Our Problems with the BDS Movement

 

The BDS Movement, its longer name is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction of Israel and only Israel, is now being taught as a proper response to the Jewish perfidy occurring in the Middle East where Israel is presumably attempting to conquer all of the Arab lands. The claims made by the BDS Movement are that Israel is an Apartheid State, using ethnic cleansing, seeking to claim lands to form Greater Israel, racial profiling against all non-European ethnicities and various other blatant lies concerning the Jewish State. But the BDS Movement has a secret it uses in order to prevent their adherents from seeing anything which would challenge their propaganda. Should any of those they intend to indoctrinate with their anti-Semitic poison decide they wish to visit Israel to verify the validity or lack thereof of what they have instructed, they tell such a curious individual that part of BDS includes never-ever visit Israel as doing so would incur their spending monies in Israel thus breaking the BDS Movement’s basic attempts to starve Israel economically. But their real fear is that their lies would not hold up to anyone with eyes and an open mind who visits Israel, and even more so should they simply travel as their own guide and watching the interactions of Israelis. Add to this is the completely ludicrous claims that Israel has been attempting to form a greater Israel by conquering lands which belong to the Arabs and are a threat to all of the Arab World. Simply looking at the map below where the Arab (Islamic) World is in green and Israel and all of the lands it covers are in light blue with the lands occupied by the Arab Palestinians are in red.

 

The Truth the Arab League does not Want You to Know

 

There once existed Greater Israel back around one-thousand years before the Common Era under Kings David and Solomon. Israel in these ancient times reached from the Euphrates River to the Wadi of Egypt, known then as the River of Egypt as it marked the Egyptian border with the Jewish State. The current claims that Israel seeks in modern times to reform this Greater Israel claim that the River of Egypt must mean the Nile River as the Wadi of Egypt is usually a dry river bed except when rains fall and it floods. The maps below show the two concepts of what formed or will form a future Greater Israel, the one on the left is the conspiracy theorists claims Israel intends to conquer and the one on the right shows the historic Greater Israel that actually did exist. Does Israel, or at least some Israelis, desire making additional lands part of Israel? The answer is yes, many ardent Zionists not only desire, but demand of the world that the United Nations enforce Article 80 of their Charter to continue to enforce and establish the Mandate Lands which include the British Mandate. The British Mandate included the region which today is made up by Jordan, Israel and the disputed occupied lands. The British Mandate was divided between the Jewish Zionists and refugees and the Arab Palestinians in what the world, and especially the British, in a manner which represented some form of equality or lack thereof. This fair and even divide used the Jordan River as the basis for forming the border between Israel, the Jewish State, and Transjordan, later named Jordan and the Arab State. This gifted the Arabs with 78% of the British Mandate and Israel was to be formed by the remaining 22%.

 

Conspiracy Greater Israel and Kings David and Solomon Historic Greater Israel

 

Within a decade of the formation of Israel on May 15, 1948, the Arab and Islamic Worlds exiled and forced out the majority of their Jewish populations totaling over 800,000 Jews after stripping them of their wealth and valued possessions. These Jews largely were taken in by Israel as the European nations refused to accept any of the Jews unless they possessed a passport for that nation. The Arabs, on the other hand, had less than 700,000 refugees who mostly were the result not of the fighting, but were Arabs who obeyed the command by Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Amin al-Husseini who called for all Arabs living amongst the Jews to take refuge behind the Arab armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen such that these armies could simply murder every person they found and then these Arabs would share in the spoils of the Jews after the Arabs reached the Mediterranean Sea. When the Arab armies were stopped from any further advance and were starting to be pushed out of the lands intended for the State of Israel, the United Nations, United States, Russia and most of the world demanded that the fighting be halted immediately. Nobody thought that waiting for the newly formed IDF to clear the lands back to the borders set under the British Mandate was wise, better that Arabs be left occupying lands promised the Zionists and the Jewish People. This was the origin of the Arab Palestinian refugees and later, in September of 1964, the formation of the PLO which initially insisted on liberating all of Palestine which was defined as the lands west of the Jordan River with the exceptions of Gaza which was occupied by Arabs of Egypt and what Jordan called the West Bank occupied by Arabs of Jordan. These lands were liberated from Jordanian and Egyptian rule during the 1967 Six Day War and defended during the Yom Kippur War. Israel also took control of the Sinai Peninsula during these conflicts which was returned to Egypt when they signed a peace treaty with Israel but the Egyptians refused to resume their control over Gaza. When peace was reached subsequently with Jordan, they refused to return to their areas called the West Bank, the Shomron according to Israel, returning them to Israel. This should have allowed for Israel to finally realize the borders promised after World War I (see map below) in a number of treaties, conferences and other legal events and documents all enforceable under International Law.

 

Mandate of San Remo for French and British including actual treaty demarcations for each nation

 

But the BDS Movement has arranged to have their own versions of history and reality. Their claim is that everything which led to the formation of Israel was as a direct result of the Holocaust and a means of alleviating European guilt over the murder of one-third of world Jewry. They deny the existence of the San Remo Conference, the Mandate System and the League of Nations, among other treaties and agreements, has designed the terms and the borders which would define the Arab lands and those of the Jewish State. The borders of Israel were supposed to be defined by what is the current border with Lebanon, the Sinai-Negev border, the Golan Heights and the remainder along the Jordan River. The BDS Movement, or at least their leadership, do not recognize these borders nor the existence of the treaties, conferences, mandates and the League of Nations implementations for restructuring of the borders of much of eastern Europe of the German Empire and Austria-Hungarian Empire as well as most of the Middle East and North Africa borders of the Ottoman Empire. These were the three empires which were on the losing side of World War I. The BDS Movement ignore all of this as well as discarding the entirety of the Mandate System such that they claim that Israel is a European colonial invasion of the purely Arab Muslim Middle East. Israel spent decades fighting to be released from the British Empire as she was a British colony. How Israel could be a colony of anyone other than the British before May 15, 1948, when Israel was finally released by the British and declaring her independence. Further, half of the Israeli citizenship are from the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia, India, South America as well as virtually anywhere on the Earth one might choose.

 

But let us look into the history of the BDS Movement. The origin of the BDS Movement comes from the Arab boycott of Israel which was born at the Khartoum Conference and the “three no’s” resulting from that conference. The “three no’s” are, “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.” This was nurtured spreading the boycott to numerous entities around the world eventually morphing into the BDS Movement. The purpose of the BDS Movement is simply to isolate the Jewish State forming a virtual blockade around Israel preventing anything from leaving Israel going to anywhere else and preventing anything from entering Israel from anywhere. Further, they demand that all cooperation with Israel on any level including academic, scientific, economic, political, social, tourist or any other interaction making Israel a pariah amongst the world’s nations. The problem that the BDS Movement proponents run smack into is that Israel is not at all similar to what they cast her. As mentioned above, the Jewish population of Israel is diverse with a large segment of the population originating from the Middle East and North Africa as well as from Europe and the rest of the developed world. Israel even has organized two separate operations to save Ethiopian Jews who were threatened and called for a savior, and that savior was the same as the one which gave the Jews thrust out of the Arab and Islamic worlds, Israel. The Jews of India have also come to Israel in a fair number of people. Israel is most definitely one of the most diverse populations found anywhere in the world. This puts to lie the BDS Movement’s claims that Israel is an Apartheid country. With Jews returning to their ancient homelands from literally around the world coming from virtually every country. They are all citizens with equal rights including voting in elections, freedom of speech, thought and in virtually every other area. Furthermore, all Israeli citizens have equal rights whether they be Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Druze, Bedouin, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu or any other people or religion even including atheists and secular humanists.

 

But the BDS Movement have decided to blame Israel for the woes and deprivations forced upon the Arabs in Gaza and in Areas A and B of the Shomron as defined under the Oslo Accords. They blame Israel for the two communities of Arabs not having elections in well over a decade. The claim that they have been denied the right to vote, but not by Israel. The reason for their not having had elections is simply, neither Hamas in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Areas A and B of the Shomron have permitted elections. Hamas chooses their leaders often in concert with Islamic Jihad and potentially influence of Iran imposing a Hamas dictatorship over Gaza. The PA is headed by Mahmoud Abbas who knows that he would not win reelection should elections be permitted to be held; thus, he has cancelled every election since 2005 meaning that Mahmoud Abbas has been their leader for now fourteen years of his four-year term. That is merely a decade more than his term was in theory, while in actuality Mahmoud Abbas heads a dictatorial regime. Israel has no influence over elections or who rules in these Arab regions which have self-rule and are semi-autonomous making them independent of Israeli rule but they remain within Israeli official borders. BDS Movement leadership minimizes the amount of independence the Arab Palestinians truly have and completely ignoring Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PA, allowing them to claim that Israel is preventing allowing them to hold elections. They also make the absurd claim that Israel has denied them their right to vote in Israeli elections. These Arabs are not Israeli citizens with most in Gaza formerly either having Egyptian citizenship or that of another Arab nation or are simply Gazans but not Israeli as Israel has disengaged from Gaza allowing that region complete independence. The PA Arabs mostly hold Jordanian citizenship with a lesser number having Iraqi, Syrian or other Arab national citizenship with some having only PA citizenship, but again, not Israeli citizenship. When Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights at the end of 1981, Israel granted the Arabs residing within the region full citizenship. When Eastern Jerusalem was annexed by Israel, the Arabs residing within the region were approved for a form of limited citizenship allowing their voting in Jerusalem and other local elections but are still restricted from voting in national elections until final determinations of their fate will be finalized.

 

The claim by the BDS Movement that Israel is performing genocide or ethnic cleansing is so absolutely ridiculous as to border comical except that it has become accepted as fact in far too many places including the halls of power around the world even in the United States Congress. The refuting of their claim is so simple that it is surprising that these two claims have any credibility. Since 1967, when Israel liberated Gaza and the Shomron, the Arab Palestinian population has grown from just over one million in 1967 to just short of five-million currently. How anybody can extrapolate from an approaching five-fold increase in a population with their suffering from a genocidal ethnic cleansing is utterly ridiculous. The only reasoning that might permit such thoughts is the belief that the IDF is so incompetent that they are unable to perform such a task. The only logical reasoning is that there is no genocidal ethnic cleansing and that the Arab Palestinians are free to survive as best they can under their own leadership independent of Israel. Virtually everything claimed by the BDS Movement are lies, extreme exaggerations and falsehoods fabricated out of whole cloth. The easiest means of proving what Israel truly is, a fully functioning democratic parliamentary nation with all of the rights and privileges which any citizen of most developed nations enjoy would be to come and spend two or three weeks sightseeing and traveling around visiting cities and towns of all sizes as well as the kibbutzim. Israel is a diverse nation whose strengths are largely due to this diversity and the interactions between the many Jews of differing origins. But that is the very reason that at the heart of the BDS Movement is the rule that none of its members ever visit Israel as that would put at risk every iota of propaganda, they have fed their followers. But since many of those purporting agreement with the BDS Movement are professors and teachers, students have no prior knowledge upon which to base judgment of the veracity of what they are taught or the putting to lie these scurrilous accusations made of Israel. The entirety of the BDS Movement is built like a house of cards where, when one lie is unraveled, the entire structure of falsehoods crashes down revealing that the entirety of the BDS Movement has no relevance or reflection of the actualities which are Israel.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Hamas, Abbas and the Lack of Peace

 

Hamas and Abbas have more in common than the fact they rhyme. Hamas insists that any peace which they will accept will have no Jews living in Palestine and that Palestine replace all of Israel. The average person, were they to actually analyze things, would realize that Palestine replacing all of Israel and their insistence that there be no Jews leaves a problem, what will happen to the over six-million Jews currently residing in Israel. The average protester will provide an easy answer which should, according to the average uninformed protester thoughts, solve everything. Their response is so simple that it actually makes sense to much of the uninformed public. This solution is for the Jews to return to the country from which they, or their parents or grandparents arrived. This is not anything even close to a viable solution and would only be put forth by those who have no idea of the history of Israel. To those behind such a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict by sending Jews back to the source of their roots; so, are Germany and Poland actually ready to accept much of the Israeli populations of Jews? Add to this the need for numerous Islamic societies to take back the Jews and their progeny from the over eight-hundred-thousand Jews they expelled. Even the United States would seek a means for refusing to permit Jews who made Aliyah from the United States from returning just as they not only refused to permit any of the Jews from the Motorschiff St. Louis to reach the otherwise open borders of the United States. The State Department assured that these Jews, who once refused were to be taken back to Nazi Germany, were not to make it to the American shores and the MS St. Louis was provided Coast Guard escorts to prevent anyone attempting to swim to the American shores. So, there should be a precondition as a caveat that if these nations, organizations and other elements desire replacing Israel with an Arab country, they need first arrange for a new location which will accept the Israeli Jews. If this location chosen to take the Jewish refugees, it should also be prepared to take twice the number of Israeli Jews as the developed world prepares to expel their Jews or find some other variation of a means to be rid of the Jews.

 

One can check these protests against Israel, which is actually a protest against Jews, and the one item completely lacking their solutions is anywhere that the Jews can rule themselves. Many of the protesters will actually claim that whatever happens to the Jews is something they deserve. Does this sound at all familiar? Probably not to most of us but we can tell you that this was the attitude of the United States, British and all the remainder of the allies during World War II. Very few nations were willing to take in Jewish refugees during World War II. The British and United States governments both were completely aware of the Concentration Camps and the reality that the Jews were being exterminated with the intent of murdering every single Jews on the Earth. They refused to take any action to protect the Jews even going to the extremes to prevent disturbing the Nazi extermination processing of the Jews. There existed a junction of railway tracks which could have been bombed in either of two locations less that ten miles apart. Both the United States and Britain refused to strike the closer of the two junctions concentrating on bombing to further location. What could be the difference and why was it important that they only bombed the further junction of train tracks. The answer is uncertain as it is impossible to prove, but the circumstantial evidence is damning. The second junction mostly prevented trains from heading eastward, the closer junction also would have blocked train traffic resupplying the eastern front. The junction which the allies ignored carried the trains to Auschwitz Birkenau carrying the Jews to their deaths. That set of tracks were not to be bombed, only the junctions which, though preventing the same train traffic, had nothing to do with the transport of the Jews to the camps was bombed and the one used to transport Jews were left intact. What is the most surprising thing is that Japan provided safe-haven for Jews refusing Nazi demands that they turn over their Jews which Japan refused to comply protecting their Jews. The Japanese protected the Jews residing on the Japanese Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, the Philippines and to a lesser extent in other regions under Japanese control. Yes, we know the Japanese were the enemy to the United States and the forces fighting the Nazis. True as that may be, the Japanese refused to allow the Nazis to touch their Jews, and that is something potentially more admirable than the acts of the allies when it came to rescue of the fated Jews.

 

Now let us look at the present. Mahmoud Abbas has already decided that the “Deal of the Century” being proposed by President Trump is to be refused in its entirety. Hamas, well, they simply refuse any peace because they simply refuse to recognize that Israel exists because the Jews are presumably incapable of performing the necessary tasks to actually rule. They know this as it is written in the Quran, or at least that is their theory as they believe that only Muslims are permitted the luxury of assuming positions of rule and power. The Quran states this as a reality by which the followers of Islam are to believe and live and imprint upon their world, the entirety of their world, which just happens to include all of planet Earth. The Quran tells that the followers of Islam are destined to rule over mankind and be the sole religion followed on Earth. This is something which has become believable as the most likely result of the current world situation, at least to many who follow the Quran. This is the basis under which the Grand Ayatollah and Supreme Leader of Iran Khamenei and the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and other Islamic groups fighting around the globe such that they will prove victorious and rule the planet. This is an inevitability which many Muslims believe must be the future as the Quran is infallible in their beliefs. The only question is which form of Islam will rule the Earth.

 

Sunni representing ninety percent of Muslims or Shiite which represents much of the remainder of believers in Islam. Many think that Shiite Islam, representing merely ten percent of Muslims, could never become the main player amongst the players of the Islamic world. This would mean that Iran should not be considered a threat as they are Shiites and thus far too insignificant to rule Islam. Iran knows a little secret, that in Islam the followers are told to follow the strong horse. Iran believes that they will be that strong horse and that if they can wipe out the Jewish State, then they would become that strong horse. Add to this their conquest of the Saudi oil fields and take the strip along the Red Sea which would include Mecca and Medina and then after taking the Gulf States and their oil fields, then Iran would become the strong horse of Islam and the ruler of the two holy cities. Iran already is establishing their Shiite Crescent across the Middle East and surrounding Saudi Arabia from the north and south (see map below). Even the green star is part of the hunger of Iran as they cover the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. They also will control the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb which controls the southern exit from the Red Sea and controlling the southern exit of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal as well as blocking the only Israeli maritime route to the rest of Asia and the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Iranian plans for conquest are currently likely going along perfectly as they had hoped. The question is what is the next desire by Iran, once they finish reestablishing Bashir al-Assad as ruler of all of Syria, take control of Yemen through their Houthis and complete their control of Lebanon and Iraq, the next question is which way will their appetite turn.

 

Shiite Crescent including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran

 

So, how does Iran fit in on the questions over Israel and the Palestinian Arabs? Iran currently is doing what they are able to arm Islamic Jihad and Hamas who together rule Gaza. Iran is seeking inroads to the Palestinian Authority but have thus far been rebuked by Abbas as he refuses to share his power with anybody, even Iran. Further, Hezballah is about as close as any terrorist army could come to being an offshoot of the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) which is tasked with running the Iranian worldwide terror forces. Iran takes in any terror outfit which it is able to bribe or otherwise cajole into allowing Iran to arm them. There is a future price which will be required when the crucial time arrives, that they follow and join in the Shiite push to rule the world. Hezballah are assisting Iranian forces in Syria and Yemen while still working on expanding their threats upon Israel from Lebanon and Syria where they border Israel along the north and the Golan Heights. Add in the Iranian influence over Hamas and Islamic Jihad and it should be realized that Iran can order violence on either the northern or southern borders of Israel and if they manage to gain control over the Palestinian Authority, they will also have another front along the eastern regions of Israel. Iran has already boldly stated that should a war break out between the United States or other Western nation, then Israel will face destruction within a matter of hours if even as long as a single hour. Their threat implies that upon any violence breaking out between Iran and the United States, Iran would immediately call for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezballah, and the IRGC forces assisting in Syria to all attack Israel with barrages of rockets. Hezballah has at a minimum one-hundred-fifty-thousand rockets and missiles with numerous, if not the majority, being guided and sufficient range to strike anywhere within Israel and numerous are able to strike Saudi air fields and even Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt and all of Jordan. Iran and their developing Shiite Crescent are becoming a hegemonic military force in the Middle East with designs on much far beyond just the Middle East, they view the world as eventually becoming their own personal apple in their eyes. The Iranian leading Ayatollahs also have almost no care about the use of nuclear weapons or of Iran being destroyed in an Armageddon style conflagration as such would simply be a step upon the way to the return of the Twelfth Imam who is destined to lead Shiite Muslims to ruling the world at the end of such a world at war. They believe this will start with the destruction of Israel.

 

Meanwhile, Hamas, which rules in Gaza, is threatening Israel with increased violence along her southern border should Israel annex even an inch of the disputed territories. By disputed territories, in this case Iran means the region liberated from Jordanian occupation during the Six Day War of 1967 where Israel also liberated Gaza from Egyptian occupation, the Golan Heights from Syria and took the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Israel has returned the Sinai Peninsula when making a peace with Egypt and later reached peace with Jordan but both Egypt and Jordan released any claim to the lands they formerly occupied. This should have signaled the end of the conflict except that Jordan and Egypt refused to allow their Arab brethren from moving with the changed borders forcing them to remain on the lands surrendered to Israel. That is what has perpetuated the conflict and has been invigorated by the Arab League, Muslim Brotherhood and Iran because these and other followers of Islam refuse to allow the Jews self-rule. The Quran explains that the Jews and Christians require the guidance and rule from their betters, the followers of Islam. Other religious people are considered to be either idolaters, polytheists or other various forms of heathens all of which must be brought into the fold believing in Islam or death. The Jews and Christians are permitted to live providing they adjust their belief from their erroneous and contaminated beliefs caused by their following their mistaken and mistranslated bibles which are different than the only valid word given as the Quran. They believe that the Jews and Christians were originally given the word as in the Quran but strayed from the proper path changing and polluting the original word. They believed that the Quran is the final word from heaven given through Mohammad. The means that this works is actually simply. The Quran was originally given to Adam, the first Muslim according to Islam. Abraham received the Quran as it was provided again but Abraham and his progeny made changes which invalidated their bibles. Then Moses again misrepresented the true Quran at Mount Sinai. The Jews continued to change the word until it was unrecognizable. The Christians added to the Jewish text with a New Testament which replaced the Jewish Bible. Christianity also claimed to have replaced Judaism and the Protestants replaced the Catholic Church as well as leaving the Jews further separated. When Islam came into being in the Seventh Century, they claimed not only to be the replacement for both Judaism and Christianity, they did not leave any chance for another word from heaven by claiming that theirs was the final word. The Quran is what both the Jews and the Christians had an opportunity, according to Islam, to follow and if Jews and Christians would simply return to their original word, which is presumably the Quran, then they will be considered to be good Jews and Christians when in reality a good Jew or Christian, by their definition, is actually a Muslim. Should Jews and Christians refuse to become followers of Islam and take the Quran as their holy book, then they are considered to affirmed that they are apostates from the only true faith, which they presumably originally were to supposed to have believed, and as apostates they would be sentenced to death.

 

Hamas has made a number of recent threats against Israel with the most recent coming less than a week after Hamas reached an agreement through Egypt with Israel presumably ending their violence including launching rockets and incendiary balloons and kites along with the border riots. The morning after the agreement was reached, Hamas permitted thousands of Gazans to riot along the border thus ending any sign that they might actually curtail the violence. These riots included launching incendiaries into Israel sparking twenty or so fires across southern Israel. Hamas also almost immediately demanded that Israel provide them with five-million dollars which would presumably be provided by Qatar. Since 2012, Qatar has provided Hamas with over one-billion dollars, all of which has been used to pay for terrorism. They have used this money and the provisions provided for rebuilding their infrastructure for the building of tunnels and bunkers within Gaza which includes hidden rocket firing positions as well as infiltration tunnels under the border into Israel in order to use them to kidnap and murder Israeli civilians. These are the investments which Hamas and Islamic Jihad believe are the most important areas for their budgeting for actions beyond lining the pockets of their leadership. The same is true for the Palestinian Authority, which is actually a domesticated PLO in theory, where they actually pay their citizens, and Israelis if they can be bribed (see image below), to murder Israeli civilians or enforcement and IDF personnel (see table below) with bonuses for multiple murders and other specifics. This has made terrorism and the murder of Israelis by far the highest paying employment the Palestinian Arabs under their rule can find. Murdering Israelis pays even higher than the Palestinian Authority Security Forces salaries except for the top officers and the group, Force 17, that protects Mahmoud Abbas.

 

Palestinian Authority Remunerations for Terrorists

 

There is one final reason why the leadership of all the various groups who rule the Palestinian Arabs, be they in Gaza or under the Palestinian Authority or even as Hezballah in Lebanon, that provides them with such a reward that making peace would deny them the millions upon millions of dollars and Euros they skim from the investments made by the United States, United Nations, European Union and numerous European governments in addition to the monies coming from Qatar or even other Arab governments and Iran. Mahmoud Abbas and his sons have all made hundreds of millions over the years with much of their wealth well hidden in Swiss numbered accounts or in other secure, hidden and untraceable places to stash excess personal money. Some of the former leaders of Hamas have retired with billions of dollars at their disposal and are living the good life in some of the Gulf States. The old adage that terror does not pay apparently never took into account the terrorism conducted against Israel, as this appears to be very profitable for those in the highest positions. Add in the Iranians providing the necessities for producing rockets and the other tools for terror, there is almost immeasurable amounts provisions and funds providing the target of your terrorism is Israel. Apparently killing Jews is one thing which apparently will never go out of fashion and might be one of the eternals which will only be terminated by the arrival of the Messiach. The world will be so far better off once the Messiach arrives and sets straight exactly what the words from Hashem are and then we can all possibly agree on the truth, whatever truth the Messiach brings us. We realize that the Messiach can arrive either as a reward for mankind living in peace and harmony or as the avenging angel sent to settle all the differences and reasons we have used to remain apart and fighting each other and finally bringing a permanent peace for those who survive. We really hope the Messiach comes peaceably, but that will require ending the continuing war again Israel and the Jewish People. That does not leave us with much faith for peaceable and really emphasizes our fears that the Messiach will come as an avenging angel and will bring the legions at their sides overpowering any and all forces of mere humans and settling every conflict. There is still time for the world to find a means for reaching understandings of acceptance of each other before a force arrives to do this for us and not be polite about their corrective efforts. That should be sufficient to cause all to pause, but then we remember the Iranian leadership who would welcome an Armageddon sized conflagration as they desire inviting the Messiach as the avenging angel as that is the form of their savior. Well, that might make peaceable an impossibility as it only takes one to spoil this cake.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Crux of the Arab-Israel Conflict, Part I

 

Most of the protests over the Arab Israel Conflict, now reestablished by the Arabs after numerous failures to destroy Israel, starting around the turn of the Twentieth Century in 1901, even before Israel had been founded and as the first Jews began returning even before the Balfour Declaration, have claimed that Israeli intransigence is the cause of the continuing conflict. As we will see, that has things quite backwards but does keep closely to the Arab propaganda which has been a multi-billion-dollar effort and counting. The actual history of this conflict often surprises people until they reach out and attempt to verify the truth and validate or disqualify what they have read. We invite people to make an honest effort to verify or vilify what we claim. We try and give links often enough but much of the information is easily researched and should not require links to be verified.

 

When the San Remo Conference decided to put the Balfour Declaration into treaty form, the Arabs initially agreed, or at least King Faisal had no problem as his main concern was to free the Arab lands from Turkish Ottoman rule and saw allowing the Jews their homelands as a fair and decent price for the Arabs to gain their independence from the defeated Ottomans. This was surprising and unacceptable to many in the British aristocracy and ruling elites, though there was a core element which supported the Jews returning to their ancestral lands. Some in Europe saw this as a means of ridding themselves of their Jewish problems. The actual result was that only a few Jews who were the original Zionists were interested in returning to Eretz Yisroel. These Jews returned to a land largely uninhabited, strewn with boulders, mostly rocky soil, swamps where there was decent lands and no real water systems and general arid conditions with a rainy season followed by a longer arid season. These Jews drained swamps, cleared land and began on a building project to distribute and store water for irrigation and general needs. As the Jews cleared land it made for an economic opportunities which Arabs then began to relocate to what would become Israel. Amongst these Arabs were groups who decided that it would be far easier to simply steal lands already cleared and irrigated than to try and prepare lands for their own usage. This led to the Jews having to defend their farms and projects which they often did by placing their wives with rifles atop the trucks as they prepared the water systems.

 

The original plan under the San Remo Conference was that the British Mandate would be to establish the Jewish State. The British took their Mandate as requiring that they allow a Jewish State in some area but not all of their Mandate. Their decision was to use the Jordan River, a natural boundary, as the border between their Arab State and their Jewish State. This gave the Arabs 78% of the land which would become Jordan, and the Jews 22% of the land which is still being fought over and debated. This was the initial two state solution. Any subsequent deal would be the second two state solution and as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas cannot play well with one another, there would be necessitated a three state solution if any peace were to be imposed which gave each interest their own region. But in order to be fair, it is worth noting that there were a series of Arab revolts where they attacked Jewish areas with all too often the British forces which were supposed to keep the peace simply standing by observing until they became threatened. In one of the Hevron riots, the British soldiers simply watched and when the Arab rioters then turned their attentions to the British, the British officer pulled his sidearm and fired one shot and the riot ended. This officer knew he could have ended the entire affair at any point simply with such an action but refused to stop the riot while the Arabs were attacking only the Jews. This was an indicator of the attitude of all too many of the British when it came to the Jews.

 

The British throughout Jordan and Iraq and in coordination with the French in Syria encouraged Arabs to relocate, even paying some and forcing others into the region which was slated to be the Jewish State such that the Jews would always be in the minority and thus unable to declare their independence. This was further implemented through a series of White Papers and other edicts which restricted the numbers of Jews permitted to move into the future Jewish State. This became particularly alarming as they all but closed entry for the Jews in the late 1930’s and through the end of World War II and until after they surrendered the Mandate. The British even set up camps and, in some rare cases used former concentrations camp locations, corralled the Jewish refugees from the Nazi concentration camps who had no homeland to return to, as it was quickly learned that all too many towns and villages were simply murdering any Jews attempting to return as they had already moved others into the Jewish homes and businesses and their return would have caused distress. This led many, many Jews to simply decide they were going to return to their ancestral lands as they were no longer welcomed in Europe. Most of these Jews ended up in the refugee camps where the British kept the numbers permitted to emigrate to the Holy Lands limited. The Movie “Exodus” gave a very optimistic but unrealistic end to the attempt of the ship SS Exodus to take Jewish refugees to Israel. The actual ship was boarded by the British in international waters, killing three of those on board and injuring some ten. In the end, after a stop in France where the French did all they could to be rid of the ship, the SS Exodus was sailed to Hamburg, Germany, a British occupied zone, where the Jews were placed in a camp for the duration. As is well known, as soon as the British were officially no longer responsible and had surrendered their Mandate occupation, Israel declared her independence.

 

As Israel declared her independence in May of 1948, which was soon after the Holocaust, many people claim that Israel was founded as an apology by the Europeans for allowing the Holocaust. This would have been a neat trick as the San Remo Conference was held from April 19, 1920 through April 26, 1920, quite a few years and almost two decades before the start of World War II, and thus the Holocaust. Did the Holocaust have something to do with the United Nations vote to approve their plan, Resolution 181, which was released on November 29, 1947, and partitioned the lands west of the Jordan river into two states, one Arab and one Jewish? This was an attempt at making a second two-state solution and is the grandfather of the modern idea that there is this pressing need for a two-state solution west of the Jordan River. That, of course, completely ignored the original two-state solution in which the Jews received a mere 22% of the Mandate lands. The Arab League refused this proposition and as it was a General Assembly Resolution, as soon as one side refuses to accept the compromise, the entire plan becomes defunct and void and is basically tossed aside and forgotten. Well, except for this one which we will get back to in a while. The reason the Arab League refused to accept Resolution 181 was because they had already aligned seven nations which were going to attack Israel as soon as it was founded. Thus, on the morning of May 15, 1948, the armies of Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Lebanon along with the fighters under the Mufti of Jerusalem and numerous other militias attacked Israel which had not had time to even consider putting together her military. Fairly soon the several groups of militias, the Hagenah and other groups within Israel, even including several Arab villages, cobbled together a military force and soon turned the tide and began pushing the Arab armies out of Israel. This was when the world powers stepped in and called for a cease to the fighting and eventually armistices were arranged. Due to the early end to the war, the Jewish forces with their Arab friends were not provided the time to repulse the invaders completely from what was supposed to be the Jewish State. This left Gaza under Egyptian control and the Shomron (West Bank) in Jordanian hands.

 

Had the fighting been permitted to reach a more timely conclusion, the Israeli forces would have stopped and advances and simply defended the lands which were promised them. That would have meant that Israel would have retained Gaza while the Egyptian military would have continued forcing all Arabs to retreat ahead of their forces clearing the population as they retreated into the Sinai and the Jordanians along with the Saudis and Iraqis would have been pressed back across the Jordan River, a natural barrier against any assault in either direction and as natural a border as any in the world (see cutaway image below). But things are seldom permitted to continue until Israel had a complete victory and ends the conflict as most of the world would prefer to be rid of Israel and with her the world’s Jews. This leaving the entire question without a complete and final solution has only led to the problems still festering today and remaining unsolved largely because the world refuses to recognize and keep the promises they made the Jewish People.

 

Cutaway View of Tactical Advantage and Necessity
of the Jordan Valley and Judean Hills for Defending
Coastal Plains and Israel Alongside the Mediterranean Sea

 

There would be a war in 1956 over Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser closing the Suez Canal to European shipping and the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping. This caused an alliance between France, Britain and Israel who gave the Egyptian President a deadline for reopening these waterways or face a military solution. When the deadline passed, the British and French continued talking while Israel attacked the Sinai Peninsula. Israel quickly took the Sinai and was sitting along the eastern shores of the Suez Canal. Needless to point out, international hew and cry was for those mean Israelis to return the Sinai with United States President Eisenhower leading the charge. Israel withdrew after the waterways were reopened. The next war was the Six Day War in early June of 1967, where Egypt and Syria had massed troops along the Israeli border threatening to drown the Jews in the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt once again closed the strait of Tiran which was recognized as an act of war. Israel decided to believe the threats from Egypt and Syria and as Egypt had already committed an act of war closing the waterways to Israel shipping, Israel launched an air attack against Egypt. The war had already entered its third or fourth day after the closing of the strait which placed Egypt in a state of war with Israel. This initiated hostilities as the Syrian forces came off of the Golan Heights before being halted by the IDF. Believing the reports on Egyptian and Syrian radio and other media that they were defeating the Jews and closing on Tel Aviv and refusing to believe Israeli reports of the opposite, Jordan quickly joined the fight. In the end, Israel again conquered the Sinai Peninsula, liberated Gaza and the Shomron and took the Golan Heights. The original lands which were to be Israel had included the Golan Heights, but the British gifted it to the French to give to Syria rather than allow it to be part of Israel due to its military importance (see image below). This is where things remained until October of 1973 and the Yom Kippur War where Egypt and Syria attacked Israel almost defeating her before the IDF could fully respond. By the end of hostilities, the Israeli forces were closing on Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt and Damascus in Syria. The United Nations backed by Russia and the United States insisted that Israel return to the final position from the Six Day War with which Israel complied.

 

Topographic Map of Golan Heights and Jordan River Valley

 

The United Nations had passed a resolution after the Six Day War in which Israel was to “return land,” this is important wording as it does not say the lands, all lands, but simply land. Israel was also to retain lands which would provide Israel with security and defensible borders. Nobody wants to admit that this actually meant Israel retaining the Golan Heights and reestablishing her eastern border as being the Jordan River, but that was the feeling and implications back in September of 1967. When Israel and Egypt reached their peace agreement, Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula while Egypt refused to accept Gaza leaving that problem with Israel, quite intentionally. Subsequently, Israel and Jordan reached a peace agreement and Jordan refused the Israeli offer to permit them to take back the Shomron though they did insist on control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by their Waqf. Their Waqf has slowly altered the rules on the Temple Mount and used rioting as a method for demanding that the rioters be calmed by banning Jews permission to visit the area. The rioters often use the al-Aqsa Mosque as their armory where they store rocks and planks along with other items which they use against the police and other officials who are attempting to restore order (see picture below). The return of the Sinai Peninsula, a region approximately three times the size of Israel, fully satisfied the demands initially from the United Nations and should have been the end with Israel able to define her borders as the Jordan River, the Golan Heights, and her recognized borders with Lebanon and Egypt. But the world does not always play by their own rules.

 

al-Aqsa Mosque Set for Use as Armory for Rioting

 

Beyond the Cusp