End the Charade and Keep Your Promises

 

For all too many people there exists so much confusion and misinformation about Israel and whose lands are whose and what are facts and what are fictions. We hear about facts on the ground and some very positive and definitive facts have been found in the grounds as well as on them throughout the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. What might surprise some is that further facts similar to these have been unearthed but either destroyed or left buried once identified east of the Jordan River, throughout the Golan Heights, in Lebanon south of the Litani River and in a swath cutting across Syria all the way to the Euphrates River. These facts exist in a simple but nearly permanent form of artwork known to exist throughout history, mosaics, in particular, mosaic floors. These stones, unless intentionally shifted and scrambled, can be restored to near their former beauty simply through cleaning the stones and perhaps some restoration around the edges or along a seam where the earth itself cracked during an earthquake or similar disruption. These mosaics mostly date back well before the Persians or the Greeks and definitely the Romans conquered these lands and existed during the Biblical times and represent the historic events immediately after their happening and representing them exactly as told when these legends were the facts of their day.

 

Mosaic in Israel shows biblical Samson

 

Most of these mosaics represent Biblical stories which are familiar to virtually any person who attended religious school where the Old Testament was studied even in a cursory fashion as these were the stories that struck awe and let little imaginations run wild and these were the types of heroes that a child would remember throughout their lives.

 

The story of Samson, whose strength was in proportion to the length of his hair, who can forget such a story, would have resonated today. Here we have a single mother put down and in the lowest caste of society praying not for herself but for her son to be a great leader. She promises to obey Hashem and never cut his hair and Hashem will favor her son with strength as his hair is long. She desires her son do well by the family name and bring it honor and this single mother thus sacrifices of herself to help all Israel with her son becoming a success. Everything she could have ever dreamt would come to be the story of her son. Just as promised, Hashem would accept Samson as a servant and Samson would free the Jews from Philistine rule.

 

Hashem blessed Samson with inhuman strength which he used against the Philistines, that is when he was not chasing Philistine women and marrying them, a failing which was his downfall. After Dalila cut his hair and turned the weakened Samson over to the Philistines they gouged his eyes blinding him and they mocked him but somebody grew lax and his hair grew long again. Then there was his final command performance before the Philistine King and Queen and every important Philistine in a grand spectacle where they were to marvel over the captured Jew whose strength they had all so feared back when he could use the jaw bone of a donkey and it would be as effective as any sword in his hands and he slew Philistines with such a weapon. The ending is that Samson pulled the supporting pillars of the arena collapsing the viewing stands bringing the house down, what a performance, and he slew the entire Philistine leadership that day and gave his life to free Israel of Philistine rule. A mosaic with ancient Hebrew letters telling the story was found dating from immediately after the Israelites regained their lands from the attacking Philistines.

 

Fish swallowing an Egyptian soldier in a mosaic scene
depicting the splitting of the Red Sea from the Exodus story
from the 5th-century synagogue at Huqoq, in northern Israel

 

This Mosaic was found in an area known as the Galilee which was very prevalent in ancient Israel and was the farmlands which supported the Israelite state. As important as were these lower relatively flat lands to the continued existence of the state of Israel as a people need to eat, the hills to the east were the tactical lands which also were used for shepherds as they tended their sheep. These hills were where the Israelites preferred to meet their enemies as the lands made infantry and chariots all but impossible to wield and heavy infantry would quickly tire chasing light infantry, slingers and archers up and down the slopes and across rocky terrain features. Further, the Israelite were very familiar with the lands and knew its hiding places, its tactically important ridges where one would be well above on a steep slope, and areas of concealment such as caves with small or hidden entrances. These were the lands where the Israelite light infantry was successful in repulsing enemies and dispatching even the Roman Legions on the uprisings which were successful in winning independence from Roman Rule, even if only temporarily as the Romans had far greater manpower and could send sufficient Legions such that the Roman men in arms outnumbered the Israelite population including women and children. Still, from time to time the Romans were chased from Israelite lands as the Israelite forces made it simply not economically prudent to continue the war. When the time came to retake the trade routes which passed through the lands and often through Jerusalem, the Israelite capital, the Romans, Greeks, Persians and others through history would arrive on the Israelite borders in numbers which put fear into the bravest of hearts.

 

This would include the Wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973 (War for Independence, Six Day War, and Yom Kippur War) which were all fought in response to acts of war and Israel defending her lands. In Israel’s War of Independence she faced a half dozen national armies which assaulted on her first day as a nation and in this war Israel lost territory including Gaza, and section of Judea and Samaria which Jordan renamed West Bank but their three thousand year old names cannot be erased thus the names of Judea and Samaria better define these lands than any invented name to conceal their natural histories. These same lands were liberated in the Six Day War as well as conquering the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula. Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt who refused to resume their claims to Gaza returning these lands to Israeli rule. Likewise, Israel even offered to return the lands originally lost in 1948 and liberated in 1967 to Jordan as under Jordanian rule the Jews were expelled from their lands under threat of extermination and fled into Israel in the weeks after the Jordanians expelled them from their land and thus the area had become mostly Arab and many Jordanians but Jordan refused the land and the Arabs remain on the land as the Jews were not the Jordanians and did not expel the conquered people but permitted them remain and work their lands. These Arabs eventually were granted independent autonomy within Israel and thus led to the Palestinian Arabs demand for a homeland invented in 1964 and initially defined as Israel not claiming the West Bank then owned by Jordan but as soon as Jordan lost these lands then the entirety of the lands between the River and the Sea became their rallying demand, replace Israel, not share land with the Jews as the goal was to exterminate the Jews which was expounded by the Mufti of Jerusalem and has been the intent of the Palestinian Arab cause ever since. They do not want two lands for two people, they want simply one people and the Jews slaughtered.

 

The Huqoq synagogue mosaics from the 5th century
depict this war elephant which surprised archeologists
as there has been no reference in Biblical texts of elephants

 

Not every mosaic was of biblical events as told in the Jewish bible but then not every Renaissance painting depicted the Trinity, the Holy Mother or other New Testament stories. The war elephant was still somewhat of a surprise as there was no mention of their being utilized in Israel or Judea by the Greeks or Romans as such forces would have had the same difficulties as had cavalry and chariots in the Judean Hills in eastern Israel. Still such a mosaic was unearthed in the excavations at the site and simply adds to the wonder and gives new insights into the lives of the Israelite Jews who remained in their natural lands after the Roman Dispersals which were inflicted as punishment for their temporarily successful revolts against Roman rule. The First Jewish–Roman War took place starting with Judean Israelites gaining independence in 66 CE only to be overwhelmed by Two Roman Legions in 73 CE. The siege of Masada was the most memorable of the final events of this First Jewish–Roman War. The Bar Kokhba revolt removed Roman rule with successes beginning in 132 CE only to be put down by some research claimed was six Roman Legions with a similar number of supporting troops in 134 to 136 CE. This revolt once put down added one last horror as a lesson for the rebellious Jews with the torturous execution of the Ten Rabbis where some claim all ten at one spectacle while others claim two had been executed earlier but the Talmud tells of the martyrdom of the Ten Rabbis: Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha ha-Kohen Gadol who were reportedly executed earlier with the following eight who were Rabbi Akiva; Rabbi Hanania ben Teradion; the interpreter of the Sanhedrin, Rabbi Huspith; Rabbi Eliezer ben Shamua; Rabbi Hanina ben Hakinai; Rabbi Jeshbab the Scribe; Rabbi Yehuda ben Dama; and Rabbi Yehuda ben Baba comprising the Ten Rabbis martyred in total.

 

Ancient First Century Mosaic Depicting
Menorah in the Center Flanked by
Tree of Life and a Shofar with
Ancient Hebrew Letters at Bottom

 

Such Mosaics are found throughout the areas of ancient Israel often depicting Roman and Greek reliefs as these themes represented the time and place realistically. Other mosaics depicted Jewish religious and historical themes and some mosaics unearthed have been dated back to antiquity. These oldest mosaics universally depict scenes from Torah (Five Books of Moses) as well as other Biblical themes from the Jewish Bible (Old Testament) even including reliefs showing Noah’s ark receiving the animals with herds and numerous animals depicted throughout the scene, the Crossing of the Red Sea, Jonah being swallowed by a large fish (it was historically just a large fish as the depiction of whale was not relevant to early life at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea), the giving of the Ten Commandments by Moses at Mount Sinai, the Ten Plagues and other stories. The quality of the stones and resolutions varied often depicting the wealth of an individual or community as the use of smaller stones (the ancient form of pixels) was a sign of wealth and additional time and efforts invested in locating, cutting and sorting the stones before use and the care with which the stones were placed. These mosaics told much about the wealthier individuals and community efforts but surprisingly mosaics have been found in modest dwellings of various qualities, which were more often than not rendered by the owner of the dwelling done as a statement of their pride and anyway one did need a floor so why not take the time and tile it artistically. The one thing was that once you laid your floor it would likely remain with the building marking where the building had existed before the walls collapsed. Floors, as any archeologist will tell you, are the one remain of a dwelling which often is all they have to go by as nothing else remains but the floor with time and once covered that floor will remain to be discovered and dated by the level in which it is discovered, the deeper the earlier the floor and the represented dwelling. Indigenous peoples floors either was the bedrock or rested upon that bedrock.

 

The telling thing is as Jewish themed and Judean and Israelite themes have been found throughout all of history in these lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea; Christian themes arrived in the middle Roman times while the first mosaics depicting Arab themes were not found until after 700 CE. The arrival of such themes dates to when these cultures appeared just as mosaics depicting Greek scenes predated Roman and Persian predated Greek and Jewish themes predated everyone. The earliest mosaics were universally of Judaic origin with an influence from Egypt and an occasional Minoan influence. Hittite artwork as well as Assyrian and earliest Greek including Philistine artwork had a lesser if any effect on Israelite artwork as these other civilizations sculpted as they were idolaters so stone carving was a prized skill while the Israelites were forbidden from worshiping other gods than Hashem and idolatry was a most serious offense against Torah and Hashem thus stone carvings were less desirable while scenes of Biblical history and nature scenes were appreciated as artwork and were thus not in any manner seen as being idolatrous thus against Torah. This likely explains the Israelite preference for mosaics over other art forms such as sculpted stone.

 

Artwork from Antiquity top Minoan Bull Scene
Diddle Depicts Hittite War Chariot and Infantry
Judean Lion from comparable Israelite Period

 

The final piece of the puzzle can be easily shown by simply looking at a few maps. This first map is of the original twelve tribes of Israel, the lands the Israelites were instructed to conquer and carve out their homelands. These lands were not completely conquered until King David and were superseded with additional conquest by Kings David and Solomon but the additional lands were soon lost and the original Twelve Tribes were to be what was historically considered Israel existed from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Negev-Sinai (Egypt) border to the Litany River in the north.

 

Here is a map depicting the conquest of the Holy Lands by Joshua as recounted in the books of Joshua and Kings:

 

 

This map depicts the original Twelve Tribes of Israel as defined in the Jewish Bible, the Old Testament both in Torah (Five Books of Moses) and later in Kings and Judges.

 

 

This map depicts the areas conquered by Kings David and Solomon and from which comes the reference to a Greater Israel which defines such as reaching from the Euphrates River to the Nile River. The Jewish State in any of its manifestations never reached the Nile River not even after the Six Day War and not after David and Solomon. The only time the Israelites had anything to do referencing the Nile River was the story of baby Moses and then the Ten Plagues where the plagues refer to the Nile River in numerous plagues of the Ten Plagues from Hashem upon Egypt because Pharaoh had a hard heart and believed not in the supreme powers of Hashem. The use of a Greater Israel as proof that the Jews desire to conquer the world is further nonsense as we would be very content to have exactly what was promised us in the results of the 1920 San Remo Conference plus the Golan Heights as they are required for having a secure border.

 

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

 

Below is the promised borders for the State of Israel as determined by San Remo Conference of April 1920, almost twenty years before the holocaust putting to lie that false claim that Israel was established as compensation for the Holocaust as the idea of a Jewish homelands stretches back in modern eras to around 1850 leading to the formation of the Zionist Conference. After World War I as the empires of the Middle East and North Africa along with the Empires within eastern Europe were being broken into smaller and independent States was where Israel was denoted to be formed under the British supervision and presumably with British assistance, hindrance was the only assistance the Jews received from the British once the Mandate plans were placed into effect. Below is the Jewish desire for our homelands including the Golan Heights, Galilee, Negev, Judea, Samaria and we will magnanimously leave Gaza to Hamas and any other Arab Palestinian desiring a homeland in Gaza which was released to Arab Palestinian control where they elected Hamas, and Gaza was the test case for any state of Palestine living beside Israel in peace. We now have our answer from their actions and their words. Their only desire is our death and destruction and we will depart no additional lands to a people so ardently desiring our destruction and wholesale genocidal murders. This is what should be being discussed, how best to care for the interests of those claiming nationality other than Israeli, especially those known to be members of any of the Palestinian Authority (PA) or other terrorist groups sword to the destruction of the Jewish State once the world fulfills their promise to the Jewish People. Here is the map with final comments below.

 

Definitive Map of Israel

 

 

The Arabs remaining in Judea and Samaria would necessarily be broken down into five main groups with residing sub-groups under the following criteria:

 

The first group would be known terrorists with blood on their hands whether they be incarcerated or not in restrictive containment facilities. These would be expelled and where they would go is not an Israeli problem. If they have any worthy properties they would receive compensation provided they never return and they should have made clear that any return within Israeli borders will lead to immediate rescinding of any probation and immediate incarceration.

 

The second group would be known ranking officers in the PA and members of any terrorist entity whether aligned with Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Fatah, PLO, Islamic State, al-Qaeda or any other known terror outfit would be permitted to transfer to Gaza or be expelled as those above with similar compensation for both groups.

 

The third group would be any Arab desiring to reside in Gaza or other nation be it Arab or other as long as that nation would be accepting of these refugees. They would be given transportation and be compensated fairly for any properties they would be unable to take with them.

 

The fourth group would be Arabs desiring to remain living even under Israeli rule but not work towards receiving citizenship at this time. At six months and one year they would be offered the opportunity to leave and seek a new life elsewhere including Gaza. If such decided to depart, they would receive compensation for what they leave behind.

 

The final group is those desiring Israeli citizenship. These individuals would receive free citizenship instructions and be required to pass a test centered on Biblical Israel and the complete history of the Jewish People in both European and Islamic rulers. Further, upon proving to have tested for acceptable level of deep understanding of Israeli and Jewish history, the fact that Jews prize Jerusalem above all else and understand Israeli laws, they would then be permitted to proceed to the rest of their path to citizenship. Such path could take as little as five years and as long as ten years. Failure to attain citizenship would place them in the fourth group and would not require their expulsion.

 

Finally, any act of terror would result in the perpetrator and all family members who were knowledgeable about the act of terror beforehand would be expelled treated as if they were in the first group. If implementing such a plan resulted in some form of migration which shocks the wider world, or simply defined as Israel even defining such a plan, we would like to remind everybody about the migrations of Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists who were massively forced either into Pakistan or leaving Pakistan and these people received little if any support from governments or humanitarian organizations by and large. There was the forced repatriation of Tibetan Buddhists including monks from Tibet to the far corners of China and the forced repopulation of Tibet with poor Chinese farmers without anybody even risking a papercut in order to protest that injustice. There was not even the slightest gasp as hundreds of thousands of Jews forced from their lands by their Arab leaders without even allowed but to carry a single small suitcase. Little was uttered when it was found that Jewish survivors of the death and work camps returned home they were thrust out of their own home city as all their belongings, stores, homes had long since given to others presumably in need making any surviving Jews doubly unwanted as the British were doing almost everything possible preventing Jews from returning to their ancestral homelands. Every day since 1920 and the recognition of a homeland for the Jewish People are established in their historical and documentable homelands the world has been evidently biased and could be said to have actively opposed any form of Jewish State. Fortunately for the Jewish People and people everywhere we have taken possession of our natural neighbors who have thus far proven to be just as approving and so very sweet and loveable as had been our ancient neighbors. The one closing idea all should take from all in this article, we are here and here we will remain as long as we have the breath with which to operate our daily lives. This will in turn assist all as we try to use our land and our gifts of the mind and provide miracles every day, even those that would normally be fatal as we bounce back as if we were professionals, which we are at so many things.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

How Did This Mess Get Started

 

Looking at the world around us one has to wonder how it all got into the horrible state of affairs. There had to be a lynchpin which started the unraveling, an actual starting point which we can trace everything back to and find the culprit who made that initial error, mistake in judgement. But in order to do that one has to decide which of the unravellings we should start with as there are so many to choose from. There is Putin, or as we like to call him, Vlad the Invader (our original reference recently stolen by a Fox News commentator the erudite pontificator), who has shaken up parts of Central Asia and Eurasia and is threatening Eastern Europe, or at least there are some former nations swallowed by the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union; there is China who apart from building a blue water navy with which not only to challenge the United States Naval hegemony of the seas, a privilege formerly owned by the British, but are also building Islands in order to cement her claims to the vast South China Sea and thus control or divert much of the sea lane traffic from the Indian Ocean in and out of the Pacific Ocean; there is the financial problems in Europe threatening the stability of the European Union and the adoption of one currency with the Euro; and the final and greatest roiling and boiling cauldron, the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). There may be other problems out there but these are the most prevalent and easily identifiable.

 

Let us start with the easiest of these, the financial meltdown in Europe. This problem was a situation just waiting to happen as soon as the most disparate economic nations decided to adopt the same currency unit without permitting a central planning committee to set their financial and economic planning and other such decisions in-line with each other. There was absolutely no way the less productive economies of such nations as Spain, Greece and Portugal had any hope of paralleling the productivity, GDP and economic output of a France, Britain or Germany. Additionally, adding the former Warsaw Pact nations probably sparked an even more divergent economic growth rate as nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and others plus the reuniting of Germany allowing the already dominant economy to also feast on the same rebuilding and economic recovery from the less efficient economic model of central planning to a market driven economy which granted these nations a greatly exaggerated GDP during their basically playing catch-up with the rest of Europe and becoming modernized economies. Thus the Euro was a pipe dream which probably had hoped that through the singular monetary unit, the Euro, would lead to a centralizing of economic planning being turned over to the European Union to plan these different economies as if they were a single unit. That was highly unlikely as that would have spelled the demise of the nation states and rendered them merely states in the continental nation of the European Union. What the European Union bureaucrats were seeking was a situation very similar to a former economic model using the Union name, the Soviet Union, replacing Moscow with Brussels and otherwise retaining that centralized, top down dictatorial form of economic planning. The hope of having all the European nations of the European Union surrender that much power to centralized governance was an impossible and thankfully unthinkable centralization of power. This became first indicated when Great Britain took a vote of the people on whether or not to adopt the Euro and the people were clearly heard to say not without losing to an invading army first, otherwise reported as a resounding no and Great Britain retained the Pound but with time would accept the Euro but it would change in buying power as it performed against the Pound. The British model of accepting the Euro while retaining their own currency would very likely have been a far better solution considering what we know now. By allowing each nation their own currency while having them also accept the Euro as legal tender the individual national economic planning would have reflected in their national currency which could slide against the Euro while still having an exchange rate at which the Euro would have an established buying power. This way Greece could remain Greece and Germany could march to their own economic tune and both nations would accept the Euro but their economy would be reflected in the exchange rate which would be set in Brussels. That would provide each nation with its economic freedoms while granting the central control freaks in Brussels their power in determining the value of the Euro to the individual currencies.

 

Next, let us take Vlad the Invader and resurgent Russia. Here the answer is simple; things are as they were inevitably meant to be. Russia has always had that appetite to chew on and swallow the smaller nations around her and some more so than others. Georgia and the Ukraine both fall into the more so than others category. Eventually there would have come along a strong and imperialist charismatic leader, instead we got a shirtless man experiencing a middle age crisis and owning a Napoléon complex likely due to the shared attribute of being of diminutive size also known as vertically challenged. Thus we have Vlad the Invader slowly but inexorably making advances which could have been potentially limited in the Ukraine to the Crimea but there would have been no stopping Putin’s appetite for conquest short of tempting his readiness for war by admitting the Ukraine and any other Warsaw Pact nation into NATO as well as the European Union. Of course this would have had the effect of making any of these moves by Russia on its neighboring countries, or as Vlad sees these nations being simply escaped provinces to be reclaimed, and thus pushing NATO or the weaker European Union into backing their mutual self-defense claims of, to quote an oldie but still a goodie, their all for one and one for all defensive agreements contained in both the European Union and especially NATO. So this can be traced back to Putin’s training as a KGB agent merging with his Napoléon complex plus his nationalistic and simplistic view that Russia was dealt a cruel and unfair blow with the, as he sees it, calamitous and most disastrous and lamentable event of the twentieth century and that he was the individual given the extraordinary and heaven ordained duty to rebuild Russia to her full and former glory. As far as others fearing Russia, especially in that neighborhood, Vlad the Invader has succeeded in spades.

 

China is another historical hegemonic power in the Pacific Ocean or at least the western shores of the Pacific Ocean and at times the Indian Ocean as well. One has to remember that China used to have regular wars with the other great power of Asia, India, back when simple people power was a determining factor and has only in recent history run astride of hard times. Historically China has either been the regional power controlling all she could survey or China was broken into separate mini-states which often warred with each other thus diminishing their powers. The only other situation was when China was overrun or controlled by outside influences and she was in a slow but constant state of regaining her independence and eventually sovereignty over her invaders. China has been and remains the slow and patient survivor and eventual victor which one need but wait to see her resurgence. China has a long history of simply refusing to be cowed or defeated, merely witnessing a temporary inconvenience. China has relied on the winds of change always knowing that no matter what the calamity, be it outside invaders or internal misrule, everything changes and change is the one criteria which can be relied upon to render all things dust. China realizes that there are time when you are riding the crest of the wave and time when the wave has crashed down upon you and whichever end of that wave you find yourself, you will eventually find yourself at the other extreme so enjoy the best of times and remember them as a goal in the worst of times. For China time has been her greatest ally and greatest enemy but she also knows that time is her greatest weapon. China will rise and fall just as the ocean tides, just on a much longer cycle.

 

Then there is the Extended Middle East which incorporates the traditional Middle East and North Africa and often called MENA. We like Extended Middle East better. This area has always been a cauldron of swirling fates. One need do no more than read the Bible, the Old Testament, to realize the great swings of fate for all who resided in this area. There have been great empires which rose from next to nothing to greatness only to be blown away like the desert sands. Some of these empires blew away so completely that one is unable to find their descendants as it is as if they were snatched from the Earth itself. Probably the strangest of stories is the people of the Bible who only recently returned to their historic, ancient lands, Israel. However, this return has become the central story and burdened with the weight of responsibility for all the unrest anywhere on the globe and particularly throughout the Extended Middle East. Despite there being no actual or traceable root to the great turmoil destroying and potentially redrawing the map of the Extended Middle East to Israel, that has not prevented many from historians to political pundits to media reporters and even to governments and their agencies such as the United States Department of State from laying all of the blame at Israel’s doorstep.

 

The turmoil in the central Middle East is nothing new as it is the control point for all trade historically between three massive and divergent continents; Africa, Europe and Asia. This was the locations of a city-state which had no viable crop or natural resource and was hidden away behind a narrow splitting in a rock face and the city was entirely built into another rock face which had an outer clearing protected by tall rock walls and survived purely on trade and taking a percentage of all transactions. The city was Petra which finally and literally fell out of use after an earthquake made its further use untenable. But Petra was an indication on exactly how important the areas of the Middle East were for trade between the three continents. Tracing history in this area you find such names as Egypt, Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Philistines, Minoans, Canaanites who worshipped such gods as Moloch and Baal, Persians and entering the more modern age, the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and finally the French and British. Where to trace back the turmoil and near constant warfare of the Middle East, perhaps to Cain and Abel and the earliest recorded use of a rock as a tool of war. That might be a stretch but the earliest conflict likely predates writing by a sufficient amount of time that it also ceased being a part of the oral history and never got recorded just as the actual traceable location of Atlantis was never given (Pillars of Hercules and out in the great waters, like that helps).

 

But the recent difficulties and intermitted warfare both between nations and internal to nations is traceable to a particular intentional act meant to create just such internal strife and potentially these external wars in order to prevent the area from ever again uniting into the one promise the French and British had given to particular Arab tribal, nations and even clan leaders to persuade them into assisting them in their efforts against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, the reestablishment of the Caliphate, meaning the areas of the Ottoman Empire intact as a singular entity, and leaving these leaders as the ruling council and the ones who would choose the new Caliph. Instead, this promise was not only shattered but the lines drawn after World War I in both the Middle East and rest of the Ottoman Empire as well as the Austria Hungarian Empire in order to prevent there ever being a reunification thus preventing these powers from becoming preeminent and capable of starting the next conflagration. The division of the Austro-Hungarian Empire mostly achieved its purpose and the next war where it did arise out of Germany which was generally a previous part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had only in the late 1800s gained its unified formation independent of outside control but not necessarily free of their influences thus leading to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi efforts and Word War II. But in the Middle East we had the Sykes–Picot Agreement which made completely arbitrary borders without, or possibly intentionally ignoring, tribal lines and clans or any of the natural political alignments often splitting lands as in the case of the Kurds; who also were promised their own nation as were the Jews in separate agreements but instead the Kurdish lands were divided and became parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran; making each nation internally unstable. Iraq is probably the most well-known of these divisions which in the case of Iraq divided the lands such that the Shiites were predominant in the south, the Sunni predominant in the center and the Kurds predominant in the north. This forced each of these imaginary nations to eventually find that the only way to restore and keep the peace was the rise of a militant strongman willing to impose peace by force of arms such as was the case under Saddam Hussein. Say whatever you like about Saddam Hussein such as he was a butcher, a murderer and a hard tyrant with an iron fist, he kept Iraq from devolving into internecine warfare such as we are witnessing today.

 

The rest of the turmoil which we are suffering through today may have had a recent triggering event, namely the Cairo speech by United States President Barack Obama and his foreign policy which was centered around his campaign promise to end the wars and bring the troops home. Unfortunately for the majority of the people turned victims in the Extended Middle East, President Obama pulled all of the United States military personnel from both Afghanistan and Iraq prematurely as neither nation had developed the experience of the new governance nor the military ability to resist disorder while, especially in Iraq, the suppressed majority had some real and serious issues and grudges to settle with the minority who had ruled the nation through oppressions and they were out to get that revenge which tore the nation apart making it ripe for a force such as ISIS to tear into its midsection and even gain some support from the people there. The Sykes–Picot Agreement was designed to make the Middle East in particular and the Extender Middle East by division of who controlled what area which became independent nations with the arbitrary borders established by their respective colonizers, left the entirety of these areas as a tinder box simply waiting for that spark and it was likely the Cairo Speech and the enthusiastic attempt after the Tunisian vegetable cart vendor’s self-immolation and subsequent uprising in Tunisia being used as the trigger for President Obama’s attempt to redraw the Middle East around granting the Muslim Brotherhood preeminence over the region sharing control with Iran as the hegemon in the east and the Muslim Brotherhood in the west. Even had this plan succeeded it would have only set up a different state of conflict but this time with two very strong entities making for an even potentially greater struggle. The war right now is contained for the most part to the Greater Syrian conflict which includes ISIS and Iraq and the Iranian intervention, and the Egyptian struggle internally for the most part with the Egyptian military wresting control from the Muslim Brotherhood. The trouble in Libya is tribal and most likely to remain in Libya unless ISIS gets a firm and significant foothold and then there will be trouble as ISIS then moves to take all of Libya and begins their spread into Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria, but especially Egypt. History will likely eventually lay the blame for the current explosion of unrest and open warfare in the Extended Middle East to the United States meddling and doing so by proxy removing their personnel, especially military, from the Extended Middle East and stirring the pot so to speak and hoping for the best. They failed, or should we simply say the truth, President Obama really had no idea what he was attempting and misunderstood the players and nearly everything in the Middle East and almost every other foreign affairs which he has chosen action or inaction. Incompetence beyond measure being wielded by a self-indulgent, uninformed, narcissist with delusions of competence and wisdom that produces a boondoggle that only complete ineptitude, ignorance and delusions of grandeur could produce. I am sure there are other adjectives which would apply but for the sake of brevity shall we coin a new phrase and call such complete ineffectiveness which produces great conflagrations as doing an Obamy.

 

Beyond the Cusp