Current Assessments of Arab-Israeli Conflict Unhelpful

 

There are a number of glaring false assumptions about the Arab-Israeli conflict which serve only to minimize the antipathy felt by the aggressor which began the conflict and set it in motion for perpetuity. The most easily identified errors are that the conflict began in 1948 with the founding of the state of Israel, that the conflict is one-hundred years old, that the disagreement is over borders, that Jerusalem is a central core of the problem and a dozen other such falsities. This war started at the oasis of Khaybar outside Medina. For close to a thousand years Jews lived in the oases of Teyma, Khaybar, and Yathrib peaceably with the surrounding communities, both idolatrous and the growing Islamic community in Medina. There was one area of contention between the Jewish communities and Muhammad, the Jews refused to convert and refused to accept him as the final prophet holding to the historic Jewish belief that the period of the Prophets was long ended. In the year 628-9 A.D., Muhammad gathered his forces and invaded the Jewish community at the Oasis of Khaybar defeating them. In less than a decade, the Islamic forces had defeated all of the separate Jewish communities driving them from the area. It is partially because these were the first groups with whom Muhammad warred or due to the stiff resistance and lack of trust as treaties were disregarded when they were considered inconvenient and no longer to one’s advantage that a great animosity was built between the Jews and Muslims that the Jews are chosen for a particular hatred by Islam. Consider the example of the Qurayza Tribe of Jews, who were defeated by Muhammad despite their leader opting to stay neutral when their town was besieged by a Meccan army that was sent to take revenge for Muhammad’s deadly caravan raids. Their sin was not joining the fight to defend Muhammad and his fellow caravan raiders who were within their town. The tribe killed no one from either side and even surrendered peacefully to Muhammad after the Meccans had been turned back. Yet still Muhammad had every male member of the Qurayza Tribe beheaded. The wars between the Muslims and their continued history of periodic particularly harsh treatment of Jews emanate from these battles.

 

Further, the Quran even states, in Sahih Bukhari 52:177, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’” This requires the followers of Islam to war against the Jews, some now interpret this to mean defeating Israel, before their end-times can commence or at least have its time set. This adds to their reasons to fight against Jews which now means Israel. Additionally there are the two spheres which the world is divided among in Islam, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. Dar al-Islam is the House of Islam, the area under Islamic rule and thus considered to be at peace; and Dar el Harb being the House of War which includes all lands with which Islam is at war that includes everything outside Dar al-Islam, simply put, everywhere else. Another point is that once Islam conquers any territory, it is to then remain under Islamic dominance forever and should Islamic territory be lost, even or especially were it to revert to previous (infidel) ownership thus falling outside Islam, that becomes a mortal affront to the supremacy of Islam. Hamas has in their preamble to the Hamas Charter a quote from their founder, Imam Hassan al-Banna “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Obviously, throughout history at numerous times the Jews and even Israel was an area of supreme importance and considered to be the ultimate threat facing Islam. But then, we would simply ask ourselves, why should Islam be any different from everyone else. Before you get up and demand what we mean by everyone else, let us give a partial list of everyone else throughout history; the Pharos’s Egypt, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ancient Greeks, Roman Empire, Byzantines, Islamic Caliphate, Crusaders, English Empire, Rome’s Inquisition, Spanish Empire, Nazis, Communists and others.

 

In all honesty, we are not claiming by any stretch of the imagination that Israel’s only difficulty is with Islam as there are a plethora of others who would love for Israel to disappear. Many groups outside the Arab and Muslim worlds would also be happy for Israel to disappear. We also need to point out not all of the Arab and Muslim worlds actively want to destroy Israel. One of the main forces which in ambivalent at best and animosity at the worst we have Rome, Vatican City to be more precise where the Catholic Church has a long history of following Replacement Theology which turned the Jews from the Chosen People into the Cursed People. Much of Replacement Theology is based upon the Jewish People being dispersed and denied any return to the Holy Lands. The fact that Israel had been destroyed and the Jews apparently thrown from their homelands was all the proof that the Christians, or in this case the Catholic Church, had replaced the Jews as the Chosen People and the Jews cursed. Then we come to Martin Luther who carries Replacement Theology one-step further and claiming that the Catholic Church has sold their souls and were to join the Jews as cursed and his church was the replacement and true faith. This idea of Replacement Theology continued being used by each Protestant Church during the Reformation. The Church of England, Episcopal Church, also took the position of being the singular holy church for the British Isles which led to years of fighting between the Catholics and the Anglicans. Every step along the way, Replacement Theology was utilized by each Protestant Church founder claimed to have the rights to the title of the Chosen People and all previous forms of Christianity and the Jews now being the cursed people. Islam was no exception as when Muhammad came forth with Islam, he declared that he was presenting the final incarnation of Allah’s word and Islam would be the last and only Chosen People as they replaced all the various Christian faiths and especially the Jews, just as the Christians had denoted the Jews.

 

 

Along with each religion, the nation which adopted these various sects of Christianity, the different forms of Islam and the anti-religion Communism all declared their animosity against the Jews. When Israel was reformed by David Ben Gurion declaring Israel founded, all the aforementioned religions had a total conniption-fit expressing their protestation in various means. Most Christian faiths declared this not to be the real return of the Jews and in no way made them once again the Chosen People with the Catholic Church even declaring Israel as an abomination while much of the Islamic world and the Arab League declared total genocidal war of cleansing of the Zionist Entity. The thing which is interesting is how the Arab Islamic worlds ignore the reestablishment of the Jewish homelands of Israel by referring to Israel as the Zionist entity such that they can claim that this is not the reestablished Jewish or Israelite homelands. This is also why they also claim that the Jews of today are not related to the Jews from antiquity despite genetic proof of their having Middle Eastern DNA markers and many families have traceable histories back many centuries even beyond one millennium. They even doubt those Jewish families who have never left Jerusalem except temporarily after Christian and Islamic expulsions always to return as soon as they were able.

 

What makes much of the efforts in the modern era since 1948 to solve the various forms it has taken adjusting to changing conditions and models presented is that they take that the entirety of the problem either began in 1948 with the founding of Israel, it started with the treaties and conferences after World War I or it began with the onset of modern Zionism. These are all completely wrong, as Islam had been at active war with the Jews throughout their history at various levels. People will point to periods where Jews thrived under Islamic rulers but most of these rulers did not follow strict Sharia, the Quranic defined statutes of law. The other difficulty is that despite periods where Jews were treated fairly well, these were always limited periods similar to the periods under European rule in the various nations where Jews were accepted for periods always eventually to come under critical treatment and even actively murdered often by burning at the stake, hanging, boiled in oil and the many various tortures of the Inquisitions. Islam began with mistreatment of the Jews either demanding the Jizya, a special tax levied against non-Muslims for the privilege and protection living under Islamic rule. This tax varied depending on the requirements of the governance, the greater their need the greater the Jizya often leading to a condition which becomes unlivable. This war against the Jews began, as we pointed out at the beginning, in the year 628-9 A.D. and continued, as has the Christian warfare against the Jews, intermittently ever since or as the anti-religious forces of Communism and Nazism have constantly since their inception.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Is an Arab State Required for Israeli Existence?

 

There is a disturbing reflective act to mention the need for an Arab Palestinian State when mentioning anything with reference to any Israeli future. The cry is that the Jews cannot expect peace without realizing and granting the Arab Palestinians an independent state. Mention the recent announcement by President Trump that Jerusalem is the Capital City of Israel and moving the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the immediate response is that the United States has destroyed the peace process at the minimal end to insisting the United States also found an additional embassy across town also within Jerusalem for the Arab Palestinians as they have lived here as long as the Jews. Never mind the truth which is backed by the Torah, the entirety of the Old Testament, the New Testament and, surprisingly enough, the Quran all testify to the fact that these lands were promised to the Hebrews, the Jewish People, by Hashem (Allah according to the Quran) for all of time and that they would be brought back to their homelands at some time of the choosing of the Almighty which would remain unknown except as the call came to their heart and each Jew who desires to be a Jew will pick up and return to their real homeland no matter the hardship or challenges. One of the greatest examples of such was the eventual return and suffering of Natan Sharansky who spent what had to feel endless time in Russian gulags simply for requesting to leave the Soviet Union and return to Israel. For many of the rest of us, the biggest difficulties were what to take and what to leave after completing all the required paperwork. But the world has bought the concept that a second Arab state must be formed out of the lands of the British Mandate. Jordan receiving the lands east of the Jordan River which consists of 78% of the land was apparently insufficient for the Arabs and if the Arabs want, they must be satiated. This is the most true in much of Europe or is their design simply to punish the Jews for being Jews and having the audacity to desire to return and establish their heritage, Israel.

 

The demand that there be another Arab Palestinian State in any part of the remaining 22% of the British Mandate is against all the applicable International Law. The world including the Arabs are aware that the sole means they can take more of the land is to force the Israelis to release claim to lands which are rightfully, legally and historically known and identified even by their enemies as being the ancestral and legitimate homeland of the Jewish People. The truth is that the leadership of Europe looked into their crystal balls for a peek into the future and upon evaluating their own societies realized what was growing and would soon reach its ignoble crescendo. They saw the monster within the guts of Europe growing and festering within the remains of the Austria-Hungarian Empire and Germany. Whether despite or because of their breaking up Austria-Hungary or due to the reparation at unprecedented levels demanded of Germany, or whether due to both or neither, they saw the looming monster of anti-Semitism. The problem most people have is they believe that in late 1947 through to mid-May of 1948 was when everything fell together to create the Jewish State of Israel. They them postulate that guilt over the Holocaust was to blame and that the world felt sorry for the Jews. That was a final stage for the creation of Israel and even in that, the attempt was made and the seeds planted to make it fail and for another attempt at genocide to erase, the one just revealed publically and acknowledged a few short years earlier after World War II. But the reality is that the Jewish State came about in a fairly quick succession of conventions and treaties using the original answer to a plea from a high ranking Jew who also saw what was coming.

 

The Baron Rothschild’s two sons worked with the Zionists and upon the death of their father in 1915 continued under the title of Baron Rothschild. The British were not entering into a promise of a Jewish homeland blindly but desired an understanding in return from the Zionists. During the war and more so immediately after the war, the central European area and spreading into France and even across the Channel to Britain the specter of growing anti-Semitism was growing and especially in Germany through the Balkans was reaching unseen levels not seen since the Inquisition. The necessity for a place where the Jews could be sent or flee was evident even to a blind man. The Baron Rothschild’s sons were Zionists and had met with Chaim Weizmann and between them decided that the best hope lay with the British and thus the British Rothschild Family petitioned and worked with the Foreign Office and in time produced the Balfour Declaration on November 2nd, 1917. The letter exists with two halves, one giving and the second qualifying the gift. The first half pertains to the hope and idea of founding a Jewish homeland in the area still using a shortened version of the Roman name given in order to erase the Jewish People from history, Palestine, while the second half spells out the rights guaranteed the existing residents of the area. These rights were carried over along with almost all of the Balfour Declaration as the core to the San Remo Conference of April 25, 1920. From here the heart and soul which eventually created Israel as far as much of the world is concerned takes a twisted route but remains largely unchanged. The next link is the Treaty of Sèvres of August 10, 1920, followed by the Treaty of Lausanne on July 24, 1923. This would be followed by a unanimous resolution passing in the League of Nations establishing the Mandate System in 1922.

 

This included the British Mandate within which the Jewish homeland was to be established. This was a charge to the British under International Law, yet in the 1939 White Paper, issued to appease the Arabs hoping they would not fight against the British in the war, an idea which pretty much failed, the promise of a Jewish State was reneged and said to no longer be a concern for the British. Despite this betrayal, the troops which made up the voluntary Palestine Battalion, which fought with the British across North Africa and elsewhere, were by and large Jews from Palestine with some Druze and Bedouin and a smattering of Arabs. The Arabs in Palestine were too busy rioting against the Jews to be concerned with the British war efforts. Further, they were loyal to the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini who was cozying up with Adolph Hitler (see image below) and the Nazi high command in Berlin and at the Wannsee Conference where some claim he was instrumental in the crafting and decision to eradicate the Jews in what became known as the Final Solution. Amin al-Husseini by the end of 1943 had headed to the Balkans where he would organize the Bosnian “Black Legions” to fight the Allies for the Nazis.

 

Mufti of Jerusalem During Nazi World War II
Where He Met the Highest Officers
And Attended the Wannsee Conference

 

After World War II, the United Nations returned to the promise still part of International Law and issued the General Assembly Resolution 181 where they issued a plan which would have redivided the remaining 22% of the British Mandate which had already been divided once before into the planned Arab and Jewish states. The initial partition used the Jordan River giving the Arabs the larger 78% of the lands east and the Jews the remaining 22% west of the river. Now the United Nations was advancing the idea that this was the entire mandate, which they now claimed needed to be shared cutting the Jews to a mere 11% of the Mandate Lands (see map below). As this was a General Assembly Resolution, all parties must accept it within a determined time after being issued and should either side reject the resolution, then it becomes null and void and cannot be resurrected without being passed once again by the United Nations General Assembly. The Zionist Congress accepted this plan but the other party, the Arab League, rejected the proposal siting the establishment of any Jewish State as unacceptable at any size. That signified the end of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 and it simply should fade into oblivion as that was exactly where the Arab League sent it with their rejection.

 

Resolution 181 Division,
Israel on the morning of May 15, 1948,
Israel after the War and losing lands of Gaza and West Bank

 

When Israel declared her independence on May 15, 1948, it had absolutely nothing to do with the United Nations vote, the League of Nations vote, the San Remo Conference, the Treaty of Sèvres and only slightly with the Mandate System. The ties to the Mandate System were due to its collapse with the British abandoning their rule over the remaining 22% of their Mandate over the former Roman area of Palestine. That left a void in that area in which the Zionist Congress declared their state within that void. There existed little if anything which could serve as an Arab governance and none was declared; there was no claim for an Arab state, let alone an Arab Palestinian state beyond the original founding of Jordan. Instead, the Arab League with the cooperation of the Arab armies of six Arab nations, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, along with numerous militias including one commanded by the Mufti of Jerusalem and selected units from several more Arab nations all combined to invade the nascent Jewish State of Israel with the intent of its annihilation. The Arabs placed all their eggs in the ‘wipe Israel off the map before it can be fully be established’ basket and that basket proved a failure and Israel has existed and thrived despite three wars with her Arab neighbors for seventy years and as of the Six Day War of 1967 they had control of the entirety of the lands within which their initial borders existed at their founding. The claim that Israel gained lands and increased the size of Israel in the war of 1948-9 is false, Israel lost land to Egypt and Jordan. The claim Israel conquered Gaza, Judea and Samaria in the 1967 Six Day War is also false as Israel liberated Gaza from Egyptian occupation and Judea and Samaria from Jordanian illegal rule as these were areas which the founding of Israel claimed as within their boundaries and Jordan, in particular, ethnically cleared Judea and Samaria as well as half of Jerusalem of the Jews who resided there, stole their homes and properties, destroyed all Jewish Synagogues and other buildings and desecrated the Jewish cemeteries using the headstones to build latrines and pave streets and walkways. Further, the Arab Palestinians came into existence at a particular date when they were invented by a decree issued after careful planning and organizing a terrorist group which was tasked to remove the occupation over Palestinian Arab lands. That date was not thousands of years ago, not even one hundred years ago, it was on May 29, 1964, when the Arab League recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and tasked them with liberating the “Occupied Arab Lands” and destroying the occupiers.

 

Where were these “Occupied Arab Lands” that the PLO was tasked to liberate? Were they the lands of Gaza held by Egypt? Perhaps they were the area of Judea and Samaria, renamed West Bank by Jordan, held by Jordan and annexed which was even not recognized by the Arab world and only two nations, Pakistan and Britain, recognized the Jordan annexation, so that was the “Occupied Arab Lands” they should liberate? No, none of the above define these “Occupied Arab Lands” that the PLO was founded to liberate from the occupiers. They were to liberate all of the nation of Israel and destroy the Jewish State and potentially decimate if not eradicate the population, at least the Jewish population. The original plan laid out by none other than the man who claimed the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini as his uncle, Yasser Arafat, stated that after the Zionist Entity (Jewish State of Israel) the PLO would not seek to rule it but would turn it over to its rightful rule under Jordan. Even the recognition of Arab Palestinians, there was no requirement to found them a state west of the Jordan River, the land was to be gifted to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Egypt and Jordan never even gave a passing thought to founding any self-rule for the supposed people, the Palestinian Arabs, and saw them simply as the crowbar with which they would remove Israel and her Jews from what they claimed was their land throughout all of history. There is a lesson from the hysteria over the founding of Israel that the remainder of the world need learn. The Islamic world, particularly the Arab Islamic world, defines history as beginning on the day that Islamic forces declare victory and incorporate the area into Dar al Islam, the House of Islam, and is liberated from Dar Al-Harb, the House of War, while the lands remaining in Dar Al-Harb exist outside of history as they are ruled by fanatical barbarians who have yet to succumb to Allah and surrendered their will to the Imams and Islamic dictatorial leaders. So, if history is defined as when they come under Islamic rule, then of course it follows that Islam has ruled the world since the beginning of history as the areas where they do not rule are outside history and are not part of their recognized world.

 

Unfortunately for this worldview, the rest of the world, especially China, have volumes of texts on top of an equal if not more voluminous and copious amount of formerly oral traditions written down showing that civilization existed for over five-thousand years and possibly far longer. Archaeology uncovered sites which predate everything which had been considered the beginning of history just forty or fifty year ago. There are items which defy the imagination and surpass all explanations which include the Antikythera mechanism, Qin Shi Huang’s tomb, Nazca lines, Gobekli Tepe, Voynich manuscript, the Cochno Stone, the numerous Henges, the Great Pyramids and the Sphynx (which claims exist it was constructed many hundreds of years before the Pyramids) which might make an inquiring mind believe that history of the human culture and civilization predates the year 600 AD and the life of Muhammad. The history of the Jews dating back to the Hebrews and the history of Abraham, Isaak, Jacob and eventually Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, the Babylonian Exile written about in the Rivers of Babylon (Psalm 137) to the historic record written in stone of the plundering of the Second Temple by the Romans recorded on the Arch of Titus (image below). There are findings every year which validate the history written in not only the Old Testament but also in the first books, the Five Books of Moses, the Torah. But under Islam if taken to the fanatical level demanded by the Islamic State and other strictest Islamic interpretations, then history begins with the onset of Islamic rule, any lands which have ever been ruled by Islam must forever remain ruled by Islam, and the only knowledge required by mankind is revealed in the Quran. Under these qualifying rules, then the history of mankind would truly reflect the onset of Islam as it came out from the Arabian Peninsula. Islam also claims that the following people were Muslims: Abraham, Moses, Noah (even Jews do not claim Noah to have been a Jew and admit Noah predates any thought of Judaism), Adam, Eve and many others from the Old Testament.

 

 

Still, there was never any other independent nation-state existing within the area which is the modern state of Israel since the establishment of Jerusalem as the Capital City by King David over three-thousand year ago. The independent Jewish nation predates King David, the second monarch of the Jewish State after King Saul, and were ruled by Judges even before the Jews made the error of demanding to have a King like all other nations; they were not supposed to envy other nations nor imitate them but the Torah actually foretold of this demand and Hashem gave permission for this demand to be satisfied with severe restrictions on the powers of a King in Deuteronomy 17: 14-20 (end of verse).

 

Other powers have ruled over the land and the surrounding areas but the land of Israel has never been ruled as a separate entity by another since its founding only having been ruled as a single entity by several Jewish ruling governments. There was never a Muslim or Arab nation of Palestine or a nation named Palestine in all of history. Still, so many demand that there must be established an Arab state for Israel to be considered a valid nation. This demand is most often found to go hand-in-hand with claims that the Jews founded their nation on the conquest of Palestine by the Jews. They refer to the 1948-9 war as when the Jews invaded the land removing the Arabs by force. History, if anybody bothers to research things, has stated and proven that the Arabs, as mentioned above, initiated the 1948-9 War as a War of Annihilation intending to destroy the newly founded Jewish State of Israel and rid the lands of the Jews. Fortunately, for the Jews, they failed. The Arab propaganda machine has placed into the world consciousness the concept that before Israel being founded in 1948, there was an Arab nation existing in the lands west of the Jordan River. Below we have included a map of the area defining the British Mandate where the area that becomes Israel is referred to as Palestine while acknowledging the founding of Jordan (TransJordan) and includes that the remaining part of Palestine, TransJordan was also considered to be within the area known as Palestine, which was also called South Syria, was reserved for a Jewish National Home, or as we added, Israel. That is what existed from the founding of the Emirate of Transjordan, British-controlled territory 1921–46, followed by the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, initially known 1946–49 as the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan and Jordan from then to currently. There is the reality and what is really sad, the world knows this, so, again, why the insistence on the founding of an Arab nation named Palestine out of the lands west of the Jordan River preferably along the 1949 Armistice lines?

 

British Mandate with its division between an Arab State of Jordan and
Palestine denoted to be the Jewish State later named Israel

 

We have said this before and we promise, this will not be the last time we state this, much of the world would like nothing more than the destruction of Israel. They were absolutely stunned when Israel survived in 1948-9 and equally astonished when Israel not only survived, but actually won definitively in the Six Day War of 1967. There were hopes during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 which caught Israel flat-footed and unprepared, but again Israel prevailed. In both the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, as soon as the Arab governments screamed to the world that the Jews were invading their lands and were waging a war of annihilation in order to establish their Greater Israel, the nations of the world, often using the authority of the United Nations, demanded that Israel stop their advance without the Arab nations admitting defeat. This permitted the Arab nations not to lose face and they still teach in their schools that they won all the wars with Israel and also as soon as they totally defeat Israel the Zionist Entity will be destroyed and gone from within the House of Islam (Dar al Islam). The next step was to try and disestablish Israel initially financially and then politically as the Arab League enacted an Arab wide economic sanction of Israel and in conjunction with the Muslim Brotherhood, CIAR (Council on American–Islamic Relations), Muslim American Society (MAS), Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) and numerous far left NGOs all worked to take that attempt at economically isolating Israel into a worldwide sanctioning which became the BDS Movement. This has been taken to attempt to also have nations refute the legitimacy of Israel. What will require watching over the next couple of years after President Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital is how many nations move their embassies, especially once the United States opens their embassy in Jerusalem to great fanfare, against who continues to adopt the BDS call. We predict that it is likely that the BDS will slowly lose its effectiveness while nations will, after an initial wave, not necessarily a tsunami but a wave none-the-less, follow suit and move their embassies and even make note of recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Our thought is that by New Year’s Day 2020 there will be closing in on, if not in excess of, one hundred nations whose embassies have been moved or in plans to be moved to Jerusalem. This will spur the Palestinian Authority (PA) to reconsider their position that they will only accept the complete eradication of Israel as the only peace which they would accept. If they continue on their current extreme position demanding that Israel be erased, then they will find that their hopes of even having a semi-autonomous state west of the Jordan River will vanish. The possibility that Israel will extend their rule over the entirety of the lands west of the Jordan River will only grow with time. The one stipulation in every treaty establishing International Law on the lands west of the Jordan River is that while Israel is required to grant almost every form of right, economic, financial, religious, etc., Israel is not required to grant the Arabs from the PA areas political rights. Israel has already set the precedent with the Palestinian Arabs of the eastern parts of Jerusalem when Israel annexed the remainder of Jerusalem by granting them the right to vote in municipal elections but for now denying them the political right to vote in national elections. That will probably not be a permanent situation, but it will be one way of allowing the Arabs to vote on the governance which is closest to their daily lives while reserving the governance of Israel for those Israelis who have resided in Israel and were not brought in through annexation. This is not a compromise which will make the Arab nations nor the Europeans satisfied but is legal under all applicable laws and will stand. The war to eliminate Israel through political, economic and other fronts will continue and is actually just another form of anti-Semitism. For the definition of anti-Semitism, the 3-D definition can be read here and the International Working Definition of Antisemitism can be read here, here or here.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Argument for Free Speech, Old Style

 

The college scene is not what many of us remember it being. We knew a place where all sides met on the stage of debate. Professors would take the opposite side of every student and force them to defend their positions. This built confidence and forced everyone to understand their own side and the opposition side just as well. Why know the other side, that would be the question from students today. Their response to any opposition is to shut down all discourse and disallow their opponents from speaking at all. There are some serious deficiencies with that approach, namely what do you do when you no longer have complete control over the debate and the new rules are defend your position or shut up. That is called the corporate world or the business world. Even a salesperson needs to shop their competition such that they know why their product is superior or how best to show their product or ideas to perspective clientele. In the real world you cannot just show up to a convention with baseball bats and cans of paint and try and intimidate your competitors as doing so will soon put your company out of business and you in prison. The real world, that’s the place you end up after college, demands more from you than running to a safe-space and grabbing a coloring book or cuddling with kittens or puppies. They demand that you actually produce and then they grade you, it’s called your annual review, on your performance against the other employees. I realize for many of you coming from a liberal arts education, or should we say indoctrination, will find the real world filled with triggers, microaggressions, full-on aggressions, challenges and not one single safe zone outside your parent’s basement, will be quite a system shock. Your current college education costing your parents $50,000/year or more is leaving you dreadfully unprepared for the horrors awaiting you out there in the real world.

 

If we have gotten your attention and you now are wondering what you can or should do, we do have some advice. The first thing you should do if you are remotely capable of handling something in the hard sciences, change majors and probably schools and take a hard science where opinions are not important, only facts in these parts, real provable facts. Engineering is demanding and dependent upon mathematics, seemingly the courses which most Liberal Arts majors have the greatest fears and trepidations over. Differential Equations will be your nemesis that stands in the way for a fair share of engineering majors. Let us assure you that it is not that horrific, just remember and learn to use the quadratic equation. It works much the same and they keep that a secret until about three weeks before the final just to make you learn how to do proofs. Just get through the course as once in the real world much of the equations and solutions are performed by calculators, very nice calculators. Other courses include Mathematics, Physics, Cosmology, Chemistry and Biology, which all are straightforward sciences. Computer Sciences and numerous Computer fields also exist but we would recommend avoiding simple repair as that field is slowly disappearing and will require ever increasing competition over fewer and fewer positions. But first, you are going to have to look inside and make some decisions.

 

College is supposed to be an adventure through which you find out who you are and what you are made of. This requires meeting challenges head on and often failing at them. Failing at a challenge does not mean you fail a course, it means you need to do some more work and prepare better for the next time. If your professors were honest and sure of themselves, they would challenge you honestly and debate and they would usually win, as they are slightly older and hopefully more knowledgeable. The same professor would defeat you when you took one side and then in the same class defeat the next student who took the opposite side. A good professor can argue both sides equally well and defeat every student except that rare student who surprises his teachers. Such students were prized, not scorned back when we went to college and was often given more challenging assignments. You want to become that student because challenge is presumably why you are in college. College is where you can try different ideas and find the ones which will define you for most of your life and it is up to you to find these core beliefs, not for some leftist professor to assign you core beliefs. When you have a good and solid education as your base, then you do not need be afraid of people who oppose what you believe because you know your side and the weaknesses of their position and this makes you the one holding the power. That is real power, not a mob of masked zealots wearing black and threatening people while preventing those they oppose from speaking. Somebody who honestly believes an opposing view would debate the speaker during question and answer and prove their beliefs to be a better solution. These people using violence and claiming that all ideas they do not support are hate speech and must be banned are insecure and afraid of honest debate and will not have any power outside the university. What job would they be hired for anyways? What skills have they shown? What prowess? What proficiency? What competence? What ingenuity, resourcefulness or useable mastery have they shown?

 

Are you getting the idea here yet? University or College is not just a place to drink beer or whatever and smoke whatever you wish and other recreational activities; you are also supposed to prepare yourself for the remainder of your life. Many of you who have demanded trigger warnings about courses which might challenge your beliefs or even slightly make you feel uneasy or who demand safe spaces where nobody can say things which might offend you are not going to be prepared for anything except a world controlled by robotic creatures who are programmed to keep a certain number of humans alive as their pets; you will be fully capable of being a robot’s pet. But let us for a minute take your beliefs and inspect their viability in the real world. Let us also inspect a world made to honor and respect your sensitivities and also another person your age with the same degree as you and identical grade point average and all the same recommendations. The two of you are perfect bookend, and like bookends, your composure and beliefs are exactly opposite. So we have the two of you identical in all ways but holding opposite views and sensitivities. Now you are both working in the same company and the company has extremely progressive tendencies except they are unfeeling so they do not fully understand that safe spaces are supposed to be exclusively for protecting left wing ideology holders and are supposed to be closed to people like your opposite who have right leaning ideas, remember you are bookends, you on the left, then all the books and then your opposite on the right. Now somebody starts defending President Trump and his policy to hold immigrants from six Middle East and North African (MENA) nations and you get all flustered and feel threatened by this person so you run to the designated safe room where you grab a coloring book. Now right after you leave another employee berates this person as a racist and spouts collective ideas and your opposite now feels challenged and afraid and also runs to the safe room and starts holding a puppy. In your world, what happens when the two of you start to discuss the situation and the argument out in the office? You are both in a safe room so your opposing beliefs cannot be offensive or is your opposing viewed bookend not permitted feelings? That is the problem with the real world, even if they had safe spaces they would be sued to make them equal opportunity safe spaces.

 

But we hear Google and many other Silicon Valley giants have found a solution to this kind of problem, namely selective employment where only those people who hold correct thinking views, which agree with the left, are safe in their employment. We are waiting for the next step where some employees gather together, go to management, and inform on the conservative in their department. Will this poor unfortunate be dragged into an office and badgered to determine whether they are truly one of those? What after that, maybe told to take an Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and if they score too right of center with their indicators they are fired. Then the witch-hunts will start and those companies will start to tear themselves apart and that will be their downfall. There was an entire nation which fell because of this exact deficiency in their community.

 

Destruction of the Second Temple

 

The Israelite nations had fought and gained their freedom from the Greeks and were once again united and were one people. Even though the Assyrians and then Romans conquered their lands, they remained united. They fought the Romans and gained their freedoms only to be reconquered when Rome sent many Legions such that the Roman Legions about equaled the number of Judeans (Jews). Imagine a conquest where there are almost as many soldiers as people. The Romans appointed a King over the Judeans who the Romans lazily and with scorn simply referred to as Jews (pronounced Juze). The people turned one against their neighbor. Gossip became the main form of communication. This made the people very argumentative and restless. Some groups blamed the Romans for their troubles while many simply blamed their neighbor, their employer, anybody but their own actions. This made the province more difficult to manage and eventually the Romans decided to remove the central institutions and erase the Jews from the earth like they had so many other tribes of people. They burned the Second Temple and stole all of the holy objects with one glaring exception, the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark simply seemed to disappear completely from the face of the earth. The Romans searched but were unable to find even a trace of where it might have been taken, hidden, or even carted out of the nation, absolutely no trace, and this was immediately after the Temple was destroyed and it presumably was within the Temple just before the destruction. The exception was most evident on the Arch of Titus, the Roman General who paraded through Rome with the artifacts he stole including the great seven armed candelabra (see image below). This was supposed to be the end of the Jews as many were taken to Rome as slaves. Another seventy years later and thousands more Jews were sent to the far corners of the Roman Empire and the Jews were given the same treatment as the Carthaginians and numerous other Roman enemy tribes who were rebellious against Rome.

 

Titus Arch

 

The name of the Carthaginians remains solely because of the Punic Wars and Hannibal and his elephants taken over the Alps. Why are there no Carthaginians to be found today, or more amazing, why are there still the Jews? We can answer that question with a single word, Torah. Judaism does depend on a land to flourish and the land depends on the Jews to produce, it is a marriage arranged by Hashem. But the land of Israel belongs to Hashem and the Jews are tasked with caring for the land belonging to Hashem. Our covenant is written in a single document that describes what is expected of us and how we are to live, Torah. We can carry our binding law and all we need with us and as long as there are Jews anywhere near, we will become a community. While we follow Torah, we will thrive; to not follow Torah will lead to our downfall. By the way, idle talk such as gossip is one of the things we are taught to avoid, both speaking and hearing and especially being the conveyance of such. Gossip cost us our Temple, our homeland, our communities but Torah saved us from extinction. Torah will bring our lands and communities back and Israel will thrive as long as we follow and do as we are expected by Hashem, it is all in Torah. That too is a challenge and takes understanding and often the accepting differences of opinion. As some claim, give me two Jews and they will produce at least three opinions. If you read the Talmud, you might be pressed to believe that to be true.

 

Beyond the Cusp