What Does the World Want From Israel?

 

Never before in human history since the Roman dispersion of the Hebrews, largely consisting of the majority remaining tribe of Judah, thus the Judeans, simply the Jews, being sent throughout the Roman Empire, particularly around the far-reaches from the heart near Rome to Jerusalem, has the world been so innately consumed with the daily actions, routine or otherwise, of such a small population sitting on such a thin sliver of land. Then, as now, the reason all the attention was with the intent of destroying the claims of an independent nation for the Jews, Judeans, in the area they believed Hashem had set aside through all of eternity for their inheritance. The fact that the people claiming this particular sliver of land at the east end of the Mediterranean Sea also claim that there is a purpose in life which is above and beyond hedonistic self-gratification and that they have a guide which defines the self-restraints which make for the most egalitarian of societies and for the most productive and healthy lifestyle was considered irrelevant. These people call this guide Torah and they claim that it demands they obey an intricate mixture contained in the six-hundred-thirteen commandments given them by Hashem to guide them to be a light unto all the nations received at Mount Sinai, a nondescript mountain which was not the highest nor most magnificent peak amongst mountains in the region but special in other ways often believed to be beyond understanding, which makes these demands solely of them while there are but the seven laws of the Noahic Code. These people, the Jews, have no desire to force or even entice others to become Jews and even will grant those who desire to convert three opportunities to decide conversion was a less than ideal decision. We ask them to reconsider the first time at the close of the discussion about their desires and reasons they seek to convert and they receive their first actual requirements which include at least two years of classes and testing to assure the new member understands the rituals and requirements for guaranteed inclusion. We offer them an easy and understandable reason for quitting at some midpoint of their education about Judaism and what is required of each Jew or Jewess and they are granted one last opting out at the end of their conversion ordeal immediately before or during their Rabbinic review in which their general knowledge and reasons for converting are questioned and considered by a panel of Rabbis who must decide if their education has been sufficiently absorbed.

 

These items are considered as the Jews having a superiority complex whereby they place themselves as being better than the others and thus resented. The truth is that Torah teaches that we live lives consisting of and presenting a model character and live by the examples of our forefathers and their desires to perfect the individual and through such be a light unto the nations. We are taught to be humble but resolute, to be learned but intuition and feelings are of equal and sometimes superior quality, we are told to set an example yet to refrain from aloofness and ingratitude, to live according to the teachings from within Torah and to be true and faithful to the Torah and to Hashem. Despite the Commandments being spelled out and such that anybody is capable of viewing them, still people claim that the Jews have secretive plans to reach out from the current Israeli lands and expand out and establishing a Greater Israel from which the Jews will rule over the world. This idea was supported by the Czars who went so far as to write a book meant to prove the Jews had such a plan and that the Torah classes where the Rabbis who had spent their lives learning Torah and books written by other Rabbis and compilations of the best of these writings but nothing which instructed Jews to try and rule the planet and corrupt governments. The forgery was titled “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was written by the Czars and utilized to validate a series of pogroms thus making the writing produced by the Czars was used to murder the Jews, not to place the Jew over other people and was a complete fraud and corruption of all being a good Jew is about.

 

A good Jew is one who is kind and who has developed a mindset of service to mankind. They are to be forever humble and to use life’s day to day interactions outside of studying Torah and supportive writings such as Talmud to learn through studying people and to find where Torah can be used to grant further insight that explains the behavior and how Torah can be used to overcome the confrontations and strife both in an individual life as well as such infecting an entire society. Much of Jewish studies are molded around serving mankind both as a whole of their society and as each individual as an entity in itself. A proper Jew views each individual both as a single drop of water in and of itself striving for perfection and also as member of a group as a clean and supportive role flowing as river through a city which can have either of two competing roles. Such a river could be used by all the residents as a source of drinking water and for irrigation and for any purpose except one. The instance anyone chose to use the river as a method for waste removal, the rest of the people downstream would no longer be able to use the river for drinking and irrigation as the waters had become fouled. There are many rivers in our lives, metaphorically speaking, and one of the most important rivers are the ways in which we interact and treat one another.

 

Here as well such rivers can be refreshing or polluted by each individual and once a river between peoples become tainted and polluted by hatreds, the river is very difficult to make clean again. Hatreds between peoples are strange in that many times they cannot even explain exactly what caused the hatred or their hatred really came from somewhere other than the object of their hate. This is very true when we come to Israel as there are those who hold very strong hatreds towards Israel, and often against Jews as well, despite knowing very little about either or even having any direct knowledge or contact. In our world today it has become a cause celeb to hate Israel and to simply assume that Israel had committed some heinous crimes against many different people for reasons unknown to anyone. If you were to ask people at a demonstration against Israel why they are demonstrating the answers you would get would probably astound anybody with even the slightest knowledge in logic. The most honest would reply that they do not know exactly why the protest was being held. Others would at least know enough to say that it was because of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. What treatment they would likely be unsure or have some really out there explanations of what Israel had done or was currently doing to these Palestinian or even what makes somebody a Palestinian.

 

Some of the more profoundly erroneous reasons are actually accepted in the media and news agencies as well as entire websites and web-communities which have sprouted up repeating these misconceptions which seem to grow out of nowhere. There are those who claim Israel stole the Palestinian’s homelands in a war. Ask which war they will reply the Palestinian Israel war. No such war has ever occurred but that will not slow them down as they will say that Israel stole their land because of some conflict. That one is correct but it would probably surprise them to learn that the war they are referring to is the war by the Arab and Muslim world to eradicate Israel as the Jewish state. Others will claim that Israel forces the Palestinians to remain in camps; some might even claim these are concentration camps. The problem is that there is not a single Palestinian camp within the areas where Israel controls the location with the closest one to being under Israeli control is in Jenin which is located in the center of the city of Jenin which is entirely inhabited by Arabs who claim they are Palestinian for political reasons and not a single Jew resides in Jenin and if one tried to reside there they would be murdered within the first few minutes of their arrival and being identified as a Jew. The Palestinian Authority has complete autonomy over Jenin and any taxes paid are paid to the Palestinian Authority from Jenin and the policing of Jenin is performed by the Palestinian Security Service. All the rest of the Palestinian camps are in areas controlled by their fellow Arabs. There is one attached to the outskirts of Gaza City under Hamas control, there are a number in Jordan, more in Lebanon and there had been a particularly large one in Syria which ISIS destroyed after Bashir Assad had bombed it to oblivion, but none in Israel.

 

Some respondents are bound to claim that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. They would be hard pressed to find out that the Palestinians numbers have increased from under a million in 1949 to around one and a half million at the end of the Six Day War and are currently around five million. At the point this new piece of information is entered into the conversation you might want to ask them if Israel is trying to commit genocide against the Palestinians and many will continue to claim that Israel is indeed attempting to commit genocide against the Palestinians. This is when you ask them if they can define genocide other than to say it is what the Israelis are committing against the Palestinians. The answers you will get will range from absurd to absolutely beyond belief. I doubt but cannot be sure if one somewhere might claim the genocide is not allowing the Palestinians to live, vote, roam freely or other deprivation which are all things which would be criminal if the Palestinians actually had Israeli citizenship. If these acts against the Palestinians are crimes then the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, Peru, Japan, China, Russia, Germany, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, South Africa and any other nation on earth are also guilt of committing genocide or whatever else one cares to call it. Israel has an Arab population around two-million strong with the largest share being Muslim and most of the rest Christians and a small minority Jewish and this Arab population in Israel is around twenty percent. These Arab Israelis work, live, vote, and have every right every other Israeli enjoys and some even are serving in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset. There is one restriction placed on the Arab Israelis that is also pressed against other non-Jewish Israelis with the exception of Druze who demanded they also have this right, this responsibility. The one thing that the Arabs are not given that every Jewish citizen is granted is mandatory service in the Israeli army, the IDF. Israelis can choose to do national service instead of serving in the IDF but the Jews and Druze are required to do service and the Arabs are not required. Understand that Arab Israelis can and do serve and serve with distinction in the IDF and many are very brave simply because they face increasingly difficult challenges as their fellow Arabs sometimes will treat them very poorly. That is a sad state of affairs which the Jews in Israel play no part. Contrary to the Apartheid claimants, the Arabs in Israel do vote and everything else they desire doing in Israel.

 

But, Beyond the Cusp, you say that Arab Israelis vote in Israeli elections, but that is code for the Palestinian Arabs cannot vote in Israeli elections, what about that? Well, true and Israelis, especially Israeli Jews are not permitted to vote in Palestinian elections. In Gaza the last elections, and only election since that election in 2007 elected Hamas and they have been ruling over Gaza ever since. That election followed soon after the Gaza Hamas-Palestinian Authority and Fatah War where Hamas won in a coup removing the Palestinian Authority from having any influence. In Judea and Samaria, what many call the West Bank, the Palestinians have an Autonomous Region which includes all of Part A and some of Part B of the three divisions agreed upon in the Oslo Accords while Israel controls Part C. The original Oslo Accords theorized and is based on Part C of these lands would remain with Israel and Part A, where ninety-percent of the Palestinian reside, would remain with the Palestinian State and the debate was supposed to be where the demarcation between Israel and Palestinian State the border would be placed.

 

These disputed lands were liberated from Jordanian illegitimate control in the Six Day War in June of 1967. For the nineteen years that Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria after the Arab initiated war to annihilate the Jews on the founding of Israel they attempted to annex the area and even their allies from that war refused to recognize their action and in the entire world only Britain and Pakistan recognized their annexation. During those nineteen years that Jordan held these lands there was not a single peep about a Palestinian State and they were content that the Jews who had resided in those lands were expelled or murdered after or during that war in 1948-9. It was not until after 1967 when Israel took those lands liberating them after Jordan joined Egypt and Syria in the war they called the war to genocidally drive the Jews into the sea which they lost and Israel gained the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and liberated Gaza which Egypt illegally retained after the 1948-9 War mentioned above. When Israel made peace with Egypt, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula and the Egyptians surrendered any claim to Gaza which Israel granted independence in August of 2005 and Hamas took control a couple of years later and has been launching rockets into Israel at her population centers ever since, and not just right before the Gaza conflicts, as those were caused by numerous reasons, always including increased to intolerable levels of rockets fired into Israel. Israel liberated the Golan Heights in the Six Day War from Syrian control and has annexed them and they will remain Israeli lands for reasons of defense which are more important now since ISIS had taken control of much of Syria just beyond those heights. Israel also liberated Judea and Samaria which were part of the area the Jews inhabited at the time of the Roman dispersion of the Jews after they attempted to gain their independence from Roman conquest for the second time. For the record, the first time the Jews revolted and gained their independence, the Maccabees ruled Israel for almost two years before Rome overwhelmed the small army using a number of Roman Legions; the war was quick but also brutal. The second revolt only removed the roman garrisons for about six months and the Romans showed up with legions again and decided to rid themselves of the Judean problem so they did to the Jews what they did to Carthage, they took the males and sold them as slaves and rowers in their galleys, triremes and other ships and dispersed others around the far reaches of the Empire. Carthage has only been heard of when studying the three wars they had with Rome and also the fete by Hannibal of crossing the Alps with elephants, actually most of his elephants died in that endeavor. The Carthaginians assimilated and were never heard from again. The Jews managed because of Torah, they managed to remain Jews over the next nearly two-thousand years until in 1948, due to decisions and treaties made at the end of World War I, known then as the Big War, when the new lines and nations were being fashioned throughout the central European areas with the breaking-up of the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the Arab nations with the breaking-up of the Ottoman Empire which were delineated in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the formation of the Jewish State, and Syria and Lebanon in the San Remo Conference Agreement signed by the Arab League in the early part of the 1920s. The agreement allowing for Jordan was signed between the Zionist Congress and the British which left all lands west of the Jordan River as inviolate for the Jewish State backed by the might of the British Empire and the crown. Well, that sure meant a whole lot as the British voted against the formation of Israel when the United Nations discussed the partition of those lands west of the Jordan River when on November 29, 1947 where they recommended in a non-binding resolution, that word non-binding is very important as it meant that if either party to the agreement rejected the agreement then the entire agreement was invalid. The United Nations partition was rejected, but not by the Jews or the Zionist Congress but by the Arab League as they were planning their war in which they would easily defeat “the Jew” and take all the lands. They failed in that venture over the years of 1948-9 as a series of cease fires were arranged as the Arab forces petitioned and the Jews/Israelis gladly took the opportunity for peace. These ceasefires were broken repeatedly by the Arab forces and each time they lost a little more land. Had they continued after the armistice which they did not break until 1967, such great restraint they showed, perhaps Israel would have ended up larger later back in 1948-9 which would have easily added 1950 had it continued further.

 

Let’s get back to our discussing of the Palestinians not being permitted to vote in Israeli elections. That charge is quite true but then again Israel does not allow Egyptians or the French or the Japanese or a myriad of others to vote in their elections and why should they. The Palestinians vote in the Palestinian elections which have been held at irregular periods with the last election for Chairman of the Palestinian Authority being held in 2005 and put off when it came up again in 2009 and again in 2012 or 2013. Parliamentary elections were last held in 2006 and been suspended since and some of those elected in that election have been removed by edict from Mahmoud Abbas after the Hamas revolt in Gaza. So, Palestinian living in Gaza would vote in Gaza and did once electing Hamas and no further elections have been deemed necessary and Israel is powerless to force election in Gaza and why would they? Palestinian Authority last held elections in 2006 and in 2005 for the top position which changes names depending on the day of the week and the color of the wall covering of the room Mahmoud Abbas finds himself, sometimes Chairman of the Palestinian Authority or Chairman of Fatah and even Chairman of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization which remains a terrorist organization in many places), others Prime Minister of Palestine, and President of Palestinian Territories and your guess is as good as mine and I presume we will just have to wait and see. The Israeli Arab/Palestinian/Gazan again who knows conflict, which would be best given the name of the conflict by all and any means of destroying the Jewish state by the concerted efforts of leftist, Arabists, Islamists, radicals, and the useful masses (Stalin had a different and more descriptive name for these peoples) through any and every means possible including Roger Waters petitioning every and all rock and music artists to not perform in the Zionist Entity (that’s Israel or home of the Jews to the rest of us) and collective hate speech reserved for Israel and the Jews of the Middle East (which means Israel as almost all have been chased from almost every Arab nation) because we all have agreed to claim terrible things which remain unproven because most of them are truly ludicrous when examined critically because we do not know any better and have never investigated a single concept that we claim to be the reason Israel is evil conflict. Kind of hard to get your arms around isn’t it. You want to understand the Jewish love for that small sliver of land which is really small as the maps below show, read your Old Testament of the Bible and our attachment becomes more clear and then read about the Holocaust, the Inquisition, the pogroms across the lands where the Jews resided or the real history behind the Yellow Star the Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis centuries after any number of Arab and Muslim rulers forced the Jews to wear particular colors denoting them for scorn and persecution and the European cruelties and other indignities even including the mob burning of a Synagogue in New York in the 1800s and the edict barring the ownership of lands by Jews and their expulsion after the Civil War in the area controlled by General Grant which included all of Tennessee, Kentucky and much of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. His order was finally rescinded after Washington D. C. was finally informed and sent a rider back with the order but in that ensuing close to two months the deed had been done and most of the Jews lost their lands, possessions and were relegated to begging and fleeing the persecution in the United States so there are few if any nations free of guilt against the Jew.

 

Four Maps of Great Britain, the United States, Australia, and India with to scale map of Israel super-imposed for comparison on each map depicting her actual rather than perceived size.

 

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Can the World be Defused?

 

Once a while ago there were three leaders who defused the terrors and monsters of their day. There work took a while longer and they may never get the credit they deserve. They were the magic combination which comes around only when things seem darkest. In a much earlier time the combination of leaders need not all be present on the world’s fields of battle at the same time, but the world moves at a different pace these days. The old team which between them staved off Europe falling, thus eventually led to our modern age as we have known it, consisted of one hero in the west of Europe, The Battle of Tours pitting Charles the Hammer Martel defeating the Umayyad Caliphate led by ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, which halted the Islamic threat from advancing further eastward and eventually led to the forced retreat of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula under the reign of terror known as the Spanish Inquisition established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, a retrograde purge for which Spain would never quite recover as that evil, or is as some might claim the purification, left Spain without a curious mind in all the realm as the Inquisition allowed not such stray thoughts other than those found in the ‘Good Book’. A few hundred years later the Ottoman Turks were prevented from further adventures in Europe being turned back at the Battle of Vienna by a somewhat unusual hero, King John III Sobieski of Poland who struck a deal whereby his lands would be left untouched by the greedy hands of the other barons and monarchs while he and his entire army would cross to the southern end of Europe and free Vienna breaking the Ottoman siege. This would stall and lead to the end of Ottoman expansion into Europe.

 

Between these two battles was a smaller battle that gained a larger than life share of attention from historians but was still none-the-less of great importance by what it avoided. The battle of which so much is made was the almost war that King Philip II of Spain decided to bring to a conclusive end and forever rid England of its Church, which followed not the Pope in Rome, restoring the rightful ruler of Christendom, Pope Clement VIII. The Armada was assembled and sailed on its historic mission which failed as it was made up of large and cumbersome ships of the old technology which favored the retrograde habits left over from the Inquisition and the purification of thought within the rule of Rome where science would become as close to defined as sin and as a threat to the sanctified rule of a Pope. The defeat of the Spanish Armada allowed the Church of England to prevail and their more open attitudes and the advantage of a strong political royalty which ruled alongside the Church of England but separate when decision of State were decided and the rule of law endured while the Church of England was to content itself with matters of faith. This partial separation between Church and the State had its periods of difficulty but it also permitted great strides in science which eventually spread through Europe beyond where the Pope had extended the Church’s strangling long reach from Rome. Eventually Rome too saw the light of the reformation and the separation between religion and government became the supreme and crowning achievement which was a long time coming with the many fits, starts and backtracks that make history fascinating. The ancient Israelites (or Hebrews) had achieved a form of separation between religious influences and the rule of a king as the limitations of each were delineated in Torah leaving certain powers to the King, others to the Clergy and the freedom to override either, though solely through admonition and persuasion, went the Prophets during their era. The one unfortunate result of the separation of Church from the matters of the ruling elites was that Europe no longer had a single overseeing power structure that the Pope provided when all prayed in the manner instructed out of Rome. This would eventually lead to many wars between the many states in Europe culminating in World War II. With these conflicts came technology which placed Europe as the crowning achievement of its time.

 

The modern realms had a tripartite power structure which managed to work towards their shared goals in what resulted in a mutually supportive series of actions despite there being no treaty or visible connection where these three strong leaders actually were collaborating, instead each added to the strength and power of the others with minimal appearance of collaboration. The three leaders were the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, who presided in that office from May 4, 1979 through November 28, 1990, while Queen Elizabeth II was the supportive monarch; Pope Saint John Paul II whose Papacy began on October 16, 1978 and ended April 2, 2005 and was a strong advocate for the rule of the people and their rights to a government deserving of the people and not the reverse and strongly held to the traditional beliefs working tirelessly largely behind the scenes while making appearances often with intent to back freedom and human rights for all people; and lastly United States President Ronald Reagan whose Presidency began on January 20, 1981 lasting until January 20, 1989 and the challenging force behind the scuttling of, as he coined it, the Evil Empire which was the Soviet Union which he did as much as anyone in facilitating the sudden downfall of the Soviet system and its iron curtain fell in under one week from the inception of the collapse of Communism in Europe. These three people had as much influence in their short decade where all three stood at the pinnacle of the power that swept in a new life and vitality born of freedom and challenging the greatest tyranny which stood in opposition to all these three defenders of the people, their individual rights and their right to choose their own governance and take control of their national ship and steer it through the ballot box and supportive of human dignity and the sanctity of life.

 

The world is once again spiraling into the void that lies beyond the cusp where freedoms are forever lost and tyranny and darkness extinguish the light of hope and the dignity of the spirit. Once again a retrograde influence is oozing from every corner advancing across the plains devouring everything in its path. The seriousness of this threat can be measured in the resisting flames in the eyes of those readying to fight a battle they know they cannot win but fight it they will in the hopes that somewhere a leader will have the courage to step forth and hold the line from crossing beyond the cusp and darkness once again gripping the heart of Europe. This threat comes from every front and ignores all borders and had many masters of which not a one honors freedom, individuality and the rights of the people to choose their own destinies and those who will lead them into the light and not towards the darkness. Currently the forces of freedom sleep as their ruling head of state has little stomach for such as the struggles barking from the far frontiers. This man who leads by following knows only that the previous leadership suffered from flaws that came from striving and this leader swears not to make such mistakes and instead retreats before taking stands and charging forth as doing so may reveal his flaws as it did his predecessors, but he realizes not that timidity and failure of vision are his flaws though his slow shrinking before every challenge is his plan to avoid mistakes. This comes when Europe also means to do well by refraining from the competition and instead seeks to facilitate and placate their way to oblivion that also lie beyond the cusp where greatness fails the timid and the freedoms hard won become easily surrendered and lost as they tip beyond the cusp and fall into the night of oblivion. There are the few who have clear sight and identify the threats but can the world rely on the strength of those who previously held roles of a supportive nature and have not been leaders of the free world as is now asked of them. The leaders in some instance are up to the challenge while in other leaders we see the rage of mediocrity hoping only to hold the line as best as possible waiting for one of the historic leaders to step forward and take the helm once more. What must the few who can lead do when the majority in the world are too tired, fat and lazy to put their shoulders to the wheel and strive to remain free, to stop the mad plunge and assure that their people are not forced beyond the cusp as from there the return will take generations and may never recover as some points, once crossed, may well mean there will be no return for this will be the final fight, the final battle between freedom and all that does empower the greatness in the human effort and spreads the light of freedom giving every last soul the power of flight so as to soar to new heights and new greatness ever pressing forward the boundaries of the mind through new equations which describe the actual functions of the universe and to eventually voyage into the far unknown and visit those points of light seen in the night’s sake for as sure as there is light there is hope for the future or the death of the individual spirit and the complete surrender to darkness forever extinguishing those final glowing embers of hope and heart as we fall beyond the cusp.

 

I have been asked by some close friends why I spend anywhere from three hours to all too often more than the eight hours demanded by a regular employ to continue to write to my slowly growing field of readers. Truthfully, I write in the hopes that somewhere an individual will find something that elevates them such that it awakens within them that spark of imaginations, the boldness to fight mediocrity, the hope that the future will continue to be filled with light and just one person at a time engage more to fight against the ever increasing flow dragging mankind towards a darkness that knows it has little time before the ingenious minds make that singular breakthrough which cements the condition of mankind at the cusp of a great adventure as we spread our wings and fly out into the cosmos and forever have insured that never shall all humankind be swallowed by the darkness beyond the cusp, beyond the whirlpool that swallows all imagination, enslaves every mind, demands total and permanent surrender, insisting on complete compliance never once to again dare. The war to remain in a place where there are a plethora of alternative paths and nobody is forced into the restriction of thought or held to a permanence of class must not be lost but there is this trepidation that the youth are not made aware of the coming threats nor are they largely taught to think independently and are made to believe that there are molds into which every person must choose their mold never to expand or reach beyond the restrictions of their mind. I write to express the truth that no two people are completely alike and thus there are no molds, only self-imposed prisons of the mind and the extinguishing of every flaming spirits as the mold makers impose a correctness of thought and attempt to ridicule and intimidate any who refuse to fold before their stifling approved dictionary for acceptable terms and their definitions. Look up the word ‘discriminate’ and unless you have an unapproved and ‘outdated’ dictionary you will not find it defined as a positive trait through which one sets standards for excellence in all things and thus chooses to expand and investigate things beyond their strict education. Trust that the elite are given the lesson that discriminate is not solely an evil where people are categorized by physical, racial, religious or national traits and all else is ignored. Discriminate also means to choose wisely, something the programmers of the public school system in too many nations is not a part of their indoctrination. Resist the limitations and open your eyes and if you suspect that the teacher is not teaching you how to think but instead what to think, start your own rebellion, a rebellion of one at first as you will need to first arm yourself and then set out to change the world. Presuming you are an adequately proficient reader this list should not take more than a few summer’s free time. With these and a few other items of personal interest, yours, not mine, you may be ready to set out but remember one other item, failure is what redirects efforts towards accomplishments and may even tach us some lessons along the way. There often is more to learn when we fail than when we finally persevere and reach the necessary and inevitable conclusion after exhausting every conceivable failure along the way, or so it may seem.

 

Rebel by reading books, yes they still exist, and writings not on the approved list. Read books such as Atlas Shrugged or other Ayn Rand writings, Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell who was a socialist programmed by his education but who became disenchanted as he experienced life and later in his life wrote of the evils of socialism as he had witnessed it applied in his day, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Unintended Consequences by John Ross. Read books about history especially by those who lived in the times they wrote about starting with The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain with special attention to his travels in what is today Israel and his commentaries on Jerusalem and Bethlehem as well as his travels through the deserted lands and remember that his writings came from a period immediately before Zionists began arriving in greater numbers. Read the Bible, both New and Old Testaments, the Quran, and the life of Confucius and Buddha for some insights into the differing religions and investigate ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, Babylon, the Phoenicians, Hittites, Mongols, and acquaint yourself with Oriental religious and societal structures and their philosophies. Read some books on war and strategy as they are useful in life and interactions in the world even in peace times such as the writings of Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz and The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. Learn to play both checkers and chess. Learn logic both as taught in math and electronics as well as philosophy, this will arm you in debates. Arm oneself with knowledge and one will be prepared for anything life sends your way.

 

I also write for my own catharsis as it soothes the mind when one is forced to organize their thoughts so as to put them down as coherent writings, and if my writings have appeared to not be as clear as hoped and lacking in total coherence, then imagine the jumbled mess in my head and what that must be like, and then imagine living with such a racket of fighting ideas but not ideals as without ideals we wander undefined through a dark forest of frightening thoughts forever to remain lost. The world seems that way at this moment and it will take a few miracles to set things back to right, but fortunately the world is full of miracles if one only knows not only where to look but how to look and discern the hidden miracles behind so much that happened every day. Smell the roses and drink some strong coffee and find some simple pursuits in life and make then your anchor by which to have a place or item you define as normalcy. Mine is real, good and strong coffee brewed from just ground whole beans blended often with little care and allowing the mixture to give me a little bit of surprise in life. A little sweet chocolate seems to make it so much tastier and gives it a round robustness that is next to addictive. But everybody deserves one addictive vice they refuse to surrender before the demands for normalcy. Ah, normalcy, how boring a thing can be.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Messy Middle East

 

We may as well write one summary of the different threats to war and actual wars in an all-in-one article. Apparently the Iran negotiations appear to have the most dire predictions of which business as usual is probably the biggest threat of them all. Thus far no final agreement appears to be on the horizon and would have been out of the question and all the sanctions and potentially more would be the current business as usual. It is abundantly obvious that United States President Obama and his Secretary of State Kerry are willing to roll over and accept whatever crumbs the Iranians will permit them and still pronounce the ‘it’s not a treaty it’s a Presidential arms agreement’ treaty, the peace in our time agreement which has Secretary Kerry’s and Iran Foreign Minister Zarif’s signatures on it promising that there will be no unnecessary or over hostile acts by the Iranian government and their work (not that there was any) towards the production of nuclear weapons for ten years, as a momentous diplomatic agreement which will place Iran on the road to international acceptance and into the world of nations. The signs that there will be an agreement, not treaty, completed by the deadline, or a few days, months, years later after more serious negotiations, of the end of June with a potential aligning ceremony in the Oval Office on the Fourth of July which will just be further evidence of the importance of the reaching an accord. Then there are the assurances and uncertainties all depending on your source as to whether or not the deal in progress is an advantageous or detrimental agreement with the numbers of sceptics steadily appearing to increase the closer we all get to an agreement. The only assurances we have is that this agreement will be beneficial to all and that the people telling us this belong to one of two groups, those reporting about the particulars that even the negotiators admit is uncertain if the agreement will encompass said assurance or are part of the providers of information who are attempting to make any agreement a positive no matter how many half-truths and outright-lies they have to shovel to a swarm of ever hungry media swarm all in an effort to further President Obama’s second greatest achievement in office after Obamacare. Such a comparison alone should worry even the greatest supporters of the President and this deal.

 

So, what can we know for sure? For one, it is that the sanctions will be lifted, all of them, or as many as President Obama can humanly bring to an end. This has been made evident through encouragements given to many leaders of industry, particularly the oil and gas industry. It has been reported that the White House has encouraged the chief executives of the Dutch Shell company, Total of France, Italy’s Eni and Lukoil of Russia to initiate talks to normalize and expand the Iranian energy sector of their economy. There have been signals, mostly in Russia, China and Europe and not-so-much in the United States (quite curious this is) to also put forth feelers and prepare the groundwork and even go so far as to agree on principles of agreements which can be made to go active the very second that any P5+1 and Iranian agreement is signed and in effect. This has been the message over the past two months and has yet to diminish in its optimism despite the negotiations appearing to crumble as Iran pulls back and refuses to agree on what one would think are some of the most vital necessities for an agreement which would be observed and have inspections of such a nature as to make such compliances enforceable. These overtures have been made while the White House continues to make statements purporting normal progress at the talks and a general sense of agreement on some of the most vital issues. President Obama has communicated through channels in the media that there will be an intensive inspection routine including snap without warning inspections while the Iranians continue to believe that the negotiations specifically forbade snap inspections nor allow inspections of what Iran denotes as military infrastructure and bases nor permit any inspection without ample and reasonable, to be determined by Iran on an individual basis, notifications before Iran will permit any single inspection. The White House insists that Iran will come forth on its previous military and nuclear procedures, accomplishments and other vital and necessary information even on particularly touchy questions which within the last week began its metamorphosis into a very different animal where suddenly the Administration claims that there is little to be gained by forcing the point of Iran reporting its previous work as we know where they have gone and what they have achieved and everything has been above board all while the Iranians remain quite intransigent on permitting inspections of military bases or revealing the information on all previous nuclear activities and military progress in related fields. From apparent media reports over the past few days the Administration appears to have become omniscient on all things concerning Iranian past progress, military research and development, military progress on missile technology (which to many observers to be directed on developing a reliable ICBM which will supplement their ballistic missile inventory adding the ability to directly strike the United States which some may find an odd direction for such intense research if one is not developing nuclear weapons to place atop those ICBMs) and possible work on a nuclear trigger mechanism which is vital to the production of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. This was supposed to settle the arguments that Iran may be hiding vital work which would include some very damning information casting the long shadow of doubt on Iranian denials to be researching the industrial development of nuclear weapons.

 

Still, the date of the presumed coming out party has been set. The final particulars of the United States surrender are being completed, the promise that after the agreement has been put in place that all sanctions will be removed has been given though not admitted and one of the latest individual pieces has been the apparent agreement that the P5+1 (read United States) will provide Iran with several light water reactors which produce plutonium which is useable for production of nuclear weapons at a far less aggressive rate than the heavy water reactor at Arak. Further, Iran shall be provided with other technologies for civilian uses of nuclear power and enriched uranium and lastly, recently leaked information indicates that the Fordo nuclear enrichment site, which was built into the heart of a mountain and is considered impervious to any bombing attack, shall remain operating with promises that it will not be utilized for enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons and instead will limit the enrichment cycles to keep them beneath weapons grade of over ninety-percent. Secretary of State John Kerry has affirmed that the United States has already relaxed several sanctions and has stated the sanctions will be lifted immediately after any signing of an agreement without having performed any steps for verifying Iranian compliance with whatever limitations and restrictions that President Obama would request as part of the agreement. This has made Senator Robert Menendez (D- N.J.) sufficiently perturbed and suspicious that he has introduced legislation to extend the soon expiring sanctions over the Iranian missile research and development on Iran for another ten years as Senator Menendez is far from convinced that any progress has been or will be made as part of the current negotiations. Perhaps this should be the position of everybody else as the reassurances from Secretary Kerry and the President and his spokespersons leave much clarification and even initial information on many subjects with missile development is chief amongst them.

 

Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Iran are juxtaposed Saudi Arabia, Egypt and in a loose and unofficial manner including Israel. The problem is most obvious in Yemen where Iranian backed and armed Houthis are in an open civil war for the control of Yemen now mostly attempting to complete their takeover by solidifying their presence across the south-western third of Yemen, something Saudi Arabia is making particularly difficult. The Saudis are quite wary of permitting Iran from militarily threatening complete control and the ability to cause a severe blockage of trade around much of the world and particularly about European-Asian trade as well as almost one-third of the world’s oil supplies and much of Europe’s lifeline to Arabian oil. The first choke point is the Straits of Hormuz and the second is the straits named Bab-el-Mandeb that controls passage from the Red Sea and Suez Canal to eventually the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean and which can be controlled from the south-western-most point in Yemen which remains just beyond Iranian reach for the time being. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have vested interests in the Bab-el-Mandeb waterway remaining open and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation nations have a vested interest in keeping the Straits of Hormuz clear and freely operating. Israel additionally has a vested interest in keeping Bab-el-Mandeb open as all trade out of Eilat’s ports in this southern-most city in all of Israel and major shipping point to Asia, something many believe is at the heart of the future of Israel, and who would even dare to challenge that. Further, having Yemen under the influence of Iran and with that, the potential of Iran to furtively place some special units from the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) into Yemen to spearhead an invasion into Saudi Arabia’s underbelly and then once the Saudis had dispatch troops to guard the southern border, then an Iranian led revolt by the Shiites who mostly live in the north-east of Saudi Arabia making that a second front likely tying up most of the Saudi forces making the nation susceptible to a mass Iranian assault timing all of this for during an announced exchange of forces thus allowing for Iran to at least have twice as many troops in southern Iraq than usual and also presenting a potential for turning those troops southward invading Saudi Arabia across the entirety of the border shared with Iraq where IRGC and other Iranian forces deployed to fight ISIS which has invaded much of the Syria and Iraq while making wild claims about being the heart of the next Caliphate. This would satisfy, if successful, one of the boasts Iran has regularly made about the Holy Cities, the most holy in Islam, of Mecca and Medina must be wrest from the hands of the deceivers and apostates, the Iranian Shiite name when referencing any Sunni Muslims. It would also be done in a direct challenge and risk infuriating ISIS which is also interested in the Holy Cities and would consider their being in the hands of Shiites as a moral imperative for ISIS and their Sunni Muslims to liberate them from the apostate hands of Iranian Shiites.

 

Now let us have a quick discussion of ISIS and their claims of being the next Caliphate. This claim at this early stage is a bit presumptuous though over-the-top bombastic claims such as the ISIS claim of being the new Caliphate are apparently part and parcel of the culture and thus should be read as such. Is ISIS a threat? Of course it is but keep in mind that it had originally served as the al-Qaeda branch in Iraq fighting the United States during the Second Iraq War under President George W. Bush where these al-Qaeda forces had been adequately eradicated that President Obama brought all the troops home declaring in a speech at Fort Bragg on Dec. 14, 2011 where he stated, “It’s harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq–all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering–all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We’re building a new partnership between our nations. And we are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.” ISIS will remain as a problem for as long as the United States continues its little trip down memory lane returning to their isolationist roots but the sooner that there is a new President, hopefully one who realizes the role the United States played in the world as without American leadership who can the world follow? After World War II the United States dictated to its enemies as well as its friends in the world to lay down their arms as the world had to be made such that Europe would find some manner of non-belligerence and thus unable to start yet another conflagration which envelops the rest of the world endangering all. The United States was not going to allow Europe drag her into another conflict, especially when the toll for World War II was figured. Japan even went so far as to insist that they be deprived of a military force capable of attacking her neighbors be put into their new constitution. The United States also made sure to have a prolonged military presence in all of the western nations as are the Soviets in theirs behind the, Winston Churchill‘s coined phrase, ‘Iron Curtain.’ With what ISIS has claimed is their aim, perhaps a similar deal should have been placed on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) thus completely covering the lands which were affected by the war. Instead, the Middle East actually faced a difficulty forced upon them by the European powers of France, Britain, Russia and Italy after World War I named Sykes-Picot Agreement where states were carved out of the colonial areas which the European powers had controlled for over two centuries. These states looked, for all intents and purposes, as randomly drawn but further delving into the agreement it becomes obvious that where the lines were less important than was repaying certain promises and not others and leaving states which could never function as normal nations as their citizenry were from different factions which would require a strong and somewhat viscous dictator more than a caring leader. Iran was fortunate enough to remain unchanged as she had remained Persia and beyond the colonial disciplines of the European overlords. This is one area where ISIS has gotten things correct, Sykes-Picot was a disaster needing remedial action, though combining all into one homogenous Caliphate where the people, more likely subjects, would all need to meet a purity test or face death or reeducation. ISIS has risen to prominence largely due to the entirety of the MENA regions being unstable, surprise-surprise, which had come partially from the mess put in place after World War I. In many ways, by not arranging to have the nations covering individual areas such as an area for the Kurds even named Kurdistan, and unifying Sunni Areas separate from Shia areas, and place borders respecting tribal areas and allowing the people to make suggestions and using them wisely, not nearly random large nations which would be so consumed by inner strife that they would be unable to mount external troubles, which also did not work as we saw with the decade of war between Iraq and Iran. This entire false drawing of nations was doomed to fail and produce an even stronger order which would eventually reunite many of the Islamic Arabs into a larger and ready to conquer group, it is just ISIS will not be that group as it currently operates. There will eventually be a leader who will find the chord which will bring people to their cause far more willingly and not by force and threat of arms. First, the MENA must find their way through this current crisis and possibly agree to redraw the lines across the Middle East divided by natural lines which will produce a more homogeneous populace for each state so that it can function as an economic unit more than a military unit as the Middle East itself has for centuries been an area which thrived through trading between Asia and Europe which it could again find their niche as well as trading their own goods, especially petroleum which unfortunately will be a major factor in the redrawing should such take place.

 

The problem will arise due to there being vested interests and moneyed interests in controlling valuable assets, especially oil. A very large example would be Saudi Arabia which will never permit the taking of their oil fields just because the majority living there are Shiites nor would they ever release their ownership holding of Mecca and Medina even to an international Islamic trust. Iran would never allow its oil fields to be given to another group made up of Arab descendants because the major population is not Persian. Any future settlement in the MENA area is going to take some serious and strong Islamic leadership who are more interested in helping the people than they are in glorifying themselves in this life which will always have some basis in control of resources. As things stand right now there is no real nation of Syria nor is there any nation of Iraq, both are consumed in internal and external conflicts tearing them apart. There were those who called for dividing Iraq into three nations, one Sunni, one Shia, and one Kurdish. This still would not have been advantageous for the Christians and the Yazidi and other tribes with either minority Islamic sects or older religions such as those following a version of Zoroastrianism. Still, any plan was bound to hit some snags but such a division might have produced a better system that would have been better able to resist ISIS and their onslaught which currently has Sunni areas of Iraq either facing Shia vengeance or Sunni purist vengeance without any government in place of their own and no trained military as the Iraqi Army was currently majority Shia and has retreated to protect Baghdad and the Shiite south with large amounts of Iranian assistance and now apparently United States assistance in supporting the Shiite operations as the Iranian and United States troops are quartered together, have joint planning sessions and the United States arming and close air support is coordinated through the Iraqi government which is under the strict influence of the Iranian government which has left the Sunni and the Kurds out in the cold and on their own. This has produced much more serious consequences for the Sunni who had depended on the Iraqi government and military for their protection which has left them at the mercies of whichever force has control of their lives each hour while the Kurds far back even during the United States military occupation after removing Saddam Hussein from power had become a semi-autonomous region with their own militias and governance allowing them to survive without any assistance from the Iraqi government, military or otherwise. The Kurds have become a safe haven for the minorities and have provided better and more varied protection for minorities than the United States and their supported Shiite government in the south leaving the Sunni completely out in the cold. What can be done to settle the problems in the MENA regions will take somebody with a plan which answers the many difficulties such would involve and the means of enforcing such against vested interests that would be less than advantageous for the population. The people need to be the primary concern and their needs must be the overriding priority forcing the drawing of any future borders. There must not be any restrictions as to the number of states, their interactive cooperation and other concerns. It is likely that a loose federation will prove the best solution, I am just glad that I do not have to find the best solution though if I find the magical resolution, I will be pushing it here where unfortunately few of the really powerful people will find it, at least not as things stand or maybe I am mistaken. This will need to wait for a different time. The one other area we have yet to address will not make it into this article, but I have written much already on the difficulties within Israel and the need for another brilliant solution here where none can exist that both sides would agree upon as both sides believe they have the unassailable right to all of Jerusalem if not also all of the lands themselves.

 

Beyond the Cusp