When the World Offers no Solutions

 

Back in the year 2000 the world demanded that Israel surrender the final remainder of the areas liberated when they were captured during the Six Day War in 1967 and defended in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and suffered numerous terror wars ever since. Israel was pressured to allow the Palestinian Authority to have an opportunity completely free of any and all Israeli support or interference and show their ability to form a functional society with a firm economy in Gaza. In 2005 Israel pulled all Israelis out of Gaza including every settler, every last of their dead were reinterred fearing what would happen if their graves were left behind. History has taught that their bodies would be desecrated if not removed and reinterred safely within Israel. Finally, the final steps were performed in early September of 2005 as the IDF closed their bases and after destroying that which could not be transferred, the final IDF forces left handing the keys, so to speak, to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. This was the stagnated state that Gaza remained stuck in as there was little or no effort at development or improving the life of the average Gazan and terrorism continued unabated. In 2007 the tipping point was reached and Hamas declared open warfare with the Palestinian Authority. In bloody fighting, Hamas persevered taking over Gaza and have ruled the region as a dictatorial power appointing each leader rewarding those who were the most active in their war to destroy Israel. Hamas allowed for Islamic Jihad to also set up in Gaza as well as to a lesser degree the Islamic State and a collection of other terrorist entities and criminal gangs. Gaza has remained in this hellish state without any attempts to establish any economic engine other than those necessary for their war on Israel and a small sector servicing the terror leaders and their families and the relative few who have gathered great wealth servicing the terror war or operating the black market.

 

The average Gazan has a bleak outlook of the future as the economic structure of Gaza deteriorates with every offensive against Israel. Hamas and Islamic Jihad always set their rocket launchers in neighborhoods other than their own and thus have slowly destroyed much of the Gaza Strip ruining economic opportunities and making more people destitute without any future worth living. It should be no surprise that the majority of Gazans would prefer nothing more than to relocate and live anywhere that life could approach normalcy. There has been a slow and mostly illegal emigration out of Gaza without any program to aid these Palestinian Arabs in setting up a new life. Currently, the majority of electricity in Gaza is provided by Israel. The majority of natural gas comes from Israel. Much if not all of clean water comes from Israel. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad elite make sure that these provisions power their homes and lives to a far larger extent than that provided the remainder of Gazans. This is the sorry excuse for the governance in Gaza and the economic situation which it has degenerated into threatens to make Gaza into merely a terrorist engine. As far as the Hamas rulers of Gaza are concerned, the lack any semblance of an economic engine for the majority of the entire region forcing more and more Gazans into terrorist ranks is great as makes their breeding of future terrorists a far easier endeavor. For Israel, Gaza is a problem with no easy solutions and one obvious one. The unfortunate reality is the world, led by Europe, refuses to even couch the only solution for the people of Gaza, Israel and Egypt, namely for Israel to sponsor an exit strategy for the Gazans who desire starting their lives elsewhere. The European Union demands that Israel deal with Hamas through Egypt or the United Nations making ceasefire after ceasefire which they know Hamas and Islamic Jihad will break within weeks leading to their demand that a new ceasefire be negotiated with Israel being made to pay an ever greater price in blood, the cost of the interceptors and the death and injury of her people along with the lost economic production. Perhaps the time has come to ignore the United Nations, the European Union, foreign governments and every other busybody and do what will serve both Israel and the Gazan people the most favorable results to solve the situation to the satisfaction of all involved who are not involved with terrorism.

 

The Two Gazas with One Pristine and the Other Ravaged

 

The problem can be permanently resolved but only if the rest of the world simply allow Israel to resolve the challenge in a manner conducive to all involved by removing the terrorist governance and reintegrate the region under Israeli control. The first stage would come in response to the upcoming rocket barrage from either Hamas, Islamic Jihad or whatever Gazan terror outfit which decides to restart hostile action. Israel should provide the United Nations, European Union and the rest of the notable busybodies that the next failure to keep peace in Gaza will result in Israel retaking Gaza as was presumed to be what would be the result of any failure of the Palestinian Authority. As the Palestinian Authority lost control in 2007, Israel was supposed to retake Gaza immediately after Hamas took control. This was the promise of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and United States President George W. Bush when the Gaza pullout was agreed upon by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Well, when Hamas took over Gaza in a coup in 2007, those American politicians apparently had a very serious case of amnesia and Israel was not provided coverage by the American administration to retake Gaza as they had promised. The rest is, as they say, history. One of the problems is that every rocket which is detected and determined to likely strike an inhabited region, the interceptor launched to destroy each one coasts approximately fifty-thousand-dollars in order to prevent what is likely a fifty to five-hundred-dollar rocket. That is another price which Israel could live without its necessity. Every Israeli saved by the Iron Dome is priceless, but there is still a price attached to every interception. This situation as it currently exists is unsustainable for Israel and even worse for the people of Gaza.

 

The solution is to allow Israel to conquer Gaza removing the terror entities forcing their leadership into exile and starting to undo the ecological and economic disasters which have resulted from their terrorist governance and its complete lack of concern for the people and the ecological situation leading to the Gazan groundwater being unfit to drink. The lives of the average Gazan outside the wealthier strip along the Mediterranean Sea, lives in an ecologic disaster area where when the tires are being burned along the border and the wind changes and blows from out of the east, the air is choking, as already stated, the ground water is undrinkable and the economic opportunities are all but nonexistent outside of joining the terrorist armies. The solution is the same as was applied to Eastern Jerusalem where the Palestinian Arabs are permitted all rights outside of political and even there they are permitted to vote in Jerusalem and neighborhood elections. Their sole restriction is from national elections as this will need to await decisions on providing them with full Israeli citizenship at some distant time. The Gazans can be permitted to have political rights within Gaza and its cities but remain under Israeli security with the IDF being fully operational within Gaza. Gaza would be returned to Israeli rule with their former autonomy reversed as was supposed to occur should the experiment fail, which it did in magnificent fashion. As the Palestinian Authority has failed repeatedly to form a unified governance with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, then it should be the right for Israel to retake control over Gaza replacing their terrorist governance. No nation should or is forced to live with terrorist ruling a region on their borders, let alone a region which technically remains part of Israel legally. Once Israel removes Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the first step would be to offer Gazans with an incentive to relocate in such a manner that nations who desire to provide the Gazans with a place to relocate would receive incentives in proportion to the numbers they allow to relocate within their borders. The incentives will overcome the trepidation for some nations and these relocation incentives will be split between the Gazans and the nations accepting them. Then the rebuilding and cleanup of Gaza can begin. With time Gaza will once again become productive. This is the only means by which Gaza can be made livable for those who remain. Why the United Nations, European Union and so many others wish to force the Gazans to live under such oppressive and unhealthy an environment under terrorist rulers just to impose a constant threat against Israel is beyond disturbing. Such disregard for human life is horrifying and just causing Israel difficulties is not sufficient reason that these people to be left at the mercies of such horrific conditions and it does not serve Israel to permit this situation to fester. The time has come for Israel to exercise its rights under the original agreement reached for the Gaza disengagement and reestablish her rule over the region. And if such works in Gaza, then next it should be applied to the Palestinian Authority regions in the Shomron where there already is some level of such cooperation. The Palestinian Arabs should be permitted to enjoy much the same benefits as Israeli Arabs with the possibility of further political rights over time. Israel needs to do what serves her the best and if such improves the lives of Palestinian Arabs, then all the better.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

An End Must be Forthcoming

 

Recent events are setting in motion a slowly roiling undercurrent for a solution which will be a permanent end to the troubles between the Arabs and the Israelis. Actually there are a number of such solutions each with its own support base and it is only a matter of time before one proves triumphant setting the others to the dustbin of history as having been futile attempts resulting in their failures. One solution has been especially evident as Ramadan nears an end. There was the horrendous slaughtering of a thirteen year old sweet girl, a dancer who had recently had a recital and was murdered while sleeping in her bed in her home stabbed in the back well over a dozen times by her cowardly assailant who had gained entrance to the Kiryat Arba by seriously injuring one of the security guards who attempted to stop him. Hallel-Yaffa Ariel was the young girls name and she was far from the first of the Ramadan victims of Arab terror. The Arabs cry and plead for open travel so they can visit friends and family during their month of Ramadan and every year the Israel government removes almost all the checkpoints, opens the barricaded roadways and grants passes for Gazans to enter Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and all is sweet and wonderful until some Jewish child or children are murdered. Last year it was three young men and this year a young girl stabbed in the back more than a dozen times in her bed while she slept. But let us define some of the varied rising expectations for the future as all but the last of these groups feels quite sure that their solution is close at hand.

 

The first is the European Union from the three presidents; President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, President of the European Council Donald Tusk, and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker; their High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini to all the numerous other ministers and national representatives who not only sat through the recent speech given by Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas where he read off a litany of false accusations and degrading slurs against the Israelis with the most disgusting of them was his using the old blood libel which had often swept across regions of Europe itself, that the Jews’ Rabbis were demanding the government and Israelis poison the Palestinian Wells. This was after Abbas and his minions who lead the terrorocracy with claims that the Israelis, the Jews were attempting to use the al-Aqsa Mosque for Devil Worship and other degrading offering and were planning on destroying the Mosque to erect the Third Temple which would not be built at the location of the al-Aqsa Mosque which sits on an added portion of the Temple Mount added by Herod (see video below). Abbas finished his litany of blood libels and demands for the death of all Israel because when he demands all of occupied Palestine he does not mean two states side by side, he means Palestine founded on the Grave of Israel whether that comes from a slaughter of the current state of Israel outright or the flooding it with five to ten thousand Arab refugees and then slaughtering the non-Muslim population starting with any Jews unfortunate enough not to have fled; either path leads to the same end, Palestine instead of all Israel and the potential for a second Holocaust. Then the Ministers of the European Union gave Abbas a rousing standing ovation lavishing upon the man who had just slandered the Jews with blood libels and then called for Europe to assist in their annihilation their most hearty and warm approval possible. We are not talking mild and polite applause for a few seconds but rather rapturous and enthusiastic applause rising to their feet and all but throwing confetti into the air celebratory applause. We can only describe this with a single word, disgusting.

 

 

That is the picture of the European Union and what is even more frightening is that it is fast becoming the position of the majority of college and university students and their professors across Europe and North America. This is an indicator of the future in Europe, the United States and Canada just as it was the indication of the future of Germany in the early 1930s. There has been some shove back lately but whether this is a temporary reflex reaction or a final reaction of a societal reflex reaction of conscience, time will tell. If history is any judge the pushback is but a hiccup which will pass with a brief collective holding of the campus’s collective breath. The tide of anti-Semitism has been climbing slowly but ever so surely for decades, just the levels remained lowest where the main concentrations of Jews resided which included many college and university campuses, the northeast down through the Nation’s Capital and along the retirement communities into Florida, in and arc from Pittsburgh through Cleveland on to Chicago and along the West Coast from San Francisco to San Diego. There are pockets of Jews in most major and secondary cities where they reside in neighborhoods mostly sticking to their friends in a fairly closed group usually politically liberal. In the vast majority of these communities they know of almost no anti-Semitism and many believe that the news stories reporting cases of anti-Semitism are aberrations and that those Jews who get worked up over it are making mountains out of molehills. This is quite true providing your entire life is centered on your groups of close friends and the few people with whom you work who would never think to utter even the slightest slur of an anti-Semitic nature anywhere near work, they enjoy receiving a paycheck and work in a field where Jews are respected and well-represented.

 

But what do these nice people know about the world outside their circle, the world of bricklayers, cement pourers, meter maids, sanitation engineers, high tension linemen, snow plough drivers, or a million other more physical position or factory workers and service jobs, the jobs either low paying or considered unskilled and not requiring eight years of college and a higher degree even a doctorate? The answer is little or nothing unless they own such a company employing such people and even then their interactions are limited. Some of us have worked in such positions while gathering an education and can tell that the level of anti-Semitism over the past half-century has steadily risen and at an ever increasing rate. Those friends they know who they discount as alarmists are actually the grounded ones whose feet are firmly planted on the ground and often mired in mud where they either meet those we refer to as the less fortunate or have solid data they know to be valid and do not simply discount the uncomfortable as an anomaly easily dismissed. The honest truth is that as the United States was a couple of decades trailing behind Europe in anti-Semitism and Europe was miles behind the Arab Muslim world the differences between these groups is narrowing at an alarming and very disturbing rate no matter what many Jews wish to believe. French Jews had some alarming wake-up calls this past year and have started their own exodus with many heading either to the United States or Israel. Their realizations will become more and more frequent as time passes and more widely dispersed and encompassing. Mathematically one could compute a date by which every Jew still practicing their religion or considering themselves to be Jews even though non-practicing or those who are feeling persecuted as those around them believe them Jews and treat them as some form of outcast monster rather than a fellow human being and will end up forced to flee to Israel. There was a time when Jews would claim there was no manner of turns the world could take as they had reached acceptance and even the Almighty would be unable to gather them back to Eretz Yisroel, to Israel. Now many will tell you that day is coming, perhaps in our lifetime or perhaps somewhat later, we would bet on sooner than most believe. What does this mean for Israel?

 

What this means for Israel is there is no alternative but for Israel to be the homeland and safety zone for the Jewish People. This time as the world turns against the Jews they will have a place to go and this will mean there will be close to twelve to fifteen million Jews residing in Israel, possibly even more. This will also mean that Israel will need land enough to support such numbers and that will require all of the lands promised by the San Remo Conference and the League of Nations, the United Nations and numerous other treaties stemming from World War I and the aftermath. The Arab Palestinian will need to choose one of two alternatives, reside in a state controlled by the Jews on all of the lands or move east of the Jordan River or to another Arab country, one of the over twenty already in existence and many very lightly populated. There has never been a nation named Palestine, no Arab or Muslim nation has ever chosen Jerusalem as their capital city, and the entire reason there are even people claiming to be from Palestine which was an ancient land with Jerusalem as their capital city is in order to steal the Jewish homeland. While you may feel that believing these lies told by the Arab Palestinians who are almost all recent arrivals who only arrived after the Jews set up the infrastructure and economic promise of jobs and a better future that it really does not matter, perhaps some of their other lies might make you less comfortable. The Arab Palestinians claim that Jesus was an Arab Palestinians and will be Muhammad’s assistant in the end times. They claim that Moses was an Arab Palestinian, Noah was an Arab Palestinian, Adam was an Arab Palestinian, Eve was an Arab Palestinian and the Bible, both the Jewish Old Testament and the Christian New Testament are inferior and inaccurate copies of the real word of Allah and as poor and corrupted copies of the Quran must be destroyed and totally replaced with the Quran. They believe that Allah is the true and only G0d and that Hashem and the Christian G0d, who are one and the same, are false gods insignificant and inferior to Allah. Just for the record, Allah is the god of Abraham, Ishmael and Muhammad while the Judeo-Christian G0d is the G0d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That is right; they are really not the same deity and only one can be the true and lasting deity and if the Arab Muslims win over the Jews in Israel it will be but a matter of time before they will replace the Judeo-Christian G0d with Allah and that will also spell the end of the bible, both New and Old Testaments and the world as is known in the Western world.

 

 

The reality is the current within large areas of the Israeli Jewish population there is beginning to be a growing irritation and animosity over the murderous ways of the Palestinian Arabs. Let me assure you that the Jews have nothing against Arabs who wish to share our economic wellbeing and live amongst us peaceably and accept that Israel is the home for the Jewish People now and from this day forward, actually from May 15, 1948 forward. The Arab supremacists Palestinians who desire to rid the world of Israel, many of all the Jews as the Hamas charter calls, are willing and empowered by the murdering of Jews like thirteen year old young woman and dancer Hallel-Yaffa Ariel stabbed over a dozen times in her back while sleeping in her bed this past week. There may end up some commentator eventually who will list the three or four times an Israeli Jew murdered Arabs in cold blood and these events have happened and are aberrations and anything but the norm and those perpetrators are in prison and not celebrated but scorned by the Jewish population no matter their reasons. The murderer of Hallel-Yaffa Ariel was shot dead as he resisted arrest and his family will be paid and paid handsomely because of his act of cold-blooded murder and this past week since his brutal act the Arabs have been having great parties in the West Bank celebrating this wondrous event with well-wishers congratulating his mother and sweets, candies and sugary pastries being handed out. For hours after this murder there were horns honked in Ramallah in celebratory revelry. Hamas and Islamic Jihad members and many Gazans also celebrated in similar manner. We can expect streets to be named and soccer contests to be held in his honor. Teachers will give lessons over the coming weeks praising and lauding his brave and heroic acts of assaulting a sleeping girl and stabbing her in the back repeatedly. How is a grown teen man stabbing a thirteen year old girl in the back a brave and heroic act? How is a grown teen man stabbing a thirteen year old girl asleep in her bed a brave and heroic act? It is anything but a brave and heroic act. It is an act of supreme and unparalleled cowardice. But the Arab Palestinians are celebrating is a grown teen man stabbing a thirteen year old girl asleep in her bed repeatedly in the back not even risking her awakening as she might fight back as the ultimate in bravery and laudable action and will teach their children that this is a level of act they should aspire towards. The mother and sister of this cowardly murderer, this assassin of a sleeping girl attacking from behind like the weasel he was are praising their relative and urging others to emulate his great patriotic act.

 

The world has quietly condemned this act in respectful tomes while demanding that Israel take great care not to allow things to grow out of control and to assure that there are no Jewish acts of revenge. There have been almost zero acts of revenge after near countless such acts from the Arab Palestinians. We mourn and pray for this to be the final senseless murder of one of our children and pray that our Arab neighbors choose to live with us in mutual respect and in mutual benefit each assisting the other. We unfortunately realize this is unlikely but it is what our prayers will ask Hashem to allow filling our Arab neighbors’ hearts with the milk of kindness and filling their minds with understanding and their souls with love for their fellow human beings and for our peoples to live together in peace. There will be a few who will speak in anger and voice their frustrations but there will be no acts of retribution and no acts of revenge. There will be mourning and we as a people will pick up the pieces and try to carry on despite the sadness in our hearts. A family will sit Shiva and mourn as prescribed by our laws and traditions. Friends, relatives and even strangers will visit the family’s home bringing food and sitting and saying nothing, not a word until spoken to by the mourners so as not to intrude rudely when they choose to be alone with their thoughts and their mournfulness. They will be polite when time has permitted a level of sanity to return to their minds and some warmth returns to their stunned hearts. They will actually try and greet all and ask of how they knew their daughter and thank those who tell them they know not their wonderful daughter though they feel close to her from all they have read. Those who say they came so as to assist with anything that needs tending and they will be thanked and invited to stay and share of the food and perhaps they will be privileged to hear parents or relatives stories of the young girl and what a fascinating joy she was to all she met. There will be sobbing, wailing and quiet sucking of breath between periods where we forget to breath, but the body reminds as its needs continue despite all else. Things will fall back to normal with the gaping exceptions when one expects their loved one and remember that joy has been stolen from them and for a moment their world will try and collapse in on itself but they will steel themselves because we must always go on. Every year parents will do what no parent should ever need to do, light a Yahrzeit Candle for a child and remember her each year it getting that little bit more difficult but she will never completely be gone as there will always be those stories of the joys she gave others and that is the greatest gift of memory one could ever pray to have for their own memory amongst others. Hallel-Yaffa Ariel, may your memory bring a smile as the one you were always giving to others to their lips so your joy added to the world can continue.

 

Beyond the Cusp