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

 

The Islamic Reformer in Egypt

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Temple Mount Status-Quo Not so Static Though

 

When Israel gained control of all of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount after defeating the Jordanian Army after Jordan which, in a misadvised act, joined the Six Day War the morning of the second day, the Israeli government faced a situation which they imagined might cause difficulties after the fighting ended. As the Israeli government of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was largely secular and placed minimal religious importance to the Temple Mount figuring while both Muslims and Christians had holy structures on the Temple Mount making it a religious site for both religions, Judaism’s last Temple was destroyed almost two thousand years earlier by the Romans led to the decision that the Temple Mount was mostly a historic site for Jews and not as much sacred grounds. The figuring was to not make any disagreements over the Temple Mount a religious subject thus adding religious overtones to what the Israelis perceived as simply a territorial conflict. As those who have followed the growing conflict between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb have realized that as far as Muslims are concerned, everything is a religious conflict and nothing is merely territorial as even once any territory is integrated from Dar al-Harb, the world of war, into Dar al-Islam, the world of Islam, then those who are not or have not accepted Islam as their faith initially are permitted to retain their religion but must follow restrictive rules designed to forcibly coerce conversion through the imposition of a punitive tax, Dhimmi second class status, complete ban of constructing new religious buildings, no proselytizing, no repairs without special permission on existing religious structures and even threat of death for not converting if all else fails. This is simply proof that all conflict with Islam is a religious conflict regardless of the basic inspirations of their enemies. This little fact has finally, after the better part of a century, begun to sink in to the perception of the average Israeli, yet even now there are a sizeable number of Israelis, almost universally secular Israelis, who still deny this reality refusing to grasp what has slowly become more and more obvious to others.

 

The realities must be realized even by the deepest skeptic with the riotous behavior designed and inspired solely to prevent Jews from ascending to the Temple Mount as their presence is being described by Palestinian political and religious leadership as prevention of the Jews despoiling and desecrating the al-Aqsa Mosque, a structure located on the Herodian expanded area of the Temple Mount that despite its rather impressive size, the Mosque is about 35,000 square meters (380,000 sq. ft.) and could hold up to 5,000 worshippers, is completely located outside of the areas where the two Jewish Temples stood. The Muslims, especially those instigating the current Arab confrontations, are fully aware that the al-Aqsa Mosque would not need to be touched in order for the Third Temple to be constructed which is why they have expanded the area which they claim are parts of the al-Aqsa Mosque to include the entirety of the Temple Mount and through this description they now claim it would be sacrilegious for Jews to enter the al-Aqsa Mosque. This is why Mahmoud Abbas referred to Jews ascending to the Temple Mount as herds of unclean beasts when initially urging the Arab rioting on the Temple Mount recently, but this is nothing new and is a form of Arab protest which has been witnessed before which is all part of the supposed status-quo which really has been more of a sliding definition than a static set of realities.

 

When after the Six Day War in June of 1967 the hostilities were brought to an end the Israeli government was faced with a set of situations unique and new. Israel had taken control of the Sinai Peninsula during the 1956 Suez War which saw Israel allied with France and Britain demanding that the Suez Canal be reopened for universal maritime traffic and that the Straits of Tiran be reopened to allow Israeli shipping from their southern port of Eilat, after both of the waterways were closed by Egyptian President Nasser. Israel had been pressured, especially by the United States, into returning all of the Sinai Peninsula receiving in exchange the promise that the Straits of Tiran were promised to remain open with assurances from the United States, many European nations and the United Nations and with any such closing being described under international agreement that such future closings would be considered as an act of war against Israel and a casus belli into the future. Israel now also held the entirety of Judea and Samaria, Jordan had renamed the area West Bank and that name should have been relegated to the trash bin of history once these lands were liberated by Israel, as well as the Golan Heights taken from Syria as part of the defensive war Israel fought, the Six Day War. When allowing the Jordanian appointed Waqf to continue to adjudicate the maintenance and other day-to-day care and other duties the Israeli government of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan set forth rules whereby the Christians continued to be responsible for the care and operations of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Muslims were responsible for the care and maintenance of the Islamic structures located on the Temple Mount including the al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock and other Islamic buildings while the Waqf would be responsible for most everything else while access to the Temple Mount was to be permitted freely by peoples of all religions and not restricted to the three Abrahamic faiths and while Jews were to be granted totally free access to the Temple Mount, they would be barred from conducting prayers. This arrangement was referred to as the status-quo.

 

Back after Israel was assailed by over a half dozen national armies upon being founded and declaring her statehood in mid-May of 1948 and fought almost a year and a half war to establish her existence against a genocidal war which eventually left Gaza occupied by Egypt and Judea and Samaria occupied by Jordan. Egypt never annexed Gaza nor offered the Arabs in Gaza Egyptian citizenship. Jordan, on the other hand, annexed Judea and Samaria renaming it West Bank and granting the Arabs living there Jordanian citizenship while expelling every last Jews residing there, particularly the Jewish communities in Hevron, East Jerusalem and other towns, kibbutzim and farms across Judea and Samaria. Jordan also destroyed all the synagogues throughout the areas they held including many centuries old structures, used the grave stones to build latrines for the Jordanian military barracks and generally attempted to remove all evidence of Israeli or Jewish history throughout the areas they controlled. Compared to being forbidden from even approaching the Temple Mount, which being in the Old City Jerusalem was within the areas of East Jerusalem held by Jordan, any access permitted by a negotiated status-quo was an improvement. This improvement was not going to remain consistent as the status-quo mediated with Jordan, the controllers of the Waqf, was altered through treaty when peace was finally reached between Jordan and Israel which left Judea and Samaria as belonging to Israel. There has been another manner by which the status-quo has been altered, that being violence. This was accomplished by the Arab leaders of the Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria who had been granted Jordanian citizenship only to have it nullified by Jordan after they lost the areas to Israel in the Six Day War. This was most likely done by Jordan to avoid having the population of Judea and Samaria from remaining Jordanian citizens and thus being relocated into Jordan as part of any peace treaty or even by Israel as part of retaining the lands gained in a defensive war. The eventual actual reason was to allow these Arabs to take on an independent identification with which to wage a new war on Israel through their new identity being defined such they had equal or superior claim to the Jews to the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea eventually leading to their supplanting the Jews from within their ancient homelands.

 

Whenever there was a desire to alter the status-quo, either by the Jordanians or the Arabs who remained within Israel, the Arabs residing in Judea and Samaria would riot and continue ramping up the levels of violence forcing Israel to accept further and further compromises by which Jewish rights, and by association Christians, and limiting further Jewish freedoms on the Temple Mount. From the original status-quo which permitted universal access to the Temple Mount for Jews and others as long as the Jews refrained from conducting prayers while on the Temple Mount that being the sole restriction; the status-quo currently being enforced only permits Jews to access the Temple Mount from the Mughrabi Gate via a dangerous wooden bridge that rises above the Western Wall plaza, as are all non-Muslims. Starting last spring the Arabs began a systematic set of confrontations taunting Jews who were permitted to access the Temple Mount. Jews also began facing longer and longer wait times and excessive and invasive searches of their effects and bodies in order to assure they were not taking any religious objects onto the Temple Mount as the display of such objects might insult and disturb the sensitivities of the Muslims. Additionally, despite numerous rulings that all of the Israeli guarantees for religious freedoms are applicable everywhere throughout lands under Israeli control including particularly the Temple Mount and the uttering of prayers by the Israeli Supreme Court in a number of separate decisions through the years. All of these rulings had no effect or change to the reality that any Jews who attempted praying on the Temple Mount would find themselves whisked off the Temple Mount and likely banned for days, weeks or months, all depending on the whims of the Israeli police who are tasked with securing the Temple Mount and enforcing the orders from the Jordanian Waqf. The confrontations which began in the spring ramped throughout the summer into rioting at the request of the Arab leadership in Ramallah who continued calling for increased levels of violence where now the Arab rioters are stoning and throwing Molotov cocktails and shooting flaming fireworks at the Israeli police. These violent riots have produced the desired result of Israeli police forbidding Jews from accessing the Temple Mount.

 

The frightening thing came when we heard Prime Minister Netanyahu guaranteed one leader after another including but not limited to the King of Jordan, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, United States President Obama and numerous European leaders or almost anybody who demanded Israeli compliance to any restrictions the Arabs leadership in Jordan or Ramallah desired to impose. While thus far the rhetoric has only referred to keeping the sacred nature of the status-quo intact with extra identification of willingness to comply with the prohibition of Jews uttering prayers or even appearing to have thought of a prayer while and if they were permitted to enter the Temple Mount, or as the Arabs are fond of calling it, the al-Aqsa Mosque. This obsessive attention paid to complying with the oppressive, dehumanizing and belittling impositions of the so-called status-quo is disturbing enough and the claim that enforcing these observances are required in order to placate the Arabs thus bringing the rioting to an end. The problem is that these riots are not being controlled from Ramallah but instead are being supported by Hamas, paid for out of Qatar and choreographed from Hamas headquarters in Turkey. Mahmoud Abbas could jump up and down and hold his breath until he turned blue and his demands would have no effect on the rioting. His call for riots came after the rioting had been escalating for weeks possibly months. These riots are serving two important goals, the first being the restricting and prevention of Jews accessing the Temple Mount and the other is to provide endless violence which will prove to be beyond the ability of Abbas and the Fatah leadership to control and bring to an end. The aim is to order up a constantly escalating violence level throughout Judea and Samaria with the highest concentration being in Jerusalem, both Eastern and Western Jerusalem. This is presumably to eventually prove Abbas is incapable of ruling the unity government or even the areas he claims he was elected to high office to coordinate and exercise authority which would lead to Mahmoud Abbas and company calling for help from the Israelis. The hope is then to double down and call for the rioting to grow into a full-fledged intifada attacking throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and potentially throughout Israel from the southern tip of the Negev to the northern farms of the Galilee. The continuing escalation is planned to result in the calling for IDF troops to regain control that Hamas has planned to instigate their takeover of Judea and Samaria replacing Abbas and then miraculously ending the chaos and rioting. Then the status-quo will have finally reached its end-point where Jews are not permitted to set foot on the Temple Mount. Then all will have hopefully realized that the Arab-Israeli war has little if anything to do with territories and borders, it is a religious war between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. The actual conflict only has a tip of the iceberg and only one of numerous tips showing in this war to impose Islamic rule across the entire world. The war with Israel is the front where Islam must reassert their supremacy over the lands where Israel now sits as it was once ruled over as part of the last Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, and as such must always be under Islamic rule. That is the real status-quo, the return of these lands called Israel to Islamic rule with the Jews and everybody else currently residing in Israel either converted, dead or paying the Jiyza and accepting their position as Dhimmis. After Israel the next target will be Europe but for now I pray for an Israeli miracle and the government extending Israeli law to all of Jerusalem and returning the members of the Islamic Waqf to Jordan with a note informing the Jordanian King that his controllers are no longer required and that free access and right to pray just as things were under King Solomon had announced after he completed the building of the First Temple saying according to scriptures, “Thus all the peoples of the earth will know Your name and revere You, as does Your people Israel; and they will recognize that Your name is attached to this House that I have built” (I Kings 8:43). This was King Solomon’s invitation to all people from every corner of the globe and from slave to ruler to come and make their sacrifices to Hashem and learn to know Hashem’s laws. The pledge of King Solomon to openly share the Temple Mount and the abundance of spiritual greatness which emanated from that holy place be accessible to all without any searches of their bodies and artifacts and restricting the time allotted each visitor was the status-quo of which Hashem would approve. And that should most definitely and even defiantly be the status-quo we need to have rather than the existing Sharia compliant rioting and lawlessness which is the status-quo defiling the Temple Mount with the blessings and approval of the Waqf and all those who believe the supposed status-quo should be applied.

 

Beyond the Cusp