Reflective Spurs Reactive

 

Reflective and reactive sound similar enough and both are applied to an action that many people do not bother to differentiate between the two, they just dismiss them as two ways of getting to a similar result. Part of the reason behind this is our Western society has become so results oriented that the method of reaching results have been so compromised that we seem to believe that the means really do not matter. Such thinking is sloppy and undisciplined and the reason that many see no difference between reflective and reactive if they were to produce similar results. This reasoning, or lack thereof, is what leads many to measure the terror war now being waged against Israel by the numbers of dead largely and the numbers injured to a lesser extent. This is where the fact that more Arabs have died and less Jews that Israel must be doing something immoral as results are all that matter.

 

So let us take a moment and break down the particulars and discover the real importance of the differences between reflective and reactive. The dictionary defines reflective as “given to, marked by, or concerned with meditation or deliberation.” The dictionary defines reactive as “pertaining to or characterized by reaction, pertaining to or characterized by reactance.” Simplifying this down an act which is reflective is premeditated, planned and intentionally performed and reactive is unplanned reflex performed due to an external threat, stimulus, peril, provocation or incitement. In any situation where there are two related actions in a situation, one reflective and the other reactive, there is only one order the two acts can occur. The reflective act must be the initiating act and the reactive must be the following action as a response to the reflective or intentional action. These are the exact order which has been occurring in Israel with the terrorist actions being the reflective act, as they are premeditated and planned to assault Israelis, preferably Jews. Despite the target being general in nature, the action is still planned even if not to the exact target and the reaction to these assaults where somebody is attempting to stab innocent civilians and is stabbing one victim and then attempts to attack another and it is evident they will continue doing so until prevented, spurs the reactive action which often is a police or military individual or an armed civilian and often thus results in the death of the terrorist. Should the Arab terrorists, instead of deciding one morning to go and stab as many Israelis as possible until prevented from continuing, decide that there is more to living than there is to rewards in some paradise gained through murdering others; the entire pyramid would collapse from the bottom up. Unfortunately, these youths get themselves so worked-up and convinced they will receive rewards in heaven if they die while committing murderous terror actions such that the pleasures, often sexual in nature, will increase with the number of Jews or Israelis that they murder, with partial credit for maimed and injured; they have a double inspiration, one to murder Israeli civilians or soldiers (yes some attack armed soldiers or law enforcement officers as they just want to go straight to Islamic heaven) and continue attacking until martyred, killed to end their stabbings spree.

 

Some of the reactive actions have, as well as the terrorist act, have been caught on surveillance cameras. Part of the reason that more terrorists have been killed than Jews have been murdered is because some of these untrained terrorists attack people causing grievous wounds but survivable and the terrorist refuses to stop even if shot and injured. They continue to try and attack and attack until stopped permanently; they really live little other choice. Below is a video from October 13, 2015, where the terrorist makes his initial strike driving his car across the oncoming lane striking pedestrians until hitting a bus stop. The terrorist then exits the car with a hatchet or hand axe and starts smashing those he had just run over and then continues on to attack another victim when an armed civilian arrives and shoots the terrorist who continues to attempt to attack as he gets shot a second and third time. He still attempted to get up and after being shot again and eventually appears to be trying to return to his car either to escape or grab yet another weapon. He eventually died from his wounds if memory serves us well. He was driving his company provided vehicle and was presumably on the clock working and had a well-paying job within Israel inside the Green Line. One would have thought he might be the poster for success for coexistence between Jews and Arabs working together for the same company with equal standing, but apparently in some instances such opportunity is no contest against the constant feed of instigation by the Palestinian Authority on Arab radio and television broadcast from the autonomous Arab areas in Judea and Samaria and on social media. The instigation is a tried and useful method as the media provocations used are the exact same as was used by the Arab authorities in the late 1920s and through the 1930s by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem both from Arab areas and from strong radio facilities in the Balkans aimed into the Arab world with the assistance of the Nazis with whom the Mufti spent World War II. We discussed this at some greater depth in our article The New Anti-Semitism Palestinianism.

 

 

 

 

The difference between reflective actions as the instigator of reactive acts has to be used as a filter upon reading or hearing the news, editorials, commentary or anything regarding the Arab Israeli Conflict; and that is what this is as the entirety of the Arab world has been working to destroy Israel since the very morning Israel was founded in May 15, 1948 when seven Arab national armies invaded Israel intent on a genocidal conflict which they believed they would win in a matter of days if not hours. The war dragged on for close to two years before a final armistice was hammered out. The end result was Israel had lost control over parts of Judea and Samaria along with Eastern Jerusalem to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt. More wars followed and in each case Israel not only survived but took back the remainder of Judea and Samaria and the remainder of Jerusalem as well as Gaza. Israel also took the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Israel made peace with Egypt and returned the Sinai but Egypt refused any offer to reoccupy Gaza allowing it to be returned to Israel as it was within the original boundaries. When peace was made with Jordan, Jordan relented the rest of Judea and Samaria as well as Jerusalem ending Jordanian occupation of Israeli lands thus ending the occupation of the lands which were a part of Israel on the morning before the combined armies attacked. The Mufti of Jerusalem encouraged the Arabs to leave Israel promising them within a few weeks they would return to a vanquished Zionist entity and share the spoils with the conquering heroes but something did not quite turn out as the Mufti had promised. The Jews lost the war as far as they lost territory, Gaza and East Jerusalem along with parts of Judea and Samaria but had survived and in a celebration of that survival they referred to the victory inaccurately as the Israeli War for Independence. The spirit of the latest Intifada, terror war, instigations or whatever one wishes to call these assaults on civilians by terrorists seeking dead Jews and their own martyrdom can be reflected in the images below which tell the tale more adequately than words could ever do.

 

 

Arab terrorist posing with his knife promising
to threaten and take Jewish lives, and they
claim Jews rather than simply Israelis

 

 

Picture uploaded within two hours after knifing terror attack in Tel Aviv was reported by the media celebrating the stabbing of a dozen Israelis

 

 

Har Nof Synagogue Terror Attack which Murdered Four Rabbis and injured half a dozen worshipers and murdered a Druze policeman who attempted to save the other worshipers. This was the cartoon which festooned the Facebook pages and homepage of the Palestinian Authority as well as the Fatah Party homepage, both organizations headed by Mahmoud Abbas who has editorial approval for all posts presumably.

 

 

Knife Wielding Rafah cleric calls upon
Arab Palestinians to stab Jews murdering
them wherever they find them and seek
them and stab them repeatedly

 

 

Israel had independence at midnight and one second on May 15, 1948 and at that point, before the Arab armies invaded at dawn, the Israeli border included all of the Negev including Gaza and the Blue Line as the border with Lebanon is denoted and the Jordan River. The lands that the Arabs claim they lost to the Israelis because of the patrician as described in the General Assembly Resolution 181 which was the United Nations suggestion of a solution of granting the Arabs a second home sharing the lands which were promised the Zionists for them homeland after Jordan was cut from their original lands. When the Arab League refused that offer as they demanded what they are still demanding, including Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezballah, Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Iran, Saudi Arabia and many more nations, terrorist groups, NGOs, European politicians, American and Canadian Politicians, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (or at least by his actions he favors such) and who knows who else or cares as there are sufficient known forces that any others really make little difference. The thing necessary to remember is that the Arab Armies attacking Israel that morning was a reflective action as any unprovoked attack of those proportions can be nothing else as accidentally attacking with multiple divisions of militaries from numerous nations’ rules accidental encroachment of Israel’s borders out of the equation and certifies such as a planned execution which was further backed by the threats made by the Mufti of Jerusalem on Jordanian and Egyptian radio and Arab radio within Israel played his threats and promises to those Arabs who would vacate Israel so the conquering armies could simply slaughter everybody they found. This proved true when after stopping a bus of doctors and nurses the Arab forces executed them on the spot as impure infidels not worthy of life. The reality is the Arab Palestinians led by Mahmoud Abbas have the blessings of numerous other national Arab leaders, Iran and nearly uncountable Arabs around the world which is why the cartoon below is so accurate.

 

 

David and Goliath as in the Reality of the New Middle East
Same as the Old Middle East Israel is Still the Small Shepherd Boy
Israel is Still David with a Stronger Sling

 

 

Yes, we know Israel has won every war and has nuclear weapons just as Iran will have produced by the time President Obama leaves office and a superior number should another American President be chosen by sloganeering and pretending the world has not been affected by the absence of American leadership and continue the policies of ignoring the world and going back to sleep as was the standard by the United States only given up due to the Cold War. What the American people choose will have either a willing to take back their mantle of the lone super power or soon be destroyed by Iranian nuclear weapons used in a far more effective manner if you only have four or five EMP producing weapons with only an unsteady delivery system. The main wish is that the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) do not explode into an even greater conflagration as such a revolt against the governments throughout the MENA nations and potentially result in an even greater flow of refugees fleeing broken nations with no effective governance and lawlessness beyond measure. The problem is such uncontrolled waves of immigration could just as easily be bringing terror operatives and instigators along with the refugees as Europe is realizing to their horror. One can only pray that there are sufficient numbers of refugees who are willing to turn in any terror or organizers from terror groups such that the lack of screening does not cause many people’s worst fears, both within Europe and others outside who would hate to see all the art and other great works and historic buildings destroyed simply because they insult Islam according to some crazed Imam such as the one with the knife pictured above.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Islamic Reformer in Egypt

 

The video below is what will hopefully be the opening salvo placing Islam on a path to having its own reformation. The timing is pretty much right on schedule as Judaism had its expansionism where it took lands by force and eventually ended that stage of its history after which it only fought to retain the small area of lands which it occupied, a struggle the Jewish state is facing today as the forces of the world continuously attempt to slice and carve Israel up leaving an ever smaller piece of land for the Jewish state to continue existing. The first story telling of Avram’s belief that idolatry was an empty concept and likely led Avram on his quest for the knowledge which eventually led him to finding G0d tells of Avram going into the showroom where his family sold idols to make a living. Avram smashed all of the idols in the shop except the largest idol which he placed the large hammer he had used to smite the rest of the idols. When his father entered the shop he was beside himself and furious demanding that Avram explain what had happened. Avram calmly explained that when he arrived that morning he caught the largest idol, the one holding the hammer, smashing and destroying the other idols. His father rejected the ridiculous story yelling that stone idols were incapable of such acts which Avram simply and calmly inquired why his father and family were selling idols under a false claim. This episode was the beginning of the travels and tribulations for Avram as most certainly he was invited to vacate his family home by his irate and distressed father. The amount of anger Avram probably received from his father and the rest of the family likely drove him to the farthest lands he could find where he felt safe from their reach and where Avram’s life was drastically changed and he started the seeds of what would become Judaism. During this struggle to find truth Avram found G0d and upon G0d instructing him, he changed his name to Avraham.

 

Some five or six hundred years later, after the Jews had been enslaved in Egypt, their numbers had increased to a point that the Pharaoh saw the Jews within Egypt as a potential threat and so placed them in bondage such that they would not revolt and join with one of Egypt’s enemies thus toppling his rule. After four hundred years we are told that the Jews were led to freedom by Moses who gave the Jewish people the Torah gaining Moses the title of the law-giver. Moses also led the Jewish people back to their ancestral homelands, the lands which presumably were granted to Avraham by G0d. The path to freedom and liberty and the forming of a people who did not have their minds enslaved and fearful, as were the minds of the vast majority of the Jewish people whom Moses led out of Egypt; Moses had to turn the nation of Israel around and journey back into the dessert. Moses had initially led the Jews directly to what was to be their homeland but the test of the spies who told of a formidable peoples who had cities with insurmountable walls and themselves were giants with great strength which was given by all but two of the twelve men sent to reconnoiter the land and the people’s panic caused Moses to lead them back into the desert until a new generation had been raised not under the oppression of slavery and with the mindset of a freed people. This, we are told, took forty years of wandering through the desert. To make this telling short we will simply list that Moses did not enter the Promised Land but turned the leadership over to Joshua who led the Jewish people on their initial efforts to conquer what would become their homelands. Initially the Jewish people broke into their individual tribes with each being autonomous. It was not until King David melded the twelve tribes into one nation and King Solomon built the L0rd’s Temple, the First Temple, in Yerushalayim. This was the pinnacle of Jewish expansion and conquest of lands and the rest of time until the Romans dispersed the Jews to the far corners of the Roman Empire in order to make them cease to exist and to perish from the pages of history that the Jewish People lived in the lands straddling the Jordan River and across the plains of the Galilee, much of these lands are where Israel exists today. The Israelites took approximately fifteen hundred to seventeen hundred years from their founding as a people and a religion by Avraham to their conquest and settling their lands centered on Yerushalayim and the Temple. This was the end of military expansionism and the adopting a kinder and gentler Jewish People, the same area approximately that the Jews are attempting to rebuild their homelands which had sat desolate for almost two millennia. Without going through the periods of conquest, rebirth and reconquering their area across Europe but instead look to when Christianity also became nonviolent and no longer expansionary, one sees that this happened for the Christian faith approximately fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred years. Checking the Islamic calendar one would notice that Islam is approaching the time-period where both Judaism and Christendom went through their transformations and became less violent and mostly no longer expansionist. So, perhaps this video has arrived and this will be the first salvo for the transformation of Islam. Here is the video and more continues below, but first the video requires watching if you have not yet come to see it already as it did appear on the social media circuit.

 

 

 

 

Time will tell if Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the latest general turned leader of Egypt will turn out to be the man who began the reformation of Islam or at least the reformation of Islamic beliefs and thought in Egypt, the most populous Islamic nation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the location of the oldest and most prestigious Islamic university in the world, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. This was the University where el-Sisi gave his landmark speech. When I first viewed this speech made by el-Sisi I immediately feared for his life. There exists probably nobody in a more advantageous position to foment this transformation. The previous time such a reformation in Islam might have been possible was just after World War I with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the secularly based Turkey which he had placed what he considered an unimpeachable guardian of the works of his lifetime when he placed the enforcement of the secular state he had set for Turkey. Much of his work is being undermined and undone by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been slowly and inexorably sliding Turkey away from the standards put in place by Mustafa Ataturk a century ago and has already replaced the top generals thus coopting the military from interfering with his designs on returning Turkey to the glory of its time as the head of the Caliphate. Now we have General el-Sisi aiming to turn Egypt into a modern and functional Islamic state. One has to give Abdel Fattah el-Sisi credit for giving this address before the faculty and administrators of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the recognized premier and most prestigious Islamic institution for higher learning in the world. If Abdel el-Sisi can persuade the Imams who teach at Al-Azhar University to teach a reformed and flexible version of Islam more centered on the original teachings of Muhammad during the time in Mecca where he initially wrote the Quran and find some evidence or writing which defines Islam in the manners of Turkey then Abdel el-Sisi may turn out to be the man who started the reformation of Islam. What might the signs be that Abdel el-Sisi is making progress and what form and nature would a reformed Islam take?

 

We can all probably agree that the first accomplishment that Egyptian President and Islamic reformer must achieve will be remaining alive. The fate that awaited former Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar El Sadat after signing a peace treaty with Israel was that he was assassinated while watching a military revue when a soldier broke ranks and charged the reviewing stands and shot President Sadat at almost blank range. Anwar Sadat, like Abdel el-Sisi, was a general in the military before becoming President for Life and that relationship with the military was short-lived as it was from amongst the ranks of the military that the Muslim Brotherhood was able to reach out and assassinate him. So remaining alive and the symbol of a reformed Islam which is being practiced within Egypt, the largest Islamic state in the world, as well as taught at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the premier institute of higher learning and scholarly discourse in all of Islam, will produce a base for Islamic reformation in which Islam is transformed into a religion which is finally capable of living in a world in which other religions are deemed to be permitted and Islam will finally be able to be practiced side-by-side with the other faiths and will no longer pose a threat challenging all other faiths demanding to be the sole religion of the world. Making such a transition will take time, hopefully not too much time, but time just the same as such a transformation cannot be expected to take place overnight, or even in a single year.

 

The signs that such changes are being effectively spread throughout Islam and there will be more than sufficient pushback making the task of spreading the reformed version of Islam that much more difficult. There will be the resistance from the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia who with Saudi oil monies who have been at the forefront of Jihad as a violent manner of spreading Islam if coercion and conversion failed to convince a people to adopt their version of Islam. Then there is the not so small matter of Shiite Muslims as Abdel el-Sisi is Sunni and thus will not hold any acceptable powers of persuasion or authority, moral or otherwise unless Abdel el-Sisi is planning to conquer all of existing Islam in order to teach then a version which is non-violent. Then there are places where Islam is practiced solely because of their willingness to use brute force to enforce the laws of Islam as they perceive such. There are entities whose very existence is dependent on violent Jihad such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezballah, the Twelvers which had their influence solely through nonviolent means. Then there are the recent events in Paris which may have revealed something extremely threatening about Islam today. The two brothers claim that they received training and that the plans were worked through and rehearsed before they were sent to France to perform their deadly acts. This would not seem to pose any problem except that one brother claimed to have worked with al-Qaeda while the other claimed he worked through ISIS. If what this implies is true then the world and Abdel el-Sisi have a serious problem on their hands. The merging of the two of the largest, best trained, and militarily capable of ruling over entire nation is seriously frightening. The world can only hope that al-Qaeda and ISIS are not working together, even if only on Jihadist acts which both terror entities have an interest, then reforming Islam will have become that much more difficult. Abdel el-Sisi made clear that he was speaking about changing the thinking and not the religion, the interpretation and not actual Islam. What he likely meant by these declarations was that he aimed to preserve the writings of Islam and simply shift the emphasis to coexistence as the Quran was first written and that the changes he was purporting were things which the Quran already states but which are not currently stressed and utilized thus getting Islam to change from being a threat to the other religions of the world into a more gentile and pleasant form where it coexists with the other religions in the world. Abdel el-Sisi reflected on his realization that should Islamic practices continue insisting on violent Jihad and the transformation of the entirety of the world to Islam by spreading Islam by the sword that Islam was facing a problem. Abdel el-Sisi described that problem perfectly when he stated, “It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Ummah to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!! That thinking, I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’, that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world! Is it possible that 1.6 billion Muslims should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!!” Abdel el-Sisi has looked at the world through open eyes and seen that should Islam continue in its current path its hand will be against every religion, and every religion’s hand against Islam, and will in the end lead to the destruction of Islam, thus its path must change. Abdel el-Sisi has awakened from a nightmare revelation where he realizes that Islam will only continue if it refuses to continue raising its hands against the world thus he has taken upon himself the task of teaching the Imams and the presumed greatest of those preaching Jihad to now preach kindness. Can he win against the likes of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Feisal Abdul Rauf and Abu Hamza al-Masri? All the rest of us can do is pray that Abdel el-Sisi is making an honest attempt and not trying to aggrandize himself, and that should his intents be pure, from the depths of his heart, and guided by his reason, that he be blessed in his quest as, should he succeed, then both Islam, the Muslim world and the world as a whole will benefit from his efforts.

 

Beyond the Cusp