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

 

How Else Can This End?

 

Everyone wants to know what can be done to restart the so-called peace process between Israel and the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, from here on referred to as AWCTP. The usual way it goes is some European country, the United States, the United Nations, the European Union or who knows who else initially calls for a conference or already are at the United Nations where they are always at some convention or another and eventually they come to the point that in order to restart the so-called peace process they will need some exchange of some sacrifice in order to change the situation thus making there a glimmer of hope. Then they reach the next step, an unfortunate and obvious step, they realize that Israel must be forced to sacrifice something of worth because the AWCTP refuse to sacrifice anything but are very good at demanding everything in order to even shake hands with any Israeli. So, this is how it starts and has started every time for almost fifty years. They realize they must demand the Israelis make some show of good faith because the other side had absolutely no good faith, they only have faith that they can wait for the rest of the world to defeat the Jews for them. People ask now why the Israelis believe that their settlements are legal under the Oslo Accords. They believe their settlements are legal under the Oslo Accords because they are legal under the Oslo Accords and always have been for almost fifty years. Israel has released thousands upon thousands of murdering terrorist prisoners who return to murder more Israelis and also some Americans and Europeans who happened to be in Israel at the wrong time. The Israelis have surrendered control over areas of Area B but have never surrendered Area C territories because that was always supposed to be part of Israel. Israel had talked of sacrificing some of Area C but only in exchange for a final and permanent peace and nothing less. The world believes Israel should surrender all of Area C along with Areas A & B which they have all but surrendered them as they have pre-surrendered them in order to finalize a lasting peace. Area A was always meant to be the AWCTP’s land and Area B was to be negotiated with shared possession until a final agreement dividing Area B was finalized. The world has decided differently and now is demanding all of Area C but this still will not satisfy the AWCTP as they demand all the lands. Not the “occupied” lands but all of the lands from the River to the Sea. The AWCTP have gotten so much assistance from the world that they now are completely sure that they can wait for the world to rid the entire area of its Jews and make a present of all the land and that is exactly what their textbooks show in their schools, all the land belonging to the AWCTP and no more Israel (see below).

 

 

These demands have gotten to the point where Israel had nothing else to give, at least not willingly. The world will slowly realize that Israel has nothing left to give and that is when the world will reach a decision, they have to rid the Middle East of its Jews. The Arabs have found themselves patsies to do what they have tried to accomplish countless times. There was their initial attempt in 1948 where they succeeded in taking Gaza and Judea and Samaria, what Jordan renamed the West Bank. They tried to include them in their 1956 closing the Suez Canal as well as the Straights of Tiran closing off the Israeli trade route to Asia. Then they attempted again in 1967 where they managed to lose Gaza, Judea and Samaria along with the Sinai Peninsula. Israel made her willingness to make peace by returning all of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt for a peace treaty, even a cold peace, a risky and cold peace but Israel desires peace enough to take risks. They even offered Jordan to retain the areas they occupied in 1948, Judea and Samaria. Jordan decided that they did not want to retain the AWCTP as they found them to be more of a disturbance and really held a grudge after the 1970 attempted overthrow of the Jordanian Monarchy, Parliament and the remainder of the government in what the Jordanians refer to as Black September. The Jordanians saw all of them as just more of the same Yasser Arafat revolutionaries and troublemakers and preferred to leave the problem in the Israelis neighborhood. The AWCTP after attempting to overthrow the Jordanian government, then proceeded to attempt an overthrow of the government in Lebanon in 1982 where the Israelis came at the behest of the Maronite Christian Militias who were threatened by Arafat and the Syrian army starting the First Lebanon War. Israelis were closing on Beirut to capture Arafat and the leaders of the PLO when they were instructed not to enter Beirut by the United States who then proceeded to rescue Yasser Arafat and his leadership cadre by helicopter and flew them to Tunis, Tunisia. This started the immediate demands from the world and secretive meeting with the Israeli left politicians which finally led to the Oslo Accords and everything that lead to the current situation and still the demands are all on Israel.

 

That is why there was recently the confab in Paris where a group of Foreign Ministers from numerous nations met French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault attended also by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The only accomplishment, beyond great press coverage and grand promises ahead of the convention, was a promise to attempt to meet again before the end of the year as they desired making some progress before President Obama departs the White House. Their announcement gave the real reason for the push to force a restart of the peace process and it has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with providing President Obama with the cherry atop his legacy, an humbled Israel beleaguered surrendering the remainder of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria in exchange for a handshake on the White House lawn with President Obama and an assembly of Foreign Ministers behind him as witness to this historic picture session. Fortunately the majority of Foreign Ministers saw no reason to attach their names to an effort so useless and transparent and most will likely not return before year’s end. Some of them have honor and refuse to add their names to such a hollow venture, and they should be praised and perhaps be emulated. But this has all been seen before and the end has always been the same, in the end the AWCTP side demands the unacceptable or simply leaving all in a huff as Yasser Arafat did to decline his own offer that President William Jefferson Clinton spent the entire evening and into the night before convincing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that the deal was a good as it were likely to get and darned if Prime Minister Ehud Barak didn’t give in and accept the deal as defined by Yasser Arafat to President Willian Jefferson Clinton content in the belief he had defined something no amount of sweet talking could ever make the Israeli leader bend. Arafat then refused his own offer and left without making any further demands. The next step was the Taba meetings which Arafat never attended and refused every proposal that followed. Why is it always Paris?

 

These Foreign Ministers likely realize the reality that Israel has nothing which they are willing to throw away as Mahmoud Abbas is simply Yasser Arafat in a suit and tie, nothing more and nothing less. His position is the same as Arafat, the Jews must all leave the land and return it to the Arab Muslims as they believe that any lands conquered by the Arab Muslims must always remain theirs and that includes every inch of the Jews historic and ancient homelands. There are no people who exist in modern times who predate the Israelis as the Israelites who have ruled these lands dating from before 1000 B.C.E. It was before 1000 B.C.E. that King David led the Israelites and conquered Jerusalem making it the eternal capital city of the Jews. The Israelites broke into two nations during troublesome times, one called Israel and the other Judea. The norther kingdom, Israel, was conquered by the Assyrians and was never heard from again until recent times. They made up the ten lost tribes of Israel. The remaining country was Judea, the one that the Romans renamed and that the AWCTP borrowed their moniker from. The name originates from the Philistines who resided in the area today called Gaza and Israel has ceded that land to the AWCTP who lost it to Hamas who have carried out a terror war ever since while the AWCTP claim it is occupied. Actually, they are correct as long as they mean that Hamas stole it from them and is occupying the land as Israel most assuredly left it making painful sacrifices uprooting a community of over ten-thousand Israelis leaving their greenhouses for the AWCTP to use to start an economy; the same greenhouses which were dismantled and turned into rockets and launchers and fired back at the Israelis once Hamas took control. Judeans, as the Israelites were then known, were scattered to the far corners of the Roman Empire after their second revolution against Rome. From there came the legend of the wandering Jew. This was due to the simple fact that the Jews never amounted to a population larger than they had at the onset of the Greek and Roman occupations. The Jews were often evicted from cities, fiefdoms and entire nations whenever things went bad such as famine, disease, economic problems or simply to amuse the people or their rulers and lastly when religious leaders demanded the lands be purified of the disbelievers or the unclean or whatever terminology pleased the faithful. Thus the world became accustomed to the Jews as a wandering people living at the behest and milk of kindness of the rulers and the people restricted often to the jobs and occupations the people found most displeasing and often as the money lenders who served to make commerce easier than the barter system. This was why when there were economic problems it was always the Jews who were blamed. It was not until after World War I that the Jewish people finally were promised their ancient Biblical homelands by the Allied powers of Britain, France, Italy, Russia and Japan; yes, Japan. The United States was an observing power and agreed though did not sign a treaty until they signed the Anglo-American Treaty which also in one section included the granting of the lands for the Jewish State. The origins of this was the Balfour Declaration which was formalized by the San Remo Conference which was then included in subsequent treaties which the Ottomans and the Arab League agreed upon. Finally, a number of years after the end of World War II and likely influenced by but not as payment for the Holocaust, Israel was reborn in a single day. The Jews were without their ancestral homes for less than two thousand years though they lived under a series of occupations for another five hundred years. Before this they resided in their lands for a thousand years and extended their lands as far north as the Euphrates River (seen the map below). The Philistines are the area in yellow near Gaza of today and the Phoenicians in pale blue near where Lebanon and western Syria.

 

Eretz Yisroel as formed after the conquests by the Kingdoms of King David and King Solomon; both of whom allowed the Principalities of Edom, Moab and Ammon to be semi-autonomous as long as they and their armies supported Eretz Yisroel

 

The Arab Muslims were simply the last who conquered the Holy Lands which are named such as Judaism and Christianity were both born in these lands. The lands were contested for years during the Crusades as Christians came from Europe attempting to reconquer Jerusalem with intermittent success but in the end the Arabs retained the lands until the Ottoman Turks conquered the lands of the Caliphate. These were the lands which they lost during World War I. After World War I and through World War II and for a while into the 1950s the Europeans held much of the Middle East and North Africa as colonies. This was after over a thousand years of Muslim colonization. Yet somehow it is the Europeans who are called the great colonizers. These same people claim that the Jewish People never resided in the Holy Land and that Jerusalem was not the site of the First Temple and the Second Temple. The end of this history is that the Jews, as Prime Minister Golda Meir so aptly put it, we have nowhere to go. Even if we had somewhere to go we do not desire anywhere else. The Jews have prayed facing Jerusalem and have prayed every year with the world, “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end on every Seder and often at the end of many holy days’ prayers. The truth of the desire of the Jewish People was aptly stated in the Song of Babylon, in which there are these words:

 

Psalm 137

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
May my right hand forget her skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
If I do not remember you,
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.

 

Yet this is the lands and the city that Mahmoud Abbas and the AWCTP demand we give them not because they won it in any wars as each war the Arabs failed to dislodge the Jews from our Homelands. They will only accept all the land over our dead bodies if at all possible. On the other hand we have offered numerous times all of the heartlands of Judea and Samaria and even to share our ancient Capital City. But they demand from the River to the Sea and they have crowds of youths on campuses across Europe and America finishing this with the line Palestine must be free. This is what they demand, no compromise, no peace. They promise that even if they are forced to accept a partial peace with some of what they claim that they will continue to resist occupation, a euphemism for continued terrorist strikes like earlier this week killing a young thirteen year old girl in her bed as she slept stabbing her repeatedly in the back. Hallel-Yaffa Ariel was the young girl’s name and she was stabbed over a dozen times in the back and was transported to a hospital where she died despite desperate efforts to save her life.

 

Hallel-Yaffa Ariel

 

This is the war the AWCTP terrorists fight while Hamas launches rockets and Hezballah threatens from Lebanon to launch many thousands of rockets and missiles throughout Israel while their supplier, Iran, has sworn to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons as soon as they are able. We will not be moved and the other choice appears to have numerous of threats to destroy the land of Israel in a, ‘If we cannot have it then nobody will have it,’ which is exactly the threats that Hamas, Hezballah and Iran all promise and the PLO threatens. There is only one of two ways that this will end, with a second Holocaust or with such a horrific war that the Arabs and Muslims finally give up their threats and leave the Jews to live in peace in our ancient Biblical lands. How Else Can This End?

 

Beyond the Cusp