The Jews Did Not Mold the Middle East

 

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

 

Greater Israel the Kingdoms of Kings David and Solomon Between 1050 and 930 BCE

 

The rise of Islam ended what had been a century of Jewish preeminence in many regions of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) under the remnants of the Persian Empire which rose again after the fall of Rome, in Egypt which returned to indigenous rule also after the fall of Rome, and under other tribal rule across the region with but a remnant of the Jews who remained or had returned to the area which had been their ancestral homelands with the majority residing in Jerusalem, Tiberius, Caesarea, Be’er Sheva and other towns and cities. Still, even in Jerusalem despite often being either a plurality or sometimes and outright majority, they never were permitted self-rule for two-thousand-five-hundred-forty-five year period, from 597BCE until May of 1948, just in case you wish to check our math. The Jews who resided within Europe and Russia have a history which well documented and tells a depressing story of pogrom, evictions, forced conversions, torture, inquisitions, purifications and the Protestant Reformation where virtually every new faction of Christianity attempted to prove their righteousness and superiority in having a pure faith compared to the Church in Rome each attempted to outdo the rest in their persecution of Jews and others not of their particular denomination of Christianity. Even after the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution which brought on the modern age, the Jews remained persecuted and forced to work only in professions which were permitted to them and throughout Europe, they mostly were forbidden from owning land. Many Jews fled to the New World hoping that things would improve, and depending on where they went and under which European power they resided determined their plight. Often they found that the Christian dominance remained a stumbling block to the Jews gaining equal rights and they were again relegated to only being permitted certain fields of endeavor and often were still denied land ownership. But what about the Jews who did not reside under the European Christians, the Jews of MENA?

 

Starting in the year 622, Muhammad began the Islamic conquest of the Arabian Peninsula where Muhammad often ordered the slaughter of the men of the Jewish tribes, taking the women to use to produce fighters or as wives, trained the male children in Islam and Jihad and raising the girls to become wives. After the death of Muhammad, the leaders of the Islamic tribes continued to expand their reach and by 725 had conquered Persia, Egypt and virtually all of the region of MENA and were making their way up the Iberian Peninsula (see map below). The spread of the Muslims was halted in the west by Charles the Hammer Martel at the battle of Tours and in the East by the Byzantines and the seemingly impervious walls of Constantinople. Our apologies to our regular readers who have suffered through this story repeatedly, but from here we will be giving a different twist. Between the Caliphates and the Ottoman Empire, the Islamic religion was preeminent ruling over almost all of MENA for 1200 years. During this period, despite what European history states as they simply restated the propaganda fed them by the Muslims and seldom questioned this perfect society where all were presumably equal and everything was sugar and spice and everything nice, the Jews did not have such royal treatment under Islamic rule. At best the Jew were Dhimmi, a form of second-class people who are forced to pay a special tax called the Jiyza. The Jiyza could be an affordable amount or it could be set such that the Dhimmis would be impoverished very rapidly. When a Dhimmi was unable to pay the Jiyza, they were often given a choice to convert or die. Jews, Christians and other Dhimmi were often forced to convert to Islam or face beheading and even after conversion they were still suspect and the slightest sign that they held to their former religion would result in their death. This was the lot of Jews under Islamic rule.

 

Expansion of Islam Across MENA and into Europe before Ottoman Rule

 

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

 

German Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire Before WWI and After WWI

 

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

 

Dates that the MENA nations received their independence after colonial rule many since the times of the Persians or even earlier

 

So, as history tells us, the Jews had no part in formation of the Middle East as the mess that it represents today. The indigenous peoples across northern Africa were conquered by the Romans and then the Caliphates and Islamic rule followed by the Islamic Ottoman Empire. After twelve-hundred years of uninterrupted Islamic rule, these nations faced around fifty years of European rule before being left to their own devices which resulted in near unanimous return to Islamic rule under various kings, royal families and dictators. The real question as to who molded the current Middle East and all of the various conflicts and problems falls to the Islamic rulers of over a millennia, the borders decided by the European colonial enterprises resulting from World War I and the current rulers who took control of these various nations with borders drawn by the Europeans without regard for the tribal and religious variations of the region. The nations which retained much of their original ethnic history were Saudi Arabia, Iran (Persia), Syria, Turkey and the rebirth of Israel. The rest of the nations were inventions of the European map makers which were drawn, some claim, with the intent of making for internal strife which would require a strong dictatorial ruler who would keep order through brute force. Whether the problems resulted from the subjugation of indigenous peoples by the Islamic rulers or if you would rather blame the short span under European rule and the resulting borders, either way, the Jews had little to nothing to do with any of the problems. Even the internal problems faced by Israel are largely due to the British importing Arabs in an attempt to prevent the Jews from establishing their homeland. The problem with the Palestinian Arab refugees is actually predominantly the result of the Arabs and their attempt in 1948 to destroy the Jewish State at her inception. The vast majority of the Arab refugees was the result of the Mufti of Jerusalem insisting that the Arabs leave the region where Israel was to be formed such that the six invading Arab armies could simply slaughter everyone as they were to presumably breeze through the new state of Israel in a victorious slaughter whose intended result was best described by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League at that time who stated, “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.” The reality turned out quite different but the result left the Islamic forces occupying areas of Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Egypt was granted rule over Gaza and Jordan over Judea and Samaria which they renamed West Bank as the historic names were far too Jewish. The one thing which never existed in the entire history of the region was any nation named Palestine or any nation which used Jerusalem as their capital other than the Jews and their ancestors.

 

What will be the final ending result of the numerous attempts, 1948-9, 1967 Six Day War, 1973 Yom Kippur War and the terrorist enterprise which has lasted since the turn of the Twentieth Century predating even the establishment of Israel? This is the question which is troubling the world as they are doing everything humanly possible short of the world declaring war upon Israel to destroy the Jewish State ignoring International Law and the promises made in treaties and conferences across recent history, especially when one stops to consider that the Jewish history in the areas of the Promised Lands originates close to four-thousand years ago. Under International Law which includes but is not limited to the San Remo Conference, the Mandate System, the British agreement with the Zionist Congress and all enforceable by the United Nations under Article 80 of the charter, though one would be hard pressed to recognize this, the eastern border for Israel is the Jordan River. The reason the world appears to pressing so hard to have Israel recognize a new Arab state is because unless Israel signs away her rights to the lands west of the Jordan River in a treaty or similar document with equal footing, the International Law leaves the Arabs with no actual claim or recourse to the lands west of the Jordan River. The reason the conflict continues between the Palestinian Arabs (a misnomer as there was never a Palestine for them to be Palestinian) and Israel is because the world refuses to keep their promises to the Jews. The reality is that the Arab world spat out the vast majority of their Jews, some nations wiped their lands completely of their Jews, sending over eight-hundred-thousand Jews moving to the sole nation on earth which would take them in, Israel, and they were incorporated into the new nation and not placed in camps from which they could demand all they wanted for their former nations to repatriate them and return to them their properties, the exact opposite of the Arab response to their refugees which are still in camps along with their third and fourth generation children still waiting for the world to destroy Israel so they can, as Azzam Pasha stated before the 1948 invasion to destroy Israel and wipe out her Jews, return to their region and take of the spoils of the defeated and dead Jews. This conflict will end in one of two ways, either the Arabs will finally accept Israel and care for their own people or the world will attempt to destroy Israel be it Iran using nuclear weapons as they have threatened, the Arabs finally defeating Israel, or the entire world will declare war upon Israel probably through the United Nations in stages. The first stage will consist of the United Nations General Assembly petitioning the Security Council to strip Israel of her membership in that body and the Security Council accepting their petition favorably. The next stage will likely be another General Assembly petition of the Security Council to revoke the November 29, 1947 UNGA Res 181 which was offering another partition of the lands west of the Jordan River which the Arab League refused making it void anyways, but by doing so the move will be treated as the United Nations invalidating the establishment of Israel. Then Israel will exist and continue to exist but the world will have turned their backs on the Jewish State and pretend that Israel has no right to exist. Eventually, this will lead to a coalition of nations which will set to destroying Israel by whatever means are necessary. What the Bible predicts about this final conflict does not bode well for the coalition as the arrival of the Messiach will be the deciding factor and the world will one last time feel the wrath of Hashem. The one thing which we can be assured of is that the Jews had nothing to do with the mess the nations stretching across the MENA region are suffering and if they would simply allow it, Israel could do much towards making these nations productive and their people wealthy and comfortable. There is so much they would gain by working with Israel instead of attempting to destroy her, but that would take common sense which Voltaire, Will Rogers or Mark Twain noted, “Common Sense is not so common.”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Why Israel Arab Conflict is Unsolvable

 

We sometimes have heard that solving the Israel Arab conflict cannot be that difficult if only Israel would sacrifice for peace. We wonder, does sacrifice for peace include returning the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt? That is Israel surrendering an area more than two and three-quarters the size of the nation of Israel itself. Somehow, the world appears to have forgotten this small fact. When Israel made peace with Egypt, Egypt refused to take the return of Gaza and disassociated from the people who had lived under Egyptian rule for almost twenty years before the Six Day War. Perhaps Israel should be thankful that Egypt did not demand that Israel accept the population of the Sinai Peninsula as Egypt really just wanted the oil wells anyway. Then Israel made a peace with Jordan and offered them the return of the “West Bank” (Shomron or Judea and Samaria) and eastern Jerusalem, Jordan refused them both but also disassociated from the Arabs residing there who had Jordanian citizenship, but that was cancelled. A great number of those residing in the area Jordan refused included people forcefully relocated by Jordan across the Jordan River into the region left to Israel. Jordan has refused to accept the return of any part of the people in the Shomron including those they relocated there in order to Arabize the region beyond anything Israel could ignore and so as to cause difficulties for Israel in the future. Then there is Syria with whom Israel is still at war but with whom they had an armistice agreement. That agreement had been breached, broken and shattered by Syrian and Iranian forces firing into Israel with snipers, launching rockets into Israel, flying armed drones over Israel and firing anti-tank missiles at IDF and civilian vehicles on the Golan Heights, yet people demand that Israel return the Golan Heights and change this to all of these projectiles aimed across the northern one-third of Israel at farmers, motorists, towns and cities just as was the case before the Six Day War when Syria owned the region. The difference is that weapons have become more accurate, have increased range, and carry larger warheads which would all but vacate the entire region within Israel, as it would become unlivable. These are the facts which, despite some debate about them, are basically uncontroversial. Finally, there is the demand that Israel returns Palestine to the Arab Palestinians.

 

Israel from Mandate to Six Day War
to Currently after Gaza Disengagement

 

Let us start with the last one first as it is the easiest to discuss and the least of the actual problems. When was there this Arab nation of Palestine that Israel stole from these Arabs? Simple answer, it never existed beyond being the name of a region given to it by the Romans when they dispersed the Jews, decided that Judea and Jerusalem were far too Jewish, and changed the names of the province, that is Roman province long before any Arab stepped into these lands and definitely not a nation unto itself. Judea became Syria Palaestina, while Jerusalem was renamed to Aelia Capitolina. The British and League of Nations referred to the region from which Britain carved out Jordan east of the Jordan River and Israel west of the Jordan River was referred to with its Roman nomenclature of Palestine, which was still a region and not a nation and from which two nations were actually carved. There has never been any nation named Palestine and Aelia Capitolina was a provincial capital which was abandoned within the first year as the people left to handle this region return to Damascus and performed their duties from there. Even as late as 1867, as reported in Mark Twain’s writings in “The Innocents Abroad,” or “The New Pilgrims’ Progress,” in the section on his visit to the holy lands, the description was less than flattering and told of a land mostly abandoned to weeds and scrub brush with hardly any inhabitation outside of Jerusalem, and even his commentary about Jerusalem was less than flattering. One can only wonder what Mark Twain would have to say now, just over one-hundred-fifty years later, seeing the Tel Aviv metropolitan region and the others including Jerusalem; they are all a far cry from the desolate little sleepy region where lethargy appeared to be the rule except for a few intrepid farmers, possibly the earliest Zionists who set to work draining swamps, channeling water and irrigating the lands starting farms as soon as they arrived. But that is claimed to have little bearing on the modern situation, because the reasons that these problems exist are not of concern to the world, it is something else.

 

The claim that Israel must sacrifice for peace is ludicrous. There are so many real reasons that peace has not been reached which have nothing to do with Israel past the simple fact that she exists. The Khartoum Resolution of September 1, 1967, and its three no’s, “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel,” has been the Arab position. Arafat, then Abbas, were permitted to negotiate providing they swore to accept the other two no’s and work towards the day when Islam defeats the Jews and Israel is no more. There is a small problem which is stated only in Arabic, a language which the Western media appear incapable of finding a translator, even Google, that any peace would simply be the first peace to be followed soon thereafter by a new round of terrorism, a new set of demands, and a new peace process, which if it should ever reach a peace, would be followed a few months later by another explosion of terror, new demands, peace talks, peace, violent terror, new demands, you get the picture. The aim is stated to destroy Israel in stages if necessary, but the end result is to destroy Israel. The only solution, you could call it the Arab final solution, is for the Jews leaving by whatever means are necessary, including exhuming the dead to take with them, and all of Israel belonging to the Arabs, because that is the way the world works and the Quran demands such. No Arab or Muslim land can ever fall under somebody else ruling it, and most certainly not the accursed Jew. That is the base position from which the Arab world had negotiated since the first day of Israeli existence when the armies of over a half dozen Arab nations poured over the borders, some were already operating in the Arab neighborhoods and farms inside of Israel that morning, and set to destroy all of Israel and every Jew along with it. The Arab war of 1948 was best described by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League at that time who stated, “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.” His reference was to the Islamic defeat of these two wars, though their victory over the Mongols came after nearly a century of Mongol rule over large parts of their Arabia. That was their intentions then and those are still their intentions now.

 

There is a dirty little secret which most, if not all, the people from the United States State department to the European Union to the numerous European national leaderships, to the co-conspirators at the United Nations to the several United Nations Agencies and virtually every two-faced, double-talking expert on the Middle East do not speak. This little secret is that it is not Israel which is preventing the making of a peace agreement. They know the Arabs turned down half of the lands west of the Jordan River in late November of 1947 when the United Nations offered just such a deal and the Zionist congress agreed but the Arab League steadfastly refused as they were going to wipe those snotty little Jews off the map a few months later, or so they believed. Egypt was offered Gaza and Jordan was offered the West Bank, both declined to retake lands they knew did not belong to them plus they were to be used to destroy Israel as the plan was already hatched. The Arabs were offered over ninety percent with land swaps and Eastern Jerusalem towards the end of the Clinton Presidency and this was refused by Yasser Arafat. The Arabs were offered over ninety percent with land swaps and Eastern Jerusalem towards the end of the George W. Bush Presidency and this was refused by Mahmoud Abbas. The Trump “Deal of the Century,” which century might be how long it will take to formulate, has already been refused by Mahmoud Abbas without seeing the offer. Abbas has all but told President Trump to take a hike and is swearing he will refuse any peace deal which will be presented by President Trump. Well, that is so much for and chance for peace in the immediate future. Wait, you say, how about President Trump working with Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Well, Jordan has refused him, twice that we have counted, Egypt has turned him down unceremoniously and in no uncertain terms regarding Gaza, and Saudi Arabia backed away from any agreements they had made when it became a part of the deal that they take in some of the Arab Palestinians.

 

The problem comes down to a simple problem, what to do with the Arab Palestinians, not just those living within Israel but the over five-million so-called Palestinian refugees. These refugees numbers just over six-hundred-thousand in 1949 at the end of the Arab War to Annihilate the Jews which was renamed the Israeli War of Independence so it would appear that Israel started a war for their independence and not they gained it legally and the Arabs attacked with the intent of wiping the lands clean. These refugees had children and unlike any other refugees, these children became refugees. These children had children who had children who have had or some day will have children who will have children and so-on ad infinitum. That is how over three-quarters of a century six-hundred-thousand refugees become over five-million refugees instead of a problem already solved. One need understand that the Arab refugees, far from anything to do with Israel, are not handled under the regular United Nations Refugee Agency, they are handled under the UNRWA, the agency which President Trump ended United States monetary support. The rest of the world jumped up and are supporting them for the time being. This energetic rush to aid anything to harm Israel will cool and UNRWA will be making desperate calls for aid from anywhere and demanding that the United States pay it fair share. You have to love all the uses that the political types get out of the phrase, “pay their fair share.” You hear it about taxes, “We just want the (super) rich to pay their fair share,” or the United Nations and its myriad of agencies whenever the United States defunds them, “We just want the United States, the richest nation in the world, to pay their fair share,” or the newest version, “Making sure foreign investors pay their fair share,” and after any oil spill or ecological disaster we hear about the company which has already suffered a blow to their income with the losses incurred by the event of the ecological disaster, yet we hear, last one, we promise, “We just insist that aggrieved company pay their fair share to clean up the effects of the disaster.”

 

There will be no solution to the Israel Arab Conflict for the foreseeable future. The world will need to be reawakened to the small problem caused by the Quranic promise that the Muslims will rule the world and Islam and the surrender to Allah will become the universal faith which every person on the planet will come to follow. The Muslims, on the strength and timing of the Arabs as they emerged from the Arabian Peninsula and conquered much of the Middle East including the lands under Persian Rule and across northern Africa taking the lands of Egypt and the Berbers, crossed into Europe at Gibraltar and were finally turned back by George the Hammer Martel at the battle of Tours. They took the Levant and were stopped by the imposing walls of Constantinople. The Ottomans made two attempts at Europe with both being turned back at the gates of Vienna with one being accomplished almost completely to the merit of the King of Poland, John III Sobieski, who commanded the Holy Roman Army plus the entirety of the Polish Army leaving his nation unprotected and depending on the promises of the other leaders that they would leave his lands safe. Surprisingly, they kept their word. These were the past attempts by the forces of Islam to conquer the world and turn every knee to bend before Allah. This means that there have been at least three or four attempts by Islam to conquer Europe, but Christianity stood and held. When the Crusaders would take Jerusalem, they often would murder the remaining Muslims and a fair percentage of the Jews. When the Muslims would take Jerusalem, they would murder most of the Christians and a fair percentage of Jews. The number of Jews usually was proportional to the casualties and amount of time and effort was required to take Jerusalem. The Arabs desire taking Jerusalem and making it completely Jew free. They wish to do this to the entirety of Israel. Their plan does not necessarily include any rescue for the Jews. They do not plan on making such necessary. The terrorists scream slogans calling for the eradication of the Jews and the Jewish State. This is their desired solution to the Arab Israel Conflict. They refuse to make peace because their solution does not include peace unless it is rest in peace, and I doubt their Jewish victims will even get that if they were ever to succeed. The Israelis know the score but the world would rather pretend that the Jews are the problem. Our best guess is old habits are very hard to break, and much of the world has been blaming the Jew for every misfortune for so long that they just simply fell back on the stock reason that there is a problem, the Jew did it. The only thing the Jews did was reclaim their ancestral homelands, the lands and city, Jerusalem, which they have prayed over, prayer for, prayed about almost every single day of their lives. We have been saying Jerusalem, next year we will celebrate this day in Jerusalem. Even a recalcitrant Jew knows the desire for next year in Jerusalem. Now that it can be right now in Jerusalem, we, as Jews, are not returning to dreams when we hold the prize in our hands. That goes for Jerusalem and every part of Eretz Yisroel.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Wherever Israel Turns there are Threats

 

Though the media is largely ignoring many of these events, they are still plaguing Israel and those who love her. There are still rioting on the Gaza border pressed on continuously as the new normal with Hamas. The Hamas tunnel systems were thwarted so incendiary kites and balloons were the response. They claim they love the land more than the Jews ever will and are willing to burn it to ashes to prove it. Israel simply nurtures the land and grows crops and establishes discoveries which are helping humanity all over the world with the problems of fresh water, growing crops in arid lands, using water gained from treated sewage to grow crops, medical cures, software for office, security software, facial recognition systems which can detect criminals in crowds such as airports and other advances in virtually every endeavor all for the improvement of our world. But that is but a small area, the border with Hamas in Gaza, what about the rest of the region?

 

In the north on the border with Lebanon, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have uncovered another series of infiltration tunnels coming from within the region presumably patrolled and kept terrorist-free by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) as per UNSC Resolution 1701, which brought the last Hezballah-Israel conflict to a close. There was to be a buffer region in southern Lebanon (see map below) where Hezballah was not to be permitted to place weapons, build bunkers, dig tunnels into Israel or place rockets. It is needless to point out, but that presumed effort has been a mitigated disaster. Hezballah has built up the region with bunkers, tunnels, launching positions concealed underground or in people’s homes, built ambush sites also often using people’s homes and increased their rocket inventory to approximately one-hundred-fifty-thousand rockets plus a percentage have been upgraded with precision guidance packages provided by Iran.

 

Map of UNIFIL Demilitarized Region

 

These modified rockets are now comparable to missiles; actually, they are missiles capable of striking within a few meters of any target in Israel. That is considered to be an existential threat by Israel and suitable warnings that this must not continue or else Israel may be forced to perform an extensive intervention. With their ranges and sizes, many of these rockets and missiles are capable of striking all of Israel (see table and map below). Unfortunately, such a threat from Israel is mostly, if not completely, ignored, as Israel is no longer considered a force to be feared. This is due largely to the crippling limitations placed on the IDF soldiers to such a point that they often delay before shooting, something which has proven excessively detrimental and cost Israel far too many lives. One example of such restraints was exceedingly evident during the rioting on the Gaza border where after allowing the troops to use their discretion, they imposed their being required to receive approval to engage targets unless their lives were under direct threat. The airstrikes by Israeli pilots also required approval even when given a specific and known Hamas positions as either an observer aircraft or drone was required to inspect the target and immediate vicinity before the mission could be concluded. Often, the pilots were instructed to return with their munitions still onboard because there was an innocent within the area considered to be potentially injurious. Hamas have often placed women and children on the rooftops of their most important positions and place their main command and control bunker underneath the main hospital in Gaza City.

 

Hezballah Rocket & Missile Threat

 

The recent past has reignited the terrorism from the Shomron by Arabs who are ruled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). One attack almost murdered a mother in her thirtieth week of her pregnancy. Her unborn child was removed by cesarean section and valiant efforts were made to save the child, but the infant died after four days, him never even having been held by his mother. This closes the loop where the only border where Israel can claim they have peace is the one it shares with the Mediterranean Sea, and please do not let the world know or they might just start to launch more Gaza Flotillas attempting to break the legal blockade of Hamas by Israel. That also brings us to the other problem which Israel faces, the United Nations and much of the world where anti-Semitism is being expressed as anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism. We had the perfect ignominy of the United Nations General Assembly which was brought to the fore by the recent vote refusing to condemn Hamas for firing rockets into Israel and the border violence which has gone on for over three-quarters of a year which we covered in this article. Within Europe, anti-Semitism has become rampant, increasing to the point that some of the political parties have refused to condemn the growing anti-Semitism within their ranks, even that of people of prominence of the party. But this trend is far from isolated to Europe.

 

In the United States, anti-Semitism has increase by near or over fifty-percent every year for the past half-decade. The recent elections placed a new member in the United States House of Representatives, from Michigan named Rashida Tlaib, who celebrated with a Palestinian flag and proclaimed her support of the Palestinians and her ill will for Israel. But it is not necessary to take our word for this, please check out what we state independently, we would be proud to have these things validated. One thing which one would need to find is my friends from long ago to validate that I had been warning my fellow Jews outside of Washington DC that anti-Semitism was rising and that a future would come probably in our lifetime that Jews would face extremely difficult situations in the United States and that at a turning point the bulk of one of the political parties would turn against the Jewish People. I also told them that I was going to retire in Israel and they did not believe that either. What can one say, such doubters.

 

There has been talk within Israel about reestablishing the Israeli deterrence so that the terrorists would refuse to continue their animosity and then we can all coexist in a period of peace. There has been no debate about exactly what form such an action would require in order to reestablish an Israeli deterrence. There have been hints such as the near immediate house demolition of every terrorist’s home regardless of other family (which would never get past the Supreme Court), immediate shutdown of any area from where a terror attack originated and the only sensible suggestion of reestablishing checkpoints throughout the Shomron. Despite the idea of reestablishing checkpoints, especially random checkpoints guided by intelligence, being a great idea to make the Shomron a safer place, Israel cannot place checkpoints within Gaza or Lebanon currently without first taking these regions through military action. Were Israel to take action to destroy the infrastructure built-up in southern Lebanon to deter Hezballah would simply return Israel into occupying southern Lebanon and all Hezballah would do is set-up new infrastructure just north of any IDF held positions. This would simply move the threat further from the Israeli public but would also place IDF soldiers at risk holding ground where the people are largely hostile. This is a ‘tried that, did not work,’ situation.

 

Then there is what to do about Hamas. This is where something can be done which would change the dynamics. Any action to change the map concerning Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all of their supporting terror infrastructure would first require being prepared to defend such actions. This would start with the considerations and guarantees provided to the Israeli government as part of the deal to engage in the grand experiment which became the Gaza Disengagement. First thing is that this was a grand idea cooked up by the United States State Department and proposed to President George H. W. Bush by Secretary Condoleezza Rice. The intent was to provide a region completely free of any and all Israeli presence in which the PA could demonstrate their ability to operate a civilized society with jobs, government services, power generation, economic development and a normative society. President Bush promised that the United States would provide cover in the United Nations should it become necessary for Israel to retake Gaza because it became a terrorist threat. By the end of 2007, Hamas had taken control over Gaza in a bloody coup and cemented their rule by discarding any PA officials they did not control off rooftops of many of the tallest buildings. From that point forward, Gaza has been a terrorist base exactly as the rightwing leadership of the Nationalist, Zionist and Religious parties within Israel had warned. The agreement Israel made was that should Gaza turn into the terrorist base it has become, Israel would be entitled to retake control of Gaza, clear out the terrorists and their supporters, and resume Israeli rule. Does anybody honestly believe that the world would not act as if it were on fire should Israel actually retake Gaza? Of course the world would go berserk, the United Nations would be holding sessions of the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Human Rights Council, UNESCO, UNICEF and the rest of the usual suspects. The European Union would be writing denunciations faster than their stenographers could write. Almost every other organization and most governments would all be lining up to take their shots at Israel for their temerity to act on a guarantee made them back in 2005 which the world was made aware of at the time. All of this is not even beginning to understand the reaction of the Arab and Muslim worlds. One would believe that the end of the planet was at stake.

 

Here is the catch when discussing Israel retaking Gaza and exactly what Israel takeover of Gaza would entail and require. First, the Israeli leadership would need to wear sound suppressing headphones for an extended period of time in order to have any peace. Second, Israel would need to have an indisputable reason such as almost five-hundred rockets launched into Israel out of Gaza in a twenty-four hour period. Since Israel just suffered exactly such an attack, allow us to divert and review. Israel was warned by the United Nations that this barrage was entirely just a reaction to the infiltration of an intelligence gathering team which was caught and engaged by Hamas forces resulting in one dead Israeli officer, one injured Israeli soldier and six dead Hamas fighters. Israel would just need to suffer this outburst as Israel deserved whatever Hamas desired to throw at her. The European Union seconded this feeling and probably threatened some punitive reaction were Israel to react with any change of the situation. Israel was permitted to react by launching rockets at Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets providing they were empty. There would be no tolerating anyone further in Gaza being killed in these exchange of fire, but if Israelis died, well, that would be acceptable. The United Nations in conjunction with Egypt, and rumored Turkey, arranged for Hamas to cease firing the rockets and simply continue the rioting along the Gaza border which Israel would need to continue to pretend that farming and other activities within a number of miles of the border were to never to survive planting or normative operating conditions as the launching of explosive and incendiary objects into Israeli territories surrounding Gaza. This would also extend to forests and wildlife reserves within these regions. What other nation in this world would tolerate such a situation? Not even the United States would tolerate this even if it were restricted to these devices being launched solely from the Baja Peninsula.

 

The reality is that Israel retaking control of Gaza might actually be the least invasive action which would provide some degree of deterrence. The problem is that Hezballah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas are actually under the direction of Iran. Should Iran decide that it desired for Israel to suffer some degree of difficulty, they could simply tell Hamas, Islamic Jihad and/or Hezballah to attack Israel to whatever degree desired. Iran has attempted to also engage and bring the PA and its terrorist groups including the PLO, al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and whatever others which exist in an Iranian attempt to completely encircle Israel with terrorist allies. Iran already has IRGC troops stationed in Syria as well as some in Lebanon which have launched rockets and anti-tank missiles at the IDF forces stationed on the Golan Heights, which should tell one about the degree of deterrence Israel currently projects. The ability to project deterrence by Israel would require some drastic action which would leave no doubt that things have changed in a determinable manner witnessing that Israel was not going to continue to suffer terror attacks without responding with the liberal application of military force altering the ability for such activities being able to continue. Israel would need to make it apparent that any terrorist attack would engender a response so severe that any further terrorist activities would require rebuilding the terror infrastructure from scratch. There are two regions which would come to mind first and foremost, the Shomron and Gaza. This would mean the removal of terrorist governments of either the PA or Hamas, depending on which region provided sufficient threat demanding such an intense reaction. Should the terror attacks continue as almost daily attacks in the Shomron, that could cause the Israeli leadership to decide to extend Israeli rule to all of the Shomron and remove the PA leadership and security forces sending them to whatever nations will accept them, as long as it is as far as possible from Israel. Another barrage of five-hundred rockets in a day from Gaza would be another stimulus for Israel to retake Gaza.

 

The world does not need get themselves into a lather, the current Israeli government would not be taking such steps in the near future. It is even doubtful that the Israeli government which will be making the next coalition would take such steps, as that government will either be very similar to the current government or far more left-leaning. Short of a general war being initiated by Arab nations, Iran or a general coordinated terror assault, Israel is unlikely to take any drastic actions which would result in a change in the separate regions under the different terrorist rule, the PA in the Shomron, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hezballah with the IRGC out of Lebanon along with possibly Syria. The chance that the Arab and Muslim worlds will decide that Israel is permitted to live in peace is improbable without a very serious change in their attitude. There are only two reasons such a decision would be reached; a Renaissance in Islam where the Mecca Quran takes precedence over the Medina Quran which drives Islam in the modern day or Israel uses such an application of military force serving as a deterrence with lasting effects. When or exactly what takes place to cause either of these reactions we will have to leave up to our readers to dream-up. The same goes for when such a wondrous event or set of events will occur. Anyone who has thought that this cannot happen too soon, we feel your thought path and join your enthusiasm.

 

Beyond the Cusp