Weeds in the MENA Garden Conclusions

 

Here is a link. We covered the political upheavals, terror threats, alignments, backing of destabilizing forces and general conditions for all the countries from Western Sahara and Morocco to Iraq and Iran. This article will try to look at the reasons and future mostly dealing with the Middle East after a brief summary on North Africa. For reference here is a map of the area we will cover which adds Turkey to our considerations as they had a few mentions previously.

 

(MENA)
Middle East and North Africa
Including Turkey and Iran
With North Central Africa

 

The first step to understanding the area is to determine which nations are playing the controlling interests and what the status of the remaining nations have especially their ties to the controlling players (We can think of this as a game of RISK where only the MENA nations get to play). The players who are vying for the position of leader of the Arab and Muslim world do include one non-nation player which we should cover initially including naming some of their aliases. That force is the Muslim Brotherhood which never actually uses their real name when interacting. In Egypt their political influence is through the Freedom and Justice Party (Arabic: حزب الحرية والعدالة‎). Egypt’s former President Mohamed Morsi was a Freedom and Justice Party member and they still hold a plurality though not an outright majority of the Egyptian Parliament. Currently the Freedom and Justice Party holds 47.2 per cent of all seats in the country’s lower house of Parliament, while allied Islamist parties al Nour Party holds 24.7 and al Wasat Party holds 2.0 per cent, respectively. This gives the Islamists in the lower house of parliament a total of just under 74 percent, a solid majority and a limit on President Sisi’s ability to govern and accomplish all he would prefer to implement. In Turkey the closest alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood, though unofficial, is the ruling Justice and Development Party headed by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The relationship has its moments and President Erdoğan did support United States President Obama’s demand that President Morsi be released and returned to the Presidency of Egypt as its duly elected leader after the military coup. This demand continued even after the new elections were held and died a slow and thankfully quiet death and the rise of Sisi from commander of the military to the newly elected President of Egypt (more on this further when we talk about Egypt’s role in the MENA Garden). In Syria, before everything hit the fan and a civil war with more sides than can be easily defined, the Muslim Brotherhood was most closely aligned with the Islamic Socialist Front (more in depth discussion of Syrian Civil War will follow). There is even a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood closely aligned with the situation in Israel which is Hamas. In Iraq the Islamic Party is the largest Sunni political party and would have to be considered the closest link with the Muslim Brotherhood though they are not in a position of any real power as we will see. In Iran the relations with the Muslim Brotherhood are another case of strange bedfellows but in Saudi Arabia, which would pretty much include the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations though they can be less trident that are the Saudis who support the Wahabbist strain of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood is considered as a terrorist group. Through the rest of North Africa the Muslim Brotherhood supports Sunni groups but has little interaction since al-Qaeda aligned Boko Haram swore allegiance with the Islamic State. Some have seen the rise of Islamic State as a challenge to the Muslim Brotherhood within the Islamist communities. The main influences which we will cover in greater detail are the Islamic State, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Syrian War and Russian concerns in Syria.

 

The oldest force in the area would be Egypt if one were to count the Pharos but that civilization was a completely separate civilization, but we need an excuse to start somewhere. Egypt has the advantage of population as the most populous of the MENA nations. Egypt is also the home of the most respected school for Islamic thought, Al-Azhar University, located with Al-Azhar Mosque in Islamic Cairo and is the oldest degree-granting university. As far as Sunni Islamic thought and interpretation, Al-Azhar is the most prestigious university. It is the central thought center for all Sunni thought and interpretation. Al-Azhar sets the dogma and interpretations used in Quranic thought in all of Sunni Islam which includes near eighty percent of all who follow the prophet Mohammad. This is important as it was during a speech President Sisi gave at Al-Azhar University to a gathering of the entire faculty where he made a request, which has some weight as Sisi is the President of Egypt, the former General of the Armies and very popular with the population which elected him in what could be referred to as a landslide. He has made some moves as best as his position has allowed and without smashing too many toes and defeated every challenge from the Muslim Brotherhood, no small feat. The demand, or request if one is to be polite, was for the Al-Azhar University faculty and Imams throughout all Islam to work within the Quran and adjust the supremacist view of Islam and instead alter the chosen Sura from the Quran and use more of the Sura from the original Mecca writings and allow for them to supercede their contrary Medina version of the Quran. (For an introduction to the two separate versions of the Quran and many quality links throughout the comments may we suggest our article and the comments of Which Quran, Mecca or Medina? The difference between the two writings are so stark that there have been rumors that they were dictated by different people rather than the idea that Mohammad had a different set of circumstances when writing the two versions.) President Sisi did this not just once but in two separate speeches to the Imams of Al-Azhar University. Reforming Islam such that it is made such that it can coexist with other faiths and separates from politics completely and become simply a religion of approaching two billion adherents. President Sisi is also using his position to advance the idea of a unified Islam such that the Sunni and Shiite as well as the lesser sects coexist in a similar manner as the many different Christian groups exist in the world today without open warfare or denouncing of one another.

 

President al-Sisi initially Took his Jihad to al-Azhar University, Cairo,
Egypt, Where on December 28, 2014 al-Sisi Delivered his Speech
Insisting that Islam Was in Need of a Climactic Reformation if not a
Transformation Redefining Jihad from External Violence To the
Ongoing Internal Purification In the Eternal Search for Perfection

 

The next most influential Sunni nation would have to be Saudi Arabia with its oil wealth. In many ways Saudi Arabia and Egypt work together to defend Sunni Islam with their main threat currently being Iran. The third nation in the Sunni hierarchy is Turkey which is at odds with Egypt as Turkey largely supports the Muslim Brotherhood and called for the return of Morsi to the Presidency after Sisi and the military had removed him presumably at the behest of the people. Turkish President Erdoğan joined President Obama and the two were close for a period as they both stood in support of the Muslim Brotherhood. General Sisi rejected their demands and called for resumption of elected governance and arranged for general election to fill the now vacant office of President and for a new Parliament. Sisi had resigned his post leading the military before running which would have resulted in his being unemployed. The Egyptian Freedom and Justice Party, which is the Muslim Brotherhood representative in Egyptian politics, was included in the elections but Sisi had won the admiration of the Egyptian people and has delivered on his promise to be a reformer. This was proven with his speeches calling for rejection of the supremacy and spread of Islam by the sword rejecting the Muslim Brotherhood calling such calls for world conquest dangerous and injurious to Islam and predicted that such actions would only bring destruction down on the Islamic world. This position is not shared by the Wahabbists in Saudi Arabia or by Erdoğan and definitely rejected by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded by a core group who believed that Islam needed to return to its golden age by imposing the strictest possible and most extreme interpretations of the Quran and Islam which they claimed was during the supremacist periods of conquest and that only by returning to the spread of Islam by any means necessary would Islam return to greatness. President Sisi sees only destruction of Islam if such a policy were to be implemented in today’s world. As for which position is correct we would vote let’s not test both and see which proves superior as the destruction and potential end of human civilization should a full blown all-out war between the Muslim world and the rest of the world be fought neither side would win and only utter destruction would be the end result. Such a war would eventually result in the use of the most extreme weapons at human disposal which would bring on a catastrophic conflagration destroying both sides. As the WOPR computer stated at the end of the movie “War Games” after testing every scenario of thermonuclear war, “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”

 

War Games WOPR Computer

 

 

 

 

What remains is Iran which can best be examined by explaining the war in Syria which includes the war in Iraq and the war in Yemen, all of which have an Iranian component as does the governance in Lebanon and the terror war against Israel. This will be quite a long explanation and will be best covered in our next article tomorrow, stay tuned.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Weeds in the MENA Garden

 

 

If one were to ask the European Union, the United States, the United Nations and the world media who is responsible for the unrest throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) the resounding echoes would continue to scream Israel for likely the rest of eternity, but is that an honest assessment or simply a knee jerk automatic programed response spurred by anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic hatreds? The easiest way to tell would be to take a quick whirl around the MENA nations and see what the truth is. Let us start our excursion at the western edge and head to the east and see what we will see.

 

A map of MENA nations is almost up to date and is only missing the Sudan, and as the Sudan was split after years of tribal and religious violence, South Sudan; and some go so far as to include Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Eretria, and Somalia.

 

Coming into the North of Africa from the Atlantic Ocean the first country we would visit would be Western Sahara where we would find Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975 in violation of resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and International Court of Justice ruling. Any efforts to dislodge Morocco from Western Sahara have been blocked directly by the United States whose full support of the Moroccan occupation shows no sign of relenting. The conflict reemerged as the “Independence Intifada” in 2005 which has remained as depicted in map below. Despite numerous efforts to defuse the situation the standoff remains.

 

Occupied Western Sahara
by Morocco Shaded Area
and Western Sahara Unshaded

 

Continuing on from the Morocco-Western Sahara conflict we next visit Mauritania which has had a rocky recent history including two military coups, the first was in 2005 followed eventually by elections for a new president in 2007 followed by the second coup in 2008. General Abdul Aziz took power after the coup but found the nation had few supporters amongst them predominantly were Morocco, Libya and Iran while the United States and European nations rejected the legitimacy of the coup continuing to refer to Abdallahi as the legitimate president of Mauritania. After the resignation of Abdallahi there were elections which allowed Abdel Aziz to become the civilian president. In February 2011 there were waves of unrest as the Arab Spring spread to Mauritania demanding President Mohamed Abdel Aziz institute political, economic, and legal reforms. The unrest culminated in April of 2012 as thousands of people in Mauritania attended demonstrations in the capital calling for President Mohamed Abdel Aziz to resign. Currently the nation is under military rule with the legal system based on Islam and Sharia.

 

Heading across the southern end the picture in Mali, Niger and Chad is the constant internal strife between Christian governments and Islamic uprisings with much of the major horrific attacks conducted by the terrorist group Boko Haram which literally means Western education is forbidden. Boko Haram follows Saudi Wahhabism and has pledged their loyalty to the Islamic State. Along the north there has been steady unrest in Algeria and especially Libya since the NATO backed coup where President Obama declared that the United States was leading from behind in the ouster of and eventual execution (murder) of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In Libya the nation is in fractious rule of numerous terror groups and tribal armies with some having declared alliance with the Islamic State. In the south east there is the Sudan which bled in the south especially in the Darfur area. Eventually the Sudan was force to divide allowing South Sudan to become independent. In October of 2015, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir issued a decree establishing twenty-eight states in place of the ten constitutionally established states. The decree established the new states largely along ethnic lines. He took it to the parliament for approval as a constitutional amendment in November and the South Sudanese parliament empowered President Kiir to create new states.

 

This brings us to Egypt where the recent history has played out live and large in the Western media. The Arab Spring riots led to the removal of President and military strongman Mubarak. The elections were held fairly soon after Mubarak was forced to step down largely by the United States backing of the Muslim Brotherhood. These elections overwhelmingly approved Muslim Brotherhood candidate Morsi to the presidency and a large Muslim Brotherhood majority in the parliament. Within the year new rioting broke out protesting the implementation of Sharia despite warnings from Turkish President Erdogan to the Morsi government to slow their radical changes or face resistance. This led to the military removing Morsi and arresting him for election fraud. New election instated former General of the Army Sisi as President though he still had an Islamist and presumed Muslim Brotherhood controlled parliament. The Obama administration refused to recognize Sisi and demanded that Morsi be reinstated; a request which was roundly ignored. Unrest still exists between Egypt and the United States which will be resolved by the Presidential election this November in the United States. As to what either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump might choose to do is a complete mystery at the present time as neither has addressed foreign policy beyond Hillary’s claim to deep knowledge claiming her time as a Senator of New York and a stint as Secretary of State under President Obama which included the Benghazi, Libya fiasco amongst other miscues and Trump claiming to have conducted business deals with numerous foreign governments and met many world leaders though particulars remain largely unconfirmed. Egypt has also faced unrest largely from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic State where both are vying for control of the Sinai from where they would presumably unseat Sisi and retake the presidency. Hamas in Gaza was seen as providing assistance to these and some Iranian backed groups in the Sinai thus earning themselves a complete sea and land embargo enforced by Egypt from their waters and land borders with Gaza. The Egyptian blockade is often ignored with the large amount of attention paid to the Israeli “blockade” which is actually an inspection of goods before allowing their delivery to Gaza usually within one or two days done to assure that weapons are not being imported by Hamas and the other terror groups which rule Gaza. Egypt too is a work in progress.

 

We will return to Israel subsequently but meanwhile on to Lebanon where the terror groups Hezballah runs the government with an opposition often afraid to act to remove the terror group as previous attempts have resulted in untimely deaths. Lebanon cannot be addressed without discussing Syria and the state of war which has more facets than hewn crystals. The main three forces are Syrian dictator Bashir al Assad who has retreated to the Alawite tribal areas along the Mediterranean coast and Lebanese border. Assad is backed by Iran and their proxy, Hezballah, out of Lebanon. These are the Shiite forces which also receive tactical support largely in the form of air strikes by the Russians who are protecting their port area along the Mediterranean coast. Inland there are Sunni groups, oft referred to as terror groups, supported largely by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Finally there are the forces of the Islamic State which stretch into Iraq where they face the Iraqi Army backed by Iran who uses mostly IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) placing Iran at either end of the Islamic State. The Islamic State has been largely self-financed though there have been rumored support from Qatar. There is another group in northern Iraq and extending into northeastern Syria which is controlled by Kurdish Militias which are opposed strongly by Turkey. The Kurdish forces were at one time rumored to be receiving training by Israeli trainers on a clandestine mission though many have refuted that this was just a means of explaining the Kurdish forces resilience and holding their own against Islamist forces considered to be better equipped.

 

This takes us to the Saudi Peninsula and Jordan which we can count as a single unit of the GCC (Gulf Coordination Council) which is a group backed mostly by Saudi Arabia which includes Kuwait and the Gulf States and to a lesser extent, Jordan. Saudi Arabia has a close working relationship with the Egyptian government of President Sisi who are jointly facing terror groups including those supported or aligned with Islamic State as well as Iranian backed terrorists and the Houthi Tribes in the Yemen civil war, a front where Iran backed and Saudi Arabian backed forces are in direct confrontation. The United States has opposed and presumably attempted to prevent, though with little success, arms shipments to the Houthis by Iran and also opposed the bombing sorties from Saudi Arabia with equal lack of success and the belligerents continue to fight on. In the southernmost areas of Yemen, the prized areas which overlook the narrow passage from the Red Sea into the Arabian Sea, called Bab el-Mandeb Strait are a group of fighters originally claiming alliance with al-Qaeda but recently changing their alliance to presumably the Islamic State. These groups have benefited directly from Saudi raids as has the currently recognized Hadi-led government.

 

Yemen Battle Map

 

Lastly let us finally look at Israel. On the Golan Heights IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) have returned fire when fired upon by intention and otherwise has unofficial drop points for wounded individuals, civilian and combatant though no difference is noted, wounded and in need of treatment. IDF soldiers take these wounded and treat them in their field facility with the more serious cases transferred to Israeli hospitals for treatment. After treatment the individuals once sufficiently recovered are returned from whence they came at same drop points. All sides can view the individual drop points and all points are respected by other fighting factions in an unarranged agreement as all sides use this treatment method and no one side wishes to risk being cut-off from Israeli treatment and have to rely on whatever resources they have available. We have no information as to whether any Iranian forces have received treatment from the Israelis though if placed in civilian clothing they would receive the same treatment as any other individual. The Israeli border with Lebanon is currently quiet as Hezballah has sufficient on their plate with forces in the Syrian conflict and rumored even to have some fighting with IRGC or Houthis in Yemen. Intelligence believed to be accurate estimated that Hezballah has stores of rockets of varying size and capable of striking Tel Aviv, Bathsheva and even Ashkelon as well as guided missiles from Iran capable of striking anywhere in Israel including the southernmost port city of Eilat carrying warhead as large as two kilos and potentially five or ten up to one-hundred kilos warheads on their short and medium ranged rockets of which they possess as many as one-hundred-seventy-five-thousand. On their larger missiles they have warheads of as much as seven-hundred-fifty kilos on modified Zilzal-2 with a four-hundred km range and which they possess an estimated one thousand. Their Fateh-110 missile has a range three-hundred km range striking at Mach 3.5 carrying a four to seven-hundred kg warhead of which Hezballah possess more than twenty-thousand and lastly there is the Shaheen-II two stage missile which has a range of two-thousand km making able to strike anywhere in Israel and into Egypt. Each missile is capable of flight altitude of up to three-hundred km, is GPS guided, and varies a one-thousand plus kg warhead making it potentially capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and retaining it guidance hardware. It is doubtful that Iran has, let alone provided Hezballah with a deliverable nuclear warhead. Such is not far from the horizon for Iran but their providing Hezballah with such a weapon is doubtful.

 

The remaining fronts for Israel are with Jordan and Egypt which are both peaceful and with the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Judea and Samaria as well as with Hamas and ally Islamic Jihad and other terror and criminal groups in Gaza. The front with the PA is largely one where there are terror strikes which can be planned by Abbas and the his PLO terror groups or the less planned but instigated through calls for violence from PA figures, PLO figures or any of a litany of groups most of which are either headed by Mahmoud Abbas or are willful practitioners at his beck and call. The most recent round were stabbings carried out largely by Palestinian Arab and some Israeli Arab youths as well as car rammings along with rock and Molotov cocktail throwing with rioting which are carried out routinely by PA controlled terror groups, the Tamini family instigators who work closely with European Union and other European NGOs whose main aims are to cause any violent response by Israel which is filmed and the instigation causing the defensive act is edited and with careful editing and juxtaposition of stock footage, prerecorded footage or actual footage with any questionable instigations by the Arabs edited over or out completely compiled into the final product which is then transmitted throughout European news agencies within a matter of a couple of hours and they run with it unedited as if it were an actual news story followed by their governments and the European union then condemning Israel for use of disproportional force or the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Gaza front is another area where Iran attempts with some success to smuggle arms mostly containing rocket motors and rocket parts and technology. Funding for Hamas comes from UNRWA as well as from the PA making the European Union, United States, United Nations and individual European nations as well as numerous Arab countries direct or indirect financiers of Hamas terrorism and rocket attacks as well as Arab instigations and propaganda which permeates their entire society from their media to the schools, summer camps soccer leagues and every aspect of childhood and raising the children to hate Jews as well as Israel. The Hamas Charter calls not only for the annihilation of Israel but of Jews worldwide. Similar language is found in Islamic Jihad and Hezballah pamphlets and charters or constitutions. The hatred goes well beyond Israel and includes Jews everywhere as well as Western culture and societies. Hamas and their allies as well as Hezballah desire a world caliphate under Sharia and openly claim so. The main difference is whether the caliphate would be Shiite or Sunni, for the rest of us that is a minor comfort.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

All the Leftist Choices Once Around the Globe

 

There is this leftist slant to the elections in the United States that cannot be ignored. Of course there are only leftists running for the Democrats. Like the left the world over, their main cry is listen to the dreams we weave and forget the realities of things. In Hillary’s case she believes that we should all ignore her criminal negligence with State Department and other secret documents which we are learning were easily read in Moscow and Beijing as well as anywhere else which had half a mind to read them. Then there was Benghazi and the deceitful ruse used to get Obama elected while telling the people and the next of kin whatever was required because truth does not matter, only power and self-aggrandizement matters. It is all about Me, Me, Me, with the Clintons. Then there is Bernie Sanders who is a self-proclaimed socialist which explains why the youth who have not paid attention to the taxes they pay and have no idea that when he says the rich will pay their fair share he means anybody who works for a living and that the only viable way to survive in his system is to become a ward of the government and live as they instruct you in high crime and run down tenements, but that will not happen for at least four years as he would need reelection before dropping the boom. Bernie wants us to ignore that his tether to sanity and reality is as thin as spider silk and as strong as cooked spaghetti. One slight breeze and he becomes a full blown communist, but the young never know of the problems with Russia or China and will need to live it to learn that lesson. Unfortunately, they may take all of America with them. That is the Democrat choices, a criminal who is running to remain out of Federal prison and a loonie-tune.

 

Democrat Front Runners
Hillary Clinton
Bernie Sanders

 

Like the Republican side is any better. At one end you have a HUGE fake moderate conservative who is just a bit too cuddly with the Clintons and has been a Democrat supporter, except when running for President as a Republican which he had sampled the water a number of elections back and found them cold. This time the water appears to be just right and he is screaming and waving his arms and hands, especially his little hands, all in an attempt to sound like a winner. Trump will never really be the President as should that realty come to fruition and he be elected and actually act on his half-baked ideas, the nation would implode soon thereafter. The good news is if he gets elected he will make gloriously loud arm waving speeches which will excite the excitable amongst the populace and allow the people he appoints and the Senate ratifies to run the nation, and that may be the sole sane and viable alternative when the rest are weighed.

 

Also running for the Republican candidacy, though you may not have ever heard of them, are John Kasich and Marco Rubio. These gentlemen may not even win in their home state, a usual given for any candidate (except Al Gore). They are calm, collected and sane, or at least until desperation set in and they knew they had to get media coverage or wilt away. Then there is the one who may be rightfully claiming to be the sole Trump alternative, Ted Cruz. He can be found at the far right end of that spider silk spaghetti strand which has Bernie at the left end. The reality is the average American likely has no candidate who will make it to the November election for President.

 

The Donald
Donald Trump That is

 

The truth is Hillary will be the Democrat candidate if the party establishment gets their wish; otherwise, whoever wins the Republican nomination will be President by default or the United States will complete their fall into irrelevance in the world and the world will enter another age of Islamic expansion, something which may already be unavoidable. More about that distressful thought in our concluding summations. The Republican “establishment” which is also referred to as the Republican elite, an oxymoron if ever we heard one, are desperately seeking anybody with sufficient name recognition, personality, and had not already lost a bid for the Presidency to represent sanity before the loud mouth or the Texan are the only choices remaining. Their BIG money candidate, Jeb, we really need another shrub in the White House, Bush bombed in an unbelievable fashion. Their calm brain surgeon found out that running for President is not for the polite or faint at heart and may be more rocket science than brain surgery. There was no astronaut or rocket scientist volunteering, likely too smart or already been as high as they desired to go unless you’re looking for volunteers to go live on Mars for the duration, something there may be millions of more applicants after the November elections and the people realize who their choices were and allowed the crazies to finish what they started. This might be the first election in American history where everybody stayed home allowing only the most deranged who actually thought their guy was actually a sane choice to vote. We might just get the answer to what if they gave an election and nobody cared?

 

But the United States is far from alone in allowing the leftists to run the show. The next main candidates are the Europeans where there is a glimmer of hope, something that has been missing for quite some time. Even the presumed conservatives are actually leftist in favor of European suicide. For those at a loss, suicide for the Europeans is known as the European Union (EU). Those who have “drank the kool-aid” believe that the EU is what allows everybody to play well and not shoot at each other as had been the practice since forever. With modern warfare if fought as the Europeans had always engaged, all-out with everything they have, then Europe would not survive its next war, and that is what ended European wars, not the EU or any other organization. The EU is actually not a representative governing body in any sense of the term. It is a pure bureaucracy which the European governments send their best manipulative schemers to try and make sure the EU either hurts them as little as possible or grants then the only lifeline that can exist as nobody would fund their lack of productivity if left to their own devices. Only an overbearing and overriding bureaucracy would be capable of demanding that France, Britain, Germany and anybody else with an operative economy would continuously bail out the other nations who apparently are incapable of self-governance or managing an economic model other than holding a hand out and demanding to be saved time after time. There is a potentially saving grace should the British, who wisely retained their currency, actually exercise self-government and vote to leave the EU as that could actually result in the other members of the EU who have an operative governance leaving it as well. The alternative is for them to constantly sacrifice the wellbeing of their own populations in order to service the wellbeing of other nations’ all too needy populations. Of course all of this is predicated on Europe surviving the influx of immigrants who plan on altering the basic nature of the culture into a foreign model which failed completely which is why they are fleeing under the rouse of being refugees from Syria. Europe’s salvation is in the hands of the people; and if they do not care if their children can have a future which is at least as free and libertarian as theirs even with the high levels of socialist governance, then their children will live to witness an all-encompassing tyrannical theocracy descend as a smothering blanket eclipsing every standard of free-choice previous generations enjoyed.

 

Israel also has been within the clutches of leftist belief that freedom can be won through appeasement and surrender to those that wish to obliterate their existence. Those powers which wish to bring about the end of the Jewish State go far and wide beyond simply the Arab Palestinians or even the Arab or Muslim powers in the world. It has been a hushed up truth that Europe has regretted ever permitting Israel to come into existence and had worked behind the scenes, more often than blatantly out in the open, to the detriment of Israeli interests. It began before 1948 with supporting the formation of Jordan on the vast majority of the British mandate and then the United Nations (UN) plan to divide the remainder into an Arab and a Jewish state and even after the Arabs refused that solution, except for the few exceptions, sought to allow the Arab states to eclipse Israel at her birth. There has been a concerted effort to support Arab terrorist demands upon Israel with the constant support for Arab Palestinian demands and the constant threats to end trade with Israel or differentiate on Israeli goods, condemnations of Israeli building in Area C which under the Oslo Accords was Israeli controlled area. But why allow actual agreements get in the way of denouncing Israel. Additionally, the Israeli government actually had the audacity to try and have any NGO (non-governmental organization) which are highly political and can amplify public positions, report their funding, especially if they receive supportive measures from other countries. That support is supposed to be through media or speeches given by their political leaders from abroad. Ah, but there’s the rub that grates against the better and proper judgement, the place where undue influence corrupts the scene.

 

Every nation in the world, whether free or dictatorial, agree on one item, the health of the state demands that any foreign elements or influences, political or otherwise, organization or agency, must identify itself as such, disclose who they actually represent and must reveal their foreign funding, especially and doubly so if they come from another government or foreign NGO or super organization such as the United Nations, European Union, Gulf Cooperation Council, United Workers Union or whatever for the government to recognize and classify them as foreign agents with one glaring exception, Israel. This begs the question of why, plain and simple, why? The reason is even more revealing and devious than are the duplicitous actions of the very governments paying for these interests and their caterwauling and screaming foul simply because Israel wishes to have the exact same truthfulness action made into law that each of these other corruptions have on their own country. Imagine the hue and cry should Israel operate an NGO in France under the name of Francophobes Unite? What many point to as evidence that Israel has just such an organization operating in the United States in AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which does not receive either direction or funding from the Israeli government, and which reports every donation they receive openly to the IRS as an nonprofit political action group is required to do under United States laws, and whose funding would likely be available under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) regulations, is a wholly privately funded by United States citizens’ contributions and not an operative of any foreign government, especially Israel. There is an alphabet soup mix of foreign funded, extreme leftist, anti-Zionist, pro-Arab Palestinian, Arabist, anti-Israel, faux-peace, surrender, appease and easily said to be outright anti-Israeli independent NGOs financed virtually completely by foreign interests and governments including many financed by the EU and European governments operating within Israel. They are further backed within Israel by a leftist media and a vocal extreme minority which cannot get their way through the ballot box so have resorted to allying with these foreign benefactors to lobby and bully the government and people of Israel attempting to bludgeon all opposition into submission and using Lawfare and a leftist stranglehold on the courts and legal system. When Israel attempted to make such organizations report their funding, the proof of this overt interference in Israeli self-government was made obvious by the explosive media frenzy and governmental uproar from across the width and breadth of Europe as well as the boisterous explosion largely around Tel Aviv and outside the Knesset in Jerusalem. Then came the threats to take the government to the courts challenging the law should it pass and European governments threatened their own forms of intimidation including taking the matter to international courts or to adjudication under their own courts claims to have international jurisdiction, especially for all things Israel such as to arrest any Israeli government or military official if they step foot outside of Israel. One knows this had gotten to the extreme when the British government had to grant special protective measures to prevent the arrest as ordered by a British court in response to anti-Israeli Lawfare for Tzipi Livni to enter the country and remain free while answering an invitation from the British government. What other democratic nation has such legal warrants sworn out against any public figure, government member, military commander and even individual soldiers whenever they step outside their national borders. Such lunacy is beyond belief but a reality for Israelis. These actions are manifestations of leftists out of control as well as a little something else. Oh, and we in Israel are informed that any belief that such steps are a sign of anti-Semitism is just our being too sensitive. Oh really!?!

 

Beyond the Cusp