right on schedule as Judaism had its expansionism where it took lands by force and eventually ended that stage of its history after which it only fought to retain the small area of lands which it occupied, a struggle the Jewish state is facing today as the forces of the world continuously attempt to slice and carve Israel up leaving an ever smaller piece of land for the Jewish state to continue existing. The first story telling of Avram’s belief that idolatry was an empty concept and likely led Avram on his quest for the knowledge which eventually led him to finding G0d tells of Avram going into the showroom where his family sold idols to make a living. Avram smashed all of the idols in the shop except the largest idol which he placed the large hammer he had used to smite the rest of the idols. When his father entered the shop he was beside himself and furious demanding that Avram explain what had happened. Avram calmly explained that when he arrived that morning he caught the largest idol, the one holding the hammer, smashing and destroying the other idols. His father rejected the ridiculous story yelling that stone idols were incapable of such acts which Avram simply and calmly inquired why his father and family were selling idols under a false claim. This episode was the beginning of the travels and tribulations for Avram as most certainly he was invited to vacate his family home by his irate and distressed father. The amount of anger Avram probably received from his father and the rest of the family likely drove him to the farthest lands he could find where he felt safe from their reach and where Avram’s life was drastically changed and he started the seeds of what would become Judaism. During this struggle to find truth Avram found G0d and upon G0d instructing him, he changed his name to Avraham.

 

Some five or six hundred years later, after the Jews had been enslaved in Egypt, their numbers had increased to a point that the Pharaoh saw the Jews within Egypt as a potential threat and so placed them in bondage such that they would not revolt and join with one of Egypt’s enemies thus toppling his rule. After four hundred years we are told that the Jews were led to freedom by Moses who gave the Jewish people the Torah gaining Moses the title of the law-giver. Moses also led the Jewish people back to their ancestral homelands, the lands which presumably were granted to Avraham by G0d. The path to freedom and liberty and the forming of a people who did not have their minds enslaved and fearful, as were the minds of the vast majority of the Jewish people whom Moses led out of Egypt; Moses had to turn the nation of Israel around and journey back into the dessert. Moses had initially led the Jews directly to what was to be their homeland but the test of the spies who told of a formidable peoples who had cities with insurmountable walls and themselves were giants with great strength which was given by all but two of the twelve men sent to reconnoiter the land and the people’s panic caused Moses to lead them back into the desert until a new generation had been raised not under the oppression of slavery and with the mindset of a freed people. This, we are told, took forty years of wandering through the desert. To make this telling short we will simply list that Moses did not enter the Promised Land but turned the leadership over to Joshua who led the Jewish people on their initial efforts to conquer what would become their homelands. Initially the Jewish people broke into their individual tribes with each being autonomous. It was not until King David melded the twelve tribes into one nation and King Solomon built the L0rd’s Temple, the First Temple, in Yerushalayim. This was the pinnacle of Jewish expansion and conquest of lands and the rest of time until the Romans dispersed the Jews to the far corners of the Roman Empire in order to make them cease to exist and to perish from the pages of history that the Jewish People lived in the lands straddling the Jordan River and across the plains of the Galilee, much of these lands are where Israel exists today. The Israelites took approximately fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred years from their founding as a people and a religion by Avraham to their conquest and settling their lands centered on Yerushalayim and the Temple. This was the end of military expansionism and the adopting a kinder and gentler Jewish People, the same area approximately that the Jews are attempting to rebuild their homelands which had sat desolate for almost two millennia. Without going through the periods of conquest, rebirth and reconquering their area across Europe but instead look to when Christianity also became nonviolent and no longer expansionary, one sees that this happened for the Christian faith approximately fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred years. Checking the Islamic calendar one would notice that Islam is approaching the time-period where both Judaism and Christendom went through their transformations and became less violent and mostly no longer expansionist. So, perhaps this video has arrived and this will be the first salvo for the transformation of Islam. Here is the video and more continues below, but first the video requires watching if you have not yet come to see it already as it did appear on the social media circuit.

 

 

 

 

Time will tell if Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the latest general turned leader of Egypt will turn out to be the man who began the reformation of Islam or at least the reformation of Islamic beliefs and thought in Egypt, the most populous Islamic nation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the location of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic university in the world, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. This was the University where el-Sisi gave his landmark speech. When I first viewed this speech made by el-Sisi I immediately feared for his life. There exists probably nobody in a more advantageous position to foment this transformation. The previous time such a reformation in Islam might have been possible was just after World War I with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the secularly based Turkey which he had placed what he considered an unimpeachable guardian of the works of his lifetime when he placed the enforcement of the secular state he had set for Turkey. Much of his work is being undermined and undone by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been slowly and inexorably sliding Turkey away from the standards put in place by Mustafa Ataturk a century ago and has already replaced the top generals thus coopting the military from interfering with his designs on returning Turkey to the glory of its time as the head of the Caliphate. Now we have General el-Sisi aiming to turn Egypt into a modern and functional Islamic state. One has to give Abdel Fattah el-Sisi credit for giving this address before the faculty and administrators of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the recognized premier and most prestigious Islamic institution for higher learning in the world. If Abdel el-Sisi can persuade the Imams who teach at Al-Azhar University to teach a reformed and flexible version of Islam more centered on the original teachings of Muhammad during the time in Mecca where he initially wrote the Quran and find some evidence or writing which defines Islam in the manners of Turkey then Abdel el-Sisi may turn out to be the man who started the reformation of Islam. What might the signs be that Abdel el-Sisi is making progress and what form and nature would a reformed Islam take?

 

We can all probably agree that the first accomplishment that Egyptian President and Islamic reformer must achieve will be remaining alive. The fate that awaited former Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar El Sadat after signing a peace treaty with Israel was that he was assassinated while watching a military revue when a soldier broke ranks and charged the reviewing stands and shot President Sadat at almost blank range. Anwar Sadat, like Abdel el-Sisi, was a general in the military before becoming President for Life and that relationship with the military was short-lived as it was from amongst the ranks of the military that the Muslim Brotherhood was able to reach out and assassinate him. So remaining alive and the symbol of a reformed Islam which is being practiced within Egypt, the largest Islamic state in the world, as well as taught at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the premier institute of higher learning and scholarly discourse in all of Islam, will produce a base for Islamic reformation in which Islam is transformed into a religion which is finally capable of living in a world in which other religions are deemed to be permitted and Islam will finally be able to be practiced side-by-side with the other faiths and will no longer pose a threat challenging all other faiths demanding to be the sole religion of the world. Making such a transition will take time, hopefully not too much time, but time just the same as such a transformation cannot be expected to take place overnight, or even in a single year.

 

The signs that such changes are being effectively spread throughout Islam and there will be more than sufficient pushback making the task of spreading the reformed version of Islam that much more difficult. There will be the resistance from the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia who with Saudi oil monies who have been at the forefront of Jihad as a violent manner of spreading Islam if coercion and conversion failed to convince a people to adopt their version of Islam. Then there is the not so small matter of Shiite Muslims as Abdel el-Sisi is Sunni and thus will not hold any acceptable powers of persuasion or authority, moral or otherwise unless Abdel el-Sisi is planning to conquer all of existing Islam in order to teach then a version which is non-violent. Then there are places where Islam is practiced solely because of their willingness to use brute force to enforce the laws of Islam as they perceive such. There are entities whose very existence is dependent on violent Jihad such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezballah, the Twelvers which had their influence solely through nonviolent means. Then there are the recent events in Paris which may have revealed something extremely threatening about Islam today. The two brothers claim that they received training and that the plans were worked through and rehearsed before they were sent to France to perform their deadly acts. This would not seem to pose any problem except that one brother claimed to have worked with al-Qaeda while the other claimed he worked through ISIS. If what this implies is true then the world and Abdel el-Sisi have a serious problem on their hands. The merging of the two of the largest, best trained, and militarily capable of ruling over entire nation is seriously frightening. The world can only hope that al-Qaeda and ISIS are not working together, even if only on Jihadist acts which both terror entities have an interest, then reforming Islam will have become that much more difficult. Abdel el-Sisi made clear that he was speaking about changing the thinking and not the religion, the interpretation and not actual Islam. What he likely meant by these declarations was that he aimed to preserve the writings of Islam and simply shift the emphasis to coexistence as the Quran was first written and that the changes he was purporting were things which the Quran already states but which are not currently stressed and utilized thus getting Islam to change from being a threat to the other religions of the world into a more gentile and pleasant form where it coexists with the other religions in the world. Abdel el-Sisi reflected on his realization that should Islamic practices continue insisting on violent Jihad and the transformation of the entirety of the world to Islam by spreading Islam by the sword that Islam was facing a problem. Abdel el-Sisi described that problem perfectly when he stated, “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Ummah to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!! That thinking, I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’, that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! Is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!!” Abdel el-Sisi has looked at the world through open eyes and seen that should Islam continue in its current path its hand will be against every religion, and every religion’s hand against Islam, and will in the end lead to the destruction of Islam, thus its path must change. Abdel el-Sisi has awakened from a nightmare revelation where he realizes that Islam will only continue if it refuses to continue raising its hands against the world thus he has taken upon himself the task of teaching the Imams and the presumed greatest of those preaching Jihad to now preach kindness. Can he win against the likes of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Feisal Abdul Rauf and Abu Hamza al-Masri? All the rest of us can do is pray that Abdel el-Sisi is making an honest attempt and not trying to aggrandize himself, and that should his intents be pure, from the depths of his heart, and guided by his reason, that he be blessed in his quest as, should he succeed, then both Islam, the Muslim world and the world as a whole will benefit from his efforts.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Welcome to the New Middle East

There are many who like to cast aspersions on United States President Barack Obama and his foreign policy expertise. Well, it appears that President Obama has done something which has seemed impossible to previous leaders from across the globe and within Israel; he has melded a unified Israeli population amongst its Jews, Christians, Druze and across many other lines of distinction. Even Haaretz has rebuked President Barack Obama, United States Secretary of State Kerry and their peace proposal which demanded an Israeli stand down and a complete surrender granting Hamas their wildest dreams for open borders and a complete end to the Egyptian and Israeli blockades which prevented Hamas importing more advances and threatening weaponry. The proposed solution from President Obama actually puts a number of otherwise unusual and unexplainable series of events of the past weeks and months into what now appears to have been a carefully crafted solution to what the American administration has viewed as the main problems and difficulties in the Middle East. Stick with me as this will take a while before it makes sense.

We have seen in the past how President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan both supported the government under Egyptian President Morsi and the parliamentary coalition headed by the Freedom and Justice Party, both being part of the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. When the Egyptian military under Army Chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed President Morsi and dissolved the Egyptian government claiming to be acting at the will of the Egyptian people, both President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan protested furiously and demanded that Morsi be returned and the elected government be returned to power. Even after the recent Egyptian elections to democratically choose new governance, Prime Minister Erdogan and President Obama persisted in their support and efforts to reinstate the Muslim Brotherhood into the leadership and control over Egypt. This unyielding support of the Muslim Brotherhood would eventually lead to the dissolving of any moral authority that President Obama could claim with many in the Middle East including numerous former American allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel.

In complete agreement with President Obama supporting the Muslim Brotherhood would come his similar support for the Muslim Brotherhood representative in the Palestinian political arena, Hamas. In the current conflict between Hamas in Gaza and Israel in response after Hamas operatives had abducted three Israeli teens and murdered them and the ensuing rocket barrages by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists on Israeli civilian populations from the southern tip of Israel almost to the Lebanon border in the north, there had been numerous calls for ceasefires, both general and humanitarian. Most of these requests were ignored by those launching the rockets from within Gaza, even those which Israel had accepted and was observing until the rockets raining down became impossible to ignore. Even the ceasefire requested by Hamas was broken by rocket fire within Gaza within the initial three hours of the twenty-four hour ceasefire. The attempts by the Egyptian government to form a ceasefire in which Israeli and Hamas representatives could meet and attempt to reach an agreement ending the violence were completely rejected by Hamas. This was not entirely unexpected as Hamas had been providing support and aid in the Muslim Brotherhood efforts to regain their control over Egypt from the military and the ensuing newly elected government which placed Hamas in a position where they would necessarily need to reject any proposals from an Egyptian government they refused to recognize as legitimate. This eventually led to the arrival of United States Secretary of State Kerry carrying out the vision of a new peace from President Obama.

Secretary Kerry attempted to force the view of the perfect resolution to the current Hamas Israeli conflict which would have permitted a cessation of violence, the selling point that bringing the violence to a close would be in Israeli interests, but only as a path to recognizing and granting the demands expressed by Hamas in order to end the violence. This included forcing Egypt to open the Rafah Crossings to complete and open trade as well as the opening of all crossings from Gaza into Israel and the termination of the maritime blockade of the Gazan coast by Israel. The plan Secretary Kerry presented at the behest of President Obama would have provided Hamas with completely open borders, a newly refurbished seaport and a rebuilt international airport with the complete freedom to import of arms to satisfy their wildest dreams. This would serve a number of principles and events which President Obama would fully support and facilitate. The most obvious would be empowering the Muslim Brotherhood by providing them a base of operations bordering the Sinai Peninsula where they could equip and train an army with which to regain their iron-fisted rule over Egypt. This would also speed up the completion of President Obama’s hopes for the new Palestinian Authority unity government by allowing Hamas to arm themselves with sufficient weapons to take control over Judea and Samaria (West Bank) in a similar coup as they used to take control of Gaza. The ideal unity Palestinian government according to President Obama placed Hamas in the leadership positions and forced Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas in a subordinate role if allowed any positions at all. It was this betrayal of Mahmoud Abbas which so infuriated Haaretz and those on the extreme left in Israel and managed to place them supporting Prime Minister Netanyahu and the continued offensive to completely end any Hamas in any future scenario for the Palestinian people.

The crucial overstep committed by President Obama was the timing of his phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sunday. According to the Israeli media, here is an excerpt of said conversation;

Obama: I demand that Israel agrees to an immediate, unilateral ceasefire and halt all offensive activities – particularly airstrikes.

Netanyahu: What will Israel receive in return for a ceasefire?

Obama: I believe that Hamas will stop firing rockets – silence will be met with silence.

Netanyahu: Hamas violated all five previous ceasefires; it is a terrorist organization which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Obama: I repeat and expect Israel to unilaterally stop all its military activity. The pictures of destruction from Gaza distance the world from Israel’s position.

Netanyahu: Kerry’s proposal was completely unrealistic and gives Hamas the military and diplomatic advantage.

Obama: Within a week of the end of Israel’s military activities, Qatar and Turkey will begin negotiations with Hamas on the basis of the 2012 understanding [following the end of Operation Pillar of Defense – ed.], including Israel’s commitment to removing the siege and restrictions on Gaza,

Netanyahu: Qatar and Turkey are the biggest supporters of Hamas. It is impossible to rely on them to be fair mediators.

Obama: I trust Qatar and Turkey, and Israel is in no position to choose its mediators.

Netanyahu: I object, because Hamas is able to continue and to fire rockets and to use tunnels for terror attacks…

Obama – interrupts Netanyahu mid-sentence: The ball is in Israel’s court – it is obligated to end all military activities.

This conversation took place in the midst of the meeting of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet. Their discussion was reportedly deciding what would be the goals going forward with the efforts against Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the rest of the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. They were discussing simply finding and destroying the tunnel systems or actually stepping the offensive to the next level and utterly destroying the infrastructure which supports Hamas and the rest of the terrorist rulers in Gaza.

There were a select few within Israeli society who called for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the casualties in Gaza claiming that the civilian casualties were reflecting harm on Israel. They touted the efforts as those they expected Secretary Kerry would present and that President Obama would offer. They honestly expected that Israel had a friend in the White House, not that Hamas had the White House completely supporting their end desires, open borders through which to import the weapons of their wildest dreams. When they realized that their support had been undercut and eviscerated every inch of support they thought they had supporting their position, these people were left standing with their mouths open wide in disbelief as they found they had been supporting a lie and that lie had been laid bare.

Now for a little conjecture which ties otherwise disparate events and weaves them into whole cloth. We had been perplexed as to what Qatar would do with eleven-billion-dollars in advanced military equipment from the United States with the blessings of the Obama Administration which includes Patriot missile batteries, Javelin anti-tank defense systems and Apache attack helicopters. Qatar already has sufficient forces to provide for their protection as there are sufficient United States military forces on bases within Qatar who could easily provide all the military protection they could ever desire. Additionally, the Qatar military predominantly consists of foreign paid fighters, so such additional military equipment made little sense. This produced a conundrum as Qatari military already had more than sufficient top line arms and advanced systems including armor, aircraft and artillery. But if Hamas could somehow procure open borders, and especially a seaport, then Qatar just might have had a solid reason for making such a procurement. Might it have been probable that Qatar was actually executing the shopping wish list of Hamas under an understanding that President Obama could force Israel into allowing Hamas to have open borders and to end the maritime blockade thus facilitating the export of somewhere in the neighborhood of eleven-billion-dollars of top of the line military equipment from Qatar to Gaza and into the hands of Hamas and their terrorist cohorts to use in what they perceived as their final destruction of Israel. This sounds completely unbelievable except for the fact that President Obama and Secretary Kerry sure seemed to support and strongly push to open the borders of Gaza and to empower Hamas and in turn the Muslim Brotherhood possibly making the return of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, placing the Muslim Brotherhood spawn, Hamas, in power over the Palestinians and giving Hamas the necessary weaponry to defeat their primary enemy, Israel. There is likely nothing which could have driven both extremes within the Israeli Jewish communities closer together, and people doubt that the American foreign policy does not have commendable outcomes.

Beyond the Cusp