Iran and Proxies Increasingly Threatening Israel Part II

 

This has been the misconception of late by Hamas, Hezballah and Iran, that Israel is simply second-rate and not up to facing their masterful and complete dominance. That is obvious in the above quote of the Supreme Leader’s Tweet. He believes the IDF is just not the same IDF as the great victor in the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. He thinks the IDF has gone soft and can no longer even fight against the terror groups amassed on her northern and southern borders. Needless to point out, despite his assessment, there has been no order for these two groups to actively attempt to destroy Israel. One can only wonder why the hesitance if the IDF is so powerless against these two supreme Arab forces. Perhaps we can explain the reason that they have not truly tested Israel. The reason that the IDF has appeared weak is two fold. The last confrontation in Lebanon the commanders were told to use restraint and not to completely destroy every and anything which posed a threat. The recent barrage from Gaza killed a Palestinian Arab and injured perhaps a dozen or so people and traumatized a fair number but did next to no damage despite over four-hundred rockets fired. This was because the Iron Dome intercepted close to two-hundred of the rockets preventing them from striking heavily residential or other regions. The Israeli defense basically rendered the Hamas rocket barrages mute. The same would be the case for any barrage of the tens upon tens of thousands rockets, and now some guided missiles, which Hezballah could fire, as the Israeli Iron Dome is just for the short range rockets. Israel also has three (perhaps four or five or more) other known (and unknown) systems which launch interceptors (or energy beams) to destroy incoming longer-range projectiles. The reason the IDF has not utterly devastated the entirety of Hezballah and Hamas weapons inventories and their support structure is because they have been restrained. Launch what you claim to be contemplating; an all out effort by all your combined forces in Gaza, Lebanon and the IRGC from Syria and possibly out of the Sinai Peninsula and then you will witness the true abilities of the IDF. Of course, the vast majority of those you order to engage Israel will not be able to tell about the force that struck them so fast and hard that they were frozen in place as they, will have gone to their virgins. Israel would prefer to make peace with her neighbors and all that is required for such a peace is the ability with Islam in general and the neighbors of Israel to settle the Palestinian Arabs outside the borders promised to Israel, the Jewish State, by the San Remo Conference, the Mandate System, the British Crown and Article 80 of the United Nations Charter. We do not desire to rule the world, to expand our borders beyond what was promised, or to interfere with any other worldly affairs, we would be simply quite pleased to be allowed to live our lives within our promised borders and share our discoveries with everyone, assist all who are suffering from some cataclysm, assisting those we can using advanced technology and agricultural methods and otherwise aiding the world the best we are able in exchange for being allowed the privilege of doing such.

 

But the leaders of Iran (formerly Persia but they decided that Aryan would be a better name in 1935 in order to proclaim their being the origins of the Aryan race) desire to complete the world of Adolph Hitler by engaging in a second Holocaust despite their denial that the Nazis ever conducted the original Holocaust. The people of Iran are not the enemies of Israel and many would be some of our greatest friends if only they were ruled by representative governance. Before 1979 and the “Iranian Revolution,” actually more the American experiment gone wrong in Iran thanks to President Jimmy Carter, the man who claimed the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a man of the cloth so he had to be righteous and peace-loving. This was just another great reckoning with a fantasy, and not reality, by the one, and thankfully only, Jimmy Carter. The rest, as they say, is history which includes the unfortunate hostage crisis which held fifty-two American citizens for four-hundred-forty-four days before folding the day that Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. Of course, there are a thousand million conspiracy theories that Reagan and the Republicans were behind the hostage crisis in order to defeat Carter. Whatever. These are the Iranians which the world is dealing with currently.

 

Distance Between Israel and Iran Plus Nuclear Sites and Size Comparison

 

Now we would like to introduce the world to a simple, but apparently beyond the ability of Westerners to understand, reality. Western Civilization, for what it is worth, has no current concept of world conquest as these civilizations have given up on ruling the world. The Greeks, Romans, Spanish, Portuguese, British all tried and failed never quite recovering from their efforts. The United States gave it an effort after the Spanish-American War but quickly realized it was a spider’s web which would only ensnare them and rob the nation of her vitality. The United States then fought wars of liberation and until recently never attempted nation building or democratizing those nations they fought to liberate. These recent attempts at democratizing and nation building have inured the United States economically and challenged the fabric of the nation. The one item we must give credit to President Trump is his lack of desire to fight the world through military force and influence. It is unfortunate that he has continued the United States presence in Afghanistan and elsewhere other than support for the Kurdish people, as other than the Kurds the rest of the Middle East only wants the United States to bleed for them and then bag up their dead and go home. The United States does not need such friends, as these friends take far more than they will ever willingly provide. Israel need learn, or at least continue to recall this message, that most of those in her neighborhood are more than willing to sacrifice your forces for their power enhancement but will be on the other side when the wars come to your border. The United States is able to recover from such mistakes, over a decade or three, possibly a century, but recover she will and remain strong the entire time. Israel does not have that recuperative power, at least not on paper or spreadsheet. Israel does have that spirit which had saved the United States in periods passed, and Israel will keep that spirit into the future, as it has been a gift of the Jewish People to be leaders in innovations and experts at their own survival. The Jewish People may have survived because the Romans attempted to destroy them by spreading them throughout and beyond their empire placing them in every known nation of their time.

 

This dispersal, as history refers to this method of destroying a people, was a Roman practice for destroying persistent enemies. There are only two peoples for whom this was used by the Romans as far as historians have been able to tell. The better-known one was the dispersal of the Carthaginians, originally the Phoenicians, who were dispersed after the Romans salted the earth around Carthage and they faded into history, unless you have met a Carthaginian lately. The lesser known was the dispersal of the Judeans, by the Judans and eventually the Jews, and the one to survive despite this treatment. The reason these two peoples were chosen for such respect was the fact that they rose against the might of Rome on three occasion each, for the Carthaginians they were the Punic Wars which every naval and land officer in Western armed forces studies, and the Jews were of lesser degree but did succeed in throwing off Roman rule, even if only temporarily until they assembled the required legions, of the overwhelming numbers of legions the second time, twice. Still, the Romans preferred their conquered people to be nice, quiet people who acquiesced to Roman dominance with an almost appreciative submission. But the Jewish People survived because they held to something more important and more powerful than land, they held a core of principles which revolved their lives around Torah. The Jews had a sense of a specific purpose to be a light unto the nations and always held to the belief that Hashem would return them to their homelands and that there would come a Messiah always in the future. They had their belief in Hashem as the One Deity and that all idols were simply powerless gods. This kept them steadfast with the belief that any suffering was penance for past sins, past grievous sins, and that there was a future coming where they would return to their homelands and the lands would welcome them and bloom. The early Zionists might have questioned the immediacy of the land blooming, but thanks in great measure to their work on a water system, the land blooms and grows crops the world over sees as some of the most advanced in agricultural sciences. It took patience as there was one prophet who predicted the exact date, well year, that the return would come and it had to do with the number of years by which the first exile in Babylon was cut short because of our good behavior and promises to not again wander from the true path. Well, the Second Temple was destroyed which should tell you that the Jews strayed again. But there was the promise which gave a date, according to Ezekiel, who said the Jews were to be punished for 430 years because they had turned away from Hashem. This was to become the Babylonian exile. The Persians under Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians and freed their Jewish captives about 70 years after Judah lost independence to Babylon. This left 360 years which the Jews would require a second exile to fulfill, as one must pay Hashem when one strays. In Leviticus 26:18, Leviticus 26:21, Leviticus 26:24 and Leviticus 26:28 the Torah spells things out quite clearly, should the Jews not fully repent their sins they would be punished increased by a factor of seven. This meant their time in the Diaspora, or under foreign occupation, became 2,520 years on the original lunar Jewish calendar which translates to 2,484 years on the adapted lunar-solar calendar used today. Count from 536 BCE forward 2,484 years and you arrive at 1948. Additionally, there is Isaiah’s prophecy Chapter 66:8 which states: “Who has heard of a thing like this? Who has seen things like these? Will a land be brought forth with labor pains in one day? Or will a nation be born at one time? For Zion has come into labor pains as well as given birth to her sons.” Israel was basically set by vote of the United Nations as well as her own declaration to be born on a set date. These are among the miracles we have seen even to the modern era, and yet there are those who argue our legitimacy.

 

Iran goes one-step further and declares they will destroy Israel and the United States on their way to world conquest. Oh, that’s right, that is something that the developed world gave up on and does not believe that any nations believe in world conquest. That is how fast they forgot Hitler and for many their own histories and their ideas of world conquest. Well, those who believe in the Quran and the Hadiths are still seeking world conquest because their holy book demands such from them and they believe that Allah will give them the world as their oyster. The Torah and the Old Testament does not declare that Israel or the Jews should ever desire or expect to rule over anything beyond the lands which Hashem promised to Abraham. No world conquest exists in our books. We are to be a light unto the nations of the world which means that there have to be other nations for us to serve as an example of how to live. We are to be the ones making the world greater by example and gifts we provide through our research and developments. Israel has been providing remote African villages with agricultural knowhow and developments, water purification systems, cell towers and electricity from solar systems backed by rechargeable batteries in order to connect them with the outside word and improve their lives. Contrary to those who malign Israel, all we honestly desire is exactly what was promised to the Jewish People after World War I, our lands under the Mandate System which gave our borders to be the Jordan River on the east, the Mediterranean Sea on the west and our current borders with Egypt and Lebanon on the north and south with the Arabs repatriated with their original homelands. The vast majority of the Palestinian Arabs were also immigrants who came into Israel, either seeking economic advantages or were forced into Israel by the British, French and Arabs in efforts to prevent the Jews from ever reestablishing their homelands. The Holocaust had nothing to do with the establishment of Israel, as this was the intent of the San Remo Conference of 1920 and the following measures of the Mandate System established by the League of Nations and enforceable by the United Nations under Article 80 of their charter. That is what we desire and know will come to pass with time. That is the truth which has been completely disregarded and replaced with claims that Israel was founded on the Arab homelands of Palestine. There has never been any nation called Palestine and that is merely the Roman name for the greater region around Israel which includes Jordan. Iran also ignores this reality and claims, the same as the old anti-Semitic claims of history, that the Jews, Israel, are masters controlling the world and responsible for every war and misfortune which humankind suffers. They claim that they are saving the world in their quest to destroy Israel and following by conquering the world bringing it their version of Shiite Islam. Do not wonder, the Iranians are not the only ones who are out to conquer the world. Islam, as a religion, is based upon the conquest of the world and the conversion of every human to whatever form of Islam the conquering Muslims practice. Then there is the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who believes that he is to establish the second Ottoman Empire and from there conquer the rest of the world, something that the initial Ottoman Empire fell a little short, by four continents or more. These are the ones seeking to conquer the world; Israel just wants what was promised by the world after World War I. Iran will not conquer Israel and thus not the world. For those who are entertaining world conquest, please just leave us alone, thank you.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

How to Hate Israel

 

Hating Israel can become difficult providing you look beyond the emotional outbursts. For those who simply dance to the conductor’s rhetoric and refuse to be curious, then hating Israel becomes simple; you just believe everything you are told and when told to jump, you simple ask how high. You do not need to ask what direction because you have practiced the jump and have it down to a ‘T’ after doing it at demonstration after demonstration. The problem is that many of the tropes told about Israel simply are false. That’s right, there are many lies told about Israel which dissolve with the slightest research. Probably the greatest lie about Israel is that the Zionists destroyed the nation of Palestine and ethnically cleansed the region and the refugees are the few who managed to escape the Jew caused carnage. The first problem is there has never in all of history been any nation anywhere called Palestine. There was a region named Syria-Palaestina which was a Roman province between 135 AD and about 390 AD. This had been the province of Judea which had been the southern kingdom that remained after King Solomon’s reign. When King Solomon died the Jewish kingdom of Israel split into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom remained named Israel as it contained ten of the tribes and the southern kingdom held the two tribes and took the name of the larger tribe, Judah. The northern kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians and they assimilated and were thought lost, thus the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Judah was conquered later by the Babylonians. From there they were conquered by the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. The Judeans overthrew the Greeks once only to be reconquered, overthrew the Romans three times only to be reconquered each time. After the third time the Romans dispersed the Jews, as the Judeans were now called as the Romans were too lazy to use their full name, sending them throughout their empire in the hopes that this would cause the Jews to be erased from history. The Romans had done this with the Carthaginians which is part of why we do have Carthaginians around now. After the third time the Jews were overthrew, the Romans also renamed Judea, calling it Syria-Palaestina as part of their erasure of the Jewish People. The British, after taking the area from the Ottoman Empire continued using the name for the region Palestine as the Ottomans kept the Roman name as had the Caliphate before them. People are often quite lazy and rather than redraw all the maps they simply keep the names. There was never a nation called Palestine or a people called Palestinians other than the early Jews. When the British referred to Palestinians, they were referring to the Jews. So, what did they call the Arabs who lived amongst the Jews? Well, they called them Arabs or Jordanians, Syrians, Yemenis, Saudis, Egyptians, Iraqis or even Turks. When did the Arabs become called Palestinians? We can give you the exact date for that as it is known. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, a product crafted jointly by the Arab League and the Soviet KGB, was brought into existence on May 28, 1964, with the presentation of the Palestinian National Covenant, which is a revisionist and combative anti-Zionist statement dedicated to the “restoration of the Palestinian homeland.” That was the day that the Arabs stopped being Arabs and no longer had their original national homes and became refugees of the imaginary former nations of Palestine and they immediately started to rewrite a revisionist history using the history of the Jewish People and replacing the Jews with Palestinians. In a frenzy of anti-Semitism, much of the world, especially Europeans and the Muslim world, took to this revisionist history as they wished to assist in the destruction of Israel as the return of the Jews to Israel fulfilled Judaism and the prophesies of their eventual return to their ancestral home. This was the story of the Dry Bones which Ezekiel had prophesied in the Bible. The return of the Jews to Israel also is a refutation of replacement theology which is practiced by numerous Christian mainline churches and by Muslims. That makes the Jews return to Israel a threat to these religions. If these churches can remove the Jewish nature of Israel, then all would be good again.

 

Then there is the cry that Israel is attempting to conquer all of the Middle East and establish what is called “Greater Israel” reaching from the Euphrates River to the Nile. This is wrong on its face because Greater Israel reached from the Euphrates River to the Wadi of Egypt (see map below), which was the border between Israel and Egypt in ancient times. There was a time when Greater Israel existed during the rule of King David and King Solomon which was actually a federation of smaller kingdoms which pledged loyalty to these Jewish Kings and paid taxes in exchange for protection from the kingdom of Israel. This was the empire which nobody ever taught about and it reached to the Euphrates River to the Wadi of Egypt as Egypt and Israel had fought a number of conflicts and no longer desired to war any further. Kingdoms of Kings David and Solomon existed from approximately 1050 BCE to 930 BCE. What was interesting about this period was that there were no wars in the known world of the time and it was not until the state of Israel broke into two kingdoms as related above, the northern kingdom remained Israel and the southern kingdom was Judea, named after the larger tribe. Then came the rise of the empires you read about in history, the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Caliphate, Ottomans, Austria-Hungarian, Russian, Spanish, French, British and the others. These all were formed through war and remained at war until they ended and were not harmonious with each attempting to force the conquered to adopt their way of life and religions. Kings David and Solomon did not force Judaism on any of the vassal states but allowed them to continue to worship their gods, be they stone idols, golden idols, great being who lived atop a distant mountain or whatever beliefs they held. Like today, King David and King Solomon basically conquered to the borders of the original lands and after that, they assisted allies to defeat their rivals incorporating them into the areas under their protection.

 

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

 

Today Israelis have a far less demanding desire, we just desire to be granted the lands we were promised. Under the original design, Israel was supposed to be formed in the area which today makes up all of Israel, Gaza, Shomron and Jordan, the entire British Mandate. The British remembered their promises to the Arabs and reached an accord with the Zionist Congress which divided the British Mandate along the Jordan River. The eastern 78% was to become the Arab land which today is known as Jordan and the remaining 22% was to be the Jewish State of Israel (see map below). This started with the San Remo Conference and the Treaty of Serves to the Mandate System which was approved unanimously by the League of Nations and then adopted by the United Nations as Article 80 in their Charter. This is the entirety of the story until the world decided that the Jews were being granted too much land and they might actually be capable of defending their borders. This led to the proposal from the United Nations General Assembly of Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. This divided the western 22% of the British Mandate in half again with much of Israel being the Negev Desert. Since this was a General Assembly Resolution, it would only be applicable if all sides involved accepted the terms. The Zionist Congress and initial Israeli government which were being formed agreed to the plan but the Arab League refused to accept the plan. Why did they do such a thing when they could have had their presumed desire, Palestine in half the land. Well, that is easy, they refused because the Jews still would have their land and Jews can never be permitted to rule themselves, they must be subservient to Islam and the Muslims who practice Islam. This was why on the morning that Israel came into existence, with the borders from above as Resolution 181 was refused by the Arab League thus making it voided and no longer even a plan, there were six Arab armies which invaded Israel in what they termed a genocidal slaughter, as the Arab League’s Secretary-General Azzam Pasha was quoted when asked for his estimate of the size of the Jewish forces, Azzam Pasha waved his hands and said: “It does not matter how many there are. We will sweep them into the sea.” Azzam Pasha was later quoted claiming, “I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” One need remember that the Arabs attacked on the morning of May 15, 1948, the morning of Israel coming into existence while some Arab forces attacked Jewish communities starting the day after the United Nations Resolution back on November 29, 1947. Meanwhile, as far as the United States aiding Israel, history tells that United States Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett argued, “Obviously, the Arabs might use arms of United States origin against Jews, or Jews might use them against Arabs.” Consequently, on December 5, 1947, the U.S. imposed an arms embargo on the region. The United States would not adopt aiding Israel until after Israel won the Six Day War in June of 1967 when President Lyndon Baines Johnson took note of the Israeli success and decided that maybe they would make for a strong ally. Yes, the United States took to Israel in value of Israeli strength and the fear that the about to be produced Lavi fighter jet would be a competitor for the American F-16 and thus they gave Israel a grand bargain if Israel would not make fighter aircraft, but that is another story.

 

British Mandate as prescribed division between Arab State of Jordan and Jewish State of Israel

 

The argument that Israel forced the Palestinian Arab refugees from their homes is the next fabrication. The Mufti of Jerusalem and the Arab Armies’ Commanders told the Arabs to leave their homes so that the invading armies could simply murder everybody they found as they swept to the sea and the Jews fell before them. The majority of the refugees came to be from these Arabs who left as they were promised they could have the spoils from the Jews once the Jews were eradicated. The only thing they did not believe was possible that Jews could defeat the forces fighting with Allah. The Jews won the war by not being slaughtered to the last but lost the Shomron and Gaza with Egypt taking Gaza and Jordan actually annexing the Shomron renaming it West Bank. There were some Arabs forced from Israel during the war but the majority of these were from villages which assisted the fighters or were attacking the Israeli forces behind the front lines. There was a percentage which was evicted for tactical means such as when the Jewish forces were making their way into Jerusalem in the last moments so as not to completely lose this precious city, the crown of Israel. These refugees have been kept in camps outside of Israel to be used to conquer Israel with the Right of Return, a phrase also taken from the Jewish story. What the world had forgotten is the Arab world forcing almost every last Jew from their lands. These Jewish refugees were thrown from their homes and penniless and as no nation was taking them in unless they had relatives, and then only if their relatives took legal financial responsibility for these refugees. Thus, they mostly ended up in the one nation who took them with open arms, Israel. These almost million Jewish refugees were accepted and immediately merged into Israeli society and were not left as refugees. They are now many of our leaders and innovators, not perpetual refugees. The Arab refugees are also the only refugees in the world who pass their status to their children generation after generation and were given their own agency, UNRWA.

 

Many of the things Israel is accused of are straight-forward anti-Semitism in a new package. The claim Israel controls the United States Congress is the old canard that the Jews manipulate governments of the world. The claim that the Jews of the world support Israel more than they do their own country is simply ridiculous, especially when often some of the speakers at such rallies are Jews who wish Israel were not Jewish or even did not exist at all. There are claims that the mainstream media refuses to criticize Israel as they control the media or own the media. This is another old canard against the Jews. What has happened is that many of the old anti-Semitic tropes have been adopted replacing Jews with Israel and slight wording changes to accompany the new noun. If you were to listen to much of what the speakers claim, they are forms of the above or claims that the Jews took over an Arab nation which never existed, Palestine. Then they will claim that Israel is an Apartheid nation despite having had Arabs in the Supreme Court and an Arab Party with representatives in the Knesset, the parliament, Arab doctors, nurses, managers, scientists, teachers, police, politicians and in every walk of life. Arabs have all the rights any Israeli has and have full citizenship in Israel. These Arabs are the actual or children and grandchildren of the original Arabs who decided not to leave when the Arabs demanded they leave, some even fought with the Jews to defend Israel in 1948 and some are in the IDF including officers and pilots. Then there is our favorite, that the Jews have not permitted the Palestinians from having an election since 2005. Israel does not rule the Palestinian Arabs about who this claim is made. The Palestinian Arabs under the Palestinian Authority have their own leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and their own parliament. The Gazans are ruled in a dictatorship run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and in a dictatorship one does not get to vote, but Israel has no say in that side either. The Palestinians have not had elections because their rulers do not want elections because they are getting wealthier than one can imagine off stealing aid money coming from the anti-Israel forces. These include the United Nations and European Union at the top of the list. Look into what we have written here on your own and you may be surprised. The research you do, please share it with others you know who are against Israel, please.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israel Just Turned Sixty-Nine

 

The renewed State of Israel just turned sixty-nine in the usual emotionally roller-coaster ride. In Israel there is an unique lead in to celebrating the rebirth of the nation state for the Israelite People, also known in modern time as the Jews (more on that in a bit). A little while before the celebratory day we commemorate the remembrance of those lost in the Holocaust. Then the day immediately before Independence day we commemorate all those who have fallen in our defensive struggle to remain a thriving and wonderful nation, but we might be a tad bit biased as citizens living in Israel and very happy with our choice to make Aliyah. Memorial Day includes the soldiers and civilians including Christians, Muslims, Arabs, Bedouins, Druze, Baha’I, other racial and religious peoples who are represented in the society which is Israel and, of course, the Jews. Memorial Day also includes all of the above who have died or suffered debilitating and life altering injuries due to terrorism. Needless to point out, this is a very solemn day filled with tears and sorrow until sundown. That is when a transformation takes place that unless witnessed is impossible to envision. Sundown on the Jewish calendar marks the start of the next day, Independence Day and some of the highest spirits and joyous occasions in all of Israel. People dance in the streets, sing joyously, some pray, some chant their prayer aloud in the street, others soak it all in and are filled with a satisfaction and a warm glowing joy. Then there are of course speeches by politicians (something we unfortunately cannot prevent as they will talk, that is their job, to talk us into submission), singing (this is great usually even if in Hebrew and you do not yet speak Hebrew), dancing both with and without singing, music and in the midst of all this they launch a good half an hour or more of fireworks, and all this is in the town center of one of the smaller cities in Israel. If one wished to sit atop one of the twenty or thirty story building’s roofs, then they could gather in the little fact that the suburbs, other downtown neighborhoods, the neighboring Kibbutzim and all over the area there would be other fireworks and the sky would light up in sparkling explosions and bright sprinkles of joy in almost every direction one would look, well, except west as the Mediterranean Sea is west of our town.

 

Well, time for a short bit of history and why Israelite became to be known as Jews. If one were to take the refounding of the State for the Israelite People with Jerusalem as their Capital City, then Israel in approximately three-thousand-one-hundred-fifty-years old. That is because somewhere between 1,000 BCE and 1150 BCE King David took an elite group from his army and entered Jerusalem (Yerushalayim) in the middle of the night and took care of the majority of the night guard, took over the main gates and opened them to allow the rest of the Israelite army to enter Yerushalayim. From that day forward, Yerushalayim became the Capital City of Israel and the Israelite People such that wherever they would reside they prayed facing Yerushalayim. Many of their services, especially the Passover Haggadah, end with the final phrase of, “Next Year in Yerushalayim.” History would note that King David’s son, King Solomon would build the Temple to Hashem allowing for a place for Hashem’s presence on Earth to settle. The Ark of the Covenant rested within the Holy of Holies, the central chamber within a chamber within the Temple. Only the Cohen Gadol (Heb. כהן גדול) was permitted to enter and then only on Yom Kippur when he was to atone and account for the people’s sins and the state of Israelite society and its reverence towards Torah. The Cohen Gadol would have a strong narrow rope capable of dragging his remains from the chamber attached to his ankle in case the recounting went badly. There are many accountings of attributes, the positions the Cherubim would face atop the Ark of the Covenant and other strict rules on how the Cohen Gadol was to prepare for entering the Holy of Holies. Let it rest that we are quite glad that we could never qualify for the position.

 

There was the instance when during a war the Israelites lost the Ark of the Covenant allowing the Ark to be captured in a battle they lost because they took the Ark of the Covenant without having been instructed by Hashem to do so. Things went quite badly for whatever city it was harbored. City after city would pass it off to save themselves and finally they begged the Israelites to take the accursed item back and never to allow it in their lands again. The Israelites took the Ark of the Covenant back with great joy and great care in handling the Ark. The Temple was subsequently destroyed by the Babylonians and the Ark of the Covenant was nowhere to be found and has remained in hiding ever since. Also between the building of the First Temple and the Babylonian conquest and destruction of Yerushalayim and the Temple when Solomon dies the nations split into two kingdoms, the Northern Kingdom held ten tribes plus their priests and was named Israel and the southern nations was called Judea as it was made up of Juda and Benyamin, two tribes and Juda was the larger of the two. Judea also controlled Yerushalayim. The Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel and never were they heard from until recently since the formation of the State of Israel, where these tribes emerge from around the globe and have proven genetic links to the Nation of Israel and the Israelite People. They were, and oft still are, referred to as the ten lost tribes of Israel. The Southern Nation continued until the Roman dispersion and their people were referred to as Judeans, which over time shortened and shortened until Judean became Jude and finally simply became Jew.

 

While in captivity, the Babylonians demanded our Priests sing songs for them so they wrote the Song of Babylon, which includes a very strong reference to the special place Yerushalayim plays in the lives of the Israelites. The Song of Babylon is also known as Psalms – Chapter 137 and those special lines are below.

Sing for us of the song of Zion.
How shall we sing the song of the Lord on foreign soil?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill (lose its cunning and strength)
May my tongue cling to my palate (roof of my mouth), if I do not remember you,
if I do not bring up Jerusalem at the beginning of my joy.
Remember, O Lord, for the sons of Edom, the day of Jerusalem, those who say,
“Raze it, raze it, down to its foundation!”

Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great who received the title of Great because he allowed the Israelites to return home to rebuild their Temple and worship Hashem. Truth be told, just as in Egypt with the Exodus, far less than half the Jews took the offer to return and reclaim their lands and make them productive. Many claim that both times the number was merely ten percent, we like to believe we could get at least double if not two and a half times as many, a full quarter of the Israelites. But many remained throughout the Persian Empire. Things went well until a descendent of one of the Israelites old enemies came back to haunt them. His name was Haman and he was the Visor (top advisor) to King Achashverosh. King Achashverosh called for his wife, Queen Vashti and her reply was, “No.” This angered King Achashverosh so he had her removed from her position as the Queen by beheading her. King Achashverosh held a contest to choose a new wife; a Jewess named Esther won and became Queen of Persia. Haman persuaded King Achashverosh that the Jews were a threat to his throne and had a Royal Order sent to all the regions that the Jews be killed on a set day. Esther’s Uncle Mordechai told her of these plans and asked her to intervene with the King, which at first she shrank from the task, but was persuaded to act. King Achashverosh could not repeal his first order so he issued a new order demanding that the Jews fight back and let the true people persevere. Haman and his sons hanged on the very gallows they had built to use on the Jews and on that fateful day the Jews won out and more anti-Semites died that day than any other day in history.

 

After this, there was a brief period of calm and then came the Greeks and Alexander who found circumcision to be abhorrent as they worshiped the human form and thought people to be born with perfection and it was an anathema to them to cut or change the body in any manner. Many Jews could not accept their making circumcision illegal and circumcision was simple to discern and once detected they faced sentencing to death. This caused them to live hidden in the caves of the Judean Hills away from the prying eyes of the Greek soldiers and officials. The Jews survived the Greeks despite many Jews being tempted and turning to following the Greek worship of idols. These were called Hellenized Jews and were very similar in many ways to the American and European Jews who have slowly over the years turned from their religion and now act as if they were gentiles in all manners except for attending church, but then many Europeans and a fair number of Americans, mostly leftists, also do not attend church. Then the Romans came replacing the Greeks and not much changed until the Jews managed to win their freedom briefly from the Romans who returned in force, defeated the Jews, and passed new restrictive laws in the hope it would break their will and force them to be Roman. Apparently, they were not familiar with Torah where the Israelites are often referred to as a stiff-necked people and stubborn beyond measure. The Jews managed the impossible and threw off Roman Rule a second time, Rome sent several legions, and this defeat was definitive. They dispersed much of the Jewish population to the far corners of their empire and everywhere in between with the hope that this dispersion would be the end of the Jewish People. Rome understood that a people without any connection to land became weak-willed and soon lost any mutual ties and became estranged and their being a nation terminated. The Jews were different because they were not tied to the land as much as they were tied to Torah, and the Romans could not take Torah away from the Jews, they had it memorized along with commentary, customs, celebrations and every iota which was within. This was the precious heritage that they passed on generation-to-generation and what kept the Jewish People defined as a people. It is Torah, which also is found in some traceable form that most of these tribes being discovered still observe to this day. They continue to observe the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday and hold the Seder for Passover and every other tradition plus a few new ones commemorating great miracles in their lives.

 

 

All of this brings us to the pertinent question, did Israel just turn sixty-nine as it was born in 1948, or was this the celebration of Israel turning somewhere around three-thousand-two-hundred-fifty years old from the anointing of the first King of Israel, King Saul? But that leaves out Moses which brings us to this being the three-thousand-four-hundred plus years old and even this is incomplete as the very first Israelite to live in the land of Israel was Abraham and from his founding of the start of a family, a religion, the following of Hashem and the rules he would teach to Moses all placed within Torah along with the History of a people. So the origin of the Israelite People and the Jewish religion begins with our Patriarchs and Matriarchs named Abraham, Izaak, and Jacob along with Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel. This makes this birthday approximately the four-thousand-seventeenth birthday as Abraham was estimated to have arrived in Canaan somewhere around 2000 BCE. The timeline above places Abraham appearance to be 2166 BCE, which makes our final approximation four-thousand-one-hundred-eighty-three years old, so have a happy, healthy and wonderful 4183rd birthday Nation of Israel. As we are writing this on Independence Day afternoon, we need to go to a picnic because in Israel we celebrate Independence Day much as it is everywhere, we go to morning religious services and a Bar-B-Q in the afternoon where there is lots of Kosher meat and no ice cream, it’s that meat and milk thing, so, good-bye for now.

 

Beyond the Cusp