Obama May Have His Deal but Who Will Inherit His War

 

Thanks to the economic and other sanctions which have hobbled the Iranian economy to the point, about eighteen months ago, it resembled a dying man crawling on his belly in tattered pants and the shreds of his shirt, shoes scuffed to the point that their original color was indistinguishable and two vultures already discussing which would get which of the choicest remains, had Iran at the brink of civil revolt. That was when President Obama held back door negotiations where he released some of the most effective of the sanctions which brought the distant oasis to the parched lips of the Iranian economy saving them to make the better deal. It is that deal President Obama, the hero of the Iranians government, is claiming is the best deal and the only option outside of war. But is this claim of peace in our time really just peace for a while in our time? The comparisons between the Munich Accords of 1938 and now President Obama is desperately seeking the same adulation for this close relative to another situation of a nation spreading its tentacles and preparing for war and barely even concealing their arming and their aspirations which have been laid out in writing. The desires for world conquest and the elimination of the Jewish People was laid out step for step by Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf and the Iranian Shiites (and also the Sunnis just to be fair and even; after all we would not want to take sides now, would we?) in the Quran and the Hadiths where the world is divided between ‘Dar al-Islam’ (Arabic: دار الإسلام‎) which translates to House of Islam and ‘Dar al-Harb’ (Arabic: دار الحرب) which translates to House of War. The followers of Islam are instructed to continue their struggle to spread their religion until it becomes the only religion practiced anywhere in the world. There are many Muslims residing in Western nations who refute any charges that Islam is to be spread ‘by the sword’ should more passive means prove unproductive and there remain some who adamantly refuse to accept Islam which is simply intolerable.

 

Then there is the Islamic State which has denuded entire cities and swaths of lands in which they have taken control of those who practiced any religion other than not only Islam but their very narrowly defined version of Sunni Islam. The marauders of the Islamic State may have been the Junior Varsity in the eyes of United States President Obama but are anything but the Junior Varsity when it comes to torture and coming up with ever more imaginative ways to ever more slowly murder their victims making sure that they suffered the most mental anguish, even if not the maximum pain, as they progressed from beheadings to burning alive to slowly being lowered in a steel cage into water to drown victims and other horrors and then posted their murderous ways using them as some form of sick recruiting tool. What is even more disturbing are the numbers of those who have rushed from across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the rest of the Western World to join the Islamic State. The only productive news concerning Iran is they oppose the Islamic State and desire to eliminate this horror from the world. But then one must ask themselves, is replacing the Islamic State horrors with Iranian, Syrian and Hezballah horrors really a step in the right direction or simply replacing one murderous and fearsome army turned government with another murderous government using its army.

 

These are the leaders of a nation of approximately seventy-eight-million-five-hundred-thousand largely Shia Muslims of which the vast majority are what are referred to as “Twelvers” with the remainder of the population being also largely Muslims following Sunni Islam. The remaining under one-percent of Iranians follows the following religions in order from largest to least; Bahá’í, Gnostic, Christian, Yarsanism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and least but with a very nice Synagogue, the Yusef Abad synagogue in Tehran pictured below, Judaism. Interestingly, there are more Jews of Iranian heritage residing in the United States than remain in Iran which according to the 2011 Iranian census stated this threatened populations of Jews at eight-thousand-seven-hundred-fifty-six souls the majority spread between merely ten families, six of them related by marriage. There are those who inflate the numbers of Jews remaining in Iran to over one-hundred-thousand largely in an attempt to portray Iran as an accepting nation granting equal rights to non-Muslims despite the fact that the minorities walk quietly and taking care to be aware of their surroundings at all times and making sure to keep their heads bowed and their gaze fixates on the ground before them and to never under any circumstance stare any Shiite Muslim in the eyes and to always speak in hushed tones speaking in slow and respectful manners and subservient language never to sound challenging or to ever, ever appear as an equal lest one be reported to the police for such an affront and pay the price for challenging their superiors. There is a very good and solid description of life in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution for Jews and other minorities given by Karmel Melamed, an award-winning, internationally published journalist and attorney based in Southern California who writes the Iranian American Jews blog. This article titled ”The Iranian-Jewish Tragedy in Iran” which gives the chilling view which the Western World needs to understand before they permit the fascist, supremacist dictatorial leadership to once again, in the brief history from 1900 to the present, to allow a cancer which believes they have a right to destroy the world in order to save the world. The history of Iran in that same time period just might give people some pause to realize the direction Iran has taken since 1900 and the path is chilling.

 

 

Yusef Abad Synagogue (Persian: Kenise e Yusef Ábád کنیسه یوسف آباد‎, Hebrew: בית הכנסת יוסף-אבד‎) in Tehran as originally appeared during the 1950s before its restoration. The person who had just completed returning a Torah to the ark will stand as a reference to the size of the main hall. The main hall of the Synagogue was built and completed in the early 1950s. She was a very ornate and majestic house of worship which will soon fall silent after enjoying hearing prayers recited for almost seventy years.

 

 

Yusef Abad Synagogue (Persian: Kenise e Yusef Ábád کنیسه یوسف آباد‎, Hebrew: בית הכנסת יוסף-אבד‎) in Tehran as it appeared after its restoration work. It was with the help of local community leaders headed by Avraham Yusian, the construction of the new facade was completed in October 1965. She was a very ornate and majestic house of worship which will soon fall silent after enjoying hearing prayers recited for almost seventy years. The brightened tiles and golden hue will unfortunately turn a pale shadow of itself as there will be no prayers to give her the joys she had exalted in over her years.

 

 

Iran did not exist in the year 1900 as all the way back then it had a name that most will recognize and for the Jews had a varied history where it went from savior to creeping to the edge of committing genocide against the Jewish People except for the bravery of one Jewess, Queen Esther. All the way back as recently as March 20, 1935 the nation was known as Persia. This name of Persia could be traced back to Cyrus the Great, the leader of Persia who conquered Babylonia and granted the Jews the right to return to their homelands and rebuild their holy Temple which many Jews chose to do while some of their brethren remained in Persia. Years later when Persia was ruled by King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I) the Grand Vizier, Haman the Agagite persuaded King Ahasuerus that the Jews were plotting against his rule and needed to be dealt with. This seems to be a repeating theme and almost always leads to someone coming up with the idea that murdering the Jews will make their nation greater, and the order was issued. The problem was that after the King created a vacancy after executing his wife for refusing his orders and generally insulting his authority for which he held a beauty contest, hopefully a contest which took into consideration more than beauty as that had worked so well with Vashti. Well, he chose Esther who the night before the order was to be carried out bravely entered the King’s court without having been invited, punishable by death, begged the King’s attention and broke the news that if his Grand Vizier Haman’s order was to be carried out they could start with her as she was also a Jew. Haman and his sons were executed on the very gallows they would have murdered the Jews of Persia. Haman, Hamas, I wonder, could there be a connection?

 

On March 21, 1935 Reza Shah Pahlavi officially renamed Persia changing the name to Iran. There are two very different theories for the change. One refers to numerous ancient references varying from the Sassanid, the Zoroastrianism, the Romans and other historical references mostly to deal with language. A more modern take takes the date and the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany and the theory of a master race, the Aryans, or the Persian word for the racial designation, Iran. The actual reason is likely was only honestly known to Reza Shah Pahlavi and he will not be giving us any hints. Another item while we are comparing modern day Iran and the Aryans from World War II as a potential enemy; the only war which Iran had fought directly was, to their credit, something which will seldom be found in these editorials in any source, was as a result of Iraqi initiated assaults as Saddam Hussein attempted to grab the Iranian oil fields. That war lasted near to a decade where some of the most horrific and destructive tactics were utilized by both sides. Despite the Iraqi military’s reputation as one of the largest and best trained and equipped in the Middle East outside Israel, Iran held them at bay and often made gains but eventually the war resembled a World War I trench warfare than world war highly mobile and technical war. The most remarked attack in this horrific war came when the Iranians needed to clear minefields and needed to do so with some degree of speed so a fairly brutish and head-on system was necessitated. The Iranians initially attempted to stampede mules and donkeys across the minefields but once the first animal struck a mine the others would scatter and run back the direction they had come from. This led to one of the most disturbing tactics where children were volunteered and upon their death their parents were financially compensated for their patriotic donation to the war efforts. The children were given plastic keys which they were told would unlock the door to heaven for them. In response to the condition of the returned remains led to the wrapping of the children in wet blankets so as to retain their parts when they hit a mine. Such fanaticism and willingness to sacrifice for the religious leadership was horrific and also showed a commitment almost beyond rational belief and which shows the length the Iranians might resort to against an enemy.

 

The question remains as to whether President Obama is saving the world from a war with Iran with his deal or allowing Iran to build up their military and potentially arm themselves with an arsenal of nuclear weapons, potentially thermonuclear warheads and the ICBMs with which to deliver them anywhere on the globe. They may even develop ICBM missiles capable of irregular flight characteristics making anti-missile systems near useless in preventing their striking their targets. Additionally, the Iranians could readily develop cruise missiles and master the ability to launch them from freighter container ships as they have done with some of their fifteen-hundred to two-thousand mile largely unguided rockets, or possibly a poorly guided missile. Of course, if the rocket has a nuclear warhead, exactly how accurate does one need to be? I mean, as long as you strike within a few miles from the intended region and, just as with hand grenades and horseshoes, close counts. What is most worrying is how the situation came to this juncture with the sanctions being weakened by President Obama allowing Iran to continue to limp along while the President and the State Department Team, which included a number of the same people who were responsible for the agreement with North Korea which led directly to their becoming nuclear armed nation, and Secretary of State Kerry appeared to trip over each other seeing who could surrender point after point and succumb to Iranian demands the fastest. The sign that Iran is about to use a fair amount of funds which will represent but a drop in the bucket of the one-hundred-fifty-billion-dollars being unfrozen and gifted to the Mullahs and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as they have already made arrangement to purchase Russian S-300 anti-aircraft-and-missile systems, one-hundred-fifty Chinese Chengdu J-10 sophisticated jet fighters with Israeli avionics and finally, two-hundred-fifty highly-advanced Russian Sukhoi-Su-30MK1 heavy-fighter-bombers as well as one-hundred IL78 MKI tanker aircraft; or simply put, Iran is purchasing an entire air force and air defense systems taking them from almost no air power worth mentioning to air superiority by comparison and potentially air superiority over the Kurds, Islamic State, and almost every nation in Northern Africa and many European nations as well. As the nations which Iran is most likely to face if they decide to expand their borders and acquire the airfields and staging areas of southern Iraq, as it appears that President Obama is fully supporting the IRGC forces and eventually other Iranian military forces to operate from within Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State with the United States providing air strikes and air support operations one has to wonder how President Obama might react should Iran decide to turn their forces southward and strike across the Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian oil fields in response to what they could claim was mistreatment of Shiite Muslims by the two nations after incidents were instigated.

 

The other front we can expect to come from Iran is for their expanding the influence of Shia Islam across formerly Sunni strongholds spreading their control over Madrassas potentially replacing Wahhabi Madrassas after they have swarmed across the oil fields, complete their control through the Houthis of Yemen and then using a pincher attack from the north and the south in order to capture Mecca and Medina and thus controlling the heart of Islam. This would also complete Iranian control of the Red Sea and the Bab El-Mandab Strait. From that jumping off point it would not be difficult for Iran to then establish a beachhead from which to operate starting in Somalia and spreading from there through Eretria and Djibouti in order to spread through the Sudan and from Iraq and Saudi Arabia into the Sinai thus being on Egypt’s southern and eastern borders. Should Iran also desire to place a substantial force injected into Syria to assist Bashir al-Assad retaking the lands he has lost and using Hezballah to cement their control over Lebanon then Iran could have a northern and southern fronts on Israel and even more troubling should they also gain access to Gaza supplanting Hamas and Islamic Jihad in controlling the area. We can also expect that Iran will fortify their ground forces with purchases of armor most likely light armor to facilitate fast swarm style attacks overwhelming any defense an opponent would be likely to have at any front relying on lighter resistance and by overwhelming the initial positions and driving deeper into any nation they intended to strike thus appearing unstoppable and gaining a perceived position of strength which would also give the Islamic State considerable challenge especially when one considers that Iran will have a very well-armed air force, something completely missing in the Islamic State’s arsenal of abilities. The likelihood that President Obama would take any position opposing any Iranian moves in the entirety of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) as such would be viewed as Iran simply doing exactly what President Obama desired, Iran stabilizing the entirety of the Islamic world, and what better way of being the hegemonic power than to also control all of the valuable lands and suppressing every potential adversary.

 

It would not be a complete surprise if should Iran manage to take control in Egypt that the Muslim Brotherhood might ‘see the writing on the wall,’ so to speak, and decide they had been in error about the lineage and correct successors of Muhammad and turn to back a Shia Islam. The truth is that there will either be a war with Iran or Iran will bring the war to each and every corner of the world one site at a time. The only question is at what point will their expansions be one bite too many and at what disadvantage will the world be in when facing the Iranian threat. History will point to the past decade and a half as the period when Iran could have been collared with minor losses and as being an opportunity squandered placing the world at risk. Once again, it appears the greatest threat building in the world is being left to Israel to stop. Let’s hope that Israel gets the necessary support of those others facing the same dangers or be willing to take on the task themselves. This is one time we can know that the United States has nobody’s back or if they do, then it is the worst of all possible scenarios placing Washington solidly behind Iran as President Obama had tilted his entire time in office, even with his efforts to place the Muslim Brotherhood ruling Egypt or turning a blind eye to Erdogan suppressing Turkey turning it into a Sharia state and potentially joining with Iran. At the very least, a combining of the regions and its people into an alliance of Israel, the Kurds, the Druze and the various Christian strongholds be brought together and aided to eliminate the Islamic State, thus putting Iran on notice that they should carefully consider their next moves as they will make all the difference in the world. As a result of removing the Islamic State, regions of Syria and northern Iraq will now be known as a state for the Kurds in the area originally promised the Kurds for Kurdistan at the end of World War I but not fulfilled due to the Mosul oil fields and politics as usual. The Druze will likely be granted some degree of autonomy within those areas in Syria where they reside and the refugees should attempt to put their lives and country back together and learn to live with a multi-ethnic nation. Further, as Hezballah has shown so much concern for Syria perhaps they can live there and maybe the Bekaa Valley but the rest of Lebanon is to be a Christian refuge free and resolute to act with favor on the Christians of the entire area and make a nation from the ruins left by Hezballah. Such a solution would be so nice and clean which is why it is unlikely to come into fruition. As Winston Churchill told the British Parliament “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.” and additionally from his writings from “The Gathering Storm,” “If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds are against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.” May some heed the warnings that many in the leadership positions in Israel be joined by those in Europe, in France, in Germany, in Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and even Greece raise their voices and call for those who cherish the G0d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not succumb to the forces of those of Abraham, Ishmael and Mohammad, Amen.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Can One be Pro-Arab-Palestinian and Pro-Israel

 

* Special at the end of the article is an extra piece I found which may be of interest. It is a video of Colonel Richard Kemp Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire when he addressed the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies on May 19, 2015. We found his address to be inspiring, informative, as well as right on target describing much of today’s societal ills along with their solution and hope all enjoy it as well.

 

 

Can one be supportive of the Arab-Palestinians and also be supportive of Israel as the Home of the Jewish People? At face value this question appears to be simplistic and completely ridiculous bringing the obvious answer of no, not in any manner. The assumption is if one is to support the Arab Palestinians one must also support the destruction of Israel as the Jewish State and if one supports Israel they must oppose the rights of the Arab-Palestinians. But there is no reason that these two sides need be opposites except that such is the entirety of the media portrayal of the conflict. One might claim that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the last place where there is a division such that only one side can claim victory in the end. It is the one conflict where one side must eradicate the other, or so the media line portrays the story and structures their coverage. It is a completely false narrative which recent events makes complete folly of the premise and the coverage, or should we say the lack of coverage. Let us look at one tale of Arab-Palestinian woes where Israel plays no active part and thus the media has given short riffed in their coverage.

 

The story of which we speak has been the fighting and open destruction being waged by both sides in this conflict in the Yarmouk refugee camp for Arab-Palestinian Refugees. This camp is on the outskirts of Damascus and originally housed tens of thousands of Arab residents with the last official census producing just over one-hundred-thousand Arabs held in the confines of the Yarmouk refugee camp. Even before the Yarmouk refugee camp became a contested area and was safely within the areas held by the Syrian military supporting Syrian Dictator Bashir al-Assad there began the initial problems for the Arab residents within. It was on the Yarmouk refugee camp that many of the initial infamous barrel-bombs were utilized in a blatant attack whose sole purpose was to murder the civilian population and punish the entirety of the population because of a small number who had joined the opposition fight against Assad. It did not matter that there were also those from the Yarmouk refugee camp who were members of the Syrian military and some others fighting by choice with the Syrian Army, all that mattered was the excuse that some small remnant had joined the al-Qaeda al-Nusra Brigades or the Syrian Liberation Army. For that crime Bashir al-Assad passed judgement on the tens of thousands including children, women, elderly and otherwise innocent refugees who had not joined either side and mostly just wished to be left to live their lives. The Yarmouk refugee camp was also one of those sights where chemical weapons were deployed as the barrel-bombs were not murdering the Arab-Palestinian residents quickly enough and some had taken upon themselves the only obvious means to reach safety and had started organizing to flee to Jordan. Reacting to this now framed disloyal act of betrayal for refusing to remain and be murdered, the Arab-Palestinians found loyal Syrian military troops along their route doing everything in their power to kill as many as possible and with the safety of Jordan within sight came the horrific sight of what must have appeared to be an impenetrable line of Syrian troops and heavy weapons waiting to intercept these refugees and prevent their making it to safety.

 

Of course some did make it across the border and joined the other Syrians living in the refugee camps being tended with as much kindness and sympathy as their Jordanian hosts are able to provide but this is still creating a humanitarian crisis just as it has in Turkey and in the Kurdish areas in northern Syria and Iraq. The world and especially the United Nations have largely given minimal efforts in caring for the refugees from the war in Syria and even less, if such is possible, to saving the Arab-Palestinians whose identity now has become Syrian refugees. There is an opportunity for the Arab-Palestinians to gain some advantage should they choose and provide a potentially better life for their children and their children by casting off their denotation as Palestinian and simply become a part of the greater Syrian refugee population. This should be a relatively easy transition as many traced their heritage back to the greater Syrian areas of the Ottoman Empire and are just as much of Syrian heritage as are the other Syrian refugees now struggling as a whole to simply survive. But such is only the end result where those fortunate enough to have made it into the camps outside of war torn Syria.

 

For those who insisted on remaining in the Yarmouk refugee camp their tribulations did not end with the barrel-bombs or the chemical weapons use, it continued with ISIS slowly and destructively sweeping across the camp as their war against Bashir al-Assad and against Hezballah and even other rebel groups all but obviated what remained of the Yarmouk refugee camp. And the devastating battle over the camp and its land was not the final end as ISIS has also taken vengeance on the remaining Arab-Palestinians finding many of them lacking in proper support and practice of ISIS and their defined form of Islam, a form which also requires great sacrifice for the cause of ISIS and for those of fighting ability joining their ranks or watching their entire family be slaughtered before being killed themselves. Where are the outcries against this horrific treatment of Arab-Palestinians? Where is Mahmoud Abbas, Saeb Erekat, Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub, Salam Fayyad, Nabil Shaath, Ahmad Qurei, Khaled Mashal, Mohammed Deif and the rest of the leadership from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, PLO and the rest of the alphabet Palestinian groups and their leaders? Why has there been no demonstrations, launching of rockets and suicide attacks into Damascus by Palestinian militant groups? Where is UNRWA to protect these Arab-Palestinians facing mortal dangers and a genocidal war waged by all sides against the survivors still living within the confines of the Yarmouk refugee camp? The answer is simple, they are all attempting to find some manner of blaming the tragedy on Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu or other Israeli leader as Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, the Syrian military, the Syrian Free Army, al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra Group, and ISIS obviously cannot be the reason as they are all groups who also are a part of the opposition to the existence of Israel, or at least would be if they were not so intent on murdering each other.

 

The problem for the residents of the Yarmouk neighborhoods are that they are being murdered by Syrian both against and supportive of Bashir al-Assad and in a final measure systematically slaughtered in a genocidal manner by ISIS and all of this being committed step-by-step starting with the Syrian Army shelling with tank fired artillery rounds destroying most of the structures of the Yarmouk neighborhoods, both residences and municipal buildings, then barrel-bombs were dropped targeting any pockets where the residents from the Yarmouk neighborhoods in an attempt to eradicate the remaining residents, then the Syrian Air Force and ground forces unleashed chemical weapons such as Sarin Gas followed by chlorine gas in attempts to slow ISIS advances and again murder the remaining residents of Yarmouk, and then ISIS completed the ethnic cleansing of Muslims as well as any Christians or others by the self-appointed religious inquisitors imposing a Muslim purity judgment on the surviving residents of Yarmouk much the way the Spanish Inquisitors passed sentence on their fellow Christians who were found impure and all others of the defined lesser faiths. Still, the fact that these horrific transgressions are being perpetrated on people formerly made separate as Arab-Palestinian refugees and not simply additional Syrian refugees.

 

Still, when perhaps there might have been some manner to have saved the majority of the Yarmouk residents there was no hue and cry as their tormentors, their murderers were not the correct kind and there was no manner for linkage to Israel as even the Arab-Palestinian leadership in Ramallah and in Gaza made no effort to offer sanctuary for their fellow Arab-Palestinian brothers and sisters. There was rarely a peep of protest raised about this mass-murdering of fellow Arab-Palestinians. As one would have been hard pressed to find a manner through which to link this as blame on the Israelis without their first being required to offer sanctuary and taken responsibility by the Arab-Palestinian leadership whose specialty is not caring for their brothers and sisters but rather raising funds from the Western elite by preying on their guilt over slights past and pocketing their percentage off the top and spending the remainder on weapons to murder Israelis, not care for their fellow Arab-Palestinians. Why would the Arab-Palestinian leadership show any more compassion, any more concern with the welfare, any feelings of responsibility, anything at all towards assisting their fellow Arab-Palestinians facing dangers and sure death when they feel little if any of this for the Arab-Palestinians they presumably represent and are tasked to actually care for and about. The reality is as the Arab-Palestinians from the Yarmouk refugee camp and the other Arab-Palestinians in camps located in either Syria or Lebanon are of little concern except if they can be utilized in some manner to assist in the destruction of Israel.

 

There is a really simply and obvious reason we heard nary a sound nor witnessed any action or compassion towards their fellow Arab-Palestinians whose lives were threatened and whose existence was in peril; there was no manner for taking these refugees and automatically forcing them onto Israel using the right of return argument as that must first be formalized through negotiations as without legal authority or even moral authority for forcing what would amount to illegal immigrants upon Israel these Arab-Palestinian refugees would require being brought within the semiautonomous Arab-Palestinian regions already in existence. By bringing any of the Syrian or Lebanese Arab-Palestinians into the existing areas controlled by the Arab-Palestinians having all legal rights and powers under their own presumed elected governance (even if it was one election one time in 2005 and not again since), that would have placed the lenses of world opinion on the fact that the Arab-Palestinians presumably living on lands under occupation by Israel and ruled over by Israel as being the falsehood that it is. The world would have been witness to the autonomous nature of Arab-Palestinian society and having the reality and truth played out in full portrayal for the world to see. This would be the end of the claims of oppression under the cruelty of the Israeli colonialists and the truth of the Arab-Palestinian oppressions being self-inflicted.

 

Perhaps the Arab-Palestinian leadership was completely unable to step up and take responsibility for the salvation, or at least the protection, of their fellow Arab-Palestinians simply because they have also never found the moral honesty to step up and take responsibility for those unfortunate Arab-Palestinians already betrayed by their own and very same leadership. The reality has been shown that only those Arab-Palestinians who can claim their misery and failures are because of Israel are to be the concern of the world because the truth is that there exists only an extremely small core who can claim to be Pro-Arab-Palestinian as the vast majority of the Pro-Arab-Palestinian are actually more interested in being Anti-Israel thus the truth is one can be Pro-Arab-Palestinian and Pro-Israel but the difficulty comes with being more Pro-Arab-Palestinian than one chooses to be Anti-Israel. The few who honestly care about Arab-Palestinians would have been sounding the outcry for the plight of the Arab-Palestinians at the hands of their brothers on both sides of the massacres as war taking place in Syria and Iraq, and both sides maliciously assaulted in a genocidal manner on the Arab-Palestinians as both sides saw them as an opposing force. That situation is something which should give the world pause to reason out how all sides could view the same subgroup amongst their midst as their enemy. Can it be true that there actually are none who would consider the Arab-Palestinians as potential friends in the tribal world that is the conflict in Syria and other places in the Arab and Muslim world or are they truly found to be abhorrence throughout the Arab world? If such proves true then the entirety of the Arab-Palestinian and Israeli conflict is a war against Israel without any real and honest concern for the Arab-Palestinian, just a burning hatred of Israel, of the Jew and their state, nothing more, nothing less.

 

I am unsure which is the more tragic, the complete lack of concern by the world, especially by the Arabs themselves from every corner, for the safety and protection of the Arab-Palestinians who play such a central role in the war against Israel or the fact that much of the world, its governments, people, organizations and institutions, are all allied set on the path to eradicate the Jewish state. How is this all happening again and so closely upon the witness of the Pogroms by the Czars, the Holocaust by the Nazis and their overly willing populations with those rare and humane exceptions, the Communist oppressive actions cleansing their society of much of its Jews, and now it is gripping all of Europe and beginning in the United States and Canada, especially in the colleges and universities which usually precedes acceptance into the society as a whole within a decade, two decades at the most. Who will be the first to stand against the oldest and seemingly purist hatred this time. Will any follow this leader or should the world simply slide once again towards an attempted genocidal conflict, this time against something the world had thought vanquished, the Jewish state at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea where it was last eradicated as a nation almost two millennia ago by the Romans, before them the Greeks, preceded by the Persians who stand ready to try once more this time as Iran but we remember them as Persia, and even earlier the Babylonians, Assyrians, Philistines and the initial wars in founding the Jewish state against the Canaanites after escaping ancient Egypt. It has been quite a long history reaching back further than any other groups which never grew to numbers which could be considered significant in the world yet always at the fore of everybody’s thoughts. How can such be and what causes this obsession with the Jews, just under two-tenths of one percent of the world population; that is 0.183% or 0.00183 of the world’s 7.6 billion people, and their percentage is in decline already without a world at war with its only Jewish population showing measurable positive growth, at least for now.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

 

* Below is a presentation on society, warfare, morality and a critique of the changes witnessed during his life by Colonel Richard Kemp Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire when he addressed the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies on May 19, 2015.

 

 

 

 

The Differing Dreams of Two Peoples

 

The basis for the “Two State Solution” is to share a land equally between two peoples who both have an attachment and love for the land. If only this were so there might be some means by which it would work. The problem is that this premise is a lie. There can never be a two state solution which will satisfy one side because they have no love for the land, they are driven by a different drummer, and then there are two groups who wish to live productively, so let’s compare and contrast the driving force behind each of the three groups. We will start with the Jewish desires of the two Jewish residents and then the Palestinian side after a few clarifying notes. There are two completely separate Arab cultures and two somewhat separate Jewish groups. These disparate groups can all but one live in this land relatively peaceably but that final group can never be appeased and has the same desires as the extreme groups currently spreading their insatiable drive across Europe and into the United States and Canada, a group with whom there is no middle ground.

 

The easiest group for us to define is the Zionist Jews. They are here to realize a dream which has lived simmering just below the surface sometimes breaking through as happened to a fervent group led by the likes of Theodor Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Rabbi Zalman Melamed, each at their own time and in their own way. The Zionist Jew has a desire to live once again in the ancestral home of the Jewish People, to live in Eretz Yisroel. The Zionist shares this dream with countless Jews throughout modern history and considers living outside of Israel as a form of punishment that though started by the Roman dispersal of the Jewish People to the farthest hinterlands of the Roman Empire in order to destroy the central pillars of Judaism which would necessarily lead to the death of the Jewish People within a couple of generations. This is what had happened to other peoples the Roman Empire had so treated but the Jewish People had a secret weapon, so to speak, called Torah. The attachment to the land of Israel was rooted in the Torah Scroll and thus Judaism is rooted in the Land and in Torah. Without the sacred and blessed land of our forefathers we were not completely lost and rudderless, we still had Torah; the Commandments, though some were to remain unfulfilled as they dealt with the land, the Priesthood, the Temple, the required Sacrifices; the rules for living a righteous life; the dietary laws; and other rules including the Oral Law which was for the first time written down. Torah became the link between one Jew and the next Jew and in Torah was the promise that in the future we would regain our land and rebuild the Holy Temple. The Zionist desire was to realize the dream of living in our Biblical and ancient lands. The Zionist dream was to live and rebuild our ancestral lands and reestablish the Promised Land to its place of prominence in our lives. This was always expected to be a realization which would take generations before it would be a dream fulfilled though the growing anti-Semitism may be the force which speeds up the return of the Jewish People to the land. The dream of the Zionist is one of rebuilding and restoration.

 

There are other Jews who were born in Israel who do not share or understand the significance of living in Israel. Many of them simply desire to live a normal life without complications and who want to find a solution to the conflict. There are also Jews born in Israel who are Zionist and thus share the dram described above and treasure their fortune of being native born and the reality that the dream has started to become a reality. There is little difference between the native born Zionist and their cousins who are returning to the lands; both have a deeply rooted tie to the land through Torah whether they can define it as such or not. Then there are the leftist Jews who do not share the Zionist dream and actually see the Jewish presence as denying the Arabs their lands and actively work to undermine any religious or secular drive to restore the Holy Lands as they see both secular and religious Zionism as being the problem and see both groups as actually being religious. Most of these Jews are referred to as post-modernist who have moved presumably beyond the primitive religions of the world and are now enlightened and thus true believers in this New Age leftist, and often environmental and so many other leftist progressive causes and thus more advanced than the simple minded Zionists who need to be awakened to the reality that they are invaders stealing the lands which has to be stopped. These Jews have so much in common with the anti-Israel activists found largely in Europe and throughout the Western World. They support the most extreme Arab claims seeing that desire to own the land as superior to any Jewish claims to the land. Many of these Post-Zionist Jews have over the past forty years or so been moving out of Israel seeing nothing special and placing no real attachment to the lands leaving it to live in Europe where their views on life are a better fit. Some of these Jews when faced with the vile and visceral anti-Semitism begin to understand some of the logic for a Jewish nation as a place of refuge from the hatreds and some even gain a further understanding of the Zionist love for a Jewish State, some solely the logic and fortunately the majority the religious. Still, there are the many who are so sold on their post-modernist lifestyle that they work ardently to destroy Israel as a national homeland of the Jewish People regarding such as a racist and supremacist set of values and one that has to be destroyed if the nirvana of the truly multi-ethnic society where all peoples are equal in value and there is no nationalist identity exists and everybody is a citizen of the world. These Progressive Jews are progressives first and foremost and secondarily Jewish if even remaining Jewish does not interfere with their progressive lifestyle and political socialist views and mores.

 

The indigenous Arab population, many of which arrived after the initial influx of Zionists had arrived and brought with them an economic outlook and productivity that increased the economic base of the area providing for more and better paying jobs. It was this economic environment of opportunity for a better life which attracted many of the first Arabs to move their families here to share in this opportunity for wealth and a comfortable life for their children when they grew up. These Arabs joined with the Jews though often the two groups lived in communities separate but in close proximity so as to share in the bounty of the land and the economic wealth. This influx started towards the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It was when the Arab nationalist movement first became a relevant segment of the Arab societies that the initial buds of the desire to take over the lands where presumably the plan was to establish one Jewish state amongst the fields of Arab states being established throughout the now defeated and defunct Ottoman Empire, and what would come to be seen as the last caliphate which must be rebuilt. This Arab nationalism was used by the Mufti of Jerusalem to whip up resentment for the Jews who had come and were stealing lands that were rightfully Arab lands. It was implied that the Jews were stealing the land and Arab wealth and it was the Arab economic opportunity which brought the Jews to the area being denoted under the British Mandate to form a Jewish state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, an area of extreme economic opportunity which had even built cities with commercial and manufacturing centers resembling the cities in Europe and the United States and the rest of the Western World. Even the mode of dress was largely Western in its appearance. Still, a large portion of the Arab population remained dedicated to raising their families and was not drawn into the nascent Arab-Israeli conflict. There were riots started which were stoked by some of the British who were set against the formation of a Jewish state and assisted the Arab nationalism as their weapon against these Jews who desired to form a Jewish state. They viewed the idea of Jews having their own nation as an affront to all they believed and held as holy. In their limited view of history, which started somewhere around the twelfth century, the Jews were a despised, small and petty group of undesirables to be scorned and looked down upon. These British anti-Semites, for lack of a better description as actually theirs was the mainstream view throughout most of Europe, saw the Jews in the Mandate lands as an oddity as they were proud and strong, completely unlike the Jews in Europe, these Jews obviously did not know their place. Their fellow Arabs who were working to build a nation that would no longer need the British heel on their collective throats ignored the British and their values as much as was possible and continued their lives. After World War II and the revelations of the Holocaust, the idea of finally acting on that promise given back in the San Remo Conference which was finally ratified in April of 1920 and backed by the League of Nations by unanimous affirmation and later agreed to by the United States in an agreement with the British. This was the point the Mufti of Jerusalem simply was unable to allow and thus he began assembling groups to fight against this idea.

 

That leads right into the final group, the Arabs who refused to permit anything which permitted Jews to rule over Arabs, even as equals before the law. They knew only Sharia by which the Jew would be cast off to the realm of the Dhimmi, the scorned and abused second class people who were subservient to their Islamic masters by whose grace they were permitted to exist. Eventually this led to the KGB established Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which was established in 1964 and had as its charter the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel which would then be united with the rest of Jordan and the Jews subjugated or murdered. The PLO was a nationalist and socialist organization designed around the call to destroy Israel and remove any lands from Jewish ownership just as had been done by Jordan when they managed to retain Judea and Samaria from the initial war of eradication which pitted seven nations and militias against Israel the initial morning of her existence and before anything resembling a national military could be established. Still, somehow the separate Jewish organizations merged and formed a rudimentary military which would succeed in defending much of the lands. The PLO was organized and trained mostly in Jordan with many of its leaders taken to Moscow where they received specialized training by the KGB in guerilla warfare tactics and revolutionary ideals and the best manner of methods to use against the Israelis. Their basic premise was that if they committed sufficient numbers of horrific terrorist strikes the Jews would turn tail and run. There was one main error in their reasoning, that the Jews would have anywhere to run to that had the same meaning of their national homeland in which they had resided for more than three-thousand years, far outstripping the under two-thousand years of exile. The Jews had returned to their lands of promise and eventual salvation and could not think of a place they would ever accept replacing Eretz Yisroel. But the PLO eventually got an Islamist entity which would compete with them for the crown of the greatest enemy of the Jews, and not just Israeli Jews as Hamas in their charter call for the eradication of Jews throughout the world (and beyond if it should ever be found that the Jews really are from another planet and have their own mothership sitting on the backside of the Moon). Then there came an alphabet soup of groups all fighting to destroy the Jewish state which included Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Fatah, Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Abu Nidal Organization, Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Al-Quds Brigades, Arab Liberation Front (ALF), Army of Islam, Black September Organization, Popular Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PRFLP), Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), Force 17 (Security force for the leader of the PA), Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and Palestinian Authority (PA). There have been other such as those claiming to be followers of al-Qaeda and ISIS as well a smaller groups which surround a charismatic leader but many such groups eventually fall to the side and merge with one of the major groups. The table is currently set with Hamas and Islamic Jihad ruling in Gaza while the remainder of the PA, which is mostly comprised of Fatah and the PLO which overlap in membership and leadership with each other and the PA. The driving force behind most of the current PA is to play up their victimhood and play on the guilt feelings of the Western world in order to gain the one manner the Western world knows to perform penance, they send funding and promise further contributions to the cause. To continue to receive these guilt payments there is a necessary but unspoken second necessity, this oppressing group which is to be thought of as evil and a horrific injustice. For the Arab cause it is this anathema that is the Jewish state, Israel. This serves as a twofer for many in Europe, they are supporting the downtrodden Arabs and at the same time ridding their world eventually, should their Palestinian allies ever succeed, of that most unholy of things, a Jewish state. The argument many of the progressives make is that Israel is a theocracy which by definition must be oppressing all the non-Jews and exalting the Jewish religion. They refuse to allow the freedom of religion laws which are part of the Basic Laws which form a legal backbone to the nation of Israel. The fact that the Palestinian Arabs demand that their areas be made Jew free is completely understandable by the Europeans and the Western world. In their post-modern world view which has reached such heights of reason and truth that their nations are self-destructing through a refusal to bother to have children as such is such a bother and requires difficulties which are just too messy to put up with. That is the gift of having no religious moral underpinning which makes the dedication to others, especially the youth who are to come to the world you leave them, and replace that with a simplistic Cyrenaic Hedonism or other offshoot of Hedonism in place of the morality of the previous religiously guided, and considered restrained, life where the raising of children was held in high regard as such preserved the future of the system and guaranteed the central pillars of the society. Often those pillars were also shared by the religious institutions and have been cast aside completely as the post-modernist seeks to be rid of those old-fashioned codes. This makes Israel a reminder of their former restrained lives and the fact that Israel is succeeding while Europe finds itself in a quagmire of a quandary of where did it go so very wrong. Thus they cast Israel as the representation of everything they hated from within their history and cast the Arabs as the innocent indigenous peoples who are enslaved and brutalized by the colonialist, capitalist, racist, oppressive and, worst of all, religiously observant continuation of the old and evil European values. Never mind that the Jews were either the brutalized of the Europeans or of the colonizing, conquering, religious, enslaving and master oppressors who had burst from the Arabic Peninsula towards the end of the first millennia and spread their will of force across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and on into east Asia, southeastern Europe, Southwestern Europe, the Balkans, northwestern China and are currently attempting another expansion, their third, into south and central Africa and the Horn of Africa, southern Europe and beyond throughout Europe, and all of Western world taking a foothold in the campuses across the Western World and into government bureaucracies taking particularly into planning for school boards and other central controlling departments. The Europeans are willing to cut their own throats if it rids the world of that anathema and effrontery known as Israel, the Jewish State. In this hatred the Arab World stands in complete harmony with the Europeans and apparently the United States State Department except the Arab World’s reasons are very different as the Arab World’s reasoning is Islamic and based in a supremacist religious interpretation of the Quran. For a basic view into and describing the initial events and interpretations that guide much of Islam to this very day read our introduction to the duplicitous stories within the Quran explained Which Quran, Mecca or Medina?. The reality is that the European and the Islamists are in complete harmonious thought for diametrically opposite reasons, one fleeing anything religious and the other intent on the supremacy of their religion, holding the destruction of Israel as one of the prominent aims of their societal norms. Another difference is the Europeans are also destroying any hopes that their beliefs and societies will continue more than one or two generation forward and the Islamists are willing to assist this as long as their religious theocracy replaces the European post-modernist belief structure. So the Western world desires to take Israel down as its final achievement before disappearing while the Islamists simply want to steamroll Israel while also stretching their dominion over the remainder of the globe.

 

The saddest reality is the Islamists militancy will eventually destroy the peaceable Arabs who simply want to raise their families and bring them into a world which holds the greatest promise for their children’s children, a very similar desire shared by the Jewish People, especially the religious Jews. The Jews also have one other desire, to build their homelands to their former glory all held within the areas from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River and no further. The Jews have no desires to rule the world or even to influence the world beyond the hopes that the Noahic Code, seven laws on which to base any civilization be used to guide the rest of the world and we will attempt to live by example of what righteousness can bring and to make discoveries and insights which we will gladly share with all who desire knowledge, be that knowledge in medicine, computers, agriculture, manufacturing, resource preservation or any knowledge of discovery which would go to further the development of the better human spirit and the ability for all peoples to live harmoniously. That is the gift we will exchange for this little strip of land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Fair enough?

 

Beyond the Cusp