Look Back and Forward to Coming Incitements for War

 

Hamas has sent out hints that they are starting their escalation which they expect will instigate a war in Gaza and a separate and more important war in the compliant Western Media. Similar to how Ben Rhodes used the White House press corps to sell a completely bogus story of how the negotiations and change in Iranian Presidency was moving along the Iran Nuclear Deal, a deal whose conditions had already been agreed upon by the end of 2012, Hamas will use the international media stationed in Gaza, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to sell their story of the horrors of war Israel is inflicting on the people of Gaza without any reason. Mark this week as the start and watch as everything develops slowly ramping until Israel is forced to strike and then the media wakes and up to that date nobody had noted the rockets as none reached them in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. The only aggression the media, especially the European media and the New York Times ever note is when Israel strikes, which they initially claim was always unprovoked except for the little terror act or other instigating act mentioned in paragraph three or four but managed as inconsequential. The media is where Hamas can expect assistance and blaming Israel leading page one above the fold with five line tall headlines condemning Israel once again casting Hamas sympathetically as the victim who only fired a few missiles the day before. The thousand or so missiles fired over the four to six weeks prior, well, maybe they will mention that as the article is continued in Sections C page 12 or somewhere equally well hidden. They do not want to paint the terrorists too harshly because then their reporters and photographers will be cast out from Gaza and be unable to get those interviews and photographs of the destroyed house with the baby dolls sitting centered in the rubble without a speck of dust all pristine and untouched (see below). Apparently there are no photographers stationed in Israel as finding any pictures of the rocket holes in Israelis homes and even the reporters appear allergic to Sderot as they might be forced to face reality.

 

Photographs of the destroyed house with the baby dolls
sitting centered in the rubble without a speck
of dust all pristine and untouched

 

Sderot is a unique town with cement shelters scattered throughout the town and at each end of playgrounds as the children only have fifteen seconds or less to reach safety when the Code Red sirens sound signifying rocket launch from Gaza. Sderot was having ten to twenty and more alarms a day for over a week before Israel finally struck Hamas in the last war. If you are doubting, shocked or surprised by this you are in good company as it was barely if ever mentioned. Hamas had launched over a thousand rockets into Israel the week before Israel attacked. Still, most new services did not cover anything until Israel launched attacks. Each time Israel responded with tank fire or an air strike the news would read Israeli strikes on Gaza destroy house and tool shed or some similar reference such as training area or building neighboring hospital or school. Then there will be the quotes of residents of Gaza residing near strike target. They were shocked awake by explosions or interrupted their normally peaceful dinner meal. Then there will be the quote of several different denunciations of the Israeli strike by several NGOs, Gaza officials (read Hamas officers), and a number of European sources. There will be a recap of the Israeli strikes over the previous days or weeks and then, in paragraph four or later will come the other shoe dropping and we find out that several rockets landed in Israel. It will be stressed that they did no damage nor hurt anybody. There will be no sympathetic interviews with the traumatized Israeli children in Sderot where the Israeli government has set up a fully staffed medical facility to council and assist the children and the adults who are suffering just as the Gazans suffer from these attacks. Both sides are suffering but only one side has actual terrorists running their government and holds no elections giving the people an opportunity to choose something other than constant warfare. There are two sides where the people are caught in an ever escalating violence and the sounds of explosions day and night with children fearing going to school or outside to play. There are two societies receiving injuries not necessarily visible at first glance.

 

 

Seldom are the Israelis suffering from the incessant fighting given their opportunity to tell their story. The media story in much of the world overlooks the Israeli pain, the Israeli suffering, the Israeli children traumatized as there is little sympathy and after all the Israeli side rebuilds the homes struck by rockets and in Gaza the homes are not being replaced. Have they mentioned that Israel had been permitting tons of cement to be trucked into Gaza? You likely read recently that Israel is no longer allowing shipments of cement into Gaza but likely not the reason why. Israel had to end their generosity as Hamas was using ninety percent of the cement to build attack tunnels into Israel reaching under the border as well as bunkers and launch points for their rockets to protect them from Israel airstrikes. The report that Israel had ended allowing cement into Gaza does not tell the entire story as Israel had allowed tons of cement into Gaza and by some estimates sufficient to have rebuilt over half of the destroyed homes and businesses. Also with the report that Israel stopped allowing cement into Gaza was another report that over three-quarters of the homes in Gaza are still not been rebuilt. So the homes are not rebuilt or even a decent start at rebuilding them and Israel stopped allowing cement in. Israel must be really cruel and cold hearted, or really is fearful of what has already been accomplished with the vast majority of the tons of cement already allowed in over the past year plus in a response to pleading by the United Nations, European Union and the rest of the oh so civilized world.

 

Hamas has taken definitive credit for yesterday’s terror attack on the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv. This comes almost two weeks after Hamas promised to reinstitute terror bombings and shootings and expressly threatened Tel Aviv as proof that nowhere in Israel would be spared their violence. There were four people murdered and at least sixteen wounded. The murdered were 41-year-old Ido Ben-Ari of Ramat Gan; Ilana Naveh, 39, of Tel Aviv; Ben Gurion University professor Michael Feige, 58; and 32-year-old Mila Mishaev of Rishon Letzion. Ido Ben-Ari’s wife was with him and is currently hospitalized in moderate condition after suffering gunshot wounds. He was a veteran of the IDF elite Sayeret Matkal unit. Ilana Naveh was a mother with four children and was reportedly murdered celebrating her 40th birthday. Michael Feige was a father to three children and worked as a prominent professor at Ben Gurion University. Mila Mishaev was engaged to be married, and according to reports managed to call her boyfriend immediately after she was shot multiple times. She had been waiting for him at the restaurant when the gunmen opened fire. The dearly lost are pictured below.

 

Tel Aviv Sarona Market Shooting Victims

 

Videos below give a small feel for the events but there really is no way we can express in any manner the horror of the event nor the horrors the friends, families and most of all the children who will wonder why they were made to suffer such a loss and will age before their time learning to live without a parent. The two terrorist shooters were cousins Khalid and Muhammad Musa Mehamara. Their family has a previous connection with terrorism, not as unusual as one might think. Their uncle Taleb Mehamara was a member of a terror cell that in 2002 targeted Israelis in southern Judea, killing four in that shooting attack as well. He was a member of the Fatah Tanzim terror organization and was tried, convicted and is serving currently in an Israeli prison. The two cousins had infiltrated Israel illegally from their small town of Yatta just outside Hevron. Several other terror groups, whose names will not be given the privilege of publicity here, praised the attack. Israeli Security Services has stated that they believe the two had been inside Israel for about a month before perpetrating their attack. The Security Agencies will be checking into what assistance and from whom the terrorists received said assistance during the lead-up to the attacks. One can only hope they can completely peel the onion and everyone who had any information and did not speak up are made to face charges as accomplices to this abhorrent crime. As a reaction to the attack as well as not taking any unnecessary chances, Israel has cancelled two-hundred-four work visas for members of the terrorists’ extended families and rescinded approximately eighty-three-thousand entry permits given to residents of Judea and Samaria for Ramadan. Now we will just have to wait and see how long before the world condemns Israeli reaction of rescinding the thousands of entry permits for Ramadan as a form of collective punishment.

 

The reality of this terror attack may be more horrific than this slaughter in a crowded market; this could be exactly what Hamas promised, the start to a very hot summer. There have been a number of media reports which have, despite Hamas taking credit, referred to this as a shooting. It took place in Israel therefore it cannot be terror. Either it was just a crime or Israel deserved it or whatever reasoning that can be twisted and warped to justify or excuse the attack such that it is not terror. You have to understand, terror happens in Madrid, in Paris, in London, in Brussels, New York or Boston, not Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Hevron or anywhere which is Israel. Terror happens even in Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, even Libya and Syria, just not Israel. When rockets start trickling over the Gaza border into Israel it will be scoffed at and ignored as just a rocket or two or three then four a week. When it becomes a half-dozen it will be a minor story which might make page A-35 on a slow news day otherwise not at all. A dozen rockets a week, well, well, that is not even two a day, no story, call us when there are more than three each day. A few more weeks and at five a day the excuse is they haven’t hit anything of note, why are you complaining, tell us when it gets bad. Finally one larger rocket heads for Tel Aviv where the reporters sit on the beach sipping their drinks. They hear a missile launch followed by everybody pointing in the sky where one bright orange light streaks towards a white streak and then a flash and a rumble seconds later rolls across the ground. Iron Dome has just saved Tel Aviv and the reporters have a story about the Israeli missile launch that blew up harmlessly in the skies over Tel Aviv. Then nothing more is reported as the rockets are flying over the border at a half dozen a day. When they reach a dozen and still the reports are about the Israel airstrike which caused further damage to an already largely destroyed Gaza, they further stress Israel is still not letting cement to be delivered. Eventually one would think with thirty or forty rockets a day but the news talks about Israel launched four Iron Dome missiles which intercepted something harmlessly overhead. When the eventual and unavoidable Israeli letting loose the dogs of war and going in with tanks and troops, then there will be reports about the rockets mentioned in the story, somewhere in the fourth or fifth paragraph after ample mention of the Israeli offensive. Sure, they will tell how the rockets were the initiating cause but people tend to believe the order they are mentioned. That order means it is all Israel’s fault as their tanks entered before the rockets were mentioned in the article so that is how it happened, the tanks went in and then the rockets were fired, right? So the story goes and again the news gets twisted and the European elites slap each other on the backs for another job well done.

 

Actual terrorists shooting, blurred in video (why escapes us)

 

Café clearing out with people running, starting just past twenty seconds in.

 

Security officer from neighboring Israeli Broadcast Company pursuing and shooting terrorist. The officer exercises excellent gun control!

 

Sarona Market Terrorist Shooting Attack in Tel Aviv

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Media and Anti-Israel Anti-Zionist Slanted Coverage

Read or listen to news reporting which emanates from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), AFP (Agence France Presse), AP (Associated Press), CNN (Cable News Network), Reuters, Fox News, UPI (United Press International), Yahoo, Google, Al Jazeera, The New York Times, or even if your news comes with a laugh as you get your news from Comedy Central, or the myriad of smaller news agencies, television news, radio news, political talk shows, print media or even blogs including Beyond the Cusp, as all of these rely on the major news reports and other media to provide the meat and gristle on which we all prey upon to survive and provide the best commentary and even historical references and other interesting color as well as opinions and positions well backed up with facts. The problem comes when you are covering Israel and trying to report relatively fairly, though our Zionist roots tend to make our writings have a slant, often the opposite than many of the news reports, due to their omitting valuable and necessary information or taking the word of terrorist leaders without any filter or validations and pass these propaganda as raw unadulterated news, one needs to carefully provide balance and factual backup of your positions. Here at Beyond the Cusp we often refer to our views as being pro-Israel and pro-Zionist as we made Aliyah almost two years past and have enjoyed our new nation and have found the people to be very accommodating, friendly, helpful and finally finding other Jews who feel as we do about Israel and the problematic situation our dear nation has had foisted upon us. As we are all damaged when Israel is damaged and we feel that it is bad enough that so many news sources report about Israel always in a biased, strongly negative light and then we are told that all we need do is talk more forcefully and then our voices will be heard and Israel will have a positive side that might go a far way to negating the perceived negative slant. The difficulty with this suggestion is when Israelis speak more forcefully the reporters write the quote relegating them to have come from someone who appeared as a desperate Israeli, anxious Israeli, enraged Israeli, or simply called a crazed Israeli which negates everything related as the reporter introduction makes sure to discount any pro-Israel opinions by only using the most wide eyed and loud Israeli and pit their frenzied Israeli opposite a Hamas Fatah spokesperson who is telegenic and calm or they simply just have the Hamas or Fatah spokesperson alone with no intelligent counter either way. Last summer’s coverage of Operation Protective Edge and the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) review looking for violation of human rights both have glaring deficiencies which no factual based reasoning could do without, namely facts. Let’s just look at the simple and obvious slanted coverage and review.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission made the slanting of their report easiest to explain as their biasing of their review was by obvious omissions. Their review began on June 13, 2014 omitting the previous months’ provocation which included the kidnapping of three teens by Hamas operatives who then killed the youths burying them in a shallow grave near their Arab community. The review also omitted the ramping of rocket firing out of Gaza which had reached intolerable levels of several hundreds a day reaching Tel Aviv area which was another escalation. Had Israel not had Iron Dome systems ringing Tel Aviv and other areas of heavy population areas intercepting these rockets, including a number of newer rockets with obviously greater range and warheads than during previous confrontations, the Israeli casualties may easily have outnumbered those suffered by Gazans as a number of the largest missiles with as high as one thousand pound warheads would have struck central downtown Tel Aviv and taken down fifty plus story buildings. This too did not manage to be recorded in the ramping of the threats out of Gaza. By starting on June 13, 2014 and concentrating their review on the start of the Israeli response to the ramped up rocket fire into Israel and by their slanting through starting point they managed to make the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and others rockets fired into Israel to be a response to Israeli unprovoked invasion and not Israeli actions being in response to the kidnapping followed by the increased rocket launches into Israel. Their study further counted the resulting casualties in a manner which portrayed the lack of Israeli casualties pitted against the numbers of Gazan casualties as another sign that Israel was using disproportional force. The reality was completely due to Israel using disproportional defense of their civilians with the Iron Dome missile interception system which intercepted Hamas and friends rockets with an unbelievable rate ranking its success at approaching perfection well over ninety percent with the few rockets which got through being unable to cause multiple deaths was due to the Israeli investment in rocket and bomb shelters and hardening schools and other places where children might otherwise have simply become victims. By concentrating on simply casualty figures the UNHRC was ignoring the fact that the Israelis had invested in defensive measures which kept their people safe while Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Islamic State and others invested their money on rockets, weapons and tunnel construction which they intended to utilize in a night of mass terror in Israel. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) found unbelievable and unestimated number and existence of tunnels both as an interconnected assault system under Gaza itself and infiltration into Israel with many of the tunnels having dug numerous branches such that it provided multiple exits and deploy points in Israel. They found IDF uniforms with proper unit markings, handcuffs and large plastic locking straps which can also be used as handcuffs along with syringed and sedative drugs which could be used to make anyone captured into a manageable subject barely conscious thus easier to take hostage, maps of the Israeli communities they were probably going to take hostages, these maps included identifying buildings where the most valuable hostages would be located such as schools, day care centers and other similar denotations, motorcycles which would permit the deployment of terrorists and maps of Tel Aviv and bordering areas. They found plans in the tunnels which described in detail a horrific and well thought out plan which would have added to the confusion after a massive rocket assault on Rosh Hashanah attacking the very synagogues in Tel Aviv where the largest were denoted on the maps, the Jewish New Year’s celebration. Israel dodged a bullet by locating and searching the tunnels thus averting a disaster if this plan had been launched during the High Holidays.

So, by omission of the attacks by making the study by the UNHRC begin with the first volleys of artillery and tank fire followed by IDF forces going into Gaza, the UNHRC turned a defensive effort into a calculated assault with an intent to destroy as much of Gaza as they could by the IDF, IAF (Israeli Air Force) and the Israeli Navy. The UNHRC also investigated on site and took every Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Gazans who were chosen for the interviews by the Hamas governing body as unbiased sources while on the Israeli side the UNHRC had specific NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) from whom they asked for representatives for their witness accounts as their debriefing of official spokespersons. The problem comes from the NGOs they questioned all being under the funding umbrella of the New Israel Fund or directly funded by the European Union and individual governments. These are NGOs whose main raison d‘être is to denounce the IDF and any right leaning or actual nationalist or Zionist politician and have an especially deep hatred of Prime Minister Netanyahu and guilt by association any government coalition he heads. These NGOs are almost universally funded by outside entities including anti-Israeli NGOs most often from Europe or the United States, European governments and wealthy individuals and their organizations who particularly hate Israel or simply hate Jews such as George Soros. The UNHRC refuses to use random or official entities to procure information and seek out those who will further their intents to demonize Israel. Thus the UNHRC always will produce a severely biased and derogatory study of Israel, the only nation that the UNHRC bylaws demands that they pass a resolution denouncing Israel for the crime-de-jour before addressing anything else the UNHRC is investigating.

The European and world media entities listed at the top of the article did a similar attitude check during the coverage of Operation Protective Edge. Their reporting hardly ever mentioned the three teens kidnapped and murdered and only obliquely referenced the massive increased ramping of the rockets and mortars launched at Israeli population centers usually claiming that Israel responded to rocket launchings always intoned to imply that the rocket launchings were not a huge deal. One has to wonder how these same broadcasters would cover merely three rockets per day being fired into their home nation’s cities by terrorists who ruled a neighboring enclave as Gaza is to Israel. We all know they would be hailing their heroic forces which would have received orders to go into the neighboring enclave and raze it to the ground and those instructions and orders would have followed an intensive series of artillery and bombing runs designed to completely eradicate the entity and the world would have thought nothing of it. If you doubt that there would be an intense reaction to such just read about how the English reacted initially to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Belfast and around London and you will read about the British calling up reserve troops and placing them at almost every corner in Belfast and the use of heavy equipment in their fight against the IRA. Meanwhile the slant of the coverage was to incessantly keep a running total as provided by official spokespersons for Hamas, like they would never lie, and report on Gazan casualties while stressing that there have been almost no casualties in Israel implying disproportional force used by the Israelis. They never divulged the why almost no Israelis were being casualties. The reason actually was a form of disproportional planning and investment in civilian protections. Hamas and friends had a system of bunkers and tunnels that they could have given shelter comfortably to every living thing in Gaza and still managed to get their people through the tunnels to where they could best attack Israel always with the intent on striking civilian targets inside Israel. When the largest hospital in Gaza was struck the media was very quick to blame Israel sighting their own eyewitness accounts of a projectile striking the hospital and then implied directly that it had to be an Israel projectile. Within minutes the Hamas spokespeople were disseminating that the Israelis had struck a Hospital on purpose and for no reason as there was no military target there. They never requested the IDF look into how the hospital was struck and if they had they would have been shown the four rocket series launched from that location and that the four rockets diverted from their firing location and one struck somewhere in Ashkelon, one struck the Shati Refugee Camp, one went out over the Mediterranean Sea and one struck the al-Sifra Hospital. These trajectories were given in care of the Israeli projection systems mapping (see below map) used for immediate return fire on the location from where the rockets originate.

Radar Trajectory of barrage launched from within Gaza depicting strike points including the short round strike on the Shifa Hospital which Israel blamed by Hamas and Media accepted Hamas talking point unchecked

The biggest piece of omission was the real reason for the disparate numbers of casualties and damage to infrastructure. This was due to a form of disproportionate defense systems provided for the protection of their civilians. As denoted earlier, Israel has a series of shelters and all new residential structures are required to have one room in the units made as a rocket shelter which is fortified to provide what is deemed adequate protection and all large buildings have such rooms easily accessible to those working inside while schools and such are also fortified against rockets nearly universally in Israel. There is a similar system in Gaza which is better known as the terrorist bunker and tunnel systems but the Gazan civilians are not permitted to take shelter within. But such is not the main reason for the difference in these numbers as there was a force multiplier which rendered the vast number of rockets fired out of Gaza ineffective as they were intercepted by the Iron Dome System which track the rockets and determines if they are heading for an area where civilians are likely to be and those it intercepts with an accuracy and percentage beyond expectation. But there is also the attitude difference which was pointed out by the Israeli Prime Minister when he was asked well after the fighting had ended and in an interview by Israeli media which was made available for the asking, still waiting, still? Anyways, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated simply that, “We use our rockets to protect our civilians while Hamas uses their civilians to protect their rockets.” But there is more. While Israel placed the Iron Dome Batteries strategically just outside civilian areas such that they would have the most advantageous angle for intercepting Hamas and friends’ rockets. The Iron Dome systems were the only combat units stationed anywhere near civilian centers unless intelligence predicted a strike was imminent. This stationing IDF units and indirect fire stations such as mortars, rockets, missiles and artillery units outside of built up areas was intended to provide all military targets as far as possible from civilian centers such that any rockets fired at Israeli military would not pose any threat to the civilian population. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, Fatah, al-Qaeda and the rest of the merry bands of terror entities operated exclusively from civilian areas as shown in this video below

There is one final item and for a change we will try to keep it short. It has to do with the lie that Gaza is the most heavily populated area on earth. How many times have you heard that reported or alluded to in conversations with asides like, Reporter Bob, isn’t it crowded with people all in a closed in area there is Gaza? –Reporter replies, Why, yes, attractive anchor person, you can hardly move in places it is so tight and people at every turn wherever you look (camera pans a large group of Gazans standing around looking innocently going about who knows what but it sure is crowded as camera return to reporter Bob, and that picture about says it all as this is the scene wherever you go. What you never quite figure out is how come whenever they go to reporter Bob he is not surrounded by Gazans getting in the way of the camera as they go about fighting their way through people packed like sardines in a can. Truthfully, if we were to compute density of people during the work week Tel Aviv with its skyscrapers has a higher density than does Gaza City. The reality is very different because as Israel places their military out in the open away from civilians, Hamas and friends lace their military units amidst civilians and often right next to schools, hospitals, hotels where the media stay (as in above video) and also try to gather as many kids near their rocket launches in an attempt to get as many civilians killed as possible. I can hear the propaganda question already of well isn’t Gaza so built up that there is nowhere for the Hamas soldiers to operate? Soldiers?!, we reply. Hamas and friends terrorist forces have places to operate outside of the two or three large metropolises but they choose their locations to endanger the maximum number of civilians as possible. Why would one of the complaints made about the blockade of Gaza in order to keep weapons out also prevents the farmers from getting their goods out to market easily. So, there are farms in Gaza which implies there are open spaces in Gaza. The argument that if they operated outside the cities in the farm areas, then the farmer’s crops might get damaged is a divergence committed to excuse their risking lives of people making the crops worth more than the lives of Gazans. So, crops are to be protected and civilians are worth less than crops, what an argument but the reporters just report that there is no place else for the rockets and command centers to be set up as Gaza is the most densely populated on the plant. Well, yes, if you do not consider Hong Kong, Singapore, Vatican City, The Maldives, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Nauru, Taiwan, Barbados, Malta, Monaco and finally Gaza, yep, the most densely populated place on the planet except for those top ten and that one in the pesky one holding down slot eleven pushing the most densely populated area on earth down to number twelve, oops. If they are instead talking about Gaza City by itself well then we need to compare cities, well it did not make the list of the top fifty cities for population density. Well, I looked hard to find a list which placed the Gaza Strip as the most densely populated nation and the best it came in at on one and only one list at third and otherwise always twelfth give or take a couple of slots and more leaning at even further down the list than twelfth. But what about open spaces you ask? How about my handy-dandy map of the Gaza Strip showing the built-up population-dense areas versus open lands as a picture is worth a thousand words and I promised to keep this short.

Display shows large open areas with little population where Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other combatants could operate without threat to the population.

All done. Hope I was brief enough and did not stray off too far from the point and thanks for visiting.

Beyond the Cusp

What Does the World Want From Israel?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Beyond the Cusp