The Hidden Trap in UNSC 2334, Israel and Palestine

 

The entirety of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 can be found at the end of the article for those willing to suffer through its tedious and tendentious prose and are welcome to peruse the entirety of the document. The one saving grace is it is not that long a read. The first item is that the preface, the longest section of the article, completely undermines the rest of the resolution. Had this in any way been reflective of its claims for reaffirming Res. 242, Res. 338, Res. 446, Res. 452, Res. 465, Res. 476, Res. 478, Res. 1397 and Res. 1515; then it would have called for negotiations to establish borders which would provide Israel with defendable and defined borders. If, when mentioning the settlements, it would have only pressed for limited or no additional settlements and limitation on expansion of existing settlements only to accommodate population increases, there would not have been the attempt to criminalize the settlements nor would it press for their dismantlement as was the seeming intent. Further, there would have been no mention of using the 1949 Armistice Lines, the Green Line, as the basis for any future borders. Finally, the resolution flies in the face, as did all the previous other than Res. 242, of the United Nations Charter as according to Article 80 of said Charter, the United Nations was considered the enforcing power for the Mandate System inherited from the League of Nations along with all other agreements and resolutions produced under the League of Nations which would define Israel’s borders to the east as being the Jordan River, period and end of discussion unless Israel decides to grant any claims of the validity they seek. Let us stress, that is validity they seek, not claim. The truth of the matter and the only decision under International Law any court can reach is that Israel owns all of Judea and Samaria and the Palestinian Authority and any other entity have no valid claim to one inch of the lands west of the Jordan River. This is more than our opinion as it was also the decision of the Court of Appeal of Versailles, France. Then there is the advisory opinion from the Honorable Justice El Araby, an Egyptian who sat as an adjudicator on the International Court of Justice when they were requested to make a ruling on the Israeli security barrier and whether it could be legally placed as designed. He warned the UNGA and others that filing further ran some risks, as he stated,

 

“The international legal status of the Palestinian Territory (paras. 70-71 of the Advisory Opinion), in my view, merits more comprehensive treatment. A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently side-stepped. The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain.”

 

The entire reason for the presage of UNSC 2334 by President Obama and his administration was in order to set up this current Paris conference where his plan is to press for them to advise for the recognition of a state for the Arabs. This would need to be pushed and be ratified and presented officially before noon EST of January 20, 2017 and then taken for a near immediate vote by the UNSC on a resolution recognizing such state, setting its borders as probably the Green Line, President Obama’s wildest dream, and making it a Chapter Seven Resolution which is enforceable by military force. Such a resolution would make any attack upon Israel for the stated purpose of forcing them from the lands that the United Nations gave to the Arabs for their state as legal and fully backed by the nations of the world. Such a resolution would also place any nation aiding Israel is such a war as vulnerable to being brought before the International Courts and sued to cease and desist or face sanction and possibly military force to end their support. Basically, such a resolution would tie the hands of every nation to turn their hand against Israel bringing the Biblical prophecy of the world turning its hand being against Israel and every nation becoming the enemy of the Jewish State. We hope we do not have to remind anyone of what follows as there are four horsemen in the New Testament and the Messiah in the Old Testament and the following is not pretty at all. But that is the direction that the European Union, President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, other select people from the Administration and many of the Arab World all would like to see become reality. President Obama is in such a rush because first he wants to get even with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for opposing the Iran treaty and not respecting President Obama and bowing to his desires at every turn and because he realizes that since Hillary Clinton did not win the election as expected, that President Trump is not going to continue the war against Israel and might change things away from the current direction making this the last time in the foreseeable future that forcing this solution and the making of a new Arab state possible. President Obama is aware that such an opportunity to force this issue is now or never and he cannot rest without giving it everything he is able.

 

The reality is that the political winds are changing and are going to blow for a while in a completely different direction and it is very probable that the world’s attentions will be swinging away from the Middle East and become more centered on economies and containment of the troubles plaguing the Middle East to only the Middle East which will also bring the refugee immigration, or should we say invasion, to a quick and unmerciful end. The war in Syria is likely to be brought to a close with whatever agreement is necessary being imposed and likely the nation made into three states; one Alawite under Bashir al-Assad; one Kurdish which may even include some of the lands from northern Iraq included and the state of Kurdistan, which had been a promise that the British made during World War I but found oil more important than their promises, finally brought into fruition; and the final a Sunni state which could very easily be divided between Turkey and central Iraq leaving southern Iraq as either the remnant of Shiite Iraq or merged into Iran. These divisions would respect tribal and ethnic division with the Sunni with the Sunni, the Shia with Shia and the Kurds finally realizing their independence. Such a strategy would also provide the Middle East with much needed ethnic borders and potentially greater security and peace, imagine that.

 

That leaves Libya which could be divided into so many smaller states except that would create the problem of constant wars between the tribes or a larger problem of a neighboring state of terrorist forces taking hold of this dysfunctional area. This is already a problem but even the terrorists found attempting to establish a safe area in Libya to be next to impossible. Sometimes conflict is unavoidable and Libya has been a cauldron of trouble ever since the Romans and Carthage fought their wars there and during the Caliphate and Ottoman eras with the Barbary Pirates and even up to the time Thomas Jefferson sent the United States Marines into Tripoli taking the harbor and forcing an end to the pirating of American vessels, well, until the next time they thought America had been weakened and had to be taught again that they were mistaken. These were the Barbary Wars, 1801–1805 and 1815–1816, bracketed the War of 1812 where the British attempted to retake their former colony and failed. The Barbary Pirates figured such a war had weakened the United States and needed to be shown otherwise. The Italians were given Libya after World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire until 1947, approximately the time many of the European nations resigned from their colonial holdings. For more on Libya and its problems through the ages, one can go here, and hopefully that will be sufficient coverage of Libya.

 

Israel, in the meantime, will eventually be granted all that which was and is still promised her. This means that the eastern border will end up being the Jordan River. The only decision the world need make is how much drama, needless suffering, necessary time to undo the damage caused by the broken promises, and the number of lives, both Arab and Israeli, will be wasted getting to the rightful and just fulfillment of promises. For those who are going to challenge about the British promise to the Arabs that they would be granted a state within the British Mandate, that was satisfied when seventy-eight percent of the British Mandate was used to make the Arab state of Jordan. The remainder, as stated in the Churchill White Papers, was to be granted the Jews for their homeland. Those claiming the division suggested under UNGA Res. 181, that division was merely a General Assembly Resolution which are suggestive in their enforcement and as soon as either side refuses such a resolution it becomes null and void and cannot be resurrected no matter how badly one desires to steal as much land and make Israel so vulnerable as to make her defense impossible just to see Jews murdered and Israel destroyed again. The Arab League refused that solution and invaded Israel on May 15, 1948; the very day Israel came into being with the Jordan River as her legal boundary.

 

The problem the world is having over Israel can be simplified to one thing; many, possibly most, of the world do not believe nor desire that the Jews be permitted their homeland. The Western World and much of the remainder of the planet are fully aware of the ancient history of the Jewish People in Israel and their Capital city, eternal Capital city, of Jerusalem. These anti-Semitic views desire the Jew to be the tiny minority which is defenseless and can be beaten, stolen from, demeaned and otherwise simply used as a punching bag by any and every nation at their whim. They want Jews not permitted to own land or have any property of their own beyond a suitcase and whatever they can carry at a moment’s notice. They desire the Jew they abused for the past twenty-five-hundred years with the brief exceptions when they revolted and threw off the yokes of Greek Rule and then Roman Rule. They want the Jew to continue to suffer the intended punishment forced upon them by the Romans with their dispersal which was intended to end the existence of the Jewish People. The Jewish fate was to be the same as every other people the Roman treated thusly such as the Carthaginians and various other tribes whose names have been lost to antiquity and are known only to those who study ancient histories and even they likely miss a good number of peoples who have been defeated by the conquering empires from Egypt, Hittite, Minoan, Persian, Babylonian and on through the ages. The Chinese, Mongols, Japanese and Indian in Asia and the Aztec, Inca and others who ruled before the European colonization in the Americas where people who were erased from history as after conquest they assimilated and disappeared. Even the Jews had their lost tribes when the northern ten tribes were carried off by the Assyrians and were never seen again though there are beliefs that these tribes are now returning to Israel from their varied places around the globe.

 

Some who desire the destruction of Israel believe that it is necessary otherwise their religion is devalued. This was the historic position of numerous Christian religious groups and was even named replacement theology. This form of preaching exists today and was exactly what was preached at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago under the direction and religious teaching of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and what President Obama listened to during sermons for the twenty years he attended this church. His claim to never have listened or heard these preaching has actually made them even more dangerous as their effect was then subliminal and affecting President Obama’s thoughts through subconscious influences and could have been partly responsible for his determination to destroy Israel and thus the Jewish People, just saying. The damages of replacement theology was based on the supposition that the Jews had been cast off by Hashem and were now under the influence of the devil, except there is no devil or hell in traditional Judaism, and thus were replaced by the Christian Church. With time the Christian Church became the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Then would come the Protestant Reformation where the protestant churches each replaced the Catholic Church. Somewhere off on another argument is Scientology but that gets way too complicated. The one item which was necessary for all these replacements to remain valid was for the Jews never to return to Israel as once the Jews returned to Israel, then the promise of their eventual return from exile by Hashem would be fulfilled and thus mean they were still the Chosen People and invalidate their replacement as such. Then there is Islam which basically claims to be the final and only valid religion of Hashem, except now they change the name to Allah, and according to Islam the Christians have joined the Jews as having been replaced. This is the ultimate replacement theology because the Muslim took the precaution of claiming there can never be another religion as they are the final rendition of the Abrahamic faiths. Islam also claims that Allah has promised them they will conquer the world and end all these false faiths through whatever means necessary. It all gets messy after a while but everybody agrees that the Jews are not to return except the Muslims in the Quran do accept that Jerusalem and Israel are the homelands of the Jews, just do not tell the Palestinian Arabs as they would get very upset with you. The one agreement of the Western religions is that the Jews must not be allowed to return and set up home in Israel and especially with Jerusalem as their Capital City; well, until sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s when many decided maybe there was room to permit the Jews to return home. Thanks.

 

French President Francois Hollande and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas

 

Anyway, apparently that short allowance has worn out and passed it use-by date and been rescinded. Now the United Nations, European Union, United States State Department (the same United States State Department which advised President Harry S. Truman not to recognize Israel but Harry listened to what his mother taught him as a child, go Mom!), numerous European countries, politicians around the globe, the Arab world, the Muslim world and many in Hollywood (where would we be without Hollywood thespians telling us what to think) and who knows who else, maybe Communists and Scientologists (though who knows anything about the Scientologists) all attempting to uproot Israel or weaken her until she cannot defend herself and find some means to eliminate the Jewish State. Did the world learn nothing from the attempts thus far to eliminate Israel and how miracles have saved her to date? In 1948 Israel did not even have a military, no chain of command, the British had taken every weapon they could find, there was no real Israeli Air Force, an Israeli tank was a car with a large caliber gun and a half dozen Arab nations and seven militias attacked within hours of the sun rising on Israel for the first time in nearly two thousand years and somehow Israel survived. In 1967 Israel was outgunned and outmanned by approximately hundreds-to-one and in Six Days took the Golan Heights, liberated Judea and Samaria from Jordanian occupation (yes, you read that right, Jordanian occupation) and conquered the entirety of the Sinai Peninsula surrounding the Egyptian Third Army. Miracle, come on, you can say it, miracle. The miracles have continued since then as in a recent Gaza conflict where there was one such event as here is one of the many articles documenting this miracle, praise Hashem. Here is what was reported by the actual Iron Dome commanding officer who related the story.

 

“A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome precisely calculated [its trajectory]. We know where these missiles are going to land down to a radius of 200 meters. This particular missile was going to hit either the Azrieli Towers, the Kirya (Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon) or [a central Tel Aviv railway station]. Hundreds could have died.”

“We fired the first [interceptor]. It missed. Second [interceptor]. It missed. This is very rare. I was in shock. At this point we had just four seconds until the missile lands. We had already notified emergency services to converge on the target location and had warned of a mass-casualty incident.”

“Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that…sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a G0d!’ I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of G0d send that missile into the sea.”

 

The truth is Israel cannot surrender a single inch of the land the world demands she grant to those sworn to her destruction. Read yesterday’s article and view the pictures there and at the look provided and you can see how if Israel gives the Arabs the Judean Hills all of Tel Aviv to the Mediterranean Sea is visible. The same goes for Haifa and Ashdod and Netanya. The entirety of the central Israeli coastal plain would become uninhabitable as shoulder fired wire guided anti-tank rockets which are guidable could be utilized to target individual structures up to half way across Israel. Rocket and artillery fire could be sight adjusted targeting central downtown Tel Aviv. Jerusalem would be completely cut off from the remainder of Israel and West Jerusalem could be starved into submission. Ben Gurion International Airport would become a shooting gallery and no plane could land or take off with any degree of safety. All of Israel could be brought to a standstill at the mere whim of Mahmoud Abbas, assuming he remained in power. The chance that Hamas or Islamic State would replace the Palestinian Authority would be more than probable; the only question would be which one would move first as that would be the reality Israel would face within months of such an eventuality as is being considered in Paris. Finally, there is one saving grace for as long as the world does not force Mahmoud Abbas or anybody who would follow him as leader of the Palestinian Authority to accept such a peace, they would have to turn down any offer which left anything of Israel intact and should the world manage to remove the Jews, then they would flee from such a situation. The reality is that once Israel is removed from having the IDF provide security in all of Judea and Samaria, then whoever leads the Palestinian authority and the rest of the security and leadership would be dead within six months as whichever terror group replaced them just as what happened in Gaza. Abbas knows this and that is why he may talk of peace but he will never accept any peace as he has enriched himself and plans to live well and spend the stolen funds as do the rest of the Palestinian authority kleptocrats. Ridiculous as it may seem, but Mahmoud Abbas is an ace in the hole as he will never accept peace whether it comes from the European Union, United Nations or whatever council the future provides, and that is something Israel has counted on in the past though few will admit such.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Obama Hollande Israel Conspiracy and the United Nations

 

President Obama and President Hollande have two major things in common at the junction; they are both lame ducks leaving office and both have a visceral hatred for Israel. The first jab at Israel belonged to Hollande with the first Paris so-called peace conference to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict back in June of last year which ended in complete and dishonorable failure. Amongst the attendees were President Hollande, US Secretary of State John Kerry, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini and over twenty other Foreign Secretaries from European States and some Arab States (see picture below). Now they are going to go for round two with the same attendees and once again leaving any meeting with Israeli leadership until after the conference. There is also the claim, a valid fact, that they will also be meeting with Palestinian Authority President Abbas after the conference while nobody is to mention the December meetings in Paris with Abbas, Kerry and Ayrault drawing up the basics and demands of the Arabs to destroy or mortally wound Israel as the conclusion to the conference. With the same attendees, how are they planning on making things different; and that has a singular answer, President Obama. We are willing to bet that even if President Obama is not there for the start of the conference, if necessary he will attend at some point and remind the various attendees of the bold step of allowing Israel to be made vulnerable through his bold actions at the United Nations right before Christmas. President Obama will be there to challenge these leaders to take the bold move to really make peace by recognizing Palestine and all members nations to the conference doing so in accord with having the conference findings formalized and President Obama will take it to the Security Council and have them pass the same resolution formally recognizing Palestine and setting its borders with half of Jerusalem as their capital city all using the Green Line. Why not place a gun to every Israelis head and telling them leave or die in a hail of a million rockets raining down from the Judean hills, the heights overlooking almost all of Israel including its heavily populated central heartlands around Tel Aviv and five other major cities. Such a forced peace resolution would make Jerusalem undefendable as well as Tel Aviv, Dimona, Haifa, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Netanya and all the suburbs and industrial centers throughout Israel.

 

French President Francois Hollande (C), United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (C-L), French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (C-R), US Secretary of State John Kerry (4th R), European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini (3rd R) and officials pose for a group photo at an international meeting in a bid to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in Paris, on June 3, 2016. (AFP Photo/Pool/Kamil Zihnioglu)

 

This conference is a set up for the imposition of a suicide peace upon Israel and guarantees war will start within days of Trump being sworn in as President as it is likely that Abbas promised to wait a short period, probably very short, after President Obama has left office and the Democrats and media can place all the blame on President Trump simply because he is the one in the White House when the fighting commenced and will be charged with doing too little to prevent any Israeli response. That is all the world cares about any longer, Israel and their making any efforts to survive and protect their citizens which the world sees as simply millions of Jews. Whatever one does, do not even try to tell these intelligentsia that Israel has almost as many non-Jewish citizens including Arab Christians, Arab Muslims, Druze, Bedouin, Baha’I and many others which make up a full quarter of the population. These unfortunates will be the ones mourned should they be harmed and Israel will be blamed for their deaths as well as receiving demands they stand down and not overreact to the attacks and that negotiations are being held again across the capitals of the world in emergency sessions and Israel must give them the opportunity to forge peace. The only peace they will be attempting to forge is what the Arab world demands, no more Israel and all the Jews gone. None of these noble nations for peace would allow a single Jew to enter their nation should Israel face the necessity to evacuate her population leaving just the military to try and defend the nation. The response of the world would mimic their responses from World War II when they knew about the Concentration Camps and did nothing, not even bomb the railroad tracks five miles to the east and destroy the junction to Auschwitz Buchenwald when striking the train depot just down the tracks. Then there was the Voyage of the Damned, the fated MS St. Louis and its slow trip back to Germany from Cuba and the refusal by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to allow a single Jew to enter as a refugee of an endangered peoples as they are now taking Syrians, Afghans and other Arab refugees under President Obama. Actually, the fact is President Obama would likely insist the Palestinians delay any attack until some amount of time after he retires and can claim to have washed his hands of Israel and the Middle East and leave blame heaped upon the new President Trump with the mainstream media valued assist.

 

MS St. Louis

 

The perfidy of all involved, which remarkably pretty much leaves Israel out of the picture except for a possible photo op for French President Francois Hollande, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, US Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama immediately after the conference and immediately before informing him of the agreement and concurrently with it being presented for consideration at the United Nations Security Council. This is the opportunity which these leftist have been drooling over. With President Obama showing a glimmer of light, a crack in the armor which the United States had provided Israel defending them in the Security Council but now the United States has taken a bow and retired to the sidelines allowing mischief to run wild. This just might result in the second phase, the recognition which formalizes President Obama’s initial assault with their abstaining allowing condemnation of any Israeli or Jewish presence beyond the Green Line and demanding any peace be based on the Green Line erasing UNSC Res 242 allowing for recognition to follow by any nation of Palestine Arab State using the Green Line for the new border. This would be President Obama’s legacy and one he would proudly hold as his most outstanding accomplishment while secretly knowing he had simply instigated yet another war. Why should his ability to destroy nations and start wars not continue to the last day of this Nobel Peace Prize Laureate?

 

The Paris conference had originally been aimed to be scheduled for somewhere right before Christmas when the June confab failed. This was postponed and was set for after New Year’s but with some of the Foreign Secretaries requesting a later date it was then set for March 15 thus making “Beware of the Ides of March” an enticing title. For reasons not made public, the scheduled meeting was moved back to January and set for the fifteenth once again. One can only wonder what forces in the universe converged on all the attending nations to return the conference to five days before President Obama is scheduled to be retired from the Presidency. President Obama might be putting some real mileage onto Air Force One in the final week of his Presidency with a possible pressure trip to Paris to insist that the rest of the world do their part of the power squeeze against Israel and formally recognize Palestine. He will claim how he is depending on their taking the bull by the horns and wrestling with reality as this may be the last time that the world has the correct people in the White House and in governments across Europe such that peace can be forged if they steel themselves to the task. There will be arm twisting, back slapping, and compliments galore, but if that fails then the threats get lined up, but a forced peace will be the only result President Obama will settle for, anything less he will take as a personal rebuke. The reasoning before was that they could not set any borders as UNSC 242 and the careful language would not allow such to be forced on Israel. That was the reasoning behind the latest UNSC 2334 setting the new border negotiations to be set around the Green Line making using the Green Line and blaming Israel for not acting faster and sacrificing for peace as the reason the rest of the world had to step in and set a border while such was a possibility. This has been planned in the White House as their contingency plan should the impossible happen, Hillary Clinton losing the election. Never underestimate Hillary Clinton when it comes to messing up even a given thing and managing to lose an election, even to a confirmed clown. With President Trump now looming on the horizon with a complete Cabinet filled with pro-Israel group of candidates, President Obama is making this appear as a threat to peace and not the return of the United States support for her ally. President Obama does not see Israel as an ally but as the bane behind all that is wrong in the world and the basis of all wars, especially those in the Middle East and North Africa. President Obama has painted the lack of a settled peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs as the most pressing and necessary emergency the nations of Europe and the Middle East to work with him in this tight schedule before the inauguration and this opportunity being eclipsed by the end of President Obama’s term on January 20 about noon. Imagine President Obama at the United Nations Security Council on January 20 at about 9:45 crying to the other members to hurry and get the Paris conference adopted by the United Nations Security Council and make it under, please, please Chapter Seven to make it a binding resolution and not merely a Chapter Six which is a nonbinding resolution which is unenforceable and depends on both sides accepting the resolution. Chapter Six Resolution would leave doubt as to whether Israel could be made to accept the Green Line meaning that almost a million Israelis would need be relocated, a monumental imposition and something near impossible to do without severe destruction to the Israeli economy and making an instant housing crisis. What everyone is ignoring is that the Palestinian Authority would reject such an offer even if it were a Chapter Seven as they are sworn to only accept all the land and the destruction of Israel, everything else is too little to end their continued demands and terror war.

 

The coming Paris peace conference is the setting of the final trap by the Obama administration should they manage to persuade the European Foreign Secretaries to accept making a resolution recognizing a Palestinian State and setting the borders recognized by the international community to be the Green Line. Their agreement is the necessary introduction which is required by President Obama as the means for requesting similar action by the United Nations Security Council and if the Paris agreement can be done with a unanimous agreement with no dissenting votes, then perhaps such pressure of universal agreement in Paris would suffice to force even that Chapter Seven resolution and provide President Obama his vitally needed legacy as thus far no such success exists and his legacy is simply lacking. This is urgent legacy building and President Obama will refuse to be denied. What is the terrible truth is that should President Obama get his legacy, the world will be that much closer to a great confrontation between two cultures, one where preserving life is the greatest gift while the other finds glory though death and honors the fallen over the living. The world will have to choose sides and it appears that at Paris, Europe might decide to side with death over prizing life and set the wheels of destiny into motion. President Obama will be getting the greatest legacy possible, the legacy of destroying much of society having it all but surrender to the purveyors of death over the guardian of life.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Philosophical Meanderings on Death

 

Many philosophers and deep thinkers, including those from the medical fields who work most closely with death, have written great volumes on the subject of death from numerous and diverse directions. They use technical jargon, some Latin, words with more syllables than appear necessary and even try discerning from experiments exactly what death is. Theologians talk of death as a passage but once they try and explain passage the, what or where they get all confusing and they go into their diffusion through use of sublimely defined terminology and references to writings by other theologians who were equally vague or tripping on some strong hallucinogenic drugs. This will be none of these as this is just as much my recounting of experiences and putting feelings as well as descriptions as best as I am able of three separate, though two are related and the other describes the differences from the others, times I have had a brush with death. This will not be as much a definition than a description of events as best I can recall, and these are, if I may borrow a description from soon to be ex-Secretary of State Kerry from his descriptions of his battles which resulted in his three Purple Hearts from Viet Nam, “etched firmly into the crevasses (he likely was saying ‘crevices’ but with his overly-pronounced Bostonian accent it sounded more like crevasses) of my mind,” or something equally and grandly pathetic. Anyway, let’s proceed on to the actual subject.

 

My first brush with death was the one I almost forgot, and had my life never come close again I would have completely forgotten, tucking all away deep in the back of my mind, which is that part of your mind that gives nightmares and is only freed up by future traumas. It was Christmas vacation, that means long enough back in time that Christmas was a word used in people’s lives and had yet to be replaced by ‘Winter’ when describing school vacations, public events and the reason there is a big pine tree in the town circle but is no longer adorned with festive lights after Thanksgiving and on into the new year, now it sits there blankly and blandly staring as if to ask, “Now what am I to do?” My family had gone to warmer climes for the holiday and I had just finished swimming in the pool but had not made it to the edge. I sank, threw a hand up out of the water waving it frantically, or so it felt. This was the deep end of the pool and I was not able to stand or reach the bottom so I waved, then slower, then I began to feel warm and then I jerked upright sitting on a stretcher throwing off a sheet from my face. I heard a thump and turned to see the attendant at the rear of the stretcher fall back to the ground, he apparently had bounced after feinting. I was in the hotel lobby, not the pool, but I was also confused enough not to question this. They checked me out after I finished spitting out water from seemingly everywhere within including coughing it from lungs and spewing it from wherever. That was what I remembered for years about my drowning experience. That was approximately fifty or so years back from this writing. Not much insight except the mind really prefers to tuck these remembrances away, far, far away where you will hopefully never find them. You all know the place; it is that place you put things to be safe and then can never find them again, that kind of put somewhere safe. Safe from even yourself.

 

Moving along around twenty years and we are parking the car and going into the Auxiliary Administrative and Out Patient Building of a major hospital in the City of Brotherly Love. It is a late Friday afternoon before a three day Memorial Day weekend and I was to be the last patient. We were fifteen minutes early but apparently some patients had cancelled and likely headed to the beach rather than that doctor’s office. The staff was in a hurry to get my brain scan done and probably head to the beach and join the rest of Philadelphia’s population. These were those primitive, pre CAT scan days of medicine where they pumped copious amounts of radioactive iodine into your bloodstream and then took passive radiation X-rays where there is no beam of electrons, it just reads the isotopes shooting out their particles within your circulatory system, and thus lighting up everything. Well, they were really in a hurry so they hooked up the IV, increased the flow rate asking all the while, “Are you feeling dizzy?” I was not so I told them so and they had the stopcock almost all the way open position and they went off to prepare the exam room. I did start to feel dizzy and inhaled to say something but never made it that far. I felt warm and odd, a very weird but not uncomfortable odd which is indescribable. Then I realized that what I was looking at was me sitting there with my wife sitting next to me likely daydreaming as she had nothing she was supposed to be doing except driving when we left. I looked down and floated around doing a 360o turn thinking that this was rather strange. Just as I thought that I transitioned to a new place and all new scene and realized that I had not had a body during this entire series of events. It was dark with a faint thin line of light and I was moving towards it but there was no real sense of motion like wind rushing by, simply I was approaching the line of light and as I got closer I started to hear voices and then joined conversations. The closer I came the more conversations we were sharing all at once, each separate, different but all equally understood at the time. The voices then slowed and became one very piercing, loud, booming, deep voice which stated with urgency for me to, “Step forward and stay or turn now.” For reasons I cannot explain now and could not then, I turned and woke in my body just as the defibrillator screeched to full charge. I gave a yelp type sound like a scared puppy. They internally discharged the paddles into the unit. They had stopped the IV and they returned to the room leaving a nurse to watch me, probably should have done that originally.

 

My Argument with Death

 

While I waited the three or four minutes for their preparations to be completed I looked at the strip they had printed out likely for the required report when you kill a patient. After later working in a hospital I now know that allowing or having a patient die are two different actions that a hospital defines. While allowing patients to die can depend on such little items such as end of life family decisions leading to a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ (DNR) notation on the door, to homeless people whose Medicare has run out, these people are allowed the ‘dignity’ of death. On the other hand, having a patient die is something to be avoided at all costs and everything possible is done to revive patients who forgot to keep breathing. This is because the legal department does not like working, especially responding to wrongful death suits as these cost hospitals million and even tens of millions of dollars. Back to looking at my strip which contained heart wave (EKG) and four channels of Electroencephalogram (EEG) and realized I had done something impressive. There was no heart-rate with close to almost five minutes and just under three minutes of no brainwaves.

 

That evening after having something to eat I sat back in my recliner rehashing through my memories of that day’s events. Everything was still quite clear to me and the something that did not fit entered my thoughts. The events were not exactly the same but that loud voice was the same. My drowning returned to be relived in memory. I had gone quickly from thrashing to warm to somewhere else where I was moving forward to a distant point of light which grew ever so slightly wider when something blocked my continuing and that voice ordered me, “GO BACK!” There was no debate, no choice, just this overwhelming and undeniable movement of turning and going back, but back where? Then I sat up and realized where. The rest is above with the poor attendant getting the shock for the week in a job which probably sees it share of the unusual. The similarities of these two events struck me and have stayed with me. The confusion was that the second time I was granted to choose. The drowning was not meant to be and that was rectified, I was not permitted passage beyond, period. This second time was what was intriguing more so than troubling. The concept that one can choose whether or not to die makes for interesting debate, even if the debate was all in my head. This choosing whether or not you pass that point of no return, and that point in apparently somewhere during the transition where you are already accommodating and acclimating oneself for the next phase of our continuing existence.

 

This inner debate may have been critical in my last episode, my last brush with death thusfar. This time there was no out of body experience though I did not realize that I was actually having my fight in the hospital, I thought it was more metaphysical, thoughts of actions rather than actual actions. I was to find out differently. This story does require some back information, my friends, please put up with one last telling or jump to the next paragraph. This starts off on one evening living in Green Country, Oklahoma where there are no tumbleweeds, no cacti, no barren rocks and sand but rather trees, bushes, grass and real cattle country. I was about to turn in while wiffy was still playing away on the computer. I lied down and just felt wrong, so I took an accounting of what I was feeling. I had no chest pain but tingling in the insides of both arms, legs felt heavy, vision was clouded at the periphery, a general sense of weakness and ill of ease. As I listed these and more I realized that I had just listed every secondary symptom of a heart attack. I interrupted wiffy and told her we needed to go to the hospital. She informed our son that Dad was having a heart attack and she was taking me to the hospital to which he showed minimal interest, with some side-eyed disbelief, as I recall. Despite there being an Emergency Squad stationed less than a full block away at the Firehouse, we chose to drive to the hospital. Advice, if you think you are having a heart attack, get an ambulance otherwise they tend not to believe you. Wiffy (who shall remain nameless) let me off at the entrance, as you really do not want to make your spouse who may be having a heart attack walk too far, and I walked ten feet to the desk. The lady receptionist asked if she could assist me and I told her I was having a heart attack plainly, calmly, as if telling her she was raising nice looking tulips. She asked if I had chest pain and I responded that I was not. She then questioned why I thought I was having a heart attack. I told her I was exhibiting nearly every secondary symptom and listed five or six. She inquired why I thought these were signs of a heart attack so I told her I was a bio med-tech and had worked for a dozen years in a thousand bed heart centered hospital in Washington D.C. and was familiar with many diagnoses including heart attack. She had me sign a form and asked me to fill it out when Wiffy arrived and I handed her the form and my insurance card. The receptionist had an orderly politely show me to the back area in a corner to a bench filled with more people all of whom looked rather less than joyful. Arlo Guthrie described this in Alice’s Restaurant as the ‘Group W Bench’ which is where they send people they do not quite believe are having a problem and are likely trying to obtain drugs for a night’s entertainment, self-entertainment that is. Fortunately for all involved, they did take blood and sent it off to the lab, possibly but not necessarily with a STAT order. Anyone who has been in a five hundred bed or better hospital with a major Emergency Department knows that blood work sent to the lab takes from thirty minutes to forever to be returned. Mine came back in under ten minutes and all of a sudden there are eight nurses making me as comfortable as I desire in my own room and three doctors examining me and a tech hooking me up to an EKG monitor. I assumed they had found a particular protein in my blood sample.

 

I was given a room fairly soon thereafter in a ward where I was the only patient who was conscious. Their treatment while hooking me up to this, that and the other was not particularly taking my comfort into account treating me more like a cadaver in Nurse College than a conscious, feeling patient. This soon upset me as one particular insertion was attempted with minimal if any lubricant and I went off! We finally struck a compromise where I would inform them of any need to take that measurement and we would go from there. Wiffy left later that night as I apparently was resting peaceably so she missed the fun. Sometime after midnight, my recollection is around 2:30ish in the morning I felt a familiar presence. My old friend had come for me once more and was insistent that this time was the time. We proceeded to argue and a fight broke out with my insisting that I was not leaving this mortal plane and my old friend insisting somebody was leaving with her and my name was at the top of her list, or some other silly insistence.

 

From what I was informed by overhearing nurses talking as if everybody was in a coma, they really were not used to conscious patients in this ward, there had been a death soon after our scuffle had ended. Apparently I was fighting anybody who came anywhere near me and had caused a commotion resulting in people trying to contain me. The number of people was consistently around ten to twelve people who had formed a ring around me to contain me. That seemed correct as that was the number there when I apparently returned consciously to this world from fighting apparently still in my body physically but my mind operating in a netherworld between places. I must have been aware of my surroundings to some extent because when I realized where I was I found myself on the floor in the middle of the ward open area surrounded by nurses and four or five large either male nurses or orderlies. They inquired why I had ceased trying to get up and I told them the truth. I stated, “The bald guy keeps throwing me on the ground, so why get up?” This appeared to baffle and please them and they assisted me back to my room, hooked me again to the monitors and intravenous pump leaving the bald guy to watch me, probably as intimidation. Apparently, during my argument I was also talking in the real world and, as I did serve some time as a United States Army infantryman, had chosen some colorful declarative terminology during our scuffle. The doctor the next morning was not upset about the physical altercation as he was about my choice language as this was a Catholic Hospital and I would be refused care if such continued. I assured him that there would be no more problems.

 

That was me near-death and apparently in-body experience and as I was told by my cardiologist, the hospital had initially written me off not expecting me to survive the night. I had under 10% heart function and was told I would definitely require having an internal defibrillator as part of my treatment once I was strong enough. They had been able, after a week of treatment, to place two stents (Israeli stents) into arteries on my heart and cleared apparent blockages. Much if not most of my left ventricle was black in color, not deep red, black. The cardiologist who performed my catheterization and follow-up has given us a detailed description when giving us the good news of my one year heart function tests. I had cleared 50% heart function tests (a measure of heart efficiency and output where over 50% is low end norms for a man in his 60’s and sufficient to not require any internal medical equipment, no defibrillator, no pacemaker, no nothing. My cardiologist all but danced a jig whenever we met as he had doubted I could clear 33%, let alone match what had been a boast of clearing 50%, I actually hit 51%, which was remarkable and to have only a small scar on the heart muscle which was one-third black is my personal miracle, Baruch Hashem. But our subject is not completely about survival but the challenge called death.

 

What I have come to find is that death comes in more than one form. The most pleasant is the form where you are permitted, with limitations, to neaten up and do whatever last items you might need such as saying good-bye to everyone, apologizing to an old friend for some stupid act, whatever it is and then when you are ready you agree you go quietly and peaceably to the next part of our journey. This might even include after you have been struck by a bus and are in two pieces ten feet apart and death will ask if you are ready implying you should use great haste if there is anything left to do. If one were to refuse to go quietly, allowing them to see their present state would be sufficient for them to agree to leave. Medical science cannot treat such injuries. Then there is the more insistent messenger of death, angel of death if you prefer, who comes bearing an order with your name on it, not at the top of a list of candidates, just one name and you are it. No choices, no moment to say good-bye, just that split instant where your face turns blank and then you are gone off to the next stop. We all go to the same next place and we make our way there as best we can. That was the gist of what I was told that one time I was graced with conversing.

 

There is no want in the next realm as we have no bodies to feed or care about upkeep, we are simply thoughts bundled in a sheath of energy. We can talk but in concepts and a kind of enveloping understanding. The interesting part is you can take time; apparently, to be alone with your own thoughts or you can have one-on-one or small group discussions or have as many separate conversations with groups, individuals or any combination thereof. Your identity remains whole and intact and you have the same feelings you had when on the Earthly plane but without the actual body. Whether that wanes over time or what happens after you have spent time in the next realm, that I do not yet know and likely one cannot know that and return here to your former physical self. Can one return, I honestly do not know but from my one experience my question is why would anyone wish to return? Is the next realm our final place or is there something beyond that where we would later transgress into? I cannot answer that any more than a zygote can fathom the life ahead of them and eventual death. The closest I ever found myself was as a potential seed about to be planted to grow in the next realm. By planted I do not in any way imply anchored as tour spirit, your next self, is free to do as it pleases within whatever physical realities exist in a place where energy is the means of communication and existence. There is nothing but a small ball of energy which is the essence of all you ever were, a crystallized energy with no absolute form or restriction of location as you can obviously exist in near endless and innumerable conversations and interaction simultaneously, so there is really little if any restriction known as location to our physical selves. Imagine conversing with every person who ever lived and all having knowledge base which becomes a sense of singularity of all but one still remains with a knowledge of self. Everything is mixed into a larger entity with every part interacting with the others and still you can feel like you move about though the mode of travel is thought energy, you move as per your thoughts much as the physicists describe quantum theory. Perhaps the best of descriptions of the interactions in the next realm, it would be described as similar to quantum entanglement except one can entangle with multiple others and the spin is up to you or as Einstein put it, “spooky action at a distance.”

 

Beyond the Cusp