Time for Israel to Help Trump and America

 

We just read an article by Will Blesch titled, “Should Israel do without US financial aid?” which led us to review some of the things we have stated on this subject. The subtitle taking a line from the article start with, “If Israel could manage without US financial aid,” which is a question we have addressed previously always reaching an answer which was a resounding affirmation. For reference, here are just some of our writings from over the years on this subject which include, “Israeli Decision Refusing US Iron Dome Aid a Great Start” from August 8, 2013, “Time Come for Divorce of Israel and United States?” from May 22, 2014, “I Worry for Israel and Her Future” from June 14, 2017, and “America Can be a Fickle Friend” from September 21, 2018. Should people read these articles they will notice that our position has steadily been for Israel to wean herself from the reliance on American largess, otherwise known as aid. We understand that the aid which the United States provides the Israeli militarily comes with some heavy ropes attached, not just a few strings here and there. First, anything the United States underwrites becomes technology which the United States will benefit in its adoption if it is deemed desirable. Second, almost all military aid monies are required to be spent on procuring American arms made in the United States even should there be Israeli modifications plus the United States retains the right to implement these modifications on their own versions. So, we have no illusions about American aid as it is largely to provide an additional customer for the United States arms manufacturers, predominantly the aircraft manufacturers. It was over aircraft that the entire United States aid began as Israel was about to go into production of the Lavi fighter jet (photo below), a direct challenger to the F-16 built by the United States. The United States decided it was wise to cut down on the number of new fighters going into production and offered Israel such a deal which they could not refuse as it included F-16’s in numbers commensurate to the expected Israeli production of the Lavi plus additional wings of F-15’s to augment the Israeli Air Force. The United States also promised to provide Israel with air superiority into the future forever. Well, we have recently passed forever as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have received or will be receiving F-35’s and currently Turkey will not be receiving them though it had been planned to provide them to Turkey. Still, the numbers between Egypt and Saudi Arabia provide them parity if not superiority over Israel, pilots not included. From this little deal everything mushroomed.

 

Lavi the Lost Dream

 

Returning to the original question; Should Israel do without US financial aid? Before answering too quickly and just jumping straight to, “Yes,” perhaps we should answer a more necessary question which should precede this one, Could Israel do without US financial aid? This question will require covering some of the ground from our previous articles and their graphs and other graphics as well. The first item which must be determined is how much aid is the United States aid set at, is it rising or static and if changing, by how much and which way. Well, the truth is revealed in the graph below which also signals some other vital information. The graph below indicates that United States aid to Israel, excepting some resupply years after military engagements, has settled at approximately three billion dollars per year. The graph also makes another reality obvious; the United States has not been the closest ally upon whom Israel has depended for their weaponry since her inception in 1948. Truth be told, after President Harry S. Truman recognized Israel, he then obliged his State Department and the Defense Department and placed an arms embargo on the entirety of the Middle East during the initial war between the six Arab nations, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, and Israel which was an Arab initiated war intending to erase the Jewish State. President Eisenhower continued the arms embargo on Israel and acted to force Israel to return the Sinai Peninsula after Egypt initiated hostilities by closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping as well as the Suez Canal to European shipping. The Israeli action in 1956 was in concert with the British and French who instead of holding up their end of the military engagement to free the shipping lanes, continued to talk to the Egyptians, they claim into a deal without any assist from Israel, despite Israel gaining hold of the eastern banks of the Suez Canal basically forcing Egypt to capitulate. Aid to Israel was first started as a trickle after the Six Day War victory of 1967, which showed the United States that Israel could become a favorable ally in the Middle East due to which President Lyndon Baines Johnson began to provide aid. The acceleration of aid came under President Richard Nixon initially in response to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, after which came the F-16’s along with F-15’s to prevent the manufacture of the Lavi which presented the jump in aid amounts. Since the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the aid package to Israel has stood steady at around three billion dollars each year.

 

United States Israel Aid (Military)

 

Great, that is the aid side of the equation. The other side of the equation is Israeli GDP from which we can ascertain what percentage of GDP the aid represents. Israeli GDP is shown from 1960 through 2016 in the graph below which is in billions of US Dollars. Taking samples, we will start with 1980, in which Israeli GDP was around twenty-seven billion dollars. This would make the United States aid equivalent to approximately eleven percent of GDP. In 1985, Israeli GDP had climbed to forty-one billion dollars making the United States aid to approximately seven and one half percent of GDP. In 1990, Israeli GDP reached sixty billion dollars making the aid approximately five percent of GDP. In 1995, Israeli GDP equaled ninety-three billion dollars reducing the aid to three and one quarter percent of GDP. In 2000, GDP broke one hundred reaching one-hundred-thirty-one billion dollars bringing aid to two and one quarter of GDP. In 2005, GDP reached one-hundred-sixty-two billion dollars making the aid at under two percent of GDP. In 2010 GDP attained two-hundred-twenty-one billion dollars placing aid at just over one and one and one third of GDP. In 2015 Israeli GDP climbed to two-hundred-eighty-five billion dollars again reducing aid to barely over one percent of GDP. In 2017 the GDP was three-hundred-sixteen and a half billion dollars making the aid at just under one percent of GDP. What this long set of calculations depicts clearly is that Israel and the United States need to renegotiate any agreements which under current economic conditions, Israel could have the United States retain the three-billion dollars of aid and free Israel to choose whatever aircraft which she deems to be the best applicable for her needs. For the ensuing few years, it is obvious that Israel will remain with the F-35 JSF as the mainstay of her Air Force as she has already received the first squadrons. Beyond these fifth-generation fighters, Israel may desire to rely on her own industries to produce her sixth-generation fighters and perhaps the United States will purchase their fighters from Israel.

 

Israeli GDP Billions $

 

When Israel was younger and dependent upon a mostly agrarian economy, the American aid was irreplaceable and one could make the case that it was actually necessary. The Israel of the 1970’s is now long passed history and she has become a high-tech nation with the GDP to match. Israel may not be in the top twenty nations economically, but when one considers her size and population, her economic picture clearly is vastly improved in the last half of a century. On an even brighter note, the Israeli economy continues to climb though quite a bit slower as one would expect. A nation can only keep up such sweeping improvements while their economy moves from dependent on agriculture and some industrial components into an industrial economy and now an information-based economy. Israel also has an impressive medical research industry, a leading agricultural industry which has provided the world with drip irrigation and crops which are suited to a desert climate and some which use partially desalinated water or treated waste waters. These advances can help numerous nations increase their crop outputs. Israel has also provided advanced medical systems and assisted with crop and irrigation for many remote African communities as well as providing electricity and communication equipment which has connected these remote places with the world and provided Internet access. Israel also has one of the best emergency response teams replete with an entire field hospital which is capable of providing almost any nature of medical aid a nation in distress might require as well as more normal medical assistance such as a maternity ward and others (see video below). Israel has become a nation with a rather diverse economy, especially when considering the small size of Israel, her being approximately the size of New Jersey. (For some maps depicting the size of Israel compared to the United States, India, Australia and Great Britain, go here) Israel recently sent a spacecraft to the Moon, though a rocket failure had it land going far too fast, making her the fourth nation to actually succeed in hitting the moon. The little craft Beresheet made a valiant effort and was a private venture by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and SpaceIL. The two companies have stated their intent to attempt another Moon lander and perhaps the Israeli government might provide some funding.

 

 

Israel today is a modern nation and as such should not be dependent, even on the United States, or other countries to provide her defense of her people and her land. Further, Israel is entering a time of undefined dangers and threats some of which are not of her doing. One example is Iran who had threatened and promised that should the United States take any actions against Iran they will decimate Israel. Theirs is not an empty threat as they have organizational control of Hezballah in Lebanon and Syria, Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza, and their own forces consisting of mostly IRGC and al-Quds Force, the first being their terrorist outreach branch of the military equal if not superior to the Iranian national armed forces, and the other a group of fanatical fighters sworn to the capture of Jerusalem (al-Quds) and the destruction of the Zionist entity (Israel). Make no mistake, these Iranian threats are real and should not be cast aside in the belief that Iran would be incapable of fulfilling their threats. According to the GFP Index of Countries, Iran is ranked as the fourteenth in military strength while Israel is ranked sixteenth in military strength with the United States ranked an obvious first in military strength and China considered third with Russia taking second. Interestingly, should Israel attack Iran, Iran has promised to strike Israel and said nothing about striking the United States under either scenario. The reality obviously is that should anybody attack Iran, they will strike Israel and for the most part ignore their actual attacker. We can assure you that this is not comforting for Israelis, but we hold to the Alfred E. Newman philosophy which went beyond just, “What, me worry?” He was often alluded to have added, “Ninety-five-percent of what we worry about never happens and the other five percent happens whether we worry or not, so why worry.” Perhaps this explains why despite all the things threatening Israel, she is still the eleventh happiest nation on the planet. In the end, Israel could and should present the United States with the deal that they cannot refuse, namely, keep your money and let’s be friends and just go along to get along. It would provide a new industry and many well-paying jobs which just might make up for the loss of revenues simply through taxes and increased GDP. Such a deal could make both nations more happy and have less friction as neither will be living off the other nation’s revenues.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

How American Jews Should Influence Israeli Politics

 

So, you either hate or love Bibi Netanyahu winning and likely forming a strong right-wing, Zionist, Religious coalition. There were four Jewish Congress-critters, Representatives Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey of New York, Ted Deutch of Florida, and Brad Schneider of Illinois, all Democrats, who came out strongly threatening Bibi Netanyahu against extending Israeli law to Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria. Well, that is all well and good for them to do as private citizens, but when doing so as representatives of other Americans and presuming to speak for Jews throughout the land, that is presumptuous to say the least. We are sure that in numerous leftist Synagogues there will be sermons and the usual gnashing of teeth that the Israeli people had the audacity to ignore the advice of their betters, after all, where would Israel be without American support. Well, let us address the so-called critical monetary support Israel receives from the United States once again (previous articles can be read here, here and here).

 

We will not go into the reason that America provides Israel with military aid as that can be read in any of the above articles. What need be told is the limitations on that aid money. The percentage has shifted over the years but seldom if ever dropping below three-quarters of the aid money being required to be spent on American equipment. The aid money has two main effects in theory. The first is to provide Israel with air superiority, something which has been downgraded slowly over the years to now it is closer to parity with the difference presumably made up for by the skill of the pilots, in theory. The second is to provide supplementary money for the American arms industry. Another effect, many refer to it as a side-effect, is that it makes Israel dependent upon the United States for resupply in times of crisis when Israel is between a rock and a hard place if not resupplied rapidly. President Nixon is loved in Israel for his resolute action during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Israel initially lost a great deal of equipment and used a great deal of her provisions turning the tide. This left Israel short on armor such as APCs and tanks as well as running out of the very essential bullets. From history we know that then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised President Nixon to force Israel to promise to give all of the former West Bank and Gaza to form a Palestinian State before resupplying her with the vitally needed equipment. If we remember well, he may have said to make them bleed. Nixon, to his eternal credit, picked up the phone, called the Secretary of Defense and ordered him to provide Israel with everything they required and to do so with the greatest of speed. The next hurdle was Europe as every ally refused to permit any resupply aircraft heading to Israel to overfly their airspace, let alone land for refueling. Portugal permitted the United States to use their airfield on one of their islands in the Atlantic Ocean and the resupply arrived helping to save the day, you might say. After this near disaster, the United States placed one of their ready supply depots inside Israel in a location which is a well-guarded secret, probably which can be found using Google. The premise for this depot is should the United States be required to respond to an emergency, they could send troops and these arms could be made ready and provided faster than attempting to bring them from the mainland. The secondary reason for this depot is that should Israel find themselves pressed for provisions; they have access to this depot which will provide for the immediate while resupply can be arranged without the urgency as in 1973 where Israel came close to the disaster of losing one war. One need remember that should Israel lose a war, it will be the last war Israel fights as after that loss, there would be no Israel.

 

Now for some facts which are often met with disbelief. The United States has not always been Israel’s close friend and military ally. In fact, after President Harry Truman went against every advisor and recognized Israel in 1948, the next thing he did was place an arms embargo across the Middle East, Israel included. For the Arabs this was not a problem as they had the support of Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Israel had as her main ally Czechoslovakia. Israel did not receive much in the way of aid from the United States until the late 1960’s and not very appreciable aid until the 1970’s (see graph below). Two items become blatantly obvious when examining the graph. First, is that aid to Israel was nonexistent through all of the 1950’s and well into the 1960’s. Second, is that United States aid to Israel has leveled out at approximately three-billion dollars annually. This fact will become more relevant later in this article. As stated before, the vast majority of this aid must be spent inside the United States. Most of the funds goes for aircraft as might be expected with the next largest amount going for aircraft parts and munitions for those very same aircraft. But the United States receives far more than these orders which benefit keeping the American manufacturing of the weapons of war remaining in business as the demands of the United States Armed Forces would be insufficient to keep all the weapons manufacturers afloat. Israeli orders may not be the largest ticket, but it is not insignificant either.

 

United States Israel Aid (Military)

 

We stated that the United States gets more than just the return of their investment in Israel with orders for arms production from the United States. Probably the two most famous are the Super Sherman Tank and the rear-view mirrors on the F-16 fighter jet which the Israelis noted the pilot was unable to see if there were any enemies at his six o’clock (behind him). The more modern addition of rear-view mirrors came about when Israeli pilots complained of having a vital blind-spot. Some industrious crew chief came up with the apparently bright idea of using sport mirrors he went and purchased at an automotive supply store which led to a design engineering change which incorporated rear-view mirrors on all F-16 fighter jets (see image below). The above mentioned are merely examples as Israel also has provided numerous improvements, modification and other forms of upgrades, not all of which were adopted by the United States. The Trophy anti-missile defense system is one such example and Israel is working on modified versions for use on other vehicles in cooperation with the United States (article here). Israel also designed some other improvements for other systems including upgraded avionics and targeting systems. Israel agrees with every purchase of American weapons systems to provide full documentation of any alterations, additions or other improvements for the United States to consider whether such would be useful on their own systems. Israel most recent upgrade was the use of the Iron Dome targeting software and related requirements which has upgraded the Patriot anti-missile systems, but this is not supposed to be common knowledge.

 

F16 with After Modification Rear-view Mirrors

 

Back to the American aid provided to Israel. When the aid reached the three-billion dollars, this was fairly close to the total Israeli GDP and was essential for Israeli military capabilities. Today, that aid is approximately one-percent of Israeli GDP. What is amusing is both Israelis and American Jews believe that Israel could not survive without continued military assistance as Israel is incapable of affording her own military requirements. The truth is quite different. The main reason that the United States desires to continue this aid is no different than when it was first negotiated, they do not desire Israeli competition in the lucrative field of military aircraft. Back in 1970 it was to protect the sales of the F-16 while today the reason is likely to protect the existing F-35 and more likely whatever a sixth-generation fighter aircraft system might entail. By having Israel in continued dependence on American aircraft, the United States avoids yet another aircraft competing with their own. The rising costs of military fighter aircraft forced the Europeans to jointly produce their Eurofighter Typhoon, the world’s most advance fighter, according to their advertising. Israel would be well advised to adjust their dependence upon the United States militarily as their aid could become questionable under a new administration. For that reason and for the well-paying jobs which Israel would gain, adding to her GDP, are two very good arguments for Israel to plan on becoming self-sufficient when it comes to military equipment.

 

 

Now, for those American Jews who wish to force their will and policies upon Israel, we have some basic advice. Make Aliyah and then you can help to elect a Prime Minister and a governing coalition more to your liking. This advice comes with a warning, once you have made Aliyah and are living in a nation the size of New Jersey, and not one reaching from one ocean to another ocean, your views will rapidly become more realistic and fitting to your location. Currently, any advice or demands you place upon Israel do not have any effect on your day to day lives. When you are in Israel, let us say Tel Aviv, and you look to the west and can see the Judean Hills which you currently insist must belong to some Palestinian Arab state, you get this chill down your spine if you have any sense of military strategies. The picture below pretty much defines the result of a Palestinian State along the Green Line. This and the increasing rate of conflict and terrorism are a rude awakening but it is also why Israel seems to be moving more to the right despite the warnings from the left in the United States.

 

Tel Aviv Now Before Green Line Peace
and
Tel Aviv the Day After Green Line Peace

 

It is not that Israelis are not listening to their counterparts in the United States, we are. It is just we tend to consider it almost as much as we react to things staring us in the face, so to speak or literally. The last Gaza war, the only reason that buildings in Tel Aviv were not struck and toppling into the streets causing thousands of deaths was simple, the Iron Dome systems which were placed between Tel Aviv and Gaza. Their near miraculous interception rate of close to ninety-percent became the miracle of that war, but eventually a way of getting past the Iron Dome systems will be found and we can only pray that Israel has the next system which will make the Iron Dome obsolete will be ready in time. Israel lives on the knife’s edge with no lack of enemies attempting to press us down and cutting Israel until there is no Israel. Living surrounded by people who desire your complete and utter destruction tends to affect the choices you make when voting. Israel is the safety net for Jews, all Jews. We were the safety net when the Arab world expelled almost all of their Jews during the 1950’s and Israel will be the safety net should Jews anywhere, yes, including America, require finding a home with minimal notice. Israel will not ask if you have any wealth or a job waiting or even an Israeli passport, only that you are a Jew needing refuge. Israel will take such Jews in with open arms and welcome them home, nothing more and nothing less. Jews who believe that tragedy cannot come to the nation in which they live are ignoring Jewish history which should have taught us that nowhere remains safe for the Jews indefinitely. Yes, even the United States has had its time where Jews were evicted from their homes when General Grant ordered the expulsion of all Jews in his military district, comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. Sure, President Lincoln countermanded that order, but by the time the orders reached Washington D.C. and were reviewed and the countermand was returned to Grant, much of the damage had been done. With the rising anti-Semitism around the world, Israel as the safe haven for the Jewish People has become more important with every passing attack upon Jews anywhere. With Jews being assaulted in New York City, once a safe haven for Jews, what more evidence is required that things are changing. To quote Frank Sinatra, sort of, If it can make it in New York, it can make it anywhere. That is as true for anti-Semitic attacks and worse as well as it worked for Frankie. What counts, Representatives Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey of New York, Ted Deutch of Florida, and Brad Schneider of Illinois, is that Israelis elected a government which will protect them and provide the decisions they find favorable. Further, if the Palestinian Authority can extend their civil law to the regions under their control under the Oslo Accords, why should Israel be prevented from the exact same actions in the regions Israel was granted control by those very same Oslo Accords. If you feel so strongly that you know better than the Israeli public and their chosen governance, then make Aliyah and form a party and run for the Knesset here on those very same ideas. We would wish you luck with your views in an Israeli election, but it is in Israel that you need be to exact the changes you desire for Israel, not in Washington D.C. We would welcome you with open arms, just come here and then you can work to make Israel in your own image. In the meantime, until you make Aliyah, allow us the privilege of electing whom we choose and have them fulfill the promises for which they received so much support. Thank you in advance for your understanding and hoped for making Aliyah so we can discuss this on equal grounds.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Defending Israel at the United Nations

 

One would be led to believe that the United Nations is the place where differences between nations and interests could be ironed out and everybody could be heard. This is the concept which is taught in schools where the United Nations is touted to be a place of peace and discourse. Unfortunately, this is only the case when you are presenting information which complies with the desired outcomes. Should you try and defend a nation which the rest of the delegates, or at least a plurality, find disturbing or unacceptable, then your microphone is cut off or you are talked over by the chair and protesting members until your time is spent and you are silenced. The quickest means of proving this theory is defending Israel before the General Assembly or almost any of the plethora of United Nations agencies. This problem almost all defenders of Israel face when attempting to present facts and other evidence. This is especially true before the Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the General Assembly and any group which is chaired or predominated by Arab, Islamic and the other nations supporting their view of Israel as the sole source of all the world’s problems. This is evidenced clearly as Anne Bayefsky attempted to present facts which countered those presented by Professor Michael Lynk whose claim was that Israel had used deadly force against peaceful, innocent Gazan demonstrators who were posing no threat to the IDF or Israel (video below). If we are required to prove that the Gaza demonstrations were more accurately described as rioting with the intent of breaking through the border and attacking Israeli civilians and that the Gazan demonstrators were launching kites and balloons which carried incendiary and explosive charges which caused tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to fields of crops, forests and wildlife preserves including threatening the nesting areas for endangered species, then we may as well be attempting to address the United Nations. We expect our readers to have read sufficiently to know that the Gaza border has been a year of challenges where tens to hundreds of thousands of tires were burned to cause smokescreens to hide attempts to breach the border fence as well as hide snipers who were approaching the border and shooting at the IDF positions.

 

 

This experience is not all that different than what occurs regularly throughout the United Nations and its related agencies. A similar response can be witnessed by watching whenever any Israeli official, be it the United Nations Ambassador or the Israeli Prime Minister who is addressing the General Assembly. Just watch the audience and delegates and the vast majority will stand and leave choosing not to hear what will be presented. They do not care about hearing the Israeli side as their minds are already made up and Israel is to blame for whatever is being discussed. Nothing Israel does, nothing Israel stands for, nothing regarding Israel and reality matter at the United Nations. The United Nations is, in its current format where dictatorships and Islamic nations rule the roost, made up of nations who hate Israel, the United States, Capitalism and freedom. The easiest motion to pass before the United Nations General Assembly is one denouncing Israel for whatever reason one may decide is their fault. Almost as easy is doing the identical motion against the United States. The main difference is that a few additional Europeans will denounce Israel than are willing to side against the United States. This might have something to do with their reliance on American military might for their own protection. What they fail to realize is that Israel also is fighting the war to allow freedom to continue and for people to gain from the technological know-how of the United States, Israel and the remainder of the free world from whence the vast majority of new developments, inventions, agricultural advances, medical accomplishments and an entire litany of other development and improvements which largely come from the free world.

 

The United Nations predominantly consists of socialist dictatorships where the people are left scratching out a meager existence while their elites enjoy the good life. What is depressing is that many of these nations are recipients of Israeli aid in a number of different means. Israel is often the first nation to arrive after a natural disaster and the last to leave, the first to provide agricultural technology to the farmers and villages to assist their growing of crops, a nation which shares medical advancements, trains their physicians, provides their hospitals with the equipment required by these trained physicians, provides electrical generation for remote villages, provides phone connectivity for these villages, provides clean water technology relieving what in many cases is a shortage forcing them to drink contaminated water and various other services all provided with no expectation of reward. Not expecting any reward is actually an advantage as these same nations, because of their leaders, vote to condemn Israel regularly. This is true of places where without Israeli aid arriving, as it did after natural disasters, would have faced an even more dire situation where many more would have died such as in Haiti (see video below). The second video below is about a dancer named George who lost one leg after the Haitian earthquake and who was brought to Israel and outfitted with a prosthetic which allowed him to return to his beloved profession. He is a great dancer. Yet, at the most recent in the United Nations, Haiti was not amongst the seven nations which sided with the United States and Israel. The seven nations were Guatemala, Honduras, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Togo. That was with one-hundred-twenty-eight against Israel with thirty-five abstaining. This is, unfortunately, about the normative number of votes concerning Israel over the past thirty to forty years.

 

 

 

The United Nations has, in the past, gone to the extreme of equating Zionism with racism. This absurdity was eventually overturned, but expects it to return in the not too distant future. There is one item about Israel which makes her stand apart from most other nations. Israel is always ready to provide aid to any nation suffering a natural or manmade disaster with the sole proviso that the nation accepts Israeli aid. Iran suffered a devastating earthquake not that long ago and the Israeli IDF disaster relief units were on standby with their planes packed and ready to assist. The Iranian leadership refused to permit Israeli aid to be delivered to the stricken area. Iran also mostly ignored the trauma and devastated lives of her own citizens. This was actually mourned within Israel, as these people need not have suffered nearly as much as they ended up going through. Israel provided aid to the United States after Hurricane Katrina and Super Storm Sandy. Unfortunately, Israel does not have a cure in her basket for the United Nations and their hatred of the Jewish State. No other nation faces such scorn and spite at the United Nations though the United States does come in closest at second. We feel quite assured that if the United Nations could vote Israel out of existence, they would do so tomorrow with no regrets. Of course, they would probably act similarly towards the United States and potentially Canada, Britain and any number of other developed nations. It is as if being a developed nation whose people enjoy a decent level of economic prosperity that such a nation is to be scorned and brought down instead of other nations marveling and doing everything in their power to emulate such success. But many of these dictatorial regimes desire to bring everyone down to their level such that they can point to the rest of the world and ask their own people where is an example that doing things differently would change anything. That is one of the sadnesses of the world today, there are so many ready to destroy those who have succeeded simply so as to make their failure appear to be norm. That is quite counterproductive.

 

Display of the Muslim Nations of the World in the Middle East, Asia and Northern Africa in Green with Israel depicted in Red

 

Take a quick glance at the above map. Should the claim by much of the Arab and Muslim worlds be accurate, then Israel should have become the most noticeable nation on the map by size and not because it is the sole one in red. The Arab world in particular likes to claim that Israel is an expansionist, colonial, destructive nation which is taking over the entirety of the Arab world which spans the Middle East and Northern Africa. They claim that Israel simply desires to gobble up their entire area and that they are all but helpless against Israel, this hegemonic power in their midst. Well, if Israel is a hegemonic power, then the world had best be very wary of Belize as it is taking over the Americas. Both claims are equally ridiculous and, believe it or not, Belize is actually larger than Israel. Israel would be overly happy to simply be granted the area which was promised her under the British Mandate. Originally, Israel was to be formed out of the British Mandate lands but the British had a promise to keep with the Arabs. The result is the lands were divided between the Arabs and Jewish state with the Jordan River as the divide. The 78% of the lands east of the river went for the Arab state of Jordan while the entire 22% was supposed to be for the Jewish state. This has never been permitted to come to fruition. When the invading Arab armies of 1948-9 ended up holding areas of Judea and Samaria, the Shomron (West Bank) and Gaza by Jordan and Egypt respectively, the world allowed them to retain these lands. When Israel liberated the lands which were originally set aside for her, the world demands that Israel give them back despite the promise of the Palestinian Arabs that they will never be satisfied unless they are granted all of the lands and the Jews either given a new home far away or left for the Arabs to slaughter as they please. When the Arabs say far away, they mean like to planet Israel, should it ever be found.

 

Planet Israel

 

There is a joke making its way around Israel. Perhaps you have heard that Israel launched a probe named Beresheet which is still proceeding to the moon. We claim that it would not surprise us to be told that we need to remove Beresheet from the moon because it is on Palestinian Arab Lunar soil and that the moon belongs to Islam as it is on so many Muslim national flags. This is said tongue in cheek, but it is actually not that far fetched as they have claimed that the Palestinian Arabs were the Canaanites, the Philistines and the Phoenicians. All three of these civilizations have long since perished from this Earth with one making their last stand against Rome as the Carthaginians. Both the Phoenicians and their later cousins, the Carthaginians, were both sea-faring Greek people and were not even from the Middle East and had no relations with the Arabian Peninsula, but when one is grasping at straws, anything will be taken as good enough. The Palestinian spokespeople have claimed that the Palestinians invented the Canaanite-Palestinian language six-thousand years ago, a mere three thousand years before Cuneiform, the accepted first written language. They had to choose a number greater than four-thousand years in order to predate the arrival of the Jewish ancestors. The problem is that none of the tribes which attempted to prevent them from inhabiting these lands survived in any form to the modern era. But, as the United Nations has proven, who needs facts when it is the Jews you wish to curse.

 

Beyond the Cusp