Philippine President Duterte Against the World

 

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took office on June 30, 2016, elected partially on his promise to bring an end to the drug trade which was destroying his nation and the people’s nation. He has gone directly to work on this promise but now is facing threats from the United Nations as well as the United States State Department. Just yesterday we were giving the United States Department of State credit and now we face the great let down as they join the United Nations Human Rights experts all of whom are denigrating the efforts of President Duterte in freeing his people from the ravages of the illegal drug trade. His efforts to clean the Philippines of this scourge has run into a difficulty which the United Nations Human Rights experts and United States Department of State as they protest the deaths of five-hundred drug suspects have who have been killed in gun battles with police. If this number shocks you, then we might ask a simple question. What part of the statement distresses one? Is it the fact that gun battles have broken out between suspected drug criminals? Is it that these suspected drug traffickers were killed extra-judicially without being found guilty by a trial in a court of law? Was it the number of drug suspects killed is so high at five-hundred? Was it something we may have missed in our quick summary? Perhaps we should slow down in the rush to judgement and place this number into perspective of the accomplishments Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in his eight weeks in office first and then discuss these introduction statements in context.

 

Yes, five-hundred were killed in gun battles in eight weeks, a total of nine suspected drug criminals each day. We agree that such is a bit shocking but what is even more shocking are the success numbers of efforts thus far which place all in sharp contrast. Thus far over four-thousand-four-hundred drug suspects have been arrested and are awaiting trial. That is a large number of arrests and that is not even the slightest bit of the success. Between those arrested and those who chose to resist arrest and died in violent gun battles approach five-thousand drug suspects out of action, that is nothing compared to this final statistic. There have been an astonishing almost six-hundred-thousand drug suspects and related operatives who have turned themselves over to authorities simply surrendering. This astounding and likely unexpected success has resulted in overcrowding in Philippine jails which were never expected to hold such numbers. We believe that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will find some alternative by which these suspects will be housed at military bases or other emergency facilities and many will likely be processed, then charged, followed by some very reasonable bails being set and the least offenders freed on their own recognizance and told they will be notified of their court date which they will be expected to present themselves or face additional and likely more serious charges of disobeying the courts. Meanwhile, after taking in the scope of the problem, is there any doubt that those who decided their odds were better in a shoot-out than a trial were actually the most guilty and the highest ranking drug lords and their security forces, the central core of what was obviously an enormous problem in the Philippines which President Duterte has delivered on a dangerous and difficult promise and done so spectacularly.

 

The one important and further ramification of the United Nations and United States State Department charges of human rights abuses and extra-judicial executions prompting threats to charge President Duterte with crimes against humanity and potentially genocidal practices are as ridiculous and they are familiar to us here. President Duterte had gone after and looking like having cleaned-up some dangerous and hard-core criminal enterprises which likely were costing the Philippine population numerous lives and making for a society where lawlessness was posing a threat and difficulty for those desiring to live in peace and security. Such a drug problem had to result in challenges to the authority of the government and pose serious threats to the Philippine citizens, especially those trying to be law abiding. Further, such a criminal enterprise must have been a huge drain on the economy and further made life difficult for the average law abiding citizens with lives threatened by such lawlessness in a similar manner as faced in Israel from terrorism and President Duterte and his government was threatened with the exact same threats as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli governance is threatened with as Israel fights terrorism. Even spookier was that the charges emanated from the United Nations human rights experts and the United States Department of State, the identical entities which make Israelis fighting terrorism appear to be a criminal enterprise against innocent terrorists just as the Philippine fight was criminalized as they brought innocent drug lords to justice.

 

The difference was the reaction from the Philippine President when compared to the passive and almost acquiescing apologetic Israeli reactions. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took on his detractors from the United States and United Nations head-on and bluntly called them out. He challenged the United States on their fatal and very public shootings of black men in the recent past challenging to know how what he was doing was any different than these shootings by the police in the cities of the United States. He also brought up the viral picture of the five-year-old Syrian boy, Omran Daqneesh, which has gone viral online (see montage below). He stressed the lack of any progress and the lack of evidence that the people of Syria were being relieved of the heavy toll from the civil conflicts encompassing every corner and area of Syria where numerous disparate groups are warring each against the others with there being at least four distinct groups, Russia, Bashar Assad, Hezballah, Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, Sunni Fighters, Islamic State and the Kurdish Militias for starters plus who knows who else. The big threat was that perhaps the Philippines would be better served separating from the United Nations as their efforts in Syria, Darfur, Libya and formerly in Rwanda, Central African Republic and the myriad of other trouble spots past and present which the United Nations had proved less than effective and in many cases where United Nations troops caused more problems than they relieved including running food for sex scandals in numerous places and their inability to enforce any order and being basically nonfunctional. President Duterte challenged the United Nations threatening to set up a group of nations initially with suggesting China and African nations to form a new international body. Perhaps Israel should assist with the formation of an actual international group of like-minded nations as a replacement for the United Nations though simply making agreements with select nations on a one-by-one nature and forge alliances more directly.

 

Five Year Old Syrian Omran Daqneesh
sitting in Ambulance in Aleppo Syria
After Being Pulled from Beneath Rubble of
Collapsed Building from Bombing Attack

 

Those who have followed or had direct experience with the United Nations and/or the United States State Department realize how much these sanctimonious organizations have rules of their own and definitions which they adjust to fit their preferred targets. Both organizations would rather target democratic states as their accommodations are often of a higher level of comfort and these targets are far more sensitive and less likely to shoot first and ask questions rarely. These organizations would prefer Israel to Gaza, Syria or most other areas in the Middle East. They would prefer to inspect Egypt from Alexandria or Cairo than the Sinai Peninsula or anywhere in Libya or the Sudan. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Gulf States are preferable to Yemen and almost anywhere is preferable to northern Nigeria where Boko Haram works their horrors. Europe is preferable to anywhere in the Third World.

 

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte

 

Their field inspections are more tailored to five star hotels than actual trouble spots. Their hypocrisy is only out done by their padded expense accounts’ and even that is a close race. They both avoid making accusation about police states such as China, Turkey, Myanmar or Turkey outside the main cities and even those are losing their luster. With the fine beaches and five star resorts in the Philippines and Israel, it is no wonder these two organizations have redundant subgroups all but assigned to giving first class air fare, placing these inspection bodies with reservations along the Tel Aviv beaches or the gorgeous resorts all along the northern Philippine Islands and Manilla. It is difficult to take almost anything either the United Nations or United States State Department accuse certain nation of being guilty of when these adjudications are more attuned to vacation season than actual criminal activities. What a world we reside in and we owe President Duterte a tip of our hats for making such needful accusations against the two grandest fraudulent hypocritical organizations on the planet.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

Treating Terrorism in a Modern Democratic Governance

 

Terrorism and a Democratic free society pose problems which are not present in any of the totalitarian style governances such as Communism, Monarchies, Fascism or Religious totalitarianism. In these governances the security forces can literally close down almost all activity relegating their populations to carefully orchestrated movements. Work transportation can be set by government, shopping for groceries can be set to limited times and all other such commerce limited extremely or closed for the time period of the emergency. By turning the society into regulated movements with careful choreography then anything not conforming to the plan is immediately obvious and a concentration of forces will quickly return things to the ordered schedule. In such a society the comfort of the people is secondary to security. If a society is prepared to give up all freedoms for the appearance and possibly improved security, then security will be increased, but at what price. In a Democratic form of governance the people’s freedoms come before anything the government desires to do and the people presumably set the level they desire on freedoms and government works around those freedoms.

 

Let’s look at a simply example that any man will understand and women will be amused though they would never admit so. It is Sunday morning and there is a one day sale at the mall and her favorite department store is adding additional savings above those the mall offers on purchases. Of course the Big Game comes on at 2:30 PM in the afternoon and it is approaching 11:00 in the morning and she demands that the two of you go have brunch at the mall and do a “little” shopping. Hopes of seeing the Big Game getting dimmer and dimmer, you do what any husband knows is the less painful thing and ready for the mall as quickly as possible so maybe, just maybe you will catch the last period of the game where you will have to provide your own level of excitement that the rest of the game presumably had generated. In a democracy such a decision would be voted upon and hopefully in the entire community men would all watch the game and the women, or most women, would converge on the mall and all would be happy. The real world is never that smooth and the bumps are always unexpected and raise the ire with government as somebody has to be blamed and they are as good a target as anybody, especially when you are changing the burst tire after hitting a pothole at fifty miles an hour on your way to work. You know the boss will be less than understanding, so the government is all to blame for not repairing the road; and if they are repairing the road, then why during rush hour making you late for work. Face it, government is always wrong, period.

 

So, terrorism, where is it that life sits on this. First thing is we all know that the routine of insanity we go through at the airport with the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) experts makes life miserable and searchs every octogenarian while ignoring any profiling which might prove effective. This is the very TSA which misses detection of 90% of items in tests run by the agency itself. This government employment boondoggle offers somewhere between none and a miniscule amount of professionalism or competence and adds nothing to the safety of flying. We all know that if each airline was responsible for their own security, then we would see automated detection systems installed around the concourses and they would work together to provide such airtight security systems which have proven well over 90% effective in detecting suspicious persons. One of the, if not the, safest airports in the world, Ben Gurion outside Tel Aviv, has some innovative security as described in this article. But then Israel had little choice but to be on the top of security and anti-terror systems, and there lies one of the greatest terror fighting tools Israel had to develop and was likely the most difficult, but establish this system they have.

 

Israel is the one place you see just as many people running towards the explosion or gunfire of a terror attack as are fleeing. The ones heading towards the attack are IDF personnel with weapons (yes, the IDF soldiers trained in use of their weapon in the public sphere carry their weapons with them 24/7 and consider themselves always on duty), police, security personnel, first responders, health care professionals, emergency care personnel, motorcycle first responders (they treat survivors and perform triage and necessary emergency life-saving treatment such as stopping bleeding and immobilizing injured areas etc.), and armed citizens licensed to carry weapons (in Israel to own a weapon you must pass a course or have proven training in public use of weapons as all owners are encouraged during heightened security times to carry their weapon and these were many of the responders who saved lives during the stabbing intifada recently faced in Israel). People you pass every day on the streets and in the halls in Israel may very well be the person who saves your life in the instance of a terror attack and this does not cover others with military and security expertise who are retired or in new professions who also are likely to run towards the attack instead of away. A trained public is the first and best line of defense but takes decades to get trained and functioning as intended.

 

But Israelis have developed systems which work with minimal input or even independently monitoring entire crowds of people looking for particular actions some of which are subconscious but found by researchers to appear on people who should be suspected and potentially watched more closely. Another system asks each individual four simple questions which are as innocuous as anyone could be asked and upon the facial expressions it picks out things which would be mostly unnoticeable to even a professional but are cues to subliminal indicators and uses these to warn of potential criminal or terrorist activity potentials. These systems have been tested in trials and have proven their effectiveness. Within a couple of years such systems will be placed in airports, malls, movie theaters, at public events, sports stadiums and across the length and breadth of many major metropolitan areas monitoring everything people do throughout the monitored areas. These systems may become so sophisticated as to be capable of using even marginally decent camera images or cities might offer purchase subsidies in exchange to hooking their systems up to the city surveillance systems expanding their web even more intrusively. But currently we need to rely on more basic human fallible systems with people watching and taking off our shoes and who knows what else just to fly off to visit the grandkids or whatever. The United States has established a frequent flier and wealthy folks go around for airport security where one goes through a precheck and is given a biometric card such that a finger print or other measure scanned and matching the card electronic record they pass right through shoes still tied and belts in place without the aggravation and indignity of the TSA rigmarole.

 

Currently most terrorist prevention must be carried out in secret and without the public being aware of their successes. We will most definitely hear about every fail as that will be the headlines for days, possibly weeks. When they fail then their following investigations are often very public which puts the government in a tough spot as the public demands to know what they have discovered and what is being done to assure such an attack never again strikes their fair city and government needs to keep much of what they learn and what they plan to do and change in their techniques known only to them if these changes and new lines of information are to remain effective. New procedures and lines of gathering information and other intelligence gathering systems must remain unknown to the terrorists in order for them to remain viable. That is why much of what we are told after a terror attack seems so lame, lame the terrorists already know or can know and it will not make their operations more efficient and capable of being undetected, everything else must remain hidden for the people to be best protected. Such secrecy is technically undemocratic and more autocratic making those involved in such security aspects of life more informed than the average person on the street. For reasons which are less than logical many people get all forms of upset when they know the government is not being fully open with them, especially on a subject as vitally important as terrorists and the dangers they pose. On another side, would the public expect that every physicist working on the latest nuclear warheads as government workers reveal everything about their work in the New York Times? Of course not, that would be foolish and dangerous. Defending against terrorism is exactly the same, it needs to be kept unknown generally if it is to serve to the advantage of the nation and make everybody that much more safe.

 

That understood, there is still much we can know which will not compromise or stop terrorism. We can know that the Islamic State is not the JV and where the average terror fighter in the Islamic State is not Kobe Bryant, their top planners and bomb makers are Kobe Bryant as far as their line of specialties are concerned. That is important for us to realize as is the fact that they want the entire non-Muslim world to either convert to Islam, pay a special tax to them for the privilege of not becoming a Muslim or dead, and by dead we mean as painfully, embarrassingly, and video-shockingly as humanly possible. Anybody who has watched their videos they chose to showcase to the world realized that they are as imaginative as they are sick and mentally disturbed. What else we need to realize is that these people are considered great minds who are making Muhammad’s and Allah’s dreams for the world be realized. Think Inquisition and you begin to realize that the Western World already survived and moved past the concept of a single world religion. Some religious groups in the West moved beyond that earlier than others, but no need to go into that.

 

The other thing one need realize is there is no such thing as religious terrorism. All terrorism is political. Your religion can drive your politics but terrorism is all about who rules over who and that is political. Catholicism, also known as The Church, was as much a political body as it was religious. Think Cardinal Richelieu against King Louis XIII and Queen Anne (of Austria) and the Three Musketeers? The Church in France had their own armies and the King had two armies, one of the Realm with which he would defend France herself and a royal guard, the Musketeers, who protected the crown mostly from British intrigues and the forces of Cardinal Richelieu. There was another French Monarch who was very well appreciated by the Church; his name eventually became Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, King of the Franks and protector of the Church. Those were earlier times when a small kingdom could come close to conquering half the known world; think Ottoman Empire where a small tribe from northeastern Turkey conquered much of the Caliphate and held the lands of Middle East and Northern Africa slowly losing ground before being felled during World War I. One could say that the world changed breaking between before and after World War I. Before World War I where the world had empires and royalty ruled absolutely and post-World War I where the Ottoman Empire and Austrian-Hungarian Empire were split into individual countries and the rule of Kings and Queens in Europe gave way to representative governments and the Middle East and North Africa were ruled as colonies presumably to prepare for eventual representative governments which proved expensive and was untenable leading to simply deserting these nations soon after World War II and soon after dictators rose to rule in the vast majority of these countries and their arbitrary borders were much to blame and are now collapsing.

 

What will rise to replace the dictatorial monarchial governances in the Middle East and North Africa will also have much to do with the potential of terrorism growing worse or lessoning into the future. Democratic governance with a separation of Church, Synagogue, Mosque and State will result in a decrease in terrorism as each elected government will face the threat as well as the West and will thus find their bases being destroyed by the governments of the countries they use as their bases currently. On the other side there is a possibility that something of the ilk of the Islamic State could become resurgent and reinstate the Caliphate on the lands which originally constituted the Ottoman Empire and striving to reestablish the entirety of the original Caliphate which at its largest stretched from Spain and southern France ending at Tours, see Charles the Hammer Martel, all the way through then Persia stopping in northern India, see Taj Mahal. The likelihood of an empire rising across the Middle East and Northern Africa are very low as long as there is an elected and largely secular government in Egypt. I would be more concerned with a Muslim Brotherhood ruled Egypt than the Islamic State as Egypt has a very modern and powerful military as far as equipment of arms. They have modern fighter-bombers, tanks, rifles, artillery along with support, control and communications systems. Most of their current systems are from the United States with some older USSR equipment and are contracting for modern, state of the art Russian equipment. The Saudi Royal Family also stand in command of a modern military as does Iran who have the advantage that much of their equipment is manufactured in Iran. Then there is Israel, the cork in the bottle as many a military expert has referred to her. The instability in the Middle East and parts of Northern Africa is rife with terrorist entities, some intertwined fighting one another such as Islamic State, al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda), Hezballah (Iran/Syria) and numerous smaller terror entities all embroiled in the remains of Syria and into Iraq and then the tribal groups some aligned with Islamic State, some with al-Qaeda and still others Muslim Brotherhood and some just for themselves in the imbroglio formerly known as Libya, aka the mess that Hillary made.

 

Cardinal Richelieu against King Louis XIII and Queen Anne of Austria

 

The solution to bring much of terrorism to an end is not that simple. One of the people at the forefront of this and with the correct idea is the current, as of this writing, President of Egypt Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who has called for a religious reformation of Islam and demanding that a path forward must include the ability for Islam to exist amongst the other religions and under secular governance and end its supremacy complex where it demands it be the sole religion and rule over everything which can be within its domain. Islam currently has no limitations on the extent of its domain and demands at a minimum it rule over the entire earth and that every person be a Muslim, eventually the exact same sect and potentially even learning from the same Imam. Wars in Islamic history have been fought over which leader was the legitimate leader of all Islam and that remains a point of contention to this day. There is the split between Sunni and Shiite which is the largest divide plus there are the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, al-Qaeda and who knows how many other lesser sects or teachings all of which claim to hold the only true and pure form of Islam. As we have said here is the remarkable similarity to Highlander as in the end, there can be only one. Some of this is a direct result of the creed of an old Arab Bedouin saying: “I, against my brothers, I and my brothers against my cousins, I and my brothers and my cousins against the world (the stranger).” This mentality refuses anything or anyone different and is incapable of incorporating anything new or different into their lives or their ethics and politics. This is what has led to centuries of warfare as it was once the belief of humankind the world over. The initial expression of treating the stranger as a welcome guest was formalized in the Old Testament as was exemplified by Abraham and the way he would greet strangers by doing everything to be a gracious host. But such has not become the accepted norm around the globe with many cases as far from the norm as possible. Some areas on the globe have even moved further from such an open and accepting model. Much of the world still sees the other as a threat and as something or someone to be conquered or worse, destroyed completely. Until the world reaches a community of inclusiveness, terrorism will exist as a method to intimidate and destroy the other, the more technologically and often sociologically advanced and accepting ethos from what classically would be called the barbarians at the gates, or within the gates, depending on the realities. Many in the West are not seeing the barbarians at their gates and are opening their gates wide to allow them in in the mistaken belief that their great loving and accepting nature will win them over. History teaches us otherwise. We once before lost the technologically most advanced culture to the barbarians even if Rome had devolved spiritually and socially. The question is will we repeat that history again. The last time it brought on a darker age for much of the globe and allowed another culture to spread across much of the known world stopped only at some of the least expected of areas. Will we watch the world take a huge step backwards? More than likely as there is an entire liberal elite who thinking they know all better than anybody else are rushing headlong to disaster just to prove they were right, what if they are wrong?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israel, Judea, Samaria, and World Idiocy

 

For the unenlightened, that is not an insult, it simply means those who have yet to be informed, yes, we try to inform the untold, that is part of our mission statement. Now, where were we? Oh yea, Judea and Samaria are Jewish lands from the ages starting with King David and King Solomon and were originally an integral part of what was declared the State of Israel on the morning of May 15, 1948 under a declaration by the United Nations despite the objections of the nations of the Arab League and their allies. But that did not deter them from attempting to make a small adjustment to the United Nations declaration and simply genocidally vanquish the nascent state of Israel murdering every last person they found. To this end they gathered forces from seven Arab nations, an untold number of militias, various military officers from various armies from World War II who fought for European nations and the Mufti of Jerusalem demanded that Arabs take refuge beyond the Jordan River, in Lebanon or behind the Egyptian military aligned in Israel’s southern border. The Arabs who remained within Israel fell into two groups, the first was Arabs who truly desired to remain in Israel and live in peace and be a constructive element in Israel’s future, and those who were interested in attacking the Jews fighting to retain their nation from behind. The Israelis had a good idea who were the friendly Arabs and when those whose loyalties were in doubt proved by the action of a large numbers of their population to be a fifth element, that was when the Israelis out of necessity drove many of the questionable Arabs out before their troops after being ambushed a number of times by some of these communities striking from behind. This was behind the initial refugee crisis where those who left their homes were forced into camps as were those pressed out for Israel due to their allying with the invading Arab armies. Further, in the wars which began on May 15, 1948 and ended in an armistice in 1949 resulted in Israel losing parts of Judea and Samaria to Jordan and the Gaza to Egypt. Jordan attempted to annex their gained lands so they changed the name to West Bank and the world, except for Britain and Pakistan, refused to recognize the annexation. It was after the 1967 Six Day War that Israel liberated these very same lands but the deceit had already started with the 1964 founding of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) demanding that an Arab state replace all of Israel. That demand is no different today; it just is demanding it from within Israel instead of in an occupied area.

 

So, let us frame the actual demands as they stand with added notes about the world at large. Israel has reached peace accords with two of her former invaders after a series of wars which though initiated by Arab powers that they either were unable to eliminate Israel but wrested control over some Israeli lands in the process of attempting to eradicate Israel and her non-Muslim populations, as in the 1948-9 war or have lost any advantage gained by attacking without provocation and then having the occupied areas returned to Israel control and even losing additional lands as in 1967 and again in 1973. Israel returned the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula for a cold peace with often cooperation on security matters which are to both parties’ favor with Egypt. Egypt agreed, nay, insisted on Israel retaining her lands which Egypt had occupied between 1948 and 1967, the area known as Gaza. Jordan subsequently made her peace with Israel surrendering back to rightful Israeli control of the areas of Judea and Samaria as well as Eastern Jerusalem making, once again, the Jordan River the boundary between the two nations as it had been on that fateful morning of May 15, 1948 when Jordanian, Iraqi and Saudi Arabian forces stormed across the Israeli border racing to reach the sea and take control of the port cities. These invading forces were aided by Arab militias under orders from Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the same Hajj Amin al-Husayni who spent the entirety of World War II in Nazi controlled lands raising all-Muslim forces which terrorized and plundered the areas Jewish and Serbian Christian populations with the blessings of the Nazis. Further, he was reputed with having advised at the Wannsee Conference where the ‘Final Solution’ was drafted and the Holocaust was placed in motion. Some reports claim that the Mufti demanded the Germans not simply exile the Jews onto the British Mandate lands in the Middle East thus taxing British and French forces in the area to take care of the refugees but instead exterminate European Jews and once in control of the Middle East and North Africa continue the extermination in those areas as well. These were the forces assailing the nascent state of Israel on her very first day of existence and before she had even gathered any formal military and where some Jews fought the invaders with stones having no arms other than slings. A swift Arab victory and the erasure of Israel appeared imminent but that was a short lived image of the situation.

 

 

Soon their efforts were blunted before they could reach their goals and finally fought to a standstill setting the Armistice Green Line as the new reality where Jordan remained in control until early June of 1967 when Jordan joined Egypt and Syria in the attack the Jordanians had been sold was going well by Egypt and Syria despite their losing on both fronts. That act despite Israeli warnings caused the loss of her occupied lands. On the Syrian front in 1967 Israel gained control of the Golan Heights, which the Syrians had used for snipers to randomly shoot Israelis walking to and from schools, tilling their lands, harvesting crops, driving on roads and other serious provocations known and the like. Israel had annexed the Golan Heights after gaining control of them from Syria during the Six Day War of June 1967. When considering the actions and the presence on occasions of terror groups aligned with al-Qaeda such as the al-Nusra and also forces attached to Islamic State with the occasional artillery or mortar round landing within the Israeli border to show for such volatile situations, Israel has adopted a policy of returning fire upon the offending source as computed by Iron Dome or similar tracking utilities. The Israeli decision to annex these vital hilltops has proven invaluable with the turmoil currently playing out on the border with Syria which is showing no sign of mitigation of the grievances and the introduction of Iranian, Russian and Hezballah forces backing Bashir al-Assad’s claim to the lands he ruled some five years ago when his intransigence on demands for rights and representative governance were refused and the largely peaceful protesters turned upon with regime forces which ignited this strife which has claimed upwards of five million lives with a large percentage being civilians and tens of millions of refugees made homeless who are now making their way across Turkey, Greece or even Italy and on into Europe. That pretty much encapsulates much of the actions over the past sixty-eight years.

 

So, the current situation is easily summed-up; Israel has made peace with three of the four nations bordering her and the fourth is in no shape currently to make any decisions about their mutual border. As discussed, Israel having annexed the Golan Heights is well within her rights according to all International Law as once Israel had returned any sections, let alone all; of the Sinai Peninsula she had fulfilled her obligations for returning lands, not all of the lands, nor the lands, nor any other absolute amount of lands. Israel was also to retain lands necessary for her continued security which was aimed at the time as the Golan Heights and the area of Judea and Samaria west of the Jordan River and many anticipated Israel retaining half of the Sinai Peninsula to the central mountains but Israel surrendered all of the Sinai. Once the peace treaties had been reached with Jordan and Egypt by which all the occupied Israeli lands of Gaza, Judea and Samaria had all claims vanquished it appeared that things in the Middle East between the Arabs and the Jews were settled. That was not to be the case as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which was formed in 1964, a full three years before the Six Day War of June of 1967, for the expressed purpose of threatening all of Israel with a challenge claiming the Arabs residing in Israel were actually an ancient culture which had their lands stolen by the Jews in the 1948-9 War and that the Israelis were evil, despicable European invaders and were intent on colonizing the entirety of the Middle East and beyond forming a greater Israel and subjugating the Arab Peoples, the indigenous Arab peoples with a nine-thousand year history going back to the time before. The Arab Palestinians, with generous assistance from the KGB, established these claims against all of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea except for the area under Arab controlled by Jordan and Egypt as these, Gaza, and parts of Judea and Samaria (referred to by Jordan as the West Bank) leaving the Jewish controlled areas as their target to form a new twenty-second Arab state. After Jordan and Egypt had relinquished their claims to any Israeli lands the PLO simply included those areas as their lost homelands which had to be returned to them completely cleansed of the Jews. They would claim that the Europeans must allow their Jews to return home ignoring the known fact that the entirety of the Arab and Muslim worlds attempted to cleanse themselves of their Jews and a vast number of them settled in Israel. There had been no mention of these Jews being returned or accepted as originating from the Arab lands all despite passports being held by these former refugees. There was a reason for the difference between the Arab refugees who are still languishing in refugee camps not included but rather kept separate from their brothers and sisters, all too often literally, while the Jewish refugees were taken in, given immediate citizenship and allowed full rights and became productive members of Israeli society. Their inclusion has been so complete that today it is difficult to tell children from the two groups of Jewish refugees apart as the great number of marriages across the societal lines, an occurrence nearly impossible in Arab society as there has been a stigma put upon the Arab refugees such that no Arab nation desires to include them into their society at large. This insane mistreatment goes so far that it even has led to a large refugee camp attached to Gaza City, an area controlled by Hamas since the 2007 coup, with the refugees camps surrounded with Concertina Wire with that being largely the only apparent difference as the refugees are housed in apartments almost identical to the apartments where the Gazans reside including many of the members of the Hamas ruling terror groups as well as other terror groups permitted to operate from within Gaza such as Islamic Jihad (they are almost co-rulers in the area), al Qaeda and even Islamic State. Hamas permits these terror entities to operate within the area it controls even to the point of permitting refugees to leave the camps in order to carry out terrorist acts against Israel. There are additional refugee camps near Ramallah in the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Mahmoud Abbas and again there is little to differentiate the refugee Arab Palestinians from the free Arab Palestinians and even their surnames sound disturbingly similar. One can only wonder what could drive a people so far as to literally imprison their brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends into refugee camps and then refuse to permit them work or any gainful activities outside their camps. Further, the vast majority of these ‘refugees’ are under the age of forty years of age, many under eighteen and have resided within the camps their entire lives. The UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) has taken on the job of tracking any refugee who have gotten from the camps and made a life for themselves in elsewhere, some as far flung as Los Angeles. The truth is according to the United Nations and UNRWA, once a family is designated as Palestinian refugee, then their generations inherit that honor and even in cases of cross marriage, an Arab Palestinian refugee and any other Arab be they Iraqi, Egyptian, Saudi or any other nationality, their children additionally become refugees. There were refugee camps in Syria one of which, the Yarmouk Refugee Camp, was heavily shelled and bombed by Bashir al-Assad once it was learned that some of its refugees had escaped and joined with one of the Islamist groups fighting Assad which made the entire camp a legal target in their now five year old war. The Yarmouk Camp was thoroughly destroyed and many of its former residents now have the unique privilege of being double refugees; they are now Syrian war refugees and Arab Palestinian refugees.

 

The only solution which makes sense since the complete destruction of stable governance throughout much of the Arab lands with Egypt narrowly escaping a plunge into the darkness which is Islamist Theocratic dictatorial rule with the Sunni version of Shia Iran with Muslim Brotherhood Imams sitting with absolute power and the power resting with the Muslim Brotherhood supported by Al-Azhar University was return to military rule until a proper governance was established. There was a price to pay for this salvation and that was a return to the strongman backed by the military and chosen by the military with the present president being the former Chief of Staff General of the Army Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. President Sisi did win an election and the test of whether democratic rule has finally come to Egypt or if they have fallen back under military dictatorship will be realized when the next elections are held and if they have beyond just the trappings of fair democratic elections or are actually verifiably honest democratic elections. Currently it is far too early to tell. Jordan has remained above the fray quite possibly because of the actions of one of the leaders in causing the fighting in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State. When the Islamic State downed a Jordanian fighter and captured the pilot, First Lieutenant Muadh al-Kasasbeh, they could have simply held him or ransomed him or amazed the world and returned him unharmed to Jordan. Instead they very publically for all to watch burned him alive and as he was fully engulfed in flames in a video posted by the Islamic State to the Internet as if it were an enlistment poster for the group. This barbaric act and the rage shared by the people of Jordan and their King may have served to deepen their trust in his honest leadership and saved Jordan from any crumbling before the anarchic forces swallowing the Middle East from Iraq to Monaco. This leaves Israel still facing a potential situation that should the Islamic State gain sufficient power they might decide that Jordan was ripe for the taking and as a result be right on Israel’s doorstep. Should there be either a Palestinian authority Fatah led government or a hybrid Hamas-Islamic Jihad government, either would necessarily fall before the Islamic State with Hamas likely simply merging while Fatah would likely flee into Israel seeking asylum as they would be no match against Islamic State and the leadership would fear facing a horrific death if captured by the Islamic State Islamist fanatics. It is exactly because of the turmoil, confusion, violence and instability of the entirety of the Middle East that Israel must establish the most defendable borders possible against ground attack such as from Islamic State or ground supported by air attack coming from Lebanon as the Syrian war may decide that involving Israel would actually alter the inevitable breakup of the former nation of Syria. That makes it imperative that Israel end the games and simply declare the Oslo Accords in all of its mutated and contorted forms dead from this day forth. Those not connected to violence or terrorism will be permitted to remain but the higher officials will need to find a new home most likely in Europe who appeared to love them and support their hatreds of Israel. Europe is in the state of taking in all the Islamic refugees they are capable, or almost as many as offered, so a few hundred more should not even be noticed except for the media swarm asking pointed questions such as are they planning on a return, will they take their complaints to the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, be assisting one of the various terrorist armies in order to gain favor when they face the Israelis without even a single aircraft, or the ever ubiquitous where are you going from here? I can picture Abbas as he responds to the media as pictured below, and wouldn’t it be the best answer he could ever give.

 

 

 

Any way one slices it, the Arabs have more than sufficient time, offers and Israeli concessions that if they have refused everything up until now, then it may as well be, “Hasta la vista, baby!” Oh, and whatever they say, “I’ll (we’ll) be back” would be the most unadvisable as such would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

 

Beyond the Cusp