What Does the World Want From Israel?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Who Will Pope Francis Blame When ISIS Slaughters in Jerusalem?

 

Pope Francis, during his visitation to the Holy Lands, was sure to make a very public statement over the plight of the Palestinian Arabs as he made a highly publicized stop at the exact section of the security barrier where Pope Francis claimed to make a prayer for a unified Arab Palestinian State emphasizing the proposed relationship to, as scrawled on that very section of the barrier, the similarity of the Warsaw Ghetto’s walls and the Israeli built security barrier, a separation object that is largely a fence but along certain stretches is required to be an actual wall such as within heavily built up areas so that it also keeps bullets and explosives from being easily launched into Israeli areas safeguarding both Arabs and Jews of all religions and all others from terrorist assaults on their lives and which has resulted in a highly effective tool in preventing homicide/suicide bombers, homicidal vehicle attacks and sniper attacks of various varieties bringing such attacks down to becoming a rarity compared to previous attacks before the barrier was constructed. Further, Pope Francis made it publically emphasized that his trip began with meetings with Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab Palestinians which he made sure to enter from Jordan flying initially into the Jordanian capital city of Amman specifically to avoid any possible meeting with Israeli officials. The Pope went further as he make a long procession, almost a victory parade, accompanied by numerous Arab Palestinian leadership from Bethlehem to Jerusalem emphasizing in his remarks the plight and flight from Bethlehem of its once predominant Christian population making heavy implications that such a sorry state of affairs had everything to do with Israeli ‘occupation’ and the hardships caused by the Israeli government, meaning the Jewish People, completely absolving the Arab Palestinians and their history of antagonism and persecution of the Christians causing the massive flight in fear for their lives from threats and actual terrorist aggressions.

 

This was followed by a visit to Israel where Pope Francis had a totally different persona becoming somewhat aggressive and antagonistic demanding the Catholic Church be granted their inalienable rights to ownership of large areas of Jerusalem with special emphasis on newly made claims to the building which houses the gravesite of King David claiming the room above King David’s tomb was a possible Christian Holy Site where the Last Supper had recently been claimed to have taken place moving it from the previous traditional spot where there were no contentious claims to this aggressively contentious place where it placed this Christian site above and over a highly Jewish site and further the Pope demanded rights to offer prayer services, a privilege granted and almost immediately abused by attempting to hold such prayers specifically on days where Jews had particularly offered up prayers from the site and taking assurances to hold these prayer before the scheduled Jewish services thus intentionally making the site void for Jewish prayer. The Pope was far from done with his assault on Judaism as well as launching additional assaults on Israel and Israeli claims within the Holy Lands in general at times appearing to insinuate obliquely that the Jews were without any religious claims as they were no longer recognized as having any religious rights having been supplanted and superseded making void any Jewish religiously made claims having been replaced by Christianity.

 

This particular claim made by the Pontiff has ramifications beyond the replacement theology where it is postulated that the Jews have become damned as replaced as the chosen people by the Christians, the Pope would claim the Catholic Church, and no longer favored by the L0rd and cast forth from Jerusalem specifically and without claims throughout the Holy Lands. Pope Francis has, by renewing the replacement theology of the past, set the precedent that Hashem can and has broken vows and promises made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, King David and others which identified the Jewish People as those chosen to carry His Message to the rest of the world has been abrogated and transferred to the Catholic Church which makes the supersessions claimed by Islam claiming that the Christians have themselves been cast off as were the Jews making the Muslims not only the replacement in eyes of Hashem but also the final chosen peoples to carry forth the messages of Hashem and, going one step further, the ones chosen to rule all of humanity going even further afield of a similar claim indigenous to the Christian faith as Judaism never held that the world would be their inheritance, they claimed only a rather insignificant measure of land strategic only in its central location to Europe, Africa and Asia being the region where the three continents converge and having ports which can connect the two main trade routes which have since been serviced by the Suez Canal.

 

The reassertion of the policy of the Catholic Church having replaced the Jews as those having a covenant with Hashem has left the Catholic Church also subjected to being replaced as the chosen of Hashem which is exactly the claim made by Islam. Carrying the replacement and the sole holy religion has also seen both Catholicism, in the more native guise of Christianity, and Islam to thus interpret such to authorize their sovereignty over the entire planet in order for them to properly prepare for the return of Jesus which had been carried one step further by the Islamic extremists claim that their religion being the sole religion Divinely inspired as the replacement, the final replacement of both Judaism and Christianity not only should rule over all of Earth but also be the sole religion practiced by all mankind. This has been carried out to the letter by ISIS as well as being the stated end goal by Iran, Hamas, Hezballah and various other claimants to being the sole pure remaining practitioners of Islam as defined by Muhammad and is behind a very real threat being made by ISIS and a number of their adherents. The agents for ISIS in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), why that redundancy is required by all that is politically correct makes me really desire to cease the practice, and I shall endeavor to do so going forth, are requesting for a list of all the Christians residing in (East) Jerusalem and their addresses to be given to those ISIS representatives by the faithful of Muhammad, note that not all are claiming faithful to ISIS following the practice of deference when outnumbered and until gaining sufficient numbers, somewhere around twenty percent, before becoming more forceful and soon thereafter, around thirty-five percent, taking rule by force and demanding total and complete allegiance followed by choice of becoming part of the faithful as defined by ISIS to the sword, otherwise death. They want these lists as soon as possible such that they can make the necessary plans and make sure they have the necessary power and people to carry out an ethnic cleansing of the Christians residing in Eastern Jerusalem. They have not requested such a list of the Jews residing within the area as they likely believe that those entire neighborhoods are easily known and identifiable.

 

This list will necessarily be assembled with an assault plan in mind by which the vast majority of the Christians residing in Eastern Jerusalem will be forced from the area implied by the sword and not by choice but such will probably be a logistics driven decision. The ISIS planners will take the precaution of having sufficient deployment of forces such that each unit will have a flanking unit on either side or at a close proximity allowing the massing of forces should any resistance be mounted such that they can quickly and without sacrificing their intended missions gather sufficient force to swarm any resistance counting on numbers to turn the tide of battle. Such has been the tactic used by ISIS as well as preparing the area for their assault before-hand. Not possessing sufficient artillery ISIS instead uses vehicle bombs and homicide/suicide bombers to soften their intended targets instilling confusion and disorganization amongst their intended target before they follow-up with swarming the target neutralizing any recovery minimizing their target any time to regroup and form a coordinated counterattacks or even an organized defense with overlapping fields of fire and the other considerations usually carried out well in advance and practiced including tactics of the enemy being interjected at unannounced times to test procedures for just such scenarios. The target in this instance is basically a cleansing operation intended to either clear an area of any opposition or make clear that certain types residing within an area should necessarily depart before they too face the determined business end of an ISIS representative’s weapon. Their announced target date for this cleansing of the population for Allah is the final day of Ramadan which falls in July 16, 2015.

 

The first determination which must be realized by Israeli police and military forces is whether to act as an intervention in force early on and prevent the organization of ISIS forces, wait until they have gathered so as to maximize arrests, intervene as soon as the assembled ISIS forces pose a threat or to simply ignore the threat and only respond to calls in an usual manner leaving the Arab Palestinians pretty much to their own ability. The final option is actually an option not supported by Torah and Jewish Law as we are directed to protect human life as even the lowest amongst us, the beggar, the infirm, the stranger and others we might normally divert our attentions from are still lives we are commanded to care for and keep safe. The concept that each life is potentially an entire nation thus if one saves one life it is as if one has saved a world. That basically means that Israeli defense and law enforcement forces must be prepared for and the one which is most feasible resulting in there being no loss of life be the ones sent for further considerations. Another consideration should be by which of the tactics that prevents any innocent casualties would allow for the most ruinous of setbacks for ISIS and at the same time making their claims of bringing the reincarnation of the Caliphate into question. There needs to be one more principled consideration, the threat to Israeli personnel and citizens, not to claim that any one life is of greater importance than another as that is beyond our ability to reason and is best left to the Creator who knows all things, Hashem. There is one consideration which must be made initially; which is whether or not this threat posed is valid and thus worthy of making and practicing for such an eventuality. Most ISIS threats issued have proven to be real and worthy of notice, but that does not necessarily mean that this attack threat must automatically be considered valid. This threat might be being presented to gauge the level of Israeli response to threats in order to more closely study the anatomy of such a response. Whatever the reasoning behind such a threat, Israeli leadership can be assured they will be held totally responsible for any casualties outside Israeli personnel. Any other nation would be the recipient of sympathy and offers of assistance with the aftermath with support in repairing any damage, aid money to augment responses training in preparation as if there is a singular attack response which would be universally applied to every attack and resolve all problems and serious planning for special situations such as a visit and speech by another head of state.

 

The importance of responding both effectively and forcefully against any initial attack while not going to an overboard approach cannot be overestimated in this instance. Should Israel present an overly cautious and overt response to this particular threat, then ISIS planners would have an effective but simple approach to fomenting fear within Israel by simply pretending to plan an attack and allow the overt, heavy-handed Israeli ramping-up of security measures. Fortunately, for actual events such as parades, speeches and other events or places where people congregate such as train and bus stations and malls; Israel does a fabulous and renowned level of successful security to meet the requirement necessary for each location and expected crowd. Since all ISIS would need to do to estimate the Israeli response to any situation would be to go study any previous similar situation and view the control of the threat level caused and they would have their answer. Pushing a threat against Israel on her own soil and thus giving her home field advantage will simply make everything that much more difficult for ISIS. In this instance Israel will be required to bring to the table an actual threat assessment and response plan as should ISIS actually follow through on a mission to slaughter as many civilian innocents, almost especially any of the numerous minority populations, as Israel is held to the highest expectation of levels possible in the world. Israel is the only nation expected to be capable of providing on a consistent and near universal level security superior to any European nation, any Western nation and even particularly the United States. Israeli security is expected to match when provided for the most insignificant of those amongst us a level of public security roughly the equivalent of that provided the Queen of England, and Israel has thus far throughout her brief but situation filled history met that challenge almost universally; Baruch Hashem. Anybody wishing an actual example of similar situations and the difference between Israeli response and another nation with proper expectations of being capable in a security situation such as a hostage crisis, simply compare the handling of the 1972 Olympic Games abduction of the Israeli team in Munich where most of the Israeli team consisting of six Israeli coaches and five Israeli athletes were taken hostage and ended up murdered along with one German police officer while five Black September members were eliminated in the regrettable failed rescue attempt where the plans for the rescue operation were poorly executed and all of the requested aid did not arrive on scene until two hours after the stand-off and siege began leading to the conflagration that murdered most of the Israelis tied up in the helicopter which was detonated with a grenade thrown by one of the terrorists compared to the Entebbe raid by an elite IDF unit responding to the hijacking of an Air France flight and the holding of Israeli and Jewish passengers and crew numbering over one hundred victims at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda, a distance of over 2,500 miles (4,000 km) in Operation Entebbe, as it came to be known, on July 4, 1976 (giving Israelis a reason to celebrate on as high a level as the people in the United States could on that nation’s bicentennial celebrations) where all but four of the one-hundred-six hostages were rescued with the IDF team suffering five injured and a sole fatality of one of the team commanders and older brother to a future Israeli Prime Minister, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, and all of the terrorists either killed or injured along with almost half of the approximately one hundred Ugandan military troops providing security for the terrorists. Israel had offered assistance and even to handle a rescue attempt with the German government who not only refused the Israeli offer but informed Israeli government officials that any Israelis sent to Germany would be refused entry at the airport and returned to Israel as this was a German operation and Israel had no right to interfere. Perhaps the Germans should have turned it over to the Israelis and thus make Israel responsible for the results.

 

But what is it they say about history, it is what it is and physics has not yet figured out how to alter history, only politicians and the media have such power. That is why when the history is written about the July 16, 2015 ISIS Ramadan assault intending to murder every Christian possible throughout Eastern Jerusalem the only credit or blame for this intended catastrophe in the manner of the cleansing of Mosul, the destruction of the two-thousand-eight-hundred-year-old capital of the Assyrian empire, Khorsabad, including its seven gates and the city with its most highly regarded sixty-four foot wall erected around 713 BCE by King Sargon II during his reign and nearly completely demolished in the beginning of the twenty-first century (or the fifteenth century on the Islamic calendar), parts of which have been preserved in museums in Baghdad, Paris, London and Chicago; destroyed thousands of books in libraries across the lands they have savagely rampaged with some of the books such as the rare books in Mosul are irreplaceable and singular remnants of wisdom and writings from ancient to the modern times; reintroduced slavery on a massive scale and especially the selling of woman as sexual slaves to the highest bidder, some women have been returned for receipt of a percentage of her resale price; burned, drowned, prisoners alive; shot, and beheaded people sentenced to death for even minor offences or taken prisoner; crucified Christians; blown apart prisoners shoved into a car with anti-tank missile; taken sledge hammers to ancient sculptures, vases, pottery destroying ancient displays in museums; and promised to bring this parade of horrors to every corner of the globe should they be allowed that possibility. This is the assembly of monsters across continents with fellow travelers identifying and subjugating their will all in a similar vein such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad; and other equally offensive and revolting acts all threatening to replace the comfortable lives of the decadent Western world should they be given that chance. That is their promise and where is the response from the supposed civilized world? They are either leading from behind or covering the back of the leader leading from behind all in all leaving Israel to fight the world’s war and stop the advance of those who desire a return to the tenth century, a backwards jolt on either calendar, especially the Jewish calendar which is in the fifty-eighth century.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Islamic Reformer in Egypt

 

The video below is what will hopefully be the opening salvo placing Islam on a path to having its own reformation. The timing is pretty much right on schedule as Judaism had its expansionism where it took lands by force and eventually ended that stage of its history after which it only fought to retain the small area of lands which it occupied, a struggle the Jewish state is facing today as the forces of the world continuously attempt to slice and carve Israel up leaving an ever smaller piece of land for the Jewish state to continue existing. The first story telling of Avram’s belief that idolatry was an empty concept and likely led Avram on his quest for the knowledge which eventually led him to finding G0d tells of Avram going into the showroom where his family sold idols to make a living. Avram smashed all of the idols in the shop except the largest idol which he placed the large hammer he had used to smite the rest of the idols. When his father entered the shop he was beside himself and furious demanding that Avram explain what had happened. Avram calmly explained that when he arrived that morning he caught the largest idol, the one holding the hammer, smashing and destroying the other idols. His father rejected the ridiculous story yelling that stone idols were incapable of such acts which Avram simply and calmly inquired why his father and family were selling idols under a false claim. This episode was the beginning of the travels and tribulations for Avram as most certainly he was invited to vacate his family home by his irate and distressed father. The amount of anger Avram probably received from his father and the rest of the family likely drove him to the farthest lands he could find where he felt safe from their reach and where Avram’s life was drastically changed and he started the seeds of what would become Judaism. During this struggle to find truth Avram found G0d and upon G0d instructing him, he changed his name to Avraham.

 

Some five or six hundred years later, after the Jews had been enslaved in Egypt, their numbers had increased to a point that the Pharaoh saw the Jews within Egypt as a potential threat and so placed them in bondage such that they would not revolt and join with one of Egypt’s enemies thus toppling his rule. After four hundred years we are told that the Jews were led to freedom by Moses who gave the Jewish people the Torah gaining Moses the title of the law-giver. Moses also led the Jewish people back to their ancestral homelands, the lands which presumably were granted to Avraham by G0d. The path to freedom and liberty and the forming of a people who did not have their minds enslaved and fearful, as were the minds of the vast majority of the Jewish people whom Moses led out of Egypt; Moses had to turn the nation of Israel around and journey back into the dessert. Moses had initially led the Jews directly to what was to be their homeland but the test of the spies who told of a formidable peoples who had cities with insurmountable walls and themselves were giants with great strength which was given by all but two of the twelve men sent to reconnoiter the land and the people’s panic caused Moses to lead them back into the desert until a new generation had been raised not under the oppression of slavery and with the mindset of a freed people. This, we are told, took forty years of wandering through the desert. To make this telling short we will simply list that Moses did not enter the Promised Land but turned the leadership over to Joshua who led the Jewish people on their initial efforts to conquer what would become their homelands. Initially the Jewish people broke into their individual tribes with each being autonomous. It was not until King David melded the twelve tribes into one nation and King Solomon built the L0rd’s Temple, the First Temple, in Yerushalayim. This was the pinnacle of Jewish expansion and conquest of lands and the rest of time until the Romans dispersed the Jews to the far corners of the Roman Empire in order to make them cease to exist and to perish from the pages of history that the Jewish People lived in the lands straddling the Jordan River and across the plains of the Galilee, much of these lands are where Israel exists today. The Israelites took approximately fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred years from their founding as a people and a religion by Avraham to their conquest and settling their lands centered on Yerushalayim and the Temple. This was the end of military expansionism and the adopting a kinder and gentler Jewish People, the same area approximately that the Jews are attempting to rebuild their homelands which had sat desolate for almost two millennia. Without going through the periods of conquest, rebirth and reconquering their area across Europe but instead look to when Christianity also became nonviolent and no longer expansionary, one sees that this happened for the Christian faith approximately fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred years. Checking the Islamic calendar one would notice that Islam is approaching the time-period where both Judaism and Christendom went through their transformations and became less violent and mostly no longer expansionist. So, perhaps this video has arrived and this will be the first salvo for the transformation of Islam. Here is the video and more continues below, but first the video requires watching if you have not yet come to see it already as it did appear on the social media circuit.

 

 

 

 

Time will tell if Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the latest general turned leader of Egypt will turn out to be the man who began the reformation of Islam or at least the reformation of Islamic beliefs and thought in Egypt, the most populous Islamic nation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the location of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic university in the world, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. This was the University where el-Sisi gave his landmark speech. When I first viewed this speech made by el-Sisi I immediately feared for his life. There exists probably nobody in a more advantageous position to foment this transformation. The previous time such a reformation in Islam might have been possible was just after World War I with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the secularly based Turkey which he had placed what he considered an unimpeachable guardian of the works of his lifetime when he placed the enforcement of the secular state he had set for Turkey. Much of his work is being undermined and undone by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been slowly and inexorably sliding Turkey away from the standards put in place by Mustafa Ataturk a century ago and has already replaced the top generals thus coopting the military from interfering with his designs on returning Turkey to the glory of its time as the head of the Caliphate. Now we have General el-Sisi aiming to turn Egypt into a modern and functional Islamic state. One has to give Abdel Fattah el-Sisi credit for giving this address before the faculty and administrators of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the recognized premier and most prestigious Islamic institution for higher learning in the world. If Abdel el-Sisi can persuade the Imams who teach at Al-Azhar University to teach a reformed and flexible version of Islam more centered on the original teachings of Muhammad during the time in Mecca where he initially wrote the Quran and find some evidence or writing which defines Islam in the manners of Turkey then Abdel el-Sisi may turn out to be the man who started the reformation of Islam. What might the signs be that Abdel el-Sisi is making progress and what form and nature would a reformed Islam take?

 

We can all probably agree that the first accomplishment that Egyptian President and Islamic reformer must achieve will be remaining alive. The fate that awaited former Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar El Sadat after signing a peace treaty with Israel was that he was assassinated while watching a military revue when a soldier broke ranks and charged the reviewing stands and shot President Sadat at almost blank range. Anwar Sadat, like Abdel el-Sisi, was a general in the military before becoming President for Life and that relationship with the military was short-lived as it was from amongst the ranks of the military that the Muslim Brotherhood was able to reach out and assassinate him. So remaining alive and the symbol of a reformed Islam which is being practiced within Egypt, the largest Islamic state in the world, as well as taught at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the premier institute of higher learning and scholarly discourse in all of Islam, will produce a base for Islamic reformation in which Islam is transformed into a religion which is finally capable of living in a world in which other religions are deemed to be permitted and Islam will finally be able to be practiced side-by-side with the other faiths and will no longer pose a threat challenging all other faiths demanding to be the sole religion of the world. Making such a transition will take time, hopefully not too much time, but time just the same as such a transformation cannot be expected to take place overnight, or even in a single year.

 

The signs that such changes are being effectively spread throughout Islam and there will be more than sufficient pushback making the task of spreading the reformed version of Islam that much more difficult. There will be the resistance from the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia who with Saudi oil monies who have been at the forefront of Jihad as a violent manner of spreading Islam if coercion and conversion failed to convince a people to adopt their version of Islam. Then there is the not so small matter of Shiite Muslims as Abdel el-Sisi is Sunni and thus will not hold any acceptable powers of persuasion or authority, moral or otherwise unless Abdel el-Sisi is planning to conquer all of existing Islam in order to teach then a version which is non-violent. Then there are places where Islam is practiced solely because of their willingness to use brute force to enforce the laws of Islam as they perceive such. There are entities whose very existence is dependent on violent Jihad such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezballah, the Twelvers which had their influence solely through nonviolent means. Then there are the recent events in Paris which may have revealed something extremely threatening about Islam today. The two brothers claim that they received training and that the plans were worked through and rehearsed before they were sent to France to perform their deadly acts. This would not seem to pose any problem except that one brother claimed to have worked with al-Qaeda while the other claimed he worked through ISIS. If what this implies is true then the world and Abdel el-Sisi have a serious problem on their hands. The merging of the two of the largest, best trained, and militarily capable of ruling over entire nation is seriously frightening. The world can only hope that al-Qaeda and ISIS are not working together, even if only on Jihadist acts which both terror entities have an interest, then reforming Islam will have become that much more difficult. Abdel el-Sisi made clear that he was speaking about changing the thinking and not the religion, the interpretation and not actual Islam. What he likely meant by these declarations was that he aimed to preserve the writings of Islam and simply shift the emphasis to coexistence as the Quran was first written and that the changes he was purporting were things which the Quran already states but which are not currently stressed and utilized thus getting Islam to change from being a threat to the other religions of the world into a more gentile and pleasant form where it coexists with the other religions in the world. Abdel el-Sisi reflected on his realization that should Islamic practices continue insisting on violent Jihad and the transformation of the entirety of the world to Islam by spreading Islam by the sword that Islam was facing a problem. Abdel el-Sisi described that problem perfectly when he stated, “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Ummah to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!! That thinking, I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’, that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! Is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!!” Abdel el-Sisi has looked at the world through open eyes and seen that should Islam continue in its current path its hand will be against every religion, and every religion’s hand against Islam, and will in the end lead to the destruction of Islam, thus its path must change. Abdel el-Sisi has awakened from a nightmare revelation where he realizes that Islam will only continue if it refuses to continue raising its hands against the world thus he has taken upon himself the task of teaching the Imams and the presumed greatest of those preaching Jihad to now preach kindness. Can he win against the likes of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Feisal Abdul Rauf and Abu Hamza al-Masri? All the rest of us can do is pray that Abdel el-Sisi is making an honest attempt and not trying to aggrandize himself, and that should his intents be pure, from the depths of his heart, and guided by his reason, that he be blessed in his quest as, should he succeed, then both Islam, the Muslim world and the world as a whole will benefit from his efforts.

 

Beyond the Cusp