Since the conquest of Judea by the Babylonians, the Jews briefly were permitted self-rule as a province of the Persian Empire after their defeat of the Babylonian Empire. Just a historical footnote, years before these other empires rose with great clamor, there was a time when the Hebrews, the Jews, had an empire as well which reached from the Euphrates River to the Wadi of Egypt (not the Nile as many claim). This was the period of a Greater Israel and modern Jews and Israelis in general do not seek empire or a Greater Israel reaching the Euphrates, though the modern border between Israel and Egypt is very close to the location of the Wadi of Egypt (see map below). But that was the before anyone recorded history except for the Egyptians and a Jewish Empire was never to be celebrated, only made into a modern fear that the Jew wants to rule the world. Back to recorded history where the Persians fell to the Greeks who fell to the Romans who dispersed the Judean, by then even the Romans were referring to them simply by the shortened term, Ju (pronounced the same a Jew). The point is that from approximately 597BCE until May 15, 1948, the Jews had no homeland anywhere and were dispersed throughout most of the world. The Jews wielded power and influence throughout many periods but were always suspect and often treated as second-class people or even as subhuman. The truth was that there were initially two main groups of Jews by the time we reach closer to modernity but before the colonizing of the New World and the rise of Europe as the main power and the Europeans, though ruled as separate nations, were unified in their common cause in resisting the expansionary conquests by the Islamic Empire, be it the Caliphate or the Ottomans. The Europeans coordinated efforts to retake the Holy Lands, in particular Jerusalem, which resulted in the Crusades which were not an offensive war but a response to the conquest of the area and their being pushed from the lands after the fall of Rome and later the Byzantine Empire by Islamic forces.

Greater Israel the Kingdoms of Kings David and Solomon Between 1050 and 930 BCE
The rise of Islam ended what had been a century of Jewish preeminence in many regions of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) under the remnants of the Persian Empire which rose again after the fall of Rome, in Egypt which returned to indigenous rule also after the fall of Rome, and under other tribal rule across the region with but a remnant of the Jews who remained or had returned to the area which had been their ancestral homelands with the majority residing in Jerusalem, Tiberius, Caesarea, Be’er Sheva and other towns and cities. Still, even in Jerusalem despite often being either a plurality or sometimes and outright majority, they never were permitted self-rule for two-thousand-five-hundred-forty-five year period, from 597BCE until May of 1948, just in case you wish to check our math. The Jews who resided within Europe and Russia have a history which well documented and tells a depressing story of pogrom, evictions, forced conversions, torture, inquisitions, purifications and the Protestant Reformation where virtually every new faction of Christianity attempted to prove their righteousness and superiority in having a pure faith compared to the Church in Rome each attempted to outdo the rest in their persecution of Jews and others not of their particular denomination of Christianity. Even after the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution which brought on the modern age, the Jews remained persecuted and forced to work only in professions which were permitted to them and throughout Europe, they mostly were forbidden from owning land. Many Jews fled to the New World hoping that things would improve, and depending on where they went and under which European power they resided determined their plight. Often they found that the Christian dominance remained a stumbling block to the Jews gaining equal rights and they were again relegated to only being permitted certain fields of endeavor and often were still denied land ownership. But what about the Jews who did not reside under the European Christians, the Jews of MENA?
Starting in the year 622, Muhammad began the Islamic conquest of the Arabian Peninsula where Muhammad often ordered the slaughter of the men of the Jewish tribes, taking the women to use to produce fighters or as wives, trained the male children in Islam and Jihad and raising the girls to become wives. After the death of Muhammad, the leaders of the Islamic tribes continued to expand their reach and by 725 had conquered Persia, Egypt and virtually all of the region of MENA and were making their way up the Iberian Peninsula (see map below). The spread of the Muslims was halted in the west by Charles the Hammer Martel at the battle of Tours and in the East by the Byzantines and the seemingly impervious walls of Constantinople. Our apologies to our regular readers who have suffered through this story repeatedly, but from here we will be giving a different twist. Between the Caliphates and the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic religion was preeminent ruling over almost all of MENA for 1200 years. During this period, despite what European history states as they simply restated the propaganda fed them by the Muslims and seldom questioned this perfect society where all were presumably equal and everything was sugar and spice and everything nice, the Jews did not have such royal treatment under Islamic rule. At best the Jew were Dhimmi, a form of second-class people who are forced to pay a special tax called the Jiyza. The Jiyza could be an affordable amount or it could be set such that the Dhimmis would be impoverished very rapidly. When a Dhimmi was unable to pay the Jiyza, they were often given a choice to convert or die. Jews, Christians and other Dhimmi were often forced to convert to Islam or face beheading and even after conversion they were still suspect and the slightest sign that they held to their former religion would result in their death. This was the lot of Jews under Islamic rule.

Expansion of Islam Across MENA and into Europe before Ottoman Rule
There was another period which the Jews were facing persecution no matter which way they turned with the only difference being whether they wished to be tortured, forced to convert and then often killed anyway by the Spanish Christians or the Muslims who were being pushed from the Iberian Peninsula and also facing the Spanish Inquisition. Both the Muslims, who were losing to the forces of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and the Spanish Christian forces who were facing fierce resistance from the Muslims believed that the Jews were spies or in other ways supporting their foes. Whichever side the Jews found themselves, their best hope was to hide and not be seen as to be seen would result in torture and likely death as they were seldom able to provide information which was worthy of sparing their lives as after they spilled whatever they knew or whatever they invented when they lacked actual knowledge, they no longer served any purpose and thus were eliminated. So, up until World War I from the period of the Babylonian conquering of Jerusalem, the Jews resided constantly under foreign rule even inside of the region which had been their homelands. What is important for this article is that they never had much if any influence on the way the MENA world was fashioned as they were simply powerless and as Dhimmi often lucky if they avoided much notice by their local rulers or any ruler over them all the way up the Caliph, King or whatever title the highest ruler desired for themselves. The Jews who lived in the holy lands did go through a rough period whenever there was a Crusade as when the Christians from Europe liberated a town from its Islamic ruler, they would go through and persecute and kill the Muslims and the Jews. When the Islamic forces would take these regions back, they would persecute and kill the Christians and Jews. The underlying reality was that when your city changed hands, if you were only tortured and not killed, that was being fortunate. This all ended with World War I which changed the face of MENA, something the Arabs to this day resent and blame for their economic and other woes, but the Ottoman Empire was not the only empire broken up, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and Greater Germany were also split into numerous nations (see map below).

German Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire Before WWI and After WWI
World War I brought the end of the Ottoman Empire and Islamic rule across MENA countries with the exception of Persia which remained ruled under Islam. After World War I, the European nations divided up the regions of the Ottoman Empire with the intent of educating and installing European styled nations. As these assigned colonial rules were established under the numerous treaties and conferences and all approved by the League of Nations and signed by the former ruler and now the leader of the forerunner for the Arab League, these mandates and colonies were considered perfectly acceptable. This is the advantage of being the winners in the war. One of the conferences was the San Remo Conference which was where the British Mandate to set up the restored Jewish homelands was born. The idea and restoration of Israel in the Promised Land was a result of World War I and was not as a result of guilt over the Holocaust. The guilt over the Holocaust canard was invented to make it appear that the Jew received their lands due to European guilt over the Holocaust and not due to the restoration of indigenous peoples to their ancestral homes. This was the driving force behind the new maps drawn for MENA and for Eastern Europe. This was a redrawing of much of the maps of all of the old world and the birth of a new world. The British were not satisfied with giving the Jews the entirety of their Mandate lands as they owed the Arab King Faisal a promise to give each of his sons their own lands to rule as he was of assistance during World War I (watch Lawrence of Arabia for a Hollywood version of why). One son of the King received Iraq and the other was granted Jordan. This meant that the Jewish State was shrunk to a mere 22% of the Mandate lands, those west of the Jordan River, and the Arabs were given 78% of the Mandate lands east of the Jordan River. The Jordan River was to be the border between the Jewish State and the Arab State. The Kurdss were also to receive their own nation but when the British found oil around Mosul, they made a deal with the King or Iraq that in exchange for the area which was to be Kurdistan, he would allow J. Paul Getty to exploit the Mosul oil fields. Thus, the Kurds had their homelands squandered away for oil by the British, which might mean that Israel was lucky that there was no oil found west of the Jordan River. The map below depicts the nation responsible for what regions and the date in which they received their independence. As World War I ended in 1918 and much of the making of these colonies and Mandates took through 1920 to 1922, the Europeans colonized the region for mostly under fifty years, which is a very short period when compared to the Islamic conquest and rule which lasted 1200 years and then these nations have largely, if not completely, returned to Islamic rule to some extent or another except for Israel.

Dates that the MENA nations received their independence after colonial rule many since the times of the Persians or even earlier
So, as history tells us, the Jews had no part in formation of the Middle East as the mess that it represents today. The indigenous peoples across northern Africa were conquered by the Romans and then the Caliphates and Islamic rule followed by the Islamic Ottoman Empire. After twelve-hundred years of uninterrupted Islamic rule, these nations faced around fifty years of European rule before being left to their own devices which resulted in near unanimous return to Islamic rule under various kings, royal families and dictators. The real question as to who molded the current Middle East and all of the various conflicts and problems falls to the Islamic rulers of over a millennia, the borders decided by the European colonial enterprises resulting from World War I and the current rulers who took control of these various nations with borders drawn by the Europeans without regard for the tribal and religious variations of the region. The nations which retained much of their original ethnic history were Saudi Arabia, Iran (Persia), Syria, Turkey and the rebirth of Israel. The rest of the nations were inventions of the European map makers which were drawn, some claim, with the intent of making for internal strife which would require a strong dictatorial ruler who would keep order through brute force. Whether the problems resulted from the subjugation of indigenous peoples by the Islamic rulers or if you would rather blame the short span under European rule and the resulting borders, either way, the Jews had little to nothing to do with any of the problems. Even the internal problems faced by Israel are largely due to the British importing Arabs in an attempt to prevent the Jews from establishing their homeland. The problem with the Palestinian Arab refugees is actually predominantly the result of the Arabs and their attempt in 1948 to destroy the Jewish State at her inception. The vast majority of the Arab refugees was the result of the Mufti of Jerusalem insisting that the Arabs leave the region where Israel was to be formed such that the six invading Arab armies could simply slaughter everyone as they were to presumably breeze through the new state of Israel in a victorious slaughter whose intended result was best described by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League at that time who stated, “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.” The reality turned out quite different but the result left the Islamic forces occupying areas of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Egypt was granted rule over Gaza and Jordan over Judea and Samaria which they renamed West Bank as the historic names were far too Jewish. The one thing which never existed in the entire history of the region was any nation named Palestine or any nation which used Jerusalem as their capital other than the Jews and their ancestors.
What will be the final ending result of the numerous attempts, 1948-9, 1967 Six Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War and the terrorist enterprise which has lasted since the turn of the Twentieth Century predating even the establishment of Israel? This is the question which is troubling the world as they are doing everything humanly possible short of the world declaring war upon Israel to destroy the Jewish State ignoring International Law and the promises made in treaties and conferences across recent history, especially when one stops to consider that the Jewish history in the areas of the Promised Lands originates close to four-thousand years ago. Under International Law which includes but is not limited to the San Remo Conference, the Mandate System, the British agreement with the Zionist Congress and all enforceable by the United Nations under Article 80 of the charter, though one would be hard pressed to recognize this, the eastern border for Israel is the Jordan River. The reason the world appears to pressing so hard to have Israel recognize a new Arab state is because unless Israel signs away her rights to the lands west of the Jordan River in a treaty or similar document with equal footing, the International Law leaves the Arabs with no actual claim or recourse to the lands west of the Jordan River. The reason the conflict continues between the Palestinian Arabs (a misnomer as there was never a Palestine for them to be Palestinian) and Israel is because the world refuses to keep their promises to the Jews. The reality is that the Arab world spat out the vast majority of their Jews, some nations wiped their lands completely of their Jews, sending over eight-hundred-thousand Jews moving to the sole nation on earth which would take them in, Israel, and they were incorporated into the new nation and not placed in camps from which they could demand all they wanted for their former nations to repatriate them and return to them their properties, the exact opposite of the Arab response to their refugees which are still in camps along with their third and fourth generation children still waiting for the world to destroy Israel so they can, as Azzam Pasha stated before the 1948 invasion to destroy Israel and wipe out her Jews, return to their region and take of the spoils of the defeated and dead Jews. This conflict will end in one of two ways, either the Arabs will finally accept Israel and care for their own people or the world will attempt to destroy Israel be it Iran using nuclear weapons as they have threatened, the Arabs finally defeating Israel, or the entire world will declare war upon Israel probably through the United Nations in stages. The first stage will consist of the United Nations General Assembly petitioning the Security Council to strip Israel of her membership in that body and the Security Council accepting their petition favorably. The next stage will likely be another General Assembly petition of the Security Council to revoke the November 29, 1947 UNGA Res 181 which was offering another partition of the lands west of the Jordan River which the Arab League refused making it void anyways, but by doing so the move will be treated as the United Nations invalidating the establishment of Israel. Then Israel will exist and continue to exist but the world will have turned their backs on the Jewish State and pretend that Israel has no right to exist. Eventually, this will lead to a coalition of nations which will set to destroying Israel by whatever means are necessary. What the Bible predicts about this final conflict does not bode well for the coalition as the arrival of the Messiach will be the deciding factor and the world will one last time feel the wrath of Hashem. The one thing which we can be assured of is that the Jews had nothing to do with the mess the nations stretching across the MENA region are suffering and if they would simply allow it, Israel could do much towards making these nations productive and their people wealthy and comfortable. There is so much they would gain by working with Israel instead of attempting to destroy her, but that would take common sense which Voltaire, Will Rogers or Mark Twain noted, “Common Sense is not so common.”
Beyond the Cusp
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