As Long as They All Hate

 

We have always held that if you are going to be denounced, sanctioned, held as a diabolical daemon in the United Nations General Assembly, receive threats from the European Union and member states and bludgeoned with words of war from the Arab world and generally made a pariah; then you may as well do whatever serves your needs and to hell with everyone else. We have seen the guaranteed death of the two state solution in any number of ways. The Palestinian education, or should we say indoctrination, system has set their belief structure that the only peaceful solution left to them is the complete destruction of Israel and the death of every Jew. Just for clarification, they teach the death of every Jew, not Israeli and not just Israeli Jews but all Jews everywhere which is possible only should they conquer the world. The PLO Charter has fairly similar wordings, goals and aims as does the Hamas Charter which also calls for their conquest of the world. People laugh when they are told these things and claim that nobody is so delusional as to believe they are going to conquer the world, that’s just plain crazy. Well, yes, it is crazy but that does not mean they do not believe they will actually conquer the world. It does not matter if the leaders know that world conquest is a pipe dream, as long as the people are sold on that idea, they will fight until their dying day, which their fighting may advance by years through another senseless death in a war that cannot be won and also will not end until totally and utterly defeated. Keep in mind that the Islamic State also expects to conquer the world, Iran’s leadership sells the people on their conquering the world; the Imams in Saudi Arabia believe they will conquer the world under Wahhabism; the Imams teaching at Al-Azhar University in Cairo (pictured below), Egypt, the leading center for Islamic knowledge in the world, also sells their Imams on the fact that Islam is destined to conquer the world and it will be their version of Sunni Islam which will accomplish this; and the Ottoman Turks also set out to conquer the world and succeeded in conquering the Islamic world, or at least a good part of it. In Islam, world conquest is one of the main tenets after the Five Pillars of Islam which are Shahadah which means belief that there is only one god, Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger; Salah which means prayers are to be given Allah five times a day; Zakat which means giving alms, charity, of 2.5% of income; Hajj which is making the pilgrimage to the house of Allah in Mecca at least once during your life; and Fasting which is the fast from sunrise to sunset during the month of Ramadan. So, why not just add another pillar and admit that Islam demands that Muslims not rest until the entire world has fallen before them and all have either converted or been put to the sword. The Jizya tax for unbelievers to pay as protection under Islam is a temporary fix which in time is presumed to pass and the other two alternatives are to be implemented, convert or die. So, what does one do knowing that their problem with the Arab Palestinians can only be resolved to their satisfaction with your death and the conquest of your country by whatever means are necessary and that no rest can be afforded Israel as the land has been declared a Waqf which means that “every grain of sand is a holy piece of Islam” according to the definition of Waqf being a religious endowment of an area, in this case all of Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea according to the Palestinian leadership.

 

Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt

 

So, the enemy refuses any compromise and is willing, as we have already witnessed, to send all ages of youth starting with ten year old children armed with knives who are sworn to jihad and will attack as long as they have life left in them even if mortally wounded they will still attempt to kill whomever comes close including aid personnel who are attempting to treat their wounds. That is the level of fanaticism faced currently in Israel and coming rapidly to Europe and possibly beyond into the United States, Canada and anywhere else taking in the “Syrian refugees” who have numbers of males between the ages of fourteen and forty and who are unaccompanied by a wife, girlfriend or children. These are not refugees people, this is a fighting force, an advance column which will be learned in quick order, ask the French as they are entering the first phase of the Islamic war for the conquest of France. Israel has been dealing with this war from day one when on May 15, 1948, when Israel was first declared a nation with her borders defined as being from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, sounds familiar doesn’t it, and six nations’ armies invaded from every border with the genocidal intent of slaughtering every Jew and taking their wealth and possibly enslaving many of the women to be used to propagate more Muslim children. They promised wealth, herds of sheep, free land and houses, all the belongings of the Jew and all other spoils of war as defined in the Quran, which includes the enslavement of their defeated opponents women and the taking of children too young to be educated and have a strong attachment to any religion and might make good Muslims after being indoctrinated. That definition of the rewards for jihad against Israel and the Jews has not changed and if you die while performing jihad you go instantly to Islamic heaven where there are lush fields of grass, waterfalls, rivers, wines, and seventy-two permanent virgins who regain their virginity after you take them such that they are always fresh young, virgin, raven haired and beautiful. You cannot make this stuff up, well, apparently you can but your name would need to be Muhammad as such is beyond our imagination. Our imagination is so poor that we can only find one answer to this situation and it will not make even many of the Israeli politicians happy as they are mired in a false promise which was made at Oslo in the accursed Oslo Accords. There was the invention of two states for two peoples living side-by-side in peace and security. There was only one problem with that agreement, one side lied. The actions of Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian indoctrinated generations since 1993 and even before have proven that the Arab Palestinians will not accept two states for two peoples living side-by-side in peace and security, they want it all and they want it now or whenever as long as it takes to force the Jews from their lands or murder them where they stand and take the lands which Oslo defined as to be shared; they have decided they do not wish to share or play well with others. This is the reality from which Israel has to decide what she wishes to do.

 

So, what are the choices and how can we rate them for viability? Well, we can continue to offer new and slightly different proposals for establishing the two state solution as we have been doing since 1993 in September. It was a sunny Monday afternoon on the White House Lawns in Washington D.C., the thirteenth of September to be exact, and the negotiations have continued ever since. Since that time the Israelis have been systematically driven back one concession at a time while the Palestinians refused to even ratify their acceptance of the Oslo Accords, everybody has simply assumed their accepting it formally and never checked, or cared to check. Their one necessary concession was to change their Charter so it would no longer call for the destruction of Israel and they were only pressed once where the United States State Department joined a session of the Palestinian Parliament to witness their vote to change the Charter and they took a vote and passed a measure calling for a committee to be appointed to assess a proper and acceptable alteration to comply with the agreement to change the Charter. They never appointed the committee and never changed a word of their Charter which remains calling for the complete destruction of Israel. Since then Israel had gone from the original plan where Israel retained Area C, the Arab Palestinians retained Area A and the sides were to negotiate where to divide Area B to now where there are demands for Israel to return to the borders from before the 1967 Six Day War and surrender the entirety of the Old City of Jerusalem which has numerous Jewish holy sites and all of Area C which also holds valuable and precious Jewish holy sites and historic locations and there have been hints that Israel should also surrender a path to Gaza straight across the midlands of Israel cutting the Jewish State into halves and even calls for surrender of much of the Galilee and most of the Negev Desert. The aim is obvious, make Israel completely indefensible and then destroy it in quick order after every inch which could be negotiated had been taken through combination of threats and twisting world opinion, and that world opinion had been very generous to the Arab Palestinians as they are willing to sacrifice all of Israel as long as doing so comes with a promise to end all Islamic violence in the Western world and they are willing to take their word for that. The catch is they need Israel to agree and that point has yet to be reached, but give the world and the masters at giving concessions, also called the Knesset, time and we might get there. The Knesset actually approved the gifting of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority who within a short period lost it to Hamas who has since used it as a launching area of rockets into civilian areas of Israel and for tunneling into Israel with the intent of accomplishing raids resulting in kidnapped IDF or civilian Israelis. That was how the Gilad Shalit abduction and ransom was conducted. The world also seems to be fixated on Israel controlling their border with Hamas and Gaza despite tons of goods, food, medicine and other non-military goods transferred through the operative crossing daily where any government or NGO can have non-military goods transferred to Gaza simply by shipping their goods through the Ashdod, Israel port as Israel has legitimate need to assure that no military use goods are given over to Hamas, a recognized internationally as a terror origination. What is curious is these same nations have no problem with the complete closure of Gaza’s border with Egypt where nothing passes through in either direction legally for months and even years at a time. Israel has treated Gazans in Israeli hospitals including Hamas leader Haniyeh’s daughter treated in Israel. At another time, if you trust Israeli new reports, Hamas leader Haniyeh’s mother-in-law was also treated in an Israeli hospital. And according to Reuters in their last line almost as an excuse our mention of this but, one of Haniyeh’s granddaughters was treated in an Israeli hospital. But Israel is accused of committing genocide in Gaza. They keep using that word and I do not think it means what they think it means.

 

So, we have an intransigent enemy which will only be satisfied when they are walking on our graves as they would have long ago been destroyed as who needs a Jewish cemetery in the middle of an Arab Muslim Palestinian entity, which also happens to be dysfunctional and a failed entity incapable of supporting itself and completely dependent on foreign funding just to feed its people. And we have Israel, the only Jewish State in a sea of Arab and Muslim states despite the Arab Palestinian argument that there are no Muslim nations, which is true because their claim is there is not one such nation and they are correct, there are twenty-one Arab Muslim States and they desire to be the twenty-second. The world is willing to grant the Arabs Palestinians their demands as long as these demands are couched in polite terms and do not completely eradicate Israel, at least this is quite true in the United Nations General Assembly but thus far has not survived and passed in the Security Council where a veto threat always seems to succeed in preventing such a measure of passing and has even prevented such from being presented as their voting it down would set a bad precedent, or at least that has been the reason given by the Arab Palestinian leadership. Recent developments have shown that the veto protection has become something which some have decided can be used as a bludgeon to force Israeli leadership to toe a line drawn outside of Israel. This threat has been intimated but has yet to actually been publicly deployed though the possibility that it was threatened in private discussions between high officials in both nations has been breached as having been a possibility in many an editorial. Still, the fact that one of the candidates for the highest office did spend close to or possible more than a half hour berating the Prime Minister of Israel because he had the audacity to present the Israeli position regarding the Iranian nuclear negotiations between the P5+1 (the permanent members of the Security Council which are the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France and the plus one was Germany and, of course, Iran) which are claimed to permit Iran to continue parts of their nuclear research and increasingly over a decade be permitted greater range of research and development with their potentially producing nuclear weapon as soon as eight years according to some and definitively after the decade when all restrictions would end (the entire deal can be read here in a translation of the Russian copy into English and reformatted for easier reading). Another little tip of something not well known, Iran had been arming Hamas in Gaza and has also been trying to find inroads to arm and aid thus bringing into their influence the Palestinian Authority and the PLO.

 

So, what can be done about this untenable situation? How about a one state solution and the Arab Palestinians will be permitted to vote in their own local elections within Areas A and B while both Palestinians and Israelis will be permitted to reside in Area C but Arab Palestinians will not have voting rights as they will be considered resident aliens within Israel. Israel gets what was promised as their minimum border according to the original intents and promises under the Oslo Accords, as that at the very least should be recognized and granted. By the way, nobody other than Israel gets a vote on that decision. Arab Palestinians will have free travel throughout Israel with checkpoints initially and as the violence ends, the checkpoints will correspondingly end. Any Arab Palestinian desiring to take advantage of an opportunity to reside outside of Israeli influences can take a buyout offer which will include a generous price for their assets such as property, business and other recognized assets plus a flight to a neutral nation and then the flight to their chosen destination, they will need proof their destination will accept them, and an additional sum as determined as a resettlement assistance. Such an offer will be available for a set period, perhaps one year, and afterwards the remaining Arab Palestinians will be considered to be resident aliens with semiautonomous rights in Areas A and B. Any act of terrorism such as attacking people with no cause other than jihad or other terrorist acts will result in deportation either immediately or after serving any prison sentence handed down by the courts. Eventually, it may become possible to allow Arab Palestinians to apply for Israeli citizenship, but that will take time and the terrorist violence will need to have ceased before such can even be considered. The Arab Palestinians will retain the right to own property and to practice their religion freely. Initially the Madrassas will be monitored to assure they are not teaching jihad or Muslim supremacy doctrines and those crossing these lines will be warned once and if their transgressing the set limits continues they will be closed. The UNRWA schools and other public education will come under Israeli control and will retain any Arab Palestinian teachers and staff but will now teach an approved version of the Israeli basic education, especially when it comes to history, the sciences and Hebrew will be a required course so that when the time arrives that incorporating them if they choose into Israeli society as full citizens they will speak Hebrew which is an aim of the education system in Israel as well as the absorption programs for Jews making Aliyah. The Arab Palestinian leadership, especially the upper levels of Fatah and the PLO will necessarily be deported as there is no path which appears possible to incorporate them peaceably into this solution. They will not be granted any remuneration as they have stolen sufficient monies over the years to cover any relocation they choose even if it be a mansion along the Riviera. This may not be a perfect plan but what exists now is far worse for both the Arab Palestinians and the Israelis. Israel cannot be expected to continue this charade where their citizens are but targets which the Arab Palestinian school system teaches do not deserve to live and are a mortal enemy and are going to murder the Arab Palestinians unless they kill all the Israelis first. That has to end as it has ruined the lives of two generations of Arab Palestinians by filling them with hatred and nothing else to base their future upon. They are taught that as long as Israel exists their lives will be worthless and the Jews have stolen all opportunities and the only path to retrieve opportunity is to destroy Israel. That is not an acceptable situation and there is but one way to resolve that, end the Arab occupation and indoctrination on what is legally under all international laws Israeli soil. Publish the Levy Report and act on it as this situation is untenable for all involved and is destroying the Arab Palestinians’ futures by selling them destruction as their only option.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

Response From European Jews Very Telling

 

As commented upon yesterday, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks received some, should we say, oh so informative responses from both sides of the pond, Europe and America, quoting his saying during his speech at the Herzliya Conference, “Jews have been faced with a choice: live in Europe and criticize Israel or be silent – or leave Europe.” As expected, the responses from the United States were more subdued and respectful while the responses from Europeans rang especially true to form as they were near the exact responses Ze’ev Jabotinsky received from Eastern Europe in the 1930s when he warned, “vacate Europe before Europe vacates you.” Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks will prove to be as forward thinking and prescient as the prophets of ancient Israel who claimed their visions and warning to originate from on high. A definition of a prophet as being one who knows what time it is, and would apply aptly to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as he appears to see the writings on the walls of too many synagogues and the desecrations of so many Jewish cemeteries and now Jews being refused entrance to particular colleges and even the Louvre museum in Paris is just too similar to the banning of Jewish professors and students from teaching or attending the colleges and universities as Germany ramped up their rejection of the Jews which culminated in the Holocaust, yet it is beginning to appear that Europe has forgotten this ugliness in her past and being hell bent on returning for another round of complete insanity.

 

The responses out of our European cousins, the European Jews, and especially their Rabbis, have been just as blinded by the seemingly empty promises of protection and affection for the Jewish population in Europe as were the protestations by German Jews when they were assured by their neighbors that their rejection and singling out for special laws and treatments was simply a temporary inconvenience, nothing more. During that fateful time it began with the very same BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement where the Jewish owned establishments were shunned by the Germans and later forbidden to frequent Jewish owned shops which eventually were destroyed during the riots known now as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass after which the fate of German and eventually almost all of Europe’s Jews were fated and it was too late to leave, to flee to Eretz Yisroel just as Ze’ev Jabotinsky had begged and pleaded that they do just a few years earlier. The responses out of Europe and the United States complained that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks delivered his “Doom and Gloom Speech” when actually the erudite and prescient man of learning delivered a message of hope, of truth and of and from his deep understanding of history being in a replay of one of its all-time favorite tunes, the tune calling to be rid of the Jewish menace, a tune played on their way to join the Crusades, played when the plague struck the cities of Europe particularly hard, played at the Spanish and other institutes of the inquisition, played before every pogrom, played as an accompaniment to the wars between Catholics and Protestants, played at the onset of the Shoah and being replayed again today as the lead for what is uncertain but the portends are evil, so very evil. Still the response was the same as each time before, the response of the intention to ignore the lessons of history and emphasize the slight and insignificant differences as proof that it cannot happen here as we are an integral and vital segment of the society and the government is behind protecting them. What will their story be when, for their protection, they are relocated to within a walled community with guards and lights around the perimeter? Will the next relocation also be accepted as the government being committed to their protection and just making arrangements to make keeping them safe, or will they finally awaken and realize the time has come to go where the government is honestly interested in keeping them and all Jews safe, Israel. What is even more important is this time; unlike in the 1930s when Ze’ev Jabotinsky pleaded his case always making sure his route back to Israel remained immediately accessible. Still, the cry was their protestation that, “It can’t happen here!” The excuses tagged on behind that phrase sounded more like reassurances made for their own mind’s serenity than a truthful estimation of their precarious lives.

 

The history of the Jews is often related looking at the calamities of both the Biblical years and those that followed managing to overlook the accomplishments of a small segment of the world’s populations which is an unfair telling. Perhaps that is the price paid for allowing ourselves to remain in the Diaspora instead of returning to our homeland sooner. We can only theorize how our lives might have proven to have progressed had we returned from the Roman dispersions immediately after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Might life have been so different living under the Eastern Roman Empire, a.k.a. the Byzantine Empire, followed by Ottoman Rule and enduring the turmoil during the centuries of the Crusades? The Jews who lived in Spain and the whole of the Arabic Muslim lands of North Africa and the Middle East fared no better and no worse than we did under the European Christian lands north of the Mediterranean Sea. Who knows how our lives might have been different and what twists and turns could have gotten us to this state where one would think we might have learned to see the signs, read the tea leaves if you will. Time after time we told ourselves that it can’t happen here and time after time it happened to that here wherever it happened to be. The Czars in Russia, the Inquisitors in Spain, the Catholics and Protestants in England, the Sultans of Algiers, the Commissars of the Soviet Union, the Imams of Iraq, the self-proclaimed or anointed ones, it made no difference, the leaders were different, the governances were different, their religions were all different but the cry was familiar, the Jew brought this pestilence, famine, disease, crop failure, economic hardship, threats from our neighboring country, millions of excuses, the same results, millions of dead or displaced Jews. There was a reason historically why our forefathers used to keep two suitcases packed with our barest of essentials and the items of our faith ready to relocate anywhere at any time and be able to set up anew.

 

It made no difference how crucial we were to their economic health, their physical wellbeing, their armies where our sons fought beside their sons and saved the realm, all of that was meaningless when the disease took hold once somebody decided to cry out those same words in a million tongues, it was the Jews, get them!. They are crying that same cry right now, it just sounds slightly different. This time it is the Zionist, the Israeli government; but these are simply strawmen set up to defuse the feelings of threat felt by the Jews despite their knowing deep inside that they are still screaming that it’s the Jews, just these Jews are all part of a foreign land allowing a feeling of comfort. But was the museum in Brussels in Europe or Israel? How about the Hyper Cacher market, Israel or Europe? We could go down the calamities and the demonstrations filled with hate which have plagued Europe and many targeting the Jews of Europe and it’s only getting worse by the day. It can and is happening here for all too many Jews. But when their Rabbis calm them and speak those soothing words you need to hear, that it is all a phase, it was young teenagers performing a rite of passage, that was because of Israel and not directed at us, the excuses are never ending but that last one is the most dangerous as it reverses the threat levels making Israel the one threatened, not the European Jew. Here is a little secret, Israel is viewed as the eight-hundred-pound gorilla who just reached her highly advanced capabilities for warfare to keep us safe while you are the tempting low hanging fruit as in Europe you are defenseless. They may say Zionist, say Israel, they mean Jews collectively and individually and they would much rather face the Jews individually in Europe than collectively and organized in Israel.

 

The threats are real and they are escalating which the reports by the police and authorities prove. Do not come and tell me about the report compiled for the community of religious leaders from your town, borough, county, city or whatever religious Kumbaya committee presented because we all know deep inside that that report was compiled in just such a way and the data massaged such that it allowed your Rabbi to deliver the sermon of his life depicting the struggle ahead as you repaired the world, you did Tikkun Olam. This, you were told was the challenge in front of you, not making Aliyah as there was so much you could do right there in your little community which would make the world a better and safer place where everyone was equal and people would break out in song and choreographed dance every so often in the center of town just like in an old Disney movie, say like The Music Man. It is not going to happen and the time is late with the situation approaching dire rapidly. Anyways, Tikkun Olam is not about perfecting the world through outside work and feel-good projects which make you believe you are making a difference when in reality you are just spinning your wheels for your own gratification, not to actually help these people who are not looking welcoming as much as they are wondering why you are doing whatever you are doing and what are you thinking. Tikkun Olam is about improving the world by perfecting yourself and making yourself the paragon of virtue and practicing the commandments because you have chosen to actually change the world for the better. Tikkun Olam is about looking deep within oneself and once we have gotten our souls and bodies to work in synchronization, both dedicated to Hashem, then we can worry about the person next and then the next after that, but first repair yourself and be the person you are proud for others to see. Be the person that when you arrive people know that wisdom and pure spirit has arrived and that alone can save the day. Tikkun Olam is what that young Muslim did during the attack taking place in the Hyper Cacher Kosher Market when Lassana Bathily who risked his life to save the market’s customers by concealing them within the freezer, and he did also turn the temperature to a point which balanced human survival and not destroying the contents of the freezer, and then remained outside the freezer and called the police outside and performed a reconnoiter of the situation which assisted and allowed for the Police to target their attack of the market and only shoot the perpetrator and save the remaining customers. This man took his actions above and beyond what might be expected of any normal person and took actions which mattered and saved lives because he believed that these people were worth saving as that is the message Lassana Bathily learned from his Imam and his study of Islam. His Imam teaching the enlightening and hopeful passages of the Quran, such as if you save one person, it says man, then you have saved a world. Lassana Bathily saved many worlds that day; the numbers vary but appear to center around a nice easy number, a dozen. How many worlds have any of us saved, perhaps that might be a better angle and the Jews in Europe could do little better than to speak the truth and by example lead your own Exodus to the Promised Land. Nobody expects anyone to be the next Moses as that would be a hard act to follow, but we can at least strive to be at least as good and promising an individual as Caleb who deserved a little more mention as he took the position of the opposition to the other ten spies who reported the impossibility of the Hebrews even with the help of Hashem and even after all they had witnessed, the ten plagues which broke Pharaoh, the splitting of the Red Sea and subsequent drowning of the Egyptian army, the handing down of the Ten Commandments and yet they doubted that Hashem would not be sufficient to win the day for them. Caleb was thought to be of similar mind while they knew Joshua was Moses’s protégé and thus would report that all would be a cake walk, but Caleb was expected to put the cherry atop the ice cream. Caleb told them that the lands were trembling and fearing their approach and with Hashem all things are possible, he took the righteous high road and then we hear almost nothing more after his one shining moment, but what a moment which I am sure we all wish we too could be such a shining example. Every Jew in the Diaspora if they get one person to also start to consider making Aliya then you have made the supreme effort of overcoming the highest hurdle, getting their attention and having them reason, especially as they will now reason with themselves and that allows. Hashem to add his voice, his quiet almost still voice and not the booming scare the entire valley voice. Lead by example, that is Tikkun Olam.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Western Governments Slowly Destroy Chance for Peace

 

Peace, peace, Western governments and leaders scream demanding peace, but there will be no peace. The recently elected government in Sweden in their first act voted to recognize the Arab state of Palestine. They made no demands that a treaty be reached between the Arabs and Israel, no requirement for the Arabs to recognize Israel, no requirement that the Arab violence and terror attacks against Israelis be ended. The Swedish government simply gave recognition to the Arabs to have formed a state named Palestine without defining borders or end to hostilities. Now the French government is preparing to also recognize an Arab state called Palestine. They are going to require that the Arabs negotiate with Israel for eighteen months and if they can manage not to reach an agreement with Israel then the French government will recognize Palestine with the 1949 Armistice Lines (also called the Green Line and the 1967 Lines which are the Armistice Lines marking the front lines at the termination of violence from the Arab World’s attempt to destroy Israel at its birth and by treaty demanded by the Arab League that the lines never be used or interpreted as being an actual border) marking their border with the possibility of exchanges of lands by mutual agreement, something the Arabs have already stated they will not accept any alteration demanding that every Jew be removed from the lands before they take control or they will remove them in whatever manner is required. So, with this news and the call from Israeli Prime Minister for a reinitiating of the negotiations starting with arranging equal land exchanges in order to facilitate Israel retaining the cities built beyond the Green Line in areas which had previously been agreed would remain within Israel. One might wonder what the reaction might be from the Arabs.

 

Well, we did not have to wait long so why make you do so. Allow me to quote Saeb Erekat, the Arab leading negotiator who stated that such an idea was “completely unacceptable” and explained “Netanyahu’s proposal to discuss the borders of settlement blocs is an attempt to legitimize the settlements. The borders that should be set are the borders of the internationally recognized state of Palestine based on 1967 borders. Settlements should be stopped instead of being legitimized.” His answer is exactly what one would expect as after all with the Swedish government recognizing the 1949 Armistice Lines as the borders despite International treaties delineating that they were never to be used in any way as borders nor were they to imply borders, terms as noted above were insisted upon by the Arab League. Add to the Swedish recognition there is the French government placing a mere stipulation that the Arabs negotiate in bad faith and refuse to even pretend to be interested in reaching any agreement in order to have the 1949 Armistice Lines recognized as their border. Why should the Arabs make any concessions when all the pressure is being placed on the Israelis to reach an agreement or else they will lose the cities in which nearly one million Israelis reside in actual cities some of which have been established for over forty years and are anything but mere settlements, they are as much a city as is Netanya, Ashod, Ashkelon or even Tel Aviv.

 

The Arabs are aware that they could cause Israel untold economic turmoil from which the Israeli economy would take at the very minimum a decade to recover. Many do not realize that of the Israelis who were forcibly removed from their communities as part of the Gaza disengagement under Prime Minister Sharon have yet to be resettled into permanent housing and many have yet to find employment. The last thing Israel would need is another situation where a large number of Israelis were immediately forced from their homes and possibly their employment due to overt demands, pressures and resultant disasters visited upon Israel even should United States President Barack Obama give assurances promising a declaration of intents that the United States is prepared to apply similar to the insane agreement received after responding to pressures from United States President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to disengage from Gaza where they also provided assurances in a letter written by President George W. Bush and taken as a guarantee of future actions by the United States. That illusion was immediately snapped back to reality when incoming United States President Barack Obama immediately let it be known that those promises were not binding on him and he would refuse to recognize the guarantees granted by now former President Bush. Sometimes one can only wonder what Israeli leaders are thinking and even more so what the world leaders are thinking.

 

Furthermore, the commentary by Saeb Erekat calling for an end to construction in the Israeli cities and communities beyond the Green Line when he stated, “Settlements should be stopped,” was completely fatuous as Netanyahu had enacted a silent building freeze since the last round of peace talks started in late 2013 which he has yet to rescind and thus there has been no building past the Green Line and Saeb Erekat is fully aware of this situation. His claim inferring maliciously that Israel was continuing to build beyond the Green Line knowing that such would enflame European leaders potentially pressing more governments to grant recognition for Palestine free of any encumbrances such as making peace, settling borders, ending violence or granting recognition of Israel, especially as the home of the Jewish People. Mahmoud Abbas has also promised to never ever grant recognition of Israel as the state for the Jewish People. Senior PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) official Hanan Ashrawi joined in on the discarding any hope for actual peace negotiations stating Netanyahu was making “a disingenuous and manipulative exercise in political and legal deception.” She continued, “All settlements are illegal and in flagrant contravention of international law and consensus, and any efforts to annex and to legalize the settlements blocs is a blatant attempt to steal more Palestinian land.” Actually, truth be told, Israel has the most well defined claim to all the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with the following provisos that Israel must provide for any residents who are not Jewish (which was predominantly the Arab and Muslim population); provide religious rights; rights of property ownership; social rights to live, work, pray and play wherever they desire; and virtually any other human rights one might define with one specific exception, the non-Jewish population does not automatically have political rights. Non-Jews would have all the freedoms except they will not automatically be granted the vote, the right to run for public office or any other political act though their freedom of speech would allow them to campaign for candidates even if they would not be permitted to vote. This omission was specifically placed into the San Remo Conference Treaty and was further enforced by United Nations Charter Article 80 which reaffirmed the findings from the San Remo Conference Treaty. These facts may not be popular and the stipulations from the San Remo Conference and the ensuing language in the United Nations Charter Article 80 which form the legal basis for the claims recognized and permitted under the treaties which establish the International Laws governing every side, part and parcel of the Arab/Israeli Conflict. These nations recognizing a state of Palestine anywhere within the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is illegal and would be dissolved upon any challenge to such an establishment without gaining Israeli permission.

 

One person who has supported Israel is Hillary Clinton whose comments about the failings at the very beginning when hosting the renewed peace talks commenting, “In retrospect, our early, hard line on settlements didn’t work.” Hillary Clinton further went on to describe how President Obama and State Department coming down on Israel immediately out of the block was the actual demand ultimately served to harden Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s stance against Israel leading directly to the collapse of the efforts terminating the negotiations which could be better described as a waste of time as their failure was predetermined. The proof of that comes straight out of the horse’s mouth as Mahmoud Abbas stated, “It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump.” The end of the Abbas commentary was a well-articulated response describing the changing tactics and shifting positions of United States President Barack Obama conveyed most often by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The comments by Mahmoud Abbas was the perfect representation of the Arab view on negotiations with Israel and the advantage the Arabs have as all they would be required to perform would be to not agree with Israel in negotiations for a year and a half and refuse to compromise on anything simple waiting for the Europeans along with the United States and United Nations to simply grant them everything they could ever have negotiated for and they got it because the Europeans believe that the reason the Arab world is fighting and threatening Western nations is because of Israel. The European leadership joined by the American Administration and State Department in blaming Israel and Israel alone for the lack of progress in the peace negotiations. The elephant in the living room which is almost universally ignored has been the negotiations creep where the Arabs have steadily moved the goalposts from the initial point where Israel had initially been expected to retain all of Judea and Samaria which was the Jordanian view when they reached a peace with Israel surrendering all of Judea and Samaria just as Egypt had surrendered all of Gaza to Israel. In both of these situations the Arab states of Jordan and Egypt surrendered to Israel the parts of the lands they had occupied from 1949 through June of 1967 when Israeli troops liberated the occupied lands which were recognized as being legally belonging to Israel. When Israel returned the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt when making peace and Jordan relented their illegal hold over Judea and Samaria many in the Western world figured that this was the end of the negotiations and that Israel would retain these areas which according to International Law were presumed to belong to Israel according to established treaty. This was not to be the end though as the Soviet Union’s KGB still had an ace up their sleeves which would place Israel in peril and threaten her very existence. The Soviet Union has fallen but their construct of the PLO is still being a thorn in the side of Israel.

 

That is the extent to which the worldview has changed where after the 1967 Six Day War it was expected that Israel would probably retain half of the Sinai Peninsula dividing it along the central mountains with Israel retaining the entirety of the lands bordering the Gulf of Aqaba thus safeguarding their southern port and its access to the Red Sea and on to all of Asia. The Israeli conceding the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula was seen as a surprise by most but was also seen as an opportunity to the KGB and its PLO terrorist entity. It was the ease with which the Israelis gave up the opportunity to rightfully claim part if not all of the Sinai Peninsula as necessary for strategic depth by extending their borders that led Yasser Arafat and his Soviet masters to believe they could steal Gaza and Judea and Samaria if they simply made Israel bleed sufficiently. This belief led to the first intifada which resulted in the Israelis taking full control over Judea and Samaria forcing the leadership of the PLO to flee into Jordan. When the PLO launched an attempted coup, Jordanian King Hussein unleashed the Jordanian Army on the PLO terrorists driving them into Lebanon where they were subsequently forced out taking refuge in Tunisia. This might have been the end of the foreign claims on Israeli lands and Israel was fully expected to retain all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. And that was the case after the treaty with Jordan and Israel had annexed all of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights which should have been the end of all claims against Israel. But that was not to be as the PLO had gained some traction and wrangled a deal for their return to the lands they now claim was stolen from them and was their possession and not Jordan’s to give away.

 

Groups working under complete silence negotiated a return for Arab governance permitting Yasser Arafat and his officers to return and setup their base of operations in Ramallah and legitimized Arafat as the Arab peace-maker with the Oslo Accords. The presumed negotiations which were to have reached a final settlement within the first five years did not live up to this hype and instead led to the storming out of the Paris talks when Israel agreed to the terms Arafat had set as his demand of Israel in meetings with United States President Clinton. This was followed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak being backed by President Clinton and given several guarantees, finally met all of Yasser Arafat’s demands for all of Gaza and 95% of Judea and Samaria and all of Eastern Jerusalem. With no objections left on which to avoid actual statehood, Yasser Arafat had only one viable choice, he was cornered and had to escape the trap he had so carefully set backfired and now he was the one in a cage trapped by his own demands. This led to his hasty departure after which he returned to Ramallah and soon thereafter initiated the Oslo Wars, a series of deadly terror attacks upon Israel, terror attacks which would continue and reach such a level that Israel put in the Separation Barrier, a structure which was largely a fence with some cement walls used to separate the two sides in built up urban settings. The route of the fence was challenged in court where some of the time led to an alteration of the barrier such that farmers still had access to their fields. All of this has led to today where the Arab demand now is for all of Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem, all of the lands beyond the Green Line.

 

That leads us to where things stand currently. It became obvious when President Obama recognized and fully supported the Arab claims to all the lands beyond the Green Line early on in his administration and President Obama clearly stated that the borders were to be formed using the Green Line, 1967 boundaries, as the basis for the formation of Palestine, the Arab state. Well, Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s second in command who assumed command upon the death of Arafat, was in a trap which he reveled in as he could never be seen to be demanding less than the President of the United States or the leaders of several European nations as well as the European Union. When Israel did not immediately fall all over themselves giving away even more lands after the edict being stated by President Obama which completely ignored all previous agreements, both written and verbal, the United States State Department, a department which has been infiltrated by pro-Arab continents at the highest levels, came down blaming Israel for there being no peace agreement when the expected final borders are well recognized by everybody in the world and questioned why Israel was stalling and avoiding the obvious. Israel was complying with the obvious, just a different set of obvious facts. The first fact was that they knew that Abbas would not now settle just for a State with the Green Line as its border but would demand much more. Abbas proved the Israelis correct when he demanded to be permitted to hold military training with troops from other nations as well as starting to demand the Israeli cities built some forty years ago be vacated as well as any factories and government buildings. They were also demanding the right to import heavy weapons, continuing to refuse to recognize Israel as the Jewish State and refused to end the ‘struggle’ (read terrorist attacks) until all of Palestine has been liberated and the Jewish infestation disposed of. Abbas also has one ace he can always play though many of the Arab refugees have been dispossessed of their homes, their apartments due to the violence of the Syrian civil war, particularly the refugees who lived in the Yarmouk Refugee Camp near Damascus which once again is under assault by ISIS.

 

There are tactical and security reasons which prevent Israel simply handing over the lands of Judea and Samaria as they handed over Gaza which fell almost immediately into the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. These terror entities have rained down an unbelievable number of rockets onto Israeli civilian targets and have attained better rockets which can reach almost all of Israel and carry larger payloads thanks to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The fear used to be that Hamas would supplant Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas either by force or in any election but that fear has been superseded by the fear that Judea and Samaria would fall into the hands of ISIS. The clues are obvious as ISIS has been determined trying to defeat Hamas, Islamic Jihad and take control of Gaza. Such an eventuality would also present a clear and frightening new front for ISIS to threaten Jordan who is already facing ISIS on their eastern and northern borders and this would surround them by closing out the western border of Jordan which has only the smallest of southern facing borders. Israel would possibly be facing a similar threat should ISIS gain control of Gaza and then Judea and Samaria defeating Fatah. It is remarkable that just as one was getting used to the Arab threats on one’s borders and slowly being able to feel safer, then a new and far more radical Islamic entity with greater ferocity which is such a threat that the Arab Islamist groups which had been fighting simply folds up and flees surrendering everything usually without a fight. Even then, when ISIS forces finally catch up with these former terror threats, they give them a choice of joining ISIS or death and then test their purity and knowledge of the person if they choose to join ISIS. Should one prove to be of insufficient knowledge of Islam or lacking in the expected levels of fervor, one finds themselves on the wrong end of a beheading. There used to be the misconception that Israel was facing completely different terrorists than the Western world faced. The terrorists faced by Israel have proven more and more to be the same people, especially as ISIS and the al-Nusra Front gain more traction and possession of the lands near the Golan Heights where there have been a number of rounds fired often at the IDF positions some requiring return fire to silence the menacing threats posed by such rounds. One might have thought this would have been made obvious by the Hezballah bombing of the United States Marines billets in Lebanon by Hezballah as well as the assassination of the American Ambassador Cleo Allen Noel, Jr. and Chargé d’Affaires George Curtis Moore in the Sudan by the PLO with Yasser Arafat giving the go code to murder these men along with a Belgian, a Jordanian, and a Saudi. They then demanded the release of numerous terrorists held in Jordan including the Black September Commander Abu Daoud and assassin of Robert Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan from the United States penal system along with the freeing of all Palestinian women in prison in Israel.

 

This ill-conceived concept is once again apparent with the Obama White House where Israel is depicted as fighting the bad war and the rest of those battling Islamic Jihadist are fighting the good fight. This misperception has led to much of the troubles, especially in Europe where even Hamas is welcomed in polite circles as they are seen as freedom fighters and not terrorists. The European elites have just as significant percentage of anti-Semites who have transferred their hatreds for the Jews and now spill their bile against Israel. Many European leaders would only approve of any act by Israel only if they slit their own throats, which is why they support the surrender of all of Judea and Samaria and continue the tired falsehood that Gaza is still occupied due to the legal and United Nations sanctioned blockade to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza and treat Hamas as freedom fighters and treat Mahmoud Abbas as if he were the second coming while often heaping scorn and insult upon Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians. It is not an easy explanation for why it appears the world is transfixed on Israel and attempting to aid in resetting the borders to where they existed before the 1967 Six Day War thus allowing for the most advantageous borders to facilitate another war for the eradication of Israel. Additionally, what do the Europeans and Americans and United Nations and their assorted NGOs plan on doing should another Arab/Israeli war be initiated against Israel? Such an eventuality would require a little more than a postcard expressing your regrets over the resurgence of hostilities and carrying a warning that the IDF should not operate beyond the borders of Israel as doing so would be considered a war crime by the overly-cultured and ever-so-erudite and properly all-knowing leaders of world opinion and the makers of the rules of war especially constructed to prevent Israeli transgressions such as winning another war with her overtly-aggressive Arab neighbors. Such embarrassments must not be permitted to be visited once more on these proud and wonderful peoples. We the leaders of the politically correct, socially-permissive, world’s conscience have decided that the nation of Israel must be forced within indefensible borders for as many times as it may take for Israel to be overrun by Arab Muslim armies and the lands cleansed of the mistake made in a moment of actual justice due to the Mediterranean breezes and the good spirits such engenders.

 

Now the Europeans are returning to their default setting of leftist hatred for all things Jewish starting with the largest thing Jewish, Israel. In order to cripple Israel in a vengeful attempt to destroy her and all she offers and creates for the good of the world because she actually willingly gives comfort and perceptions of safety for any Jews in the world to make Aliyah and enjoy. Proof was the fact that almost no civilian died as a result of being struck by a Hamas fired rocket during Operation Protective Edge. The reason for such an accomplishment was the years and treasures put into designing and creating such a system as the Iron Dome which protected innocent Israeli peoples including Israeli Arabs both Muslim and Christian. Israel saw the spending of over a hundred-thousand Israeli Shekels to intercept a rocket costing possibly as much as a thousand dollars but most likely only fifty to a hundred dollars. Why would Israel put so much effort and treasure to save lives? They do because every single life is far more precious than any amount of money or riches. Israel treasures life while our enemies taunt us for what they see as wasteful as they claim to treasure death. That is why they casually throw away the lives of the Arabs who live under their oppressions as they see the death of a Gazan civilian as another accusatory headline in the New York Times and newsprint across the Western World as well as electronic media picking up their slanted stories on the deaths of their civilians which were due to their firing rockets from the roof of a shelter, but what matter of difficulty does that pose as the rocket was aimed at the accursed Israel. That is what is defined as capable of bringing joy to the European elites, the destruction of Israel simply because Israel is a productive and healthy society and that riles the elites and leaders of a Europe predictably descending.

 

Beyond the Cusp