Why Does Israel Continue to Exist Today?

 

Ask the average American irreligious or slightly religious Jew, many call them secular Jews or twice a year Jews who only visit the synagogue for the High Holidays and celebrate Hanukkah almost as if it were the Jewish Christmas even to having what they call a Hanukkah Bush (it really is a Christmas Tree with a six pointed star on top instead of a five pointed star). Ask the Jewish leadership of the Anti-Defamation League. Ask Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism. Ask Gideon Levy who writes for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Ask J-Street, B’Tselem, Peace Now or any of the plethora of misnamed human rights groups which act as Palestinian Arab critical support and fifth column against Israeli interests. The list of people and groups one can ask extends throughout Europe and the entire world with an ever growing number vocally screaming foul over the latest law passed by the Knesset which makes the Jewish communities anywhere west of the Jordan River legal, even those in the, dare we say it, West Bank, formerly known as Judea and Samaria for close to three thousand years. All these protesters keep repeating that this law will destroy the Israeli democracy and disenfranchise Arabs in Israel. This is total bunk. The Israeli Arabs will not be affected by this law in any way or by any means, period. Arabs will still be permitted to work in any position they are qualified to and desire, they will continue to be doctors, nurses, lawyers, Ministers in the Knesset, judges including on the Supreme Court, drivers, construction, engineering or anything they can dream. They will still own their homes, live where they choose, attend schools of their choice, attend church, Mosque, Synagogue or other religious institution of their choice, drive, ride all forms of transportation, vote in all elections and everything else as citizens of Israel. Guess that democracy thing will survive.

 

I hear the yelling already, “What about the Palestinians voting?” Well, tell you what, whenever Mahmoud Abbas decides that elections are due, then they can have elections. Abbas is serving his twelfth year of a four year term which started in January 2005. The reason the Palestinian Arabs have not voted is because the Palestinian Authority, which means Mahmoud Abbas who has become its dictatorial ruler, has suspended their democratic processes as Abbas knows he would never win in a fair election and the deceit necessary to have him win is beyond his personal ability to manage as there are those standing ready for any opportunity to replace him. Israel has absolutely no control over elections for the Palestinian authority any more than it has over elections in Gaza ruled by Hamas. Where Israel is often faulted for the lack of opportunity to vote for their government by the Arab Palestinians, it has no validity and nothing to do with Arab Israelis who have full rights and do vote in Israeli elections. What happens to the Palestinian Arabs has more to do with their true intentions and the actual and real meaning and purpose of the State of Israel. We will try and clarify both in the remainder of this article and hope we can at least set a few misconceptions straight.

 

First, let us cover the easiest misperception, that Israel was founded to be a democracy. Not even slightly true. Israel was founded to be the homeland for the Jewish People. It is that simple. Read the Balfour Declarations (see image below) and you will see nary a word about democracy throughout. Read the San Remo Conference and again nary a word about elections, democracy or anything covering governance. Everything in every treaty, conference, document and even the Mandate Rules written by the League of Nations have no reference to democracy or anything about how the State of Israel was to be governed. The main points were that it was to be the homeland for the Jewish People and it could not deprive the residents residing in the land of their freedoms to own property, practice their religion and all civil and religious rights but says nothing about political rights. According to all of the laws etcetera regarding the making and founding of the State of Israel, the form of governance is completely unmentioned leaving it up to the Jews, the Zionists, to decide as they formed their nation. Technically, Israel could legally limit the right to vote to Jews or even to practicing Jews. Israel did not take that path. Israel gave full rights to their population whether Jewish or not. That is why Arabs are full voting citizens of the State of Israel as are many other peoples who were present or have been allowed citizenship as refugees from persecution. The Arabs who remained in Israel did not join the Arab forces who attacked Israel in the 1948 Arab War of Genocidal Intent launched by the Arab World on Israel’s founding morning of May 15, 1948.

 

Balfour Declaration and
Initial Proposed Map and Lands

 

As a result of that war, what in Israel is euphemistically called the Israeli War of Independence and is celebrated as a victory as Israel survived, yet the reality comes to territory where Israel lost major parts of Judea and Samaria to Jordan who renamed that area the West Bank while Egypt took over the Gaza Strip. There were some Arab villages which harbored fighters which attacked the Israeli forces from behind the lines which lead to the Israeli forces dispossessing the entire village as that was the expedient way of addressing the situation most efficiently and immediately deciding that the villagers were at the least partially responsible for the use of their areas for staging a rear attack and that they were acting as a fifth column. Much has been misrepresented about these actions claiming that these villagers were dispossessed of their lands simply because they were Arabs and nothing else, ignoring their harboring of Arab forces which were planted in order to attack Israeli forces from behind and cutting off their routes of supply and assaulting the civilians claiming that every Jew was a legitimate target. These differences will never be resolved and can only be mitigated by what means will allow.

 

We have settled that the only real meanings behind the founding of Israel was to take some desert, swamp lands and rock strewn hills into the Jewish homeland. The few people residing in these lands at the end of World War I, a sparse set of peoples strewn here and there, were guaranteed their civil and religious rights such as continued ownership of lands, herds, business, residence and other properties as well as rights to worship in their traditional methods and follow their religions freely. The existing residents were not guaranteed political rights which were reserved technically for the Jewish People if this were the decision of the Zionist Congress upon the founding of the state. When Israel was founded on May 15, 1948 one might say that everything hit the fan as forces from more than a half dozen Arab armies and militias attacked Israel from every possible direction. Peace was not achieved for over a year and when the decision of governance was finally addressed the leadership from the Zionist Congress and the other groups such as the Haganah reached the decision to extend full political rights to all the residents in the nation, Arabs, Jews, Christians, Bedouins, Druze, Baha’I and other smaller minority groups all as one democratic nation. This was the first actual decision on using a democracy and it is notable that the democracy was all inclusive of those who were not opposed to the Jews having their own state. This is how and why Israel is a democracy.

 

When the State of Israel was founded, the Palestinian Arabs were not citizens of Israel but were Arabs residing in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia as well as some Iraqis, Turks, Yemenis and others who were part of the invading forces and who remained on the lands or were actually driven onto the lands by their governments in order to make what have become known as facts on the ground. The claims that all of the Palestinian Arabs came from inside Israel is a common factual lie which has been repeated so often with such force and echo-chamber reinforced, the world now accepts it as factual. This is the main drive behind the two state concept as the claim is Israel owes the remnant of her invaders their own nation. This misconception has poisoned the waters so permanently that a solution would be difficult if this was the sole difficulty. There is a further problem in that the Arabs do not believe that the Jews have any right to a homeland within what they see as the Muslim Ummah. Their claim is that throughout all history, which for the Muslims begins in 625, there have been no Jewish lands within the lands they conquered and colonized. The reality is that the Arabs have the longest running and most extensive colonial enterprise in world history. They also are under the belief that the problem with the world is that it has not yet, emphasis on yet, come under the rule of Allah and the dictatorial rule of Islam. Until they are disabused of this notion, Israel, as well as the world in total, can never feel safe from the next Islamic offensive, something the Europeans should remember from their own history as Islam has attacked through Spain only to be turned at Tours by Charles “the Hammer” Martel and twice from Turkey Ottoman Empire being turned back at the Battle of Vienna, the first attack being stopped in 1529 and the second assault turned back by Polish King John III Sobieski in 1683.

 

Israel, conceived, initiated and founded to be the homeland of the Jewish People has faced the difficulty of a Palestinian Arab irascible obstinacy demanding they are the rightful owners of the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and that the Jews have no rights in these lands and deserve to be exterminated. This has been their first, second, and final demand and they refuse to compromise and accept anything less. Their demands are often couched in coded verbiage such as their demanding they receive their 22% of the Mandate Lands. The western leadership will almost always take that to mean that they are demanding 22% of the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea this meaning Judea and Samaria or Judea, Samaria and Gaza. What Abbas actually means and has explained as his meaning is 22% of the entire of the Mandate Lands, the 22% which consists of all the lands not taken to make Jordan which was 78% of the original Mandate Lands, the entire of the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Yasser Arafat and after him Mahmoud Abbas both demanded that Israel be destroyed and replaced by Palestine. Abbas has actually offered one compromise; his idea of a two state solution. His two state idea is for an Arab Palestine which will be completely free of Jews and an Arab ruled State of Israel where the Jews have no rights and are allowed to live at the indulgence of their betters, the Arabs which will include over five million Arabs brought from refugee camps from around the Arab world and even within Judea and Samaria and Gaza and who knows how many additional Arabs who simply claim to be refugees seeking economic betterment. Anyway one cuts it, finding a solution which will satisfy the Palestinian Arab leadership and their Arab League backers, it would require sacrificing the Jewish State making the Jews once again stateless.

 

The problem with the Arab reasoning is that history did not begin in 625 AD, especially in the lands of Judea, Samaria and the rest of the lands of the Twelve Tribes of Israel (see map on right below). The Twelve Tribes of Israel were founded when Joshua crossed the Jordan River and defeated the first Canaanite King of Jericho. This was followed with another victory at Ai and continued until the Holy Lands were conquered following numerous tactical routes first heading through the central Judean hills, then southward and finally the northern areas (shown in the left map below). This conquest began approximately 1275 BCE. Since that time virtually every conquering empire outside those in the Americas, China, Japan, and Russia but even to including the Vikings if one believes that the Greeks were originally Vikings who found the Greek climate preferable to Scandinavia, surprise, surprise, and their Triremes were modified Long Ships; they all have invaded and occupied without ever naming Jerusalem as a capital city even for a province unless the province was expressly for the Jews as was the case under the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great. The Jewish People have an extensively long history uninterrupted with Jews residing in the lands and especially in Jerusalem constantly starting soon after the entrance of Joshua through the expansive times under Kings David and Solomon through the First Temple Period, their Babylonian exile of most of the population and their subsequent return and building of the Second Temple and expanding the Temple Mount and the remainder of their history through to the modern period. That is the real history and Israel was founded recognizing the entirety of the history, not just that which is fancifully convenient for the Islamic sensibilities.

 

Israel Through the Ages Joshua Enters to the Twelve Tribes

 

Then there is the biggest fallacy of them all, that Israel conquered Palestinian Lands in the Six Day War in 1967. First thing is there has never been anything called Palestine for their land to be stolen. Palestine is the name of the region and the original use of the term Palestinian was for the Jews during the British Mandate period where the Arabs were referred to as Arabs or Syrians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Druze, Bedouins, Egyptians or other designation of origin or tribe. When Israel regained the lands of Judea and Samaria in the 1967 Six Day War they were not conquering new lands, they were liberating their own lands which had been occupied by the Jordanians since the 1948 War. The only occupation of Judea and Samaria was by Jordan and the claim that Jordan gifted these lands to the Palestinian Arabs is a great misconception, a great invention of propaganda. The lands were originally and always Israeli and were occupied by Jordan. One cannot give away stolen lands and thus Jordan could not gift the lands to the Palestinian Arabs as it was stolen land occupied illegally by Jordan. The entire world with the exception of Britain and Pakistan refused to recognize these lands as Jordanian. Even Egypt and the Arab League refused to recognize the Jordanian occupation. Lastly, Jordan signed a peace with Israel surrendering the occupied lands of Judea and Samaria back to Israel and it was not until two years after that treaty that Jordan officially claimed to have gifted the lands to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Arabs. That makes these lands doubly not Jordanian to give as they were not even occupying the lands when they claimed to have given them away. What is next, the Iranians claiming they gave away Hollywood to the Arab Palestinians community of Southern California? That would be just as legal as the Jordanian claims to have given land they did not even possess at the time to the Palestinian Arabs and they even made the claim retroactive to attempt to grant it some degree of validity. That simply does not wash and the land remains Israeli until such time as Israel gives it away in a treaty, something seeming more and more remote by the day.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Palestinians After More than Philistine Lands

 

The Palestinian leadership and spokespersons have made the false claim repeatedly that they are the descendants of the long dead Philistines and claim they are simple demanding their ancient homelands. There are any number of problems with this narrative starting with, but not ending with, the fact the Philistines were of Greek descent, not Arab. Then there is the little inconvenient fact that the Arab expansion from their ancestral homelands of the Arabian Peninsula waited until well after the Roman Empire had fallen, somewhere around 625 of the Common Era. All these and other little equally inconsequential truths aside there remains the one as to what exactly were the Philistine lands. Truth be known, the Philistines being a people of the sea held solely coastal cities with their five capital cities being Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron and Gath. This would relate to Ashdod as the northern most city and continuing down the coast including Gaza on to approximately the Egyptian border possibly extending into parts of norther Sinai Peninsula. This would be about half again more land than Gaza which is currently held by Hamas and is sometimes referred to in editorials as Hamastan. Claiming to be the Philistines would rule out the entirety of their claims to lands of the West Bank, but why let realities get in the way.

 

Tribes of Israel and Land of the Philistines

 

What brought this on was reading some of the overly forgiving eulogies rightfully praising Simon Peres at his state funeral last week. The picture painted of Peres was one of a man whose life was spent in the unswerving desire for peace and of a gentle soul who was next to faultless and was the measure of understanding. I would have liked to have known of the man described, but that is often how eulogies are, aggrandizing those traits the world found laudable while ignoring those which did not meet the world’s universal measure of greatness. Thus almost none mentioned that Simon Peres was the driving force which drove the building of the experimental reactor at Dimona which could be used for the production of nuclear weapons grade materials, and his deals to acquire French Mirage jets which served as the backbone of the early Israeli Air Force as well. They omitted his support for settlements in what many once believed were lands which at best could have been thought to be negotiable Israeli lands and other Zionist endeavors which assisted in building a strong and viable State of Israel in the 1950s and early 1960s before Peres remade himself into a leftist icon and the man who pursued peace regardless of the consequences and never once saw any of the difficulties resulting from his actions. Simon Peres was a force of wild abandon that wreaked havoc as it broke down every argument and logical caution all in the name of Oslo.

 

Once he had drafted and brought the Oslo Accords, forcing them upon his own nation and government using every coercion and international pressure in order to force Israel to kneel before the altar of Oslo, as if it were the Golden Calf in the plains before Mount Sinai during the Exodus, and the results were similar in both cases. Simon Peres sold the chimera of land for peace and made such into an idolatrous religion with the Oslo Accords as the idol of worship and constructed a virtual Shrine of Oslo where land for peace was to be worshiped and the term Oslo was a sainted and holy word. This idolatrous cult diverted many an Israeli just as idolatrous cults of the Philistines, Egyptian, Hittites, Edomites, Assyrians, Greeks and Romans stole Israelite souls throughout Israeli history. In many of the times past the Israelite people and later the Jews were punished for their taking of false gods and worship of idols in place of Hashem. Some have postulated that the terrorism could have been interpreted as divine retribution for the worship of the doctrines of Oslo over the Commandments in Torah. There are many wisdoms and truths about the Land of Israel in Torah which we are not to question but to protect and serve to make them holy and dedicated to the worship of Hashem as commanded in Torah. Perhaps it would be of interest for this lay person to tell of the few with which even I am familiar.

 

First and foremost, the land of Israel belongs to Hashem and Hashem has assigned the Israelites, many call us Jews but that term defines Jews everywhere while Israelites are the Jewish People who have remained through time or returned to these ancient and holy lands thus making us separate in one aspect from other Jews, to tend and care for the lands of Hashem and the lands will care for us for as long as we keep Hashem’s Commandments. Hashem gave us these lands to sustain us as a reward for living by the Commandments of Torah and the lands will be bountiful in measure with our obedience and pure worship of Hashem as Commanded in Torah. There are more than Ten Commandments, there are six-hundred-thirteen Commandments, Mitzvot, in Torah and the Rabbis have added quite a number of regulations, one might call them, over the years as listed in Talmud and other doctrinaires. We are to follow these directives from Torah as if our lives depended upon them because they actually do depend upon them if the land is to support us and keep us. Those who do not follow Hashem and do these Commandments will be “vomited from these lands” as the lands will reject the sinners. After the last exile which lasted almost two-thousand years we hope we have learned this one truism at long last.

 

There are instructions as to how we are to face those living in the lands which Hashem was to give us and this should probably apply to the modern times as well. We are to give these people three alternatives, each less hospitable than the previous one. The most hospitable is they are welcome to remain in the lands and we will not settle where their cities exist as long as they leave us in peace to follow Hashem and they agree to obey the Noahic Code of seven commandments upon which all civilized nations are to be based according to Torah. These are not dissimilar to the Ten Commandments but are slightly less demanding (see image below). Those agreeing to this may live within the lands and will be afforded equal protection from outside attacks and be treated as equals with equal rights and be free to live providing they reside peaceable and obey the Noahic Code, the Devine Code of seven universal commandments.

 

Noahic Codes

 

The second choice is they may choose to leave the lands entirely. If they choose this they will be afforded ample time to gather their belongings, herds, moveable property, vehicles, wagons and household goods and leave to choose a new homeland and we promise not to harm them, chase after them or bring upon them undue hardship once they have left for their future new homelands. Granted, this was much more easily achieved when the Israelites came to the Promised Lands after the exodus from the exile in Egypt (Mizraim). Of the Canaanite Tribes there were a few who chose to remain and did so in peace, some chose to leave and went forth from the land unhindered, but most chose the last alternative to their dismay and eventual demise. The third choice is to bring war against the Israelites and to try and vanquish us. Those choosing to take this stance and bring war face the ultimate response, annihilation. In case of war we are instructed by Torah to bring complete and total war against those who choose to treat us with violence and we are instructed to kill them to the last individual and to destroy their cattle, goods, and all that is theirs so as to wipe their name from history from that point forward. Total war is what we are described to bring against those who bring violence against us in Hashem’s lands.

 

This is not how we have treated the violences brought against us and instead have sought to make a peace with those who have chosen war. Peace cannot be made with people whose stated desire is your eradication. Reading even the school books that the Western nations of Europe as well as the European Union, United States, Canada, Australia and the United Nations have paid for in full and some have sent representatives to review the content of the texts and approved them and they state that the Jew in Israel is a mortal enemy to the Palestinian who must murder them wherever they find them. This is taught over and over again in every class imaginable and such is reinforced through plays and exercises where they reenact the murder of IDF troops and Israeli Jews. They have children’s shows on television where they sing songs about the heroic martyrs who murdered Jews and how they too will murder Jews when they are older. The governments of the world know of these textbooks which they pay to have printed. They know of these children’s television shows and the summer camps which are paramilitary training camps which teach the genocidal murder of all Jews worldwide. The world governments and most of the academics know of the naming of parks, schools, summer camps, soccer teams, sports tournaments, streets, squares, mosques and buildings of all types after murderers of Jews, or terrorists, of what they call blessed martyrs which is their term for suicide bombers who successfully murdered Israeli civilians including often numerous Arab Israeli citizens. The world knows of these things and gives it tacit approval all the while condemning Israel for any defense put forth to protect Israeli civilians. The western nations, especially the United States, demand that Israel remove blockaded streets, remove checkpoints and allow Palestinians free access into Israel basically instructing Israel to not enforce the borders with Palestinian Authority semi-autonomous regions knowing full well that doing so will provide clear access for terrorists into Israeli cities where they can and will murder Israeli civilians and then when these attackers are prevented from murdering Israeli civilians by police and they are shot the world protests the extrajudicial killing as if there had been no threat to life despite the terrorists already having stabbed or shot any number of individuals often resulting in deaths or permanent debilitating injuries which scar, disfigure and disable the victims for life.

 

There is a term in history, more of an explanation really; it is the theory that Jewish blood is cheap, often costless and inconsequential. This was true in much of history both in Europe and the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) area under Islamic rule and Greek and Roman before that. One example were the Crusades where when they had numerous troops who were not battle-hardened and had never tasted blood (killed a man) they would assault Jewish towns and ghettos somewhat for sport and for the experience of killing so that when they reached the holy lands they actually had mastered their weapons and no longer gave killing a second thought which made them better soldiers. This training also made the slaughter of entire towns and cities in the holy lands easier on the soldiers’ consciences as they “purified” (rid) them of their non-Christian peoples. Do not believe this was only a Crusader practice as there was also purification in the Islamic world where they too were readying armies for the conquest and spread of Islam and often also for retaking the Holy Lands. As Jerusalem was of obvious value above and beyond that of any normal city as well as was Bethlehem and Nazareth, the Muslims were particularly driven to hold these cities simply to deny the Christians their prized possessions which they found made them lesser fighters, or at least that was the theory.

 

Once these cities, Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem had finally been conquered, the next city of premium value and declared the third most important city for Islam became Constantinople. It replaced Jerusalem which had previously held that title until it was finally secured and defended and proven beyond the ability of the Christians to challenge. They treasured Constantinople so much they even gave it an Islamic name, Istanbul. Once they had finally broken through the walls of Constantinople and taken the city and renamed it Istanbul, they went the additional step of taking the Hagia Sophia, the largest and most decorative cathedral of the world at that time, and transformed it with the addition of four minarets and named as the Aya Sofya First Imperial Mosque of Istanbul (modern picture below where it now serves as a museum covering its entire history). The Hagia Sophia has had a spotted history of grandeur and falling into gross disrepair as well as suffering a number of earthquakes and one pillaging. Today it has had most of its frescos restored and the plaster removed to reveal others once again displaying its grandeur as a museum open to the public. One can only hope this grand structure and example of glorious architecture remains in all of its historic beauty for posterity but that will remain to be seen.

 

Aya Sofya First Imperial Mosque of Istanbul
Hagia Sophia Museum

 

Once the Muslims had taken Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul it eventually fell to the Ottoman Turks, themselves Muslims, and to the allies after World War I after which it was returned to Turkish rule as Turkey remained as a nation in the aftermath of the Great War. They needed a new third holiest city for the conquests to continue. This did cause some differences of opinion as there were three separate cities which served at times holding the honor of greatest target of Islamic armies. The Islamic armies of the west which had invaded Europe by crossing the Gibraltar Straights and entering Spain, or Andalusia as the Muslim named the area, first gave the honor to Madrid and then Barcelona as the third holiest city in Islam, simply the manner in which the next targeted assaults intended to conquer were named. The Islamic forces then took most of Portugal so quickly along with Spain that Lisbon, as far as we could discern, was never so honored. The next target was France and the Muslim forces had experienced no real opposition of consequence so set their sights high and named Paris as their next great conquest. They ran into a problem somewhere around Tours, France in October of 732, where the forces under the leadership of Charles “the Hammer” Martel who defeated the Islamic forces in such a definitive battle that they were turned back out of France and back into Spain.

 

Meanwhile, as well as much later in history, the next target was in the west of Europe where the Islamic Ottomans targeted Vienna. The interesting item here is the Ottomans made two separate attempts to take the city laying siege to the city in 1529 and again in 1683. The Ottoman Empire led by Suleiman the Magnificent made the first attempt to take Vienna laying siege to the city for almost three months when nature decided to turn upon the Ottoman forces. First there came rain storms which destroyed what tunneling efforts had not already been defeated by the defenders of Vienna. The frontal assaults broke first at distance by the use of arquebus, a rifle-like hand cannon (see image below), and at closer range the use of long pikes broke the assaults. This was followed by an early and particularly heavy snow leading to a rout where many supplies and artillery were abandoned and many men captured. This led to years of conflict between the Austria-Hungarian forces backed by Spanish and Holy Roman forces against the Ottoman Empire forces leading eventually to another attempt at taking Vienna.

 

Arquebus, a rifle-like hand cannon

 

Beginning on July 14, 1683 the Ottoman forces under Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha and Kara Mehmed of Diyarbakir initially fought their way to the walls of Vienna and laid siege to the city. The siege held for a couple of months until September 12, 1683, when relief forces arrived to relieve the city. King John III Sobieski of Poland had prepared his forces for a total war of relief for the city of Vienna during the summer of 1683. He requested and received guarantees from all the neighboring countries and backed by the Holy Roman Empire states for a pact of nonaggression while he mustered his entire army to march to relieve Vienna. His forces arrived and backed by Holy Roman Cavalry leaving sufficient forces at key junctions and guarding all bridges to sustain resupply of his forces, King John III Sobieski defeated the Ottoman forces laying siege to Vienna and broke the stalemate thus setting his name into the history books as the man who began the eventual defeat of the Ottoman Empire and broke their advances into Europe once and for all. Thank you for tolerating this trip through history though off topic. I do tend to ramble.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The World Has Gone Crazy!!!

 

As per usual, the world is being counterintuitive, obsessive compulsive, defining things upside-down and joining the enemy. The most egregious of these is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has gathered the rightful ire from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) over the recent statements by Abraham Foxman’s replacement as Director of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt. The exchanges all were traceable back to the recurrent statements by numerous leaders from the Arab Palestinian Authority including their President, Mahmoud Abbas demanding that when (not if) their Palestinian State is established in Judea and Samaria with East Jerusalem as its Capital, the lands must be made free of Jews, absolutely devoid of Jews by whatever means may prove necessary (below is a now infamous video circulated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) with translation relating the revulsive commentary by Abbas). Arab Palestinian Authority leaders from the Fatah Party, a political projection of the PLO terror group, had posted claims on their Facebook page as reported in Israel Today with additional details provided by PMW with further corroborative links and information.

 

 

This finally incited a response from Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu who spoke in a formal video released last week (which can be watched below). An excerpt from the beginning of the video Prime Minister Netanyahu makes the statement, “Jewish communities in Judea Samaria, the West Bank, are an obstacle to peace. I’ve always been perplexed by this notion. Because no one would seriously claim that the nearly two million Arabs living inside Israel – that they’re an obstacle to peace. That’s because they aren’t. On the contrary.” Further into his speech, Prime Minister Netanyahu condemns these demands and makes an even wider condemnation of a world which stands idly by with these words, “And this demand is outrageous. What is even more outrageous is that the world doesn’t find this outrageous. Some otherwise enlightened countries even promote this outrage.”

 

 

The initial reaction came from the Obama Administration from the State Department where Elizabeth Trudeau scornfully replied as if scolding a child, not answering a statement from a head of state stating, “We obviously strongly disagree with the characterization that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank. We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful.”

 

The response which was then released by the ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt stated, “Israel has many legitimate concerns about Palestinian policies and behavior, not the least of which is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s rash accusations that Israel commits acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. However, the charge that the Palestinians seek ‘ethnic cleansing’ of settlers is just not one of them.” He further raised the claim that Israel treats the different Israeli citizens allowing each different rights and benefits with these words, “We want to see Israel as a democratic country that acknowledges and protects the rights of all its citizens, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, Sabra and immigrant, Jew and Arab.” The truth is all citizens also do include Druze, Baha’i, Bedouin, Ethiopian, Indian, Russian and a multitude of others residing legally in Israel with complete equality in all areas of life be they opportunity, employment, political, private, public, residence and any area imaginable replete with legal definitions and protections. Any such claims are simply ludicrous. The ZOA response can be read here.

 

Media have reported on the criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statements with one report reporting his equating items, which he had not, with their commentary of, “equates opposition to Israeli settlements with ‘ethnic cleansing’” as he never used the misnomer of settlements but instead referred to them as what they are, Jews, Jews residing in Area C of Judea and Samaria which under the Oslo Accords is under Israeli civil and military responsibility and designated as useable for development by Israel while denying Palestinian Authority from developing in these defined areas as they are restricted to Areas A where the PA has civil and military (security) responsibility and Area B where the PA has civil and the PA and Israel share military (security) control. Some in the Israeli media such as Haaretz also went off the deep end over the Prime Minister’s video quoting the various responses from the State Department reaction as if it were the words from the Angels in Heaven. It is so good to have the prophets of Haaretz giving us unwashed and ignorant ones true vision and leading us to reasoned understandings. Actually, I have found a fair definition of Zionist, or at the least a supporter of Eretz Yisroel, if you generally disagree with most political stances from Haaretz, or the newspaper and source of intelligent and reasoned thought as they would have one believe, then you are a Zionist.

 

The easiest way to show the hyperventilation over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statements is beyond the pale is simply to ask what would have been the reaction had Israel been demanding the making of East Jerusalem Arab free East Jerusalem as it is to be part of the unbreakable and complete Capital City of Israel. There would be explosive denunciations and ethnic cleansing would be the least horrific of the criminal accusations thrown at Netanyahu and when Mahmoud Abbas denounced such a declaration he would be lauded and receive invitations to travel the world repeating his condemnations and he would be presented before the United Nations General Assembly to personally present the condemnation message they would all but unanimously vote to make it an official General Assembly denunciation of the entire State of Israel. There might even be calls to evict Israel from the United Nations and declare Israel no longer recognized by the United Nations as a nation. This would be reconsidered as without an official state of Israel, who could the United Nations Human Rights arm denounce at the start of every meeting?

 

The double standard where the Arab Palestinians can make any statement and nobody ever takes exception and if they even actually question the helpfulness, they explain that they understand the frustration felt and driving the Arab Palestinians as Israel simply refuses to take a national day of swimming towards Gibraltar leaving the entirety of the lands for the Arabs to take. The regard for everything Arab understandable and excusable and everything Israel to be questioned and called into doubt is appalling. From the very beginning the British enforced the ban on firearms ownership against the Israelis and often took the confiscated weapons and accidentally lost track of their whereabouts after storing them briefly with Arab leaders’ compounds before forgetting them as somehow they had disappeared.

 

During the war to annihilate the Jewish state immediately after her founding in 1948 found a strange set of bedfellows with both British and Nazi officers assisting the Jordanians, Egyptians, Syrians and other Arab armies with tactical and strategic efforts from their various headquarters. The initial invasions routes are shown in the map below. Still, with some assistance with arms shipments from Czechoslovakian and few others, though there are stories of other clandestine arms shipments, Israel managed to hold much but not all of her territory. One of which I read about many years ago, and have been unable to find corroborative evidence ever since, told that some of the largest electronic transformers, the sixty-six-thousand volts down to two-thousand volts, being shipped to Israel from Baltimore weighing the correct tonnage but upon arrival they were opened and resembled an arms piñata with even reportedly tanks being in at least a few shipments. The Israelis managed to form a defense force from various groups which these eventually formed the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) whose storied history is well-known.

 

Initial Invasion Routes by Arab Armies on May 15, 1948

 

What is not as well-known is how desperate state of the first hours and some of the most horrific events in the early hours and days of that desperate war which had been misnamed Israeli War of Independence as it was Israeli war to avoid a genocidal invasion bent on the murder of every Jew they could find. One of the most gut wrenching was the slaughter of seventy-nine from a convoy including doctors, nurses, students, patients, faculty members, a few Haganah fighters and a British soldier. The convoy consisted of ten vehicles consisting of two ambulances, three buses of medical staff, and three logistical trucks, escorted by two Haganah armored cars. The convoy set off for the hospital at 9:30 am carrying 105 passengers. An armored car usually meant for the Israelis a regular vehicle which may have some metal plates welded and a hole in the roof allowing for one man armed with a machine gun to stand and shoot. These were definitely not the halftrack many visualize when they hear armored car. They were ambushed using an electronically detonated mine to stop the convoy which was immediately raked with rifle and machinegun fire resulting in the dead. Some of the rear vehicles turned and fled back to central Jerusalem forgetting reaching the hospital. They carried most of the twenty wounded from the ambush. Much, actually virtually all, of the convoy personnel were unarmed medical personnel and patients leaving them all but completely unarmed. This tragic event is usually ignored as the only stories usually made public paint the Israelis who were fighting for their very existence and facing more than the invading armies as many Arab villages inside Israel and behind the front lines were organized and attacked supply depots, reinforcements on their way to the front, injured being transferred for treatment in the rear and sometimes engaging the rear of units fighting the invading Arab armies.

 

The years after the Israeli surprising victory in the Six Day War of June 1967 forward, the Arabs realized that destroying Israeli militarily was not going to be possible, let alone easy. After their failure after being able to surprise the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 and still having Israel reestablish their defenses and push the Arab armies back and beyond the starting points in the Golan Heights and the Suez Canal and pushing towards Damascus, Syria and Cairo and Alexandria Egypt; the world demanded Israel cease and return to the Golan Heights and Suez Canal. The Arabs decided that they needed a new approach and in cooperation with KGB planners they made plans to change the perception of the strong Arab world against Israel into a weak Arab surrogate against the stronger Israel. This birthed the using of the PLO which had been established in 1964 to carry out a terror war against the Israeli enemy. The PLO was already sworn from their start to liberate the lands from the Jews. In 1964 Jordan held Judea and Samaria, what they called the West Bank, and Egypt held Gaza, so what was the PLO intending to liberate? Israel itself, that is what they were determined to liberate. They intended to kill the Jews and take Israel or at least make life so impossible that the Jews would simply leave. They never could understand that the Jews not only did not intend to leave, many had nowhere to go as they were themselves exiled from Arab nations which had forced all but a remnant of their Jews to flee for their lives often without their wealth as they were limited to a suitcase, two at most and no jewelry or other items of value. These are the almost million Jews which Israel simply welcomed and incorporated into Israeli population and not held in camps demanding the Arab nations take them back and reconstitute their wealth as the Arabs have done with their “refugees” who mostly fled at the urgings of the Mufti of Jerusalem.

 

The Palestinian ploy making Israel the powerful oppressor has been adopted throughout much of the world and with the assistance of the remains of the socialist remnants from the Cold War, their latest alliance with Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the college and academic anti-Semites are educating and fermenting in the colleges and universities of Western Civilization are reinstating a general sense of anti-Semitism using Israel as the modern Jew. They claim they are not anti-Semites as there are Jews who are amongst their ranks and they are only against the Israeli policies against the Palestinians. They support the Arab claim that all the land of Israel is their natural homeland and the new anti-Semites are those claiming that the Jews are the only people of the planet who must not be permitted their own nation. While there are those including many Israelis who are calling for the formation of a homeland for the Kurdish people, but the Jewish homeland is coming increasingly under fire from international bodies and this is only the first wave. When today’s college and university elite graduate and there has been a decade of these trained anti-Israel graduates coming to power across the Western World, then Israel will hopefully have weaned themselves from the United States and become what she must, completely self-reliant. The reality is Israel is about to stand alone in the world. She will still have trade with some select few nations but she will have no friends with power. Her friends will be unable to assist other than with trade and perhaps provide raw materials Israel may absolutely require to survive; but Israel can expect to be evicted from the United Nations and find no friend on the Security Council which means a world poised to do the unthinkable, destroy the Jewish nation and the Jews worldwide once and for all. That was a day which the prophets foretold and it is not going to be a pretty day. Do not believe anyone knows how that day ends as that may not be as expected. It will be the final day after which the world may end in a whimper. As the poet T S Eliot predicted in his immortal poem in its entirety below he wrote, “This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”

The Hollow Men

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

 

Beyond the Cusp